I was a waitress in a greasy-spoon-type diner. My boss was my (now ex) husband's pothead cousin. She was the owner and only other waitress, and half the time she was too stoned to come in to work, so I would end up working 16 hour days, 7 days a week.
And since she was "family" I was supposed to just suck it up and keep my mouth shut.
I cleaned the bathrooms, answered phones, ran the register, bussed my own tables, made salads coffee and hauled my own huge motherfucking soda canisters, mopped the floors, waited tables...you name it. All for $1.50 an hour plus tips, which weren't much -- all these old motherfucking Texas farmers who were so cheap they'd leave me a $0.60 tip from the $0.40 cup of coffee they paid for and I refilled about 900 times.
Sunday mornings were the worst -- round 11am all the holy rollers would come in fresh from church. Whole families of inbred country-fried fucks, complete with 6 or 7 screaming snot-nosed brats, a husband who thought his shit didn't stink, and a big-haired air-headed PTA soccer mom who couldn't be bothered to control her brood of shithead kids. My personal pet peeve was when I'd go over to these tables, ask if they needed anything, and they'd say "Oh no, hun, we're fine", then let me get five or six steps away and they call out, "But we need --"
When my boss did manage to make it to work, she and her brother (who washed dishes) would go off in the walk-in cooler and smoke a blunt, then come out and fuck me up. They'd throw leftover food off the tables at each other at closing time, shit like that...and guess who got to clean it up?
I hated my job, hated the people I worked for, hated the customers. I read somehwere, while I was still working there, that if a food service worker smoked a cigarette and then didn't wash their hands before serving food again, it was just as germ-ridden as if they'd spit in your food.
I'd go take a smoke break, thinking of that the whole time, and then come back and serve my customers with a shit-eatin' grin on my face...without washing my hands first.
