As a former
waiter at
Perkin's Restaurant, I encountered a lot of strange, exotic types of people. There were the quiet little old ladies who would sit in their booth for hours on end, curled up over a book, and only ordering a cup of hot water for the teabags they brought along from home. There were the Perkin's Rats, the kids who weren't old enough to go to bars and were too unlucky to live somewhere besides
Springfield, IL, and thus were forced to loiter in the restaurant for as long as they possibly could.
None, however, were quite so menacing or fearsome as the Big, Scary, Grizzled Waitress.
The Big, Scary, Grizzled Waitress works mainly during the daytime. She has 6-14 children at home, possibly several hundred grandchildren, and several half-feral pets. She moves with the grace of an eighteen wheeler and the confidence of a deathrow inmate. Her steely eyes survey the dining room with unconcealed hatred for the universe and all the customers within it, and she is only driven by the soggy, forgotten singles which grace her tables when she finally drives out her clients. Her voice is like the sound of metal being strained and twisted to its breaking point. Her hips are broad and muscular, and her jowls undulate thickly as she strides to and from her tables. Her ability to carry items is staggering, sometimes hefting up to fourteen plates full of food, all lined up on one arm like some sort of greasy caravan slowly delivering fatty foods with poorly contrived names to her glistening, lipstick-encrusted maw.
Woe to the inconsiderate student waiter or waitress who speaks of when they'll leave and get a "real job" in the presence of the Big, Scary, Grizzled Waitress, for she will smite the offender with righteous indignation as well as her rusted-out 1974 Buick that seats 81.
Screw not with Big, Scary Grizzled Waitress. She knows that she has nothing to lose, and that one server job is as miserable as the next, and she will stop at nothing to have her way. She doesn't care about the customer, her co-workers, her family, her god. No, it is the one dollar bill that drives her. George Washington is her god, and Lincoln her messiah.