Kim

It's Thursday, and the managers at my local Applebee's have called upon the Christiansburg store to help them out. After a suitable amount of pleading and laying on of guilt trips, the bartender they get is Kim. Kim used to work here. A year or so ago she transferred to the Christiansburg store and moved her residence to somewhere near Radford. Now she lives an hour's drive from Roanoke. I hope they give her some overtime.

I like the name Kim. There was a time when I derived much enjoyment from writing short stories—science fiction, mostly. A female character named "Kim" was prominent in several of my stories. In each story the character "Kim" was an intelligent, competent, physically attractive young woman with a strong personality. My fictional Kim was a memorable character. I don't know the Applebee's Kim very well, but she seems intelligent and mature. She entered the Army at age 17 (I bet there's a story there) and is very confident of her survival skills. Now, at 35, she studies biology at a local university. She seems to have many of the qualities of my fictional Kim.

The store is understaffed today and they get slammed with a big lunch crowd. Kim is busting her butt at the bar when an older (70-ish) man, impatient at not being seated quickly enough, walks over to the bar and says "Do you want me to go over to Anthony's for lunch?" Kim gives him a polite answer but she's understandably annoyed at his sarcasm. "Can you believe he said that? Doesn't he see how busy we are today?"

So I say to her, "You've heard that old joke, 'What's the difference between a proctologist and a bartender?' "

"The difference between a proctologist and a bartender?" she says, puzzled. "I don't know."

"A proctologist," I tell her, "only has to look at one asshole at a time."

If you're going to be sarcastic about not getting served quickly enough, find someone who is standing around with his hands in his pockets to be a target of your sarcasm. Do not, repeat, do not get sarcastic about slow service with someone who is moving at lightspeed behind the bar fixing drinks for an packed restaurant, delivering food orders, ringing up checks, washing glasses, carrying dirty dishes to the kitchen, packing to-go orders, answering the phone, and on and on. Just don't do it. You've no idea how close you may come to being told exactly where you can go.