The Madcap Adventures of Turtle Man and Raccoon Lady

The other day two of our most notorious "animal" guests where in at the same time, and I almost felt like I was in some sort of low rent zoo. To be fair, most days at work I feel like I'm in a low rent zoo, but that's kind of to be expected.

There's a man who comes in that everybody calls "Turtle Man," because he looks like a fucking creepy ass turtle.  He's probably in his 60s, he walks hunched over with a cane, and he has giant glasses. He also usually wears a bucket hat.  And I should mention the reason that he walks hunched over is that he has some kind of back brace equipment strapped to him, and normally I'd never make fun of somebody with a genuine medical condition, but he's so damn weird and annoying that he's exempt from any exemptions of mockery.

He actually looks a little like this:

except older and more hunched over and not wearing a big green suit...and okay maybe only vaguely like this

Turtle Man requires a full glass of ice on the side for his glass of tap water, extra napkins, and no matter what he orders he asks for a soup spoon. He has never actually ordered soup.   He usually orders a steak and eggs or a roast chicken, and woe to those who don't bring him a soup spoon ahead of time. He will get up and start waving.  It happens.  I'm not sure what he does with the soup spoon, since I've never actually watched him eat. I just know what when he's finished his plate is a mess and he only ever tips two dollars no matter how much his bill is.

The Raccoon is a whole different breed of crazy.  She has crazy dark brown hair that seems to be a cross between an 80s perm and a mullet,  but more importantly she has her entire eye area covered in black makeup.  All around the eye. Big black circles. We've actually debated whether or not this make up is tattooed on or if she actually just smears big sticks of charcoal around her eyes every morning. The Raccoon comes in with her comparatively normal looking husband/boyfriend/whatever and they always get one cup of coffee and one order of scrambled eggs.  If the eggs are too well scrambled they will send them back. They also request a bread basket, but only the brown bread, not the white bread, and for the love of god don't forget to give them jelly.

I long for the day when I can tell Turtle Man we are out of soup spoons, and Raccoon Lady that there's a shortage of brown bread. I doubt it'll ever happen, but it's good to have dreams.

In other news, all that ever plays on our radio any more is six different versions of  "Girl From Ipanema" and now the slightest mention of that song makes me want to punch somebody.

Love to say "you've gotta be fuckin kidding me"

Hello internet!  I've been a bit MIA the past couple weeks due to working every day until going out of town, and then you know....actually going out of town.  And, well I love writing this shit but I'm sure as hell not going to update my blog via smartphone.  Way too much work, too much potential for typos, and anyway I was too busy living it up in my hometown, The Rubber City (that's rubber as in tires btw, though rubber as in condoms would be way sexier.)

I have to say, going back to my hometown and seeing how other restaurants are run, and speaking to Akron waiter friends, it once again occurred to me how goddamn weird my job is.  Not to say that it was always easy working at the chain restaurant but problems were pretty "normal" as far as problems go.....shitty tippers, unruly prom kids, drunks at the bar, Lebron being a non-tipping classless asswipe.  The rest of the time it could be a hell of a lot of fun.

I do love my job at the Cafe despite all the weirdness, but it really is filled to the brim with insanity.  Anyway.  We have a policy at work called "Love to say Yes." It's a pretty straightforward spin on "the customer is always right."  Basically, do whatever you can to accommodate. And, in the most basic sense, I do support this.  My job is to make sure that my guests have a good experience. It actually benefits me for my guests to have a good experience. If my guests have a good experience they will tip well, come back, and maybe even compliment me to my boss.  If my guests have a shitty experience, they won't tip, they'll demand free shit, they'll complain and they might yelp me.  I have never actually tried to make somebody have a bad experience.  Yet the entitlement in the neighborhood is off the charts, and often "love to say yes" just turns into "bend over and take it."

Way back when we first instituted "Love to Say Yes" as a rule back in January 2012, a co-worker of mine drew up this response in the notebook.

And honestly it's not too far from the truth. Everybody has gotten so chicken shit and paranoid about what crazy bullshit these nut bags may post on yelp, that they've taken to bending over backwards to please these people.

Here are some things people have asked me over the years:

Can you butter my toast in the kitchen?

Can you cut my food up in little pieces?

Can I have hummus instead of salad dressing?

Can I have pancakes instead of toast?

The list goes on and on. One time I had a woman who wasn't even my table flag me down and demand that I open her butter packets for her.

Which....just. How helpless are you? There's actually a guy who comes in who either has an artificial arm, or just a non-functioning arm, and he somehow manages to cut his own food and spread butter on his toast. If he can do it, so can you.

One time I had a guy demand that I have the kitchen hand make a custom sauce from scratch for his mussels, because he didn't like the sauce we offered. I made the mistake of saying no and he complained to the manager about what a horrible rude excuse for a human being I am. And honestly, I kind of am a horrible excuse for a human being, but not because of refusal to hand make mussels sauces.

The problem is that these people are so used to having everything exactly as they ask for it, that they actually don't know how to respond when any minor conflict may arise. Last week we had a woman come in who asked about a cocktail we featured last summer.  I recognized the name of the cocktail but couldn't recall the ingredients off of the top of my head.  I told the woman this and she started to tear up. Actual tears were dripping down her face.  And I kept telling her that if she could tell me the ingredients, we'd probably be able to make it for her. But the level of distress was unreal.

My former co-worker once told me he had a theory about Upper West Siders:

You could take them out of the neighborhood, drop them anywhere on earth, and they'd all look around horrified and say "What?! I have to wipe my own ass?!"

Yep. That pretty much sums it up.

Flashback Friday!

Per usual, today will be a celebration of excerpts from "The Book"

Anything in bold italics is recounted here exactly as it was originally notated.

Nov 7, 2011

Some lady was yapping about getting dysentery from tomatoes.

Because, you know....that's a thing.  Looking back, I could have had much more sucess with my Oregon Trail games of years past.

Events of November 15, 2011

1. Homeless man shows us his pubic hair while demanding bread and butter
2.  Homeless man asks for can opener to indulge in his can of corn. After being told that we don't carry can openers, a guest demands that we bring his can to the kitchen to open it.
3. An innocent young girl, sitting at table 10.got her purse stolen from the back of her chair. A car that was passing by told her that a lady just grabbed her purse.  The young girl ran down Broadway to see the old lady toss her purse in the trash.
4.  A woman left the bathroom door open while relieving her lady parts. Not unlocked, OPEN.

Wow. Evidently November 15 was a hell of a day.   I think I may actually need to dedicate a future entry to all the weird shit that people do in our bathrooms. Because...I mean...there was the woman who used to go in and change her juicy leg bandages, the guy who used to shit all over the floor, the people who just didn't lock the door, and of course that woman body-checked a guy who was politely waiting in line for the bathroom and started screaming "You can't go before me!!!"

I guess we'll do one more flashback story before we close for the weekend.  Real quick:

November 17, 2011

A woman at 46 looks at the specials and asks, "Is this food?"

No, bitch it's a fuckin practical joke.  We just PRETEND to have food, to mess with your head.  "Bouillabaisse" is actually code for "something that is totally not food, and I'm just going to bring you a can of Febreeze instead."

I swear to god, writing this blog I'm going to run out of eye roll gifs.