The one and only job hazard of working at Sharkey's is that you come home smelling like fish, and your friends and family begin to believe it's a personal hygience problem.
But the truth of the matter is, I'm a cook at a little bar and restaurant a mile or two from my house, and even though it's minimum wage and sort of boring at times, I really couldn't ask for more from that job.
I work with a guy nicknamed Bugsy. He calls everybody "boss" and used to have a huge crush on my mother many years ago. He thinks the sun rises and sets on me. Every Sunday night, he brings his little black-and-white TV set into the kitchen so that I can watch X-files. And supposing orders come in during X-files, he takes care of them for me.
Supposing a creepy intoxicated customer wanders into the kitchen to marvel at my beauty and ask me out, Bugs is there to say, "hey, leave my girlfriend alone."
First of all, being a cook in a restaurant is an incredibly powerful position. EVERYBODY knows you don't fuck with the cook. Many a waitress has come and gone because she fucked with the cooks and the cooks fucked with her back. "Can you hurry it up with my order" is an unacceptable way to speak to a cook. If a waitress makes demands on a cook in an unpleasant way, the cook is well within his rights to burn the waitress's food, thereby denying her a good tip. Also, waitresses just have to deal with cooks gossiping about them, for example: "I cannot BELIEVE how dumb she is!" If they overhear and demand a little more respect, you refuse to let them eat the last few pieces of pizza at the end of the night.
Second, I am the first female to have worked in the kitchen at Sharkey's in many years -- at least five or ten. Naturally, this makes me pretty damn special, especially since I work with a bunch of bachelors who have NO idea how to treat a woman. They have gotten it in their heads that you treat women with respect, at least, but they don't know quite what "respect" entails, so they treat me like a goddess and just kind of hope they're doing an okay job of it.
If Ma'moiselle Helena wants to watch X-files, Ma'moiselle Helena gets her wish. If she wishes to sit down and read for eight hours, she gets that wish, too. If Ma'moiselle Helena complains that she hates making pizza, Ma'moiselle Helena's co-workers make them for her. If Helena wants to eat a dozen clams without paying for them, the other cooks will make her a fresh pot so she doesn't have to eat skanky ones. If Helena wants the newspaper, the waitresses know to yield it to her immediately -- after all, Helena is the cook, and the waitresses are mere waitresses. And the other cooks know not to disturb her, because she's the freakin' princess of the universe.
All in all, it's a pretty good situation.
...And when Helena turns 21, she fully intends to let all the creepy intoxicated customers buy her drinks at the end of the night. After all, they don't see too many of my kind in Sharkey's, whose main clientele is old men and middle-aged Quick-Draw Lottery junkies.
If Helena is asked to cover someone's shift, she is rewarded with ten bucks or a couple packs of cigarettes. When Helena has a rough night -- for example, the night one of the other cooks had a seizure in the kitchen and all the waitresses were being abnormally irritating -- she gets invited upstairs for a few beers after work, no strings attached. Then she gets a ride home, and EVERYBODY offers her a ride home.
Truly, this job could not get better. Well, they could pay me more, but since I don't freaking DO anything, I'm not going to ask for anything more. Besides, I eat completely free. Sometimes, actually, I feel pretty guilty for having it so easy. But hey... I may as well take what I can get for now.
It's late and I'm bored and restless... Signing off,
~Helena*