Confessions of A Naughty Girl

Take These Broken Wings, Mister Mister

Well guys, Oscar is home, safe and sound. I am thinking that he loves his new home, as he is currently curled up in my lap, snorting. Oh yes, Oscar thinks he is Wilbur the pig, and since "Charlotte's Web" was my favorite book growing up, that's f*cking dandy by me.

After a little spelunking around the apartment, and a small poopy incident in his new pet bed (I will attribute that small error not to the fact that he's special, but more so to the fact that he is confused, tired, and just had his pee pee snipped a few days ago), he started catsturbating on my carpet, rubbing his little two pound body all over the place. I was tempted to discourage it, but then realized that it's a perfectly natural thing. He's a little kid - he really doesn't know what the hell he's doing. So I am going to be a cool mama and let him know - only when he's old enough to understand - that doing this is wrong, and he'll grow hair on his paws and I'll know then that he's going to hell. Just kidding. But he really did catsturbate, and I felt kind of bad watching.

Regardless, I just had another 12 hour workday. This sort of thing has not become unusual, but what was unusual was that I spent four hours working at the restaurant of my new client. Oh yes. Mandatory.

As part of "learning how to better service the business", each member of our team - in groups of three - is required to work a 4-hour shift at one of the restaurants, shadowing the general manager and learning the day-to-day ops of the business. Some of us get to work in the kitchen, "spinning wings" (aka, shaking a Tupperware container full of sauce with wings in it, to coat them in one of those extra special sauces). Some of us get to shadow the take out person. Yet others are behind the bar, watching the ugly get drunk and attempt to hit on one another.

Most people on my team were not happy. One copywriter in particular said, "Um, yeah. See, this is exactly why I went to ad school - so I wouldn't be serving f*cking wings in a restaurant." I, on the other hand, have an inherently, positive-to-a-fault kind of attitude, and frankly, after pushing papers around at a white-collar job for two years, was psyched for this opportunity. I mean, it was only four hours of my life, and it got me out of sitting at my desk yelling at people on the phone. At least it'd be a change of pace.

I prepared last night. I picked out my "comfortable" outfit, made sure to wear my rubber-soled Pumas, and even styled my hair so it would look good in a hair net, should I have to wear one. I told myself this was going to be fun. Like a summer job. You know, back when I didn't have to worry about those things...those "bills" and "bar tabs" and "new Salvatore Ferragamo camel-colored knee-high boots".

We arrived at the restaurant an hour late this afternoon, due to the fact that it was raining and there was an hour's worth of traffic on the GA400. Which actually prompts me to say that in addition to people not knowing how to generally navigate Atlanta and drive like shit, in the rain, it's ten times worse. Everyone slows down to like, 10 miles an hour (even on freeways), and brake checks you every 30 seconds. And then they arrive at their destination two hours late and complain that they, "got stuck in a crazy rainstorm", despite the fact that it was drizzling and nothing accumulated.

Anyway, we arrived at the restaurant and met our General Manager, who was very nice, except for his nasty little habit of staring at our boobs (I was with two other girls) while he spoke to us. He kept darting his eyes back and forth, looking like a lizard about to slither over to its prey, thus causing me to silently dub him "Geico". So Geico (the gecko) showed us everything - the sauces, the beer tap, the meat freezer, the whole nine yards. And just as I was about to jump in the kitchen and pull on my hair net...

The other girls in my team decided it was time to order practically a whole menu's worth of food, and sit down with Geico and ask questions so we wouldn't have to actually do anything. While the conversation was pretty interesting, I, for one, would have much rather been gooping it up with the honey mustard and spinning wings.

By the time our conversation was over, our shift was up, and alas, I had a 45 minute drive and 184 brake checks waiting for me on the way home.

I was a little disappointed, until I realized that hair net or not, Geico was saving me at least 15% or more on my time spent at my desk, sitting on the phone and yelling at people. So for that alone, I say Viva La Wings.

posted by KA @ 8:59 PM