Wednesday, September 6, 2006
Shift: 11 AM - 7 PM
Station: Breaker
I had these nice guys at one of my tables yesterday and they were in my pit again today.  One of them asked me what my sign is, I said, "Aries."  He said, "I'm an Aries too."  He showed me a coin he had won from one of those souvenir coin machines.  Then he pulled something out of his shirt pocket and said, "Here, this is for you."  I thought it was a pin, but it was a coin - a flattened 1937 Mercury dime, to be exact.

One side is the shiny head of Mercury, the Roman god.  The other side is a depiction of the correct way to perform the Heimlich maneuver.  Although I don't seem to remember it being taught this way in my CPR class.  It sure is nice to have such helpful customers - thanks Chuck!

Tuesday, September 5, 2006
Shift: 12 PM - 8 PM
Station: Pit
I walked up to a man and his wife and asked if they wanted something to drink.  She was playing and he was standing behind her, so he proceeded to order thusly: "She'll have a Coke."  He paused and watched as I made a "C" on my notepad for "Coke."  Then he said, "With rum."  No problem.  He hadn't been on my web site, didn't know the correct way to order.  Not a big deal.  Even though it was crowding the left margin, I wrote "R" in front of the "C" for "Rum and Coke."  He continued: "That's a Captain Morgan's rum, and make that a Diet Coke.  With a lime."  Oh my god, what a retard.  So I took a deep purposeful breath, let it out.  Crossed out the "RC" and said, "Sooo...she wants a Captain and Diet, with a lime?"  He thought about it for a few seconds, then said, at first with doubt, then with conviction, "Yesss...that's right."  I wrote down "Cap D l."  I said, "And what would you like?'  He said, "I'll have a Coke."  Having been through this before, I waited to see if he would continue.  He didn't, so I wrote down "C," said, "Thanks, I'll be write back with your drinks," and started to walk away.  As I took a few steps I heard him say, "With a shot of Captain Morgan's on the side."  Good lord, was this guy serious?  How can someone take such a simple thing as ordering a drink and make it a five minute ordeal?  If he ordered like that again I decided I'd have to cut him off, if just for having crossed the stupidity threshold.

This guy was playing at my table and his girlfriend was sitting next to him, just watching.  As I was walking up, before I could even say anything, he saw me and motioned me over with his finger and said, "Can we get a drink?"  Then to his girlfriend, "Baby, what do you want?"  I hate guys like this.  They think they are such big shots when in reality are just assholes.  But I put a smile on, looked at the girl, and waited for her to order.  She didn't look at me, just pouted at the guy, and whispered/whined something like, "I don't know what I want."  I was really, really hating both of them.  She probably never had a job in her life, whined and used her helplessness (which was really uselessness) to make this dumbass loser feel like a man.  The only silver lining to this situation was that they took each other off the market.  But back to our charming couple.  He was saying to her, "You want like a Margarita or something?"  She kept saying, "No...I don't know.  No, I don't want anything."  He turned to me and said, "Get her a Margarita.  And I'll have a cognac."  Big surprise.  I said to her, "Do you want a Margarita?"  He said, "Yeah, get her a Margarita."  I ignored him and kept looking at her.  She finally looked at me and kind of smiled and said, in that lazy whiny way, "Yeah, I guess."  God, I fucking hate women like her.  Then I turned to him and said, "Would you like your cognac straight up or on the rocks?"  He said, "Straight up.  What's the best kind you got - Captain Morgan?"  I almost laughed in his stupid poser ignorant face.  I said, in the way that Steve Martin spoke to Kermit in The Muppet Movie, "We do have Captain Morgan.  However, that's a rum, not a cognac.  And it is our best spiced rum."  He kind of laughed a little, obviously embarrassed but not too much, because his girlfriend was even more ignorant than he was, and didn't understand a word of what had just transpired.  He said, "Yeah, OK, bring me a shot of that.  Make it a double."  I said, "Sure."  I would've brought it out in a snifter if we had one at the bar.

As I was dropping off a drink at one of my tables and waiting for the customer to dig out his tip from his pocket, I could feel another customer staring at me from the next table.  He was leaned so far back in his chair that it was up on the two back legs and I could almost feel him breathing down my neck.  But he wasn't checking me out, he was in "I want to order a drink because I'm dying of thirst" pose.  I glanced over at him to see him smiling from ear to ear, so endearingly, so sweetly he could've been blamed for global warming.  I said, "I'm just dropping off.  Your waitress will be right out."  I had never seen a smile disappear so fast.  He immediately turned back to his game and his chair snapped back into position.  I wasn't even sure anything had even happened.  Wow.  I wonder how many hearts he had broken with such mesmerizing sincerity.  And I was amazed that he turned on that kind of charm just to get a drink, and how fast his true colors showed when he didn't get his way.

Sunday, September 3, 2006
Shift: 8 PM - 4 AM
Station: Pit
I was taking orders when this Asian lady yelled out, "Get me lemon Coke!"  You have to imagine a very heavy Asian accent, along with the way they talk, which is usually a yell.  Now, I'm used to this because my mom talks to me like this all the time, but with her I'm always saying, "Stop yelling, I'm not deaf."  Of course this makes her mad, so she'll say, "I'm not yelling!"  At this point she really is yelling, but she sounds exactly the same as before.  So anyway, I said to the lady, "We don't have lemon-flavored Coke.  Do you want a Coke with a lemon?"  She yelled back, "Get me lemon Coke!"  I started to laugh because this also reminded me of the way my mom would respond, with complete oblivion to anything I say.  I knew it would be a fruitless exchange, so I said, "OK," and started to walk away.  She started yelling, "Two!  Get me two!"  Her husband, who was standing next to her, decided to join in.  He yelled, "And one orange juice!"  I stopped, turned around and said, "OK, two lemon Cokes and one orange juice."  The husband yelled, this time pointing his finger at me, "Orange juice!"  I looked at him, then just bust out laughing.  Damn, I thought my parents were in California.

We got new uniforms and for some reason we got new underwear to go with them.  They're the real sexy, lacy, black boy shorts and they're great except I don't really see the point in wearing them because no one's going to see them.  If someone does happen to see them they probably wouldn't be looking at them because our ass-cheeks would be showing.  Anyway, so one of the girls was walking around taking drink orders when a man said to her, "You girls have really nice uniforms here."  She said, "Thank you."  He kind of leaned in close to her and said, "Um, I don't mean to embarrass you but, I think part of your uniform is coming off."  He pointed at her legs and she looked down and saw the panties had fallen down to her thighs right above her knees.  She had been walking around and not even felt it falling.

Saturday, September 2, 2006
A new month, a new beginning.  I went to L.A. on Thursday and drove back to Vegas today.  I was going to get up early and try to beat the holiday traffic coming into town, but since I'm a lazy misanthropic atheist, I ended up leaving around 1:30 PM.  Boy did it suck.  It usually takes me around three and a half hours to make the drive but there were so many cars that at some points it was literally stop and go.  Still, it went pretty smoothly and some areas it was clear enough that the fast cars were able to pass.  So I was on the I-15 going north, which is the interstate between L.A. and Vegas and I had passed Baker, which is a small town about an hour or so south of Vegas, and I started the climb up the mountain when I noticed that the cars ahead of me started to put on their brake lights.  Suddenly I saw what looked like a huge plume of smoke as thick as fog, but I didn't smell anything burning.  It got so dense that we almost came to a complete stop because it was literally impossible to see.  I was in the fast lane of the two lane highway, and as I slowed down and everything started to clear, I looked to my right because that's where it was coming from, and I realized that it wasn't smoke but dirt from the side of the road.  About a hundred feet off the road there was a white SUV completely flipped upside down, dust and dirt still billowing thickly in the wind from underneath.  There was a car pulled over and as I watched, another car pulled over, and people got out from those cars and ran towards the SUV.  My mouth dropped open, but I kept driving, still not really understanding what happened, but at the same time suddenly recognizing that people could be hurt very badly.  I didn't notice if anyone was still in the car, or how many people, or anything.  It must have just happened; the traffic was clear and there were no other cars involved and people just kept on driving, just like I did.  I looked at my clock and it said 4:15.  Just then I drove by the sign that said, "Las Vegas 60 mi."  I kept that in mind so I could tell the cops where I was. But because I'm an idiot, I called my mom in L.A. instead.  I told her what just happened and she said, "You need to call 911."  I said, "Oh, yeah, I was just about to do that."  So I hung up and dialed 911, but it was busy.  Then I noticed I passed the sign that said, "Exit Bailey Rd."  I called a couple more times, and it was still busy, so I figured people must have already called.  So much for me preparing to be the hero.  I thought about it all the way home, hoping that no one was hurt.  Not that there was anything I could do.  Because I certainly did nothing to help.  When I got home I tried to find the accident report on the Internet and I finally found it on the California Highway Patrol web site, and this is what it said:

Incident:

2123

Type:

Traffic Collision - Ambulance Responding

Location:

SOLEDAD CANYON RD AT NB SR14

ADDITIONAL DETAILS
5:16PM	SOLEDAD NOW OPEN BOTH DIRECTIONS
4:30PM	SOLO VEH TC - ON ITS ROOF
4:26PM	1039 PANORAMA -- ETA 15
4:24PM	1039 LACO FD
4:21PM	CALLER STATES SEVERAL MOTORIST ON SCENE VEH WILL NEED A TOW
4:21PM	PLS ROLL FIRE
4:20PM	TC PASSED 2 MILES FROM TUNNEL ON SOLEDAD VEH FLIPPED IN ROAD WAY

I don't know what all the abbreviations mean but from what I can understand it looks pretty much how I remembered it.  I guess there really isn't much point to this story except it freaked me out a little and made me sad.

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