What is up with wait staff at restaurants that make you feel like you're putting them out by actually being there? Yesterday Margaret, my grandmother, and I went to a national restaurant chain that rhymes with "schmili's" (I have to do that in case their corporate lawyers try to hunt me down--I'm probably already on their "watch list" since I one time refilled my drink there 14 times! But who could blame me when they charge $2 for a glass of pop! If they're not ashamed of THAT, I'm not ashamed of risking my health to take home a gallon of Diet Coke in my bladder!) Anyway, when our server came up, she had that teenage I-know-I'm-better-than-you-but-due-to-circumstances-beyond-my-control--namely-my-stingy-parents-won't-buy-me-$125-jeans-AND-pay-my-cell-phone-bill--I'm-forced-to-work-here-but-don't-have-to-like-it-and-by-god-YOU'RE-not-going-to-like-it look. If you've ever been to that mall food court staple "Hot Dog on a Stick" you know the look I'm talking about. One thing she DID have going in her favor (and that eventually earned her her tip) was that we never had to go very long before getting our refills. In fact, she was so diligent in bringing us more pop that Margaret finally had to cut me off! All in all, it wasn't THAT bad, but it did remind me of awful high school jobs that were pretty mindless but served as an evil means to a necessary end.

Speaking of which, that reminds me of my only high school job; I worked in the Shopko electronics department for a few years and pretty much enjoyed it. (Except for the hideous orange smock we had to wear! That was wrong on TWO counts--one: the orange was a shade that would have made anyone look like they were in the late stages of liver failure, and two: how could you be taken seriously when wearing an article of clothing called a SMOCK?!?) One Christmas experience, however, was pretty memorable--it was the Christmas that the original Nintendo Entertainment System was THE must-have Christmas item. We had to field at least 50 calls a day asking if we had gotten any new shipments in and when they did come in, they were gone within the day. As Christmas approached, frantic parents were getting more and more desperate--resorting to disparaging and demeaning remarks to us clerks--since we were the ones responsible for ordering them and had a secret stash of them in the back storeroom for all our good-for-nothing pot-smoking buddies. Well one evening, it was really rushed and the service desk had a cart of returns that they had parked in my department but I hadn't had a chance to put in back yet. On the top was a returned Nintendo in its original box. Well, a woman who had come in almost every day to see if we had any in saw that sitting in the cart and just took it. Evidently she thought it was someone else's cart and not the return cart, because she went to the front and bought it. The day after Christmas, I was working again, and she storms in, absolutely fuming, accusing me of ruining her son's and her Christmas. She said that her son had opened up his present from Santa on Christmas morning and inside he didn't find his dream machine but a filthy, broken Nintendo. He had no idea why Santa would deliver something like that to him and she was forced to tell him there was no such thing as Santa. (Although it seems to me she passed up a golden opportunity to tell him he shouldn't have been so naughty that year) When pressed, I found out how she had gotten the machine in the first place, but I don't think that appealing to her sense of karma or divine justice would have been appropriate, so I had to play the good corporate hack and apologize--which if you know me was NOT easy--so I earned a lot of karma points for it that, which I promptly spent on judging the servers at Taco Time.