Servility With A Smile

            It’s late October and in a small Marigny restaurant, the cooks are grilling dozens of burgers on propane grills.  Without a functioning hood, the dining area fills with smoke so we almost forget the flies.  There are hundreds of them.  It seems like there are hundreds of customers too, belligerent drunk contractors screaming for Roast Beef on French (we don’t have any Roast Beef or any French bread) and 22 year old National Guard soldiers who are not allowed in the French Quarter because of their bad behavior.  Everyone is ordering food to go.  “You got that?  It’s to go,” they emphasize even though all the food is served in Styrofoam containers because we don’t have a dishwasher (the machine or the person to operate it).  A group of women with gold teeth send back their meat because it is not well-done.   There is no sign of pink, but they want well-done burgers in 5 minutes. They want new burgers, and we’d better not put these same ones on the grill cause they nasty.  One of them rushes into the kitchen to scream at the cook.  Sweat drips down my neck as I explain that we don’t have any cold drinks because the power has been out for 16 hours.  We have lost $2000 worth of meat.  A middle aged woman asks me for some ice for her tea and I tell her to go to Uptown, where they got the power.  A gay man tries to argue with me that we obviously have power because he can see lights in the kitchen.  “Do you know what a flashlight is?” I ask him. I fantasize about making a test the customers have to answer before ordering.  This would involve a multiple choice test on the menu and some short answer questions like, “If the restaurant does not have power, one cannot expect the following items and should not complain about their absence.” 

            That was October.  Since the new year, the Marigny has managed to maintain an almost constant stream of electricity, so the drinks are cold again.  We now use plates and I, the waitress and bartender, wash them myself. When it gets too busy I use Styrofoam and say the machine is broke.  Nobody is willing to work as a dishwasher, not for six dollars an hour.  The cook, an illegal alien, constantly begs me to marry him so he can get his papers and work at McDonalds.  He’s in love with that signing bonus.  I tell him that, no matter what, they really need to open a McDonalds around here soon.  Maybe a Burger King would be good, so everybody can have it their way and leave me the fuck alone about the temperature of the meat and the amount of pickles they get.   No matter what we order, the beer company is always a day late, and the owner eventually shows up in an unmarked van stocked with a bunch of cases of some beer like Rolling Rock, which nobody wants to drink.

            However, these problems are banal compared to the chaos caused by the influx of crazy people who now, without their medication, loiter around.  The restaurant doubles as a Laundromat and also offers Video Poker as well as a small grocery section, so it is easy for displaced lunatics to linger about endlessly like students hollering in the halls and skipping classes while receiving student loan checks.  One madman is constantly showing me his belt, his shoes, his socks, his pants and wallet when I walk by the poker machines.  If I don’t comment on each article of clothing every time, he attempts to follow me around the restaurant—“ You like this belt?  You like these shoes?”—until I want to smack him.

            Then there was Oink man, the obese elderly gentleman who cannot speak, but instead Oinks like a pig.  He started coming in for coffee and Oinking in my face.  I would offer him Half-n-half, milk, sugar, and sugar substitutes, but he could only Oink, over and over even after I walked away. He could usually be found outside at one of the sidewalk tables, Oinking to himself for the whole world to see.  A few weeks ago, Oink man tried to steal a Diet Coke and the owner yelled to put it back.  Oink man proceeded to hurl a bottle of Chardonnay at the owner’s head.  He grabbed more bottles and ran out onto the sidewalk, Oinking furiously.  We told him we’d called the cops and expected him to do what any normal assailant would do, run, but instead he Oinked in the doorway for the 20 minutes it took for the cops to show up. 

            One morning, a sweaty woman came in, her shirt soaked and reeking.  She wanted to use the phone and I let her after she explained that her phone lines weren’t working.  I even dialed the number for her because her hands were shaking.  Then I eavesdropped.  Her diatribe went something like this:  “You’ve got to call David and tell him they’re after me again.  They’re getting the cops after me and I can’t go to jail here now.  I’ll never get out.  I’m going home and I’m not turning the lights on “—I doubt she had power—“or answering the phone.  Tell David to leave me a message at Smitty’s.  They’re hunting me.  They’re hunting me down again.”  When she hung up, I asked if she was okay.  “It’s just my family trying to have me killed.  It’s no big deal, one of those things that happens to everyone,” she assured me.  Yes indeed ma’am, I believe it is.

            Some twenty-something-year-old hippie kept getting grabby with me, so I told him to keep his hands off.  He came back during the lunch rush and began sobbing inconsolably, real tears and his shoulders shaking, his voice trembling that he was so so sorry.  He obviously had some sort of horrendous eye infection; snot ran from his eyes and he smeared it into his dreads with his hand.  He too wanted a well-done burger to go, extra mayo, light mustard, only one tomato, no lettuce, extra pickles, and onions on the side.

 
Will somebody please open a Burger King or a Free Mental Health Clinic in this area soon???