by Marie Simas
I didn’t get a driver’s license until I was twenty-five, so I rode a bike everywhere. All four years of college, that was how I got around. I bought a used bike from Goodwill. It was a piece-of-shit ten-speed, with peeling burgundy paint. Only the front brake worked. I rode it everywhere and I had a U-Bar to lock it. When I got home, I carried the bike on my shoulder up three flights of stairs to my apartment.
It was my second bike. The first shitty bike got dismantled and stolen because I was too lazy to carry it up the stairs on my back at 3 a.m. after cycling home from work. I woke up one morning, went downstairs and it was gone. Someone must have spent hours sawing through the metal railing I had attached it to. The bike wasn’t worth more than $30 bucks, but they took it anyway.
I learned how to carry gallons of milk on the handlebars. When I went grocery shopping, a lot of my purchasing choices were logistic—I needed to make sure I could carry them home on my bike.
I tried to show off, sometimes, by riding without my hands. I got pretty good at it.
During my final year at San Francisco State, I got a part-time job at Dine-In, which was a restaurant delivery service. It was basically pizza delivery for rich fucks who didn’t want to order room service at their five-star hotel. These bastards wanted a $100 lobster, but they didn’t want to get off their asses and go get it themselves. Dine-In catered to them.
I worked the phone banks. There weren’t many of us. On any given night, there would be two or three girls working the phones, a dispatcher, and a few drivers. That was it. One of the other phone girls was a thin Hawaiian with NO eyebrows. She may have had a single row of eyebrow hair. But that was it. She didn’t wear any makeup—just lip liner and eyebrow pencil. She plucked and groomed her eyebrows all day long. She brought out that little eyebrow kit and tweezers every hour, looking for an errant hair that dared to pop out of her forehead. Her whole forehead was shiny and hairless.
The dispatcher was a frighteningly thin white chick with bad skin and mom jeans. She wore Lee jeans—the ugliest mom jeans on earth. The crotch zipper was tucked right up under her tits. And then she wore half-shirts. It was an odd look. But I guess you can get away with a lot when you weigh eighty pounds. She ate like a horse, too. She was jittery. I suspected cocaine or speed.
The manager was a really dynamic guy—I can’t remember his name. He wasn’t that attractive—he kind of reminded me of Jack Black. Same looks, same personality. I thought he was funny and cute. I probably would have slept with him if I’d kept working there much longer.
It was the only job I ever got fired from. I mixed up my schedule and didn’t show up for three days. One of the other employees said that she “called me”—but I was home the whole time and I didn’t get any calls. I think that she was full of shit. To this day, I’m not sure if they switched the schedule on me after the fact, or if I just fucked up and read it wrong.
When I showed up on the day I thought I was supposed to work, Jack Black called me into his office. That’s when he fired me. I was young and dumb, so I bawled like a baby. I could tell that he was freaked out by this—he wasn’t sure if he should believe me or not.
After settling myself down a little, I closed the office door, went around to his side of the desk and gave him a kiss on the mouth. It was electrifying. I felt lightning bolts, just like they talk about in romance novels. He looked at me, shocked. But he didn’t say anything and didn’t pull away.
I picked up my check and thanked him. Then I walked out. I could feel his eyes digging into my back as I walked to the street and got my bike. I was trying to look cool, so I hopped on the bike and started riding down the street with no hands.
Less than halfway down the block, my tire caught on a rail for the commuter train and I tried to stop by slamming on my one shitty brake—the front brake. I promptly went over the handlebars. I was wearing shorts, so I got scraped up pretty bad, but I didn’t break anything. My handlebars got fucked up, so I knew that I would have to walk the bike home.
I felt humiliated, so I lay on the ground and didn’t move for a minute. Pretty soon, a giant bus screeched to a stop on my right and the bus driver got out.
“Are you okay, miss?” he yelled.
I looked up to see dozens of people staring at me through the bus windows, their noses pressed up against the glass.
“Yeah, I’m all right,” I said and waved him off.
When I left that office, I thought I was hot shit. Less than five minutes later, I was a spectacle. Fired, sitting in the street with bloody knees and a broken ten-speed. God was good at teaching me some humility.
I sat up, turned around, and looked over my shoulder. All the Dine-In employees were staring out the window at me from the second floor office, their hands and noses smashed up against the glass. Jack Black raised his hand slowly...and waved.
I sighed, picked up my bike and walked home.
The Accordion Dollars
1993, AGE: 21
When I graduated from college, I moved to Northern California in order to attend UC Davis. I wanted to get a Master’s degree. Instead, I did what a lot of recent college graduates do—I went to work in a restaurant. I worked graveyards at a greaseball twenty-four-hour diner near the school, which I never actually attended.
Pathetic.
That job sucked to high heaven. It was the worst job I’ve ever had. I spent most of my time cleaning up puke and chasing out sleeping homeless people. That’s what working a graveyard shift will get you.
I used to work with two male servers on the weekends, Jim and Paul. Jim was a forty-something married guy who used to pocket all the cash checks for himself and Paul was a twenty-something stoner who hated the job.
I’ll tell you something about male servers. They’re vindictive. If you don’t tip them, they’ll make you pay for it. They will!
So here’s some valuable advice—if you can’t afford a tip, then eat fast food or, better yet, don’t eat out at all. Servers remember who you are. Trust me.
Anyway, one night, we were all fucking around on another endless graveyard shift. I was always the closer, which meant that I would stay until 6 a.m. It was about 2 a.m. It was slow, so Jim and Paul were getting ready to leave.
But suddenly, a huge group of geeks came in to eat, so Paul and I split the tables. Now these guys were super duper geeks—wearing long black dusters, which made them look like Keanu Reeves in the Matrix. They had Dungeons and Dragons books and dice, so they could play D&D while they were waiting for their food.
Two of the geeks sat down in Paul’s section. Paul didn’t have a chance to get to the table right away. Our busser had just cleaned it off, and the geeks sat down. When Paul went to the table, he noticed that his tip from the previous customers was missing. He knew it was gone because he had seen the tip on the table from far away. It was two dollars, folded like an accordion. The money had been placed standing up, like two little soldiers, at the edge of the table.
Now it was gone. Paul walked to the table and confronted the geeks.
“Did you guys see a tip on this table?” he asked.
“No,” they said, shaking their heads.
Paul crawled beneath the table to make sure it hadn’t fallen underneath. Nope. The money was gone. Paul looked at the geeks. They wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“I’ll be right back, guys. Give me a minute.” Paul went back to the kitchen and got Jim.
“Jim! Psssst! Hey Jim!”
“Yeah? What’s up? I was just getting ready to bounce,” said Jim, who was already donning his coat.
“Naw, you need to help me get these motherfuckers. They just stole my tip off the table, man!” Paul’s eyes bulged and he shook his fist.
Now, let me explain something about restaurant etiquette. It’s bad if a customer is a shitty tipper. It’s even worse if a customer doesn’t tip at all, but most servers consider this to be part of the business and they just grumble and accept it. But to steal tips off a table is another thing entirely. T
his is a cardinal sin above all cardinal sins. And there’s hell to pay.
So, the night began.
The geeks decided to go “all out”—they ordered appetizers, drinks, dinner, the whole enchilada. Jim and Paul were thrilled. Lots of opportunities for revenge.
I sat in the back watching this little cinema unfold. In the meantime, I warmed up my nightly allotment of whipped cream bottles, so I could suck the nitrous oxide for a quick high.
First, Paul and Jim prepared the geeks’ drinks. They went to the back and dipped the cups into the employee toilet. The employee toilet was the most rancid, shit-splattered, vomit-smelling toilet you could imagine. Nobody used it, except the cooks, and even then, it was only when they had to puke or take a long shit. Even the cleaning lady avoided that toilet, saying it was beneath her. So it never really got cleaned. Every now and then, someone would throw a urinal cake into the tank, but it was like throwing an SOS pad at the EXXON Valdez spill. Nothing could crack that impenetrable filth barrier.
After the cups had been baptized in shit water, Paul spit two giant loogies in the bottom of the cups, and filled the cups with ice and soda.
Jim served the drinks with a smile. Paul was too pissed to go out to the table.
“Here you go, guys! Free refills!” Jim patted the geeks on the back.
Then came the appetizer. They ordered a sampler platter, which had our finest selection of greasy finger foods, like fried zucchini, mozzarella sticks, onion rings, and some other shit I don’t remember. The cook was in on the joke, so he dropped all the food on the floor and stomped on it before it went into the fryers. When the platter was done, the cook kissed his fingers to his lips and laughed.
Paul brought the plate to the back and unzipped his pants. They pulled their cocks out and dipped the tips in the ranch dressing.
Then came the burgers, which were stomped again by everyone’s boots. The buns were thrown against the wall; the tomatoes and pickles were rubbed against the trashcans. Their side salads came out of the trash: the dregs from the dinner rush.
The geeks ate everything. Every...last...bite.
And finally, the dessert! The coup de grâce! They ordered milkshakes, which we all hated to make because the restaurant had an old-fashioned milkshake machine and we had to pack and blend the milkshakes by hand. But tonight was different. Jim and Paul packed the ice cream, adding layers of booger, spit, and even a little bit of piss. A masterpiece!
I sat in the back watching the show while sucking back some of the nitrous oxide every few minutes. Jim and Paul high fived each other. They were proud of their night’s work. This revenge was their opus.
A few minutes later, all the geeks left en masse. The restaurant was empty. Paul went out to the table to collect the plates.
“Hey! Hey, you guys! Come here—you’re not going to believe this!” he yelled.
Jim and I went out to meet him.
There, sitting on top of the dirty plates, was the same tip that Jim had been looking for. The same two dollars...
Folded like an accordion.
Shitty-Jobs-R-Us
1999, AGE: 26
By the time I turned 26, my dreams of graduate school were pretty much dead in the water. By that point, I’d been waitressing in shitty restaurants and clubs for seven years. I was smoking too much, drinking too much, and college was a distant memory.
The saddest part was that I never really looked for a better job. I just kept working as a waitress. I enjoyed the easy cash and constant gossip. I got tangled up in dramas and it became impossible to leave. There’s a lot of scandal and sexual intrigue that happens in restaurants and bars—that’s just the nature of the business.
I’ve worked in many jobs where managers fucked employees in the office. In one case, a married male manager actually fucked another guy in the office. Fearless. It was during an employee party and he came out of the office all sweaty.
I guess the manager was mostly straight, but he got passed over for a promotion when the rumor spread around.
If you’re ever given the opportunity to fuck at the office, you ought to try it. It’s actually quite fun. The danger of getting caught might be the majority of the excitement.
Anyway, maybe some of you have seen the movie Waiting. It’s a comedy about restaurant work. It’s based on these archetypes—the slutty hostess, stoned busser, and horny cooks. The funny thing is that all the stereotypes are true. In the movie, the kitchen manager is played by actor Luis Guzman, who is a pretty unattractive Latino. In the movie, he fucks a gorgeous bartender in the bathroom and his friend barges in and takes a picture.
After seeing the movie people always say, “There’s no way a guy that ugly would get a girl like that.”
They’re basically saying that this ugly Latino guy would never be able to fuck such a pretty white girl. Well, folks, nothing could be further from the truth. In every restaurant, in every city, in every town across America, there is one universal truth... and that is:
The ugliest Latino is always fucking the prettiest white girl.
Don’t believe me? It’s 100 percent true, I swear on my life. I’ve worked at dozens of shitty restaurants and it’s always true. I’ve talked to Latin guys who’ve had literally hundreds of sexual partners. No condoms, either. The Virgin of Guadalupe tattoos run interference for any possible STDs.
Case in point: Rogelio was the assistant kitchen manager at Castillo’s, a shitty Mexican joint that tried to sell itself as upscale Latin fusion. Everything in that kitchen came out of a fucking bag.
Rogelio was short, fat, dark. He had greasy, curly soccer hair and a wife and four kids at home. By the time I started working at his restaurant, Rogelio had fucked his way through the entire wait staff. Girls adored him. They fought over him. They put notes on his car, followed him around, flirted with him on their breaks. It was insane. One server, Mandy, used to come to work without panties just so she could entice him to fuck her in the walk-in freezer or in the office.
Rogelio was never satisfied with just one, so the jilted ones got mad. Women went crazy for him. Psycho, even. One time, a particularly crazy one went to his house, smashed all his car windows and screamed on his front lawn, “I’m fucking your husband!” That was embarrassing for everyone involved. Luckily, Rogelio’s wife wasn’t home. He called the police and got the crazy bitch arrested.
Rogelio even borrowed money from co-workers for an abortion. More than once, actually. I thought that was a bit much. Last I heard, Rogelio was still married—his wife oblivious to his dalliances.
I couldn’t say anything. I also fucked my kitchen manager, Oscar, —in the office, no less.
Oscar and I met at Castillo’s. At the beginning, I despised him. He was conceited, arrogant—full of swagger. Of course, all the other servers adored him. I couldn’t understand it!
One girl in particular, Jayne, was obsessed. She invited Oscar to her house for private parties. She would draw little maps with directions to her house on napkins. Then she would go outside and leave the napkin on his windshield, tucked underneath the wiper blade. I saw the napkins sitting on his car at least a dozen times.
“Jayne, why do you like Oscar? He’s such an asshole!” I asked.
“Oh my god! He is soooo fucking hot! I want him to go out with me. I would suck his dick right now,” She swooned.
“Seriously? You’re so nasty; ugh! He’s such an arrogant prick. He’s not even cute.” I frowned and looked over at Oscar, who was helping another waitress at the register. She was flipping her hair and batting her eyelashes, her hand firmly on his bicep. I looked back at Jayne, who grabbed a napkin roll and began simulating fellatio. She was talking to me, but her eyes were on Oscar’s dick, bulging through his pants.
Oscar turned around and winked, “Jealous, eh?”
Both of the other waitresses giggled.
“Jesus Christ! You are the dumbest group of bitches I’ve ever seen!” I rolled my eyes and stomped out to the patio to smoke. I c
ouldn’t watch these idiots fawning over that asshole anymore.
Oscar pursued me for a year and every time I said “No,” he tried harder. I could have complained to upper management, but part of me enjoyed the chase.
In the end, I fell for him just like all the others. Along the way, his conceit and swagger transformed itself into confidence and charm. Looking back, I’m sure he didn’t change— only my opinion of him did.
Oscar was fun. He made me feel alive and happy.
It’s always a mistake to fuck your manager because you might just marry him.
We’ve been together for ten years now... and counting.
CHAPTER 5
Later... It’s Life
Orange Baby
2004, AGE 31
When I finally got pregnant, I was over thirty and it was completely unplanned. I was lazy, stopped taking the pill, and Oscar and I were just using the Hail Mary method (pulling out).
Panicked, I made my first appointment with a “baby doctor.” Doctor McCann was a chubby Irishwoman with wild red hair and kaleidoscope reading glasses. Her breasts were enormous and she moved them about with her hands when she sat down.
“Doctor, what am I going to do? It’s not a good time for me right now.” I put my face in my hands.
“Well, do you want kids or do you want to have an abortion?”
“No... I don’t know. I guess I want kids... eventually.”
My obstetrician looked at me like I was the dumbest bitch on earth. “Missy—you’re over thirty. Over thirty! What the hell you waiting for? Your eggs aren’t getting any younger.”
“Uh, well.. I’m trying to go to graduate school...” I stammered. It wasn’t convincing.
She shook her head at me. “Guess what, missy? I’ve got news for you... there’s never a good time to have kids. Never. You’ll never have enough money and the timing always sucks. That’s motherhood. Get used to it.”
I cried. Then I laughed. “Okay. Let’s do this.”