why i almost quit yesterday, and a bunch of things i'd be foolish to say out loud.

I normally have a great job. I roll in around noon and I'm done by five. I'm adored by my coworkers and customers alike. I've been given a raise and more responsibility (though even at the "more" level, my responsibility is minimal).

Yesterday was the day I almost threw in the apron.

First I lugged eight cases of Pepsi around all by my sweaty self, filling the cooler inside and the soda machine outside. Then I was rather publically reprimanded for miscounting candy and giving a customer nearly twice what they'd paid for (penny candy is a pain in my ass and I'd shorted the store NEARLY A DOLLAR...).

Then I had the weirdest ice-cream-scooping "mess-up" ever. A man came into the restaurant around 4:30, just before I started wrapping things up for the day, and after the above incidents. He read the entire ice cream menu out-loud, to himself. Then he ordered, I swear to freaking Christ, a scoop of strawberry ice cream on a cone.

me: Sugar cone, or wafer cone?
him: waffle cone.
me: I'm sorry, we do not have waffle cones. Would you like sugar or wafer?
him: Regular.
me: Pointy or flat-bottomed? (This simplification is required seventeen times a day.)
him: Uh, waffle.
me: Wafer?
him: Yes.

So I fetch one scoop of strawberry ice cream and plop it on a wafer cone, and the man comments, "Wow, that's a big scoop!" And I think, "Great, I probably give too much ice cream away, too," while he pays, licks, and leaves.

A couple of minutes later, a woman with a cane sticks her head in the door and yells,

WHAT KIND OF ICE CREAM DID MY HUSBAND ORDER?

I reply: strawberry. She then yells,

CHOCOLATE!

...then withdraws her evil, wrinkly face and allows the door to slam... a personal pet peeve of mine.

Since I was already having a pretty miserable day, I decided not to chase her limping ass back out into the street and point out to her that I could make another cone for her husband and ask why, given several moments of prime opportunity, her husband hadn't pointed out to me that the PINK ice cream with GIANT CHUNKS OF STRAWBERRIES in it wasn't what he'd really, truly wanted, deep down inside. Because given the day I was having, I would have gladly dumped the first cone in the garbage and made another cone, with an EVEN BIGGER FREAKING SCOOP OF WHATEVER FLAVOR HE WANTED.

Posted at 9:31 AM in category summer of 1955.
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