Steph Foster Humor Columnist
I spent the first two weeks of school enjoying myself and relaxing, because classes aren’t important. However, the passing of those first few weeks meant that I had to go back to work. I usually don’t mind going to work since, at my job at home in Pittsburgh, I work in a restaurant and am allowed to sleep in the booths, eat all the free food I want, and talk back to customers as I see fit. I’d be doing all these things at home, so there’s really no reason to dread going to work.
But Denny’s a different story. I often work the midnight shift, and the 3 a.m. Denny’s crowd is comparable to a new puppy, or your 90-year-old grandma. The kind that you never wanted, because you wanted a cat instead, but your mom insisted on this annoying little purebred incontinent thing that insists on biting everything and knocking over everything but hey, it’s yours, and you can’t let it die. And now you sort of like it. Of course this description applies strictly to the puppy, not the grandma. I didn’t even feel like clarifying, but I knew that if I didn’t, I’d have someone yelling at me about how I’m a grandma-hater. Speaking of grandmas, don’t you hate when people have ridiculous names for their grandparents? Calling them “Nu-Nu” or “Pompa” or something else like that wasn’t cute when you were two, and now it sounds like vomit. Because vomit makes a noise. Please just stop.
Also, puppies don’t give you money, and apparently, neither do customers at Denny’s. Grandmas do though. Which brings up a topic that has and forever will instill a rage in me that everyone wishes I would shut up about…
In my year of working at the Denny’s in Latrobe, I’ve undergone the transformation from a beautiful butterfly to a person that hates people, all because of two things: tips, and the way that customers treat food service workers. If someone were to survey me in a census about how much these things make me mad, I would have many, many things to say, and I would fill out that survey with such fervor, and it would go into government books and stand on record that I, Stephanie Foster, really hate everyone. It’s obvious from this last sentence that I know nothing about the US census.
If you think that I’m just being bitter, you’re right, but let me explain. On one of the graveyard shifts that I worked last year, a group of high school freshman stumbled in around midnight, drunker than anyone I have ever seen in my life. Of course nobody goes to Denny’s sober, or fully clothed, after 10 p.m., but these guys were bad. What happened in the next two hours could have been the plot to a children’s book called “Me and My Liver.” In “Me and My Liver,” little Johnny drinks a lot, goes to out to eat, loudly calls his waitress “ugly,” eats 27 pancakes, throws up on the bench outside Denny’s and in the ashtray right next to it and realizes that drinking is VERY, VERY BAD. Of course I was forced to help clean it up, while licking my wounds from being called ugly (THAT WAS SO ORIGINAL). And to top it all off, little Johnny and his dwarf- sized freshmen friends left 62 cents and a heap of evacuated sugar packets on the table.
So here is the moral of the story, I guess. There are several little morals, or moralettes, as I’ll call them, because there’s no reason that I can’t invent words. 1. If you’re going to drink, do it and home and don’t be 14 either, because being drunk and being a teenager are both things that are intrinsically evil (for more information on intrinsic evil, see your theology professor). 2. Give me your money. I don’t care if you save starving babies from…starvation. Or if you donate money to Sarah McLaughlin and her upsetting spokesmanship for the ASPCA. Or if you’re generally just a wonderful, pleasant person to be around. I just want your money. If you can’t understand that waitresses get paid just over two dollars an hour, then you have no soul, and if that’s the case, then picking a Catholic college could not have been any less in your favor.
Also, “Me and My Liver” ends with Johnny going to Eat’n Park next time he wants to drink. Also, if any Saint Vincent students plan on coming in when I’m working, remember to leave a nice tip, unless you want your name mentioned in the paper, which would probably be an honor, because newspapers are the most exciting new form of media.
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