Thanks,
Ryan

In the meantime, go to www.ashersarlin.com.

Affectionately Yours,
Ryan

Hey jackasses, want to know why I sometimes fly off the handle in my stories…or why I don’t always take the “higher, moral road”? Because these stories are true and decent people (such as myself) don’t always remain calm and they CERTAINLY care when they’re given a few bucks on an hour and a half worth of work. It certainly doesn’t help when it’s work for some ungrateful, ignorant, idiotic customers.

So before I get another email telling me how I should just shut up, accept my dollar an hour in wages (after taxes) and “be oh so grateful” for my tips, take a minute to think how you’d feel if you spent 90 minutes serving a family of four blacks and all you got out of it was $1.80 at the end of the night and the tag of “racist”.

This is the last thing I’ll write on this subject. Do you people know just how easy it would be for me to twist the stories around to where I looked like a saint in the face of such stupidity and ignorance? Do you? But I don’t. I write about what truly happens and sometimes I come out looking good. Sometimes I come out with egg on my face. I’m sorry that for the 30 or so hours a week I’m a server, I don’t go by the book 100% of the time and that sometimes, I get upset. Sometimes, I write what I’m thinking. Sometimes I might ask a customer why I got a bad tip (which is, coincidentally, encouraged by management). Sometimes I might get upset and show a little emotion. Sometimes I get downright pissed when I’m walked all over and have a buck to show for it.

So for all those things and more, I’m sorry.

Good night and good luck, Chris.

This, of course, is a cardinal sin against black people.

Black Woman: “Why can’t we get our o’n table!?”
Me: “Well…ma’am…this is how the seating works. It’s like a community table and the chef just comes out, cooks everyone’s food at the same…”
Black Woman: “You can’t tell us w’ere we can and can’t sit! You don’ hafta say dat ’cause we’s black.”
Me: “Uh…I wasn’t…I was just saying that…”
Black Woman: “I’ve haff a min’ to file a discrimination suit ‘gainst ya.”
Me: “Is that a joke?”
Black Woman: “No.”
Me: “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought it was a big joke.”

Why is it some black people feel entitled to special treatment? Oh, that’s right…because of all those slaves I’ve owned and all those Million Man Marches I’ve demonstrated against. That and I strangled Martin Luther King Jr to death with my own two hands.

And why is it when they don’t receive that special treatment they feel it is me “holding them down”. People, that’s how our restaurant works. It’s not racism or discrimination.

So I seat them, smile politely, and take their drink and dinner orders. I tell them that because they wanted a seperate table, it will take a little longer for a chef to come out.

Black Woman: “What fo’?”
Me: “Well, we only have two chefs on and you’re the third table to be sat. If you’d like your food a little quicker, you can sit at the table that I was showing you earlier.”
Black Woman: “But why is it gonna take longa fo’ us?”
Me: “Okay. You’re the third table. There’s two chefs. They can only cook one table at a time. That’s why we have large community tables that can hold eight people…so everyone gets their food faster.”
Black Woman: “Whate’er.”

Obviously, there’s no place for logic in a brain so filled with racism-paranoia and ignorance.

As I was walking away from the table, I heard the little girl at the table I tried to seat the black people at when they came in, point at the black family and say (within earshot of the black family of four), “Daddy, do they hate us?”

Cue laughter for me and the white family. Cue embarassment for the black family.

After the dinner, I brought them the check. I was polite and helpful throughout the entire dinner, even taking time away from other tables to show the black father how to use his chopsticks and getting them every to-go sauce they could ever need. I wanted to be overly-nice to this black family to prove a point to myself.

See, to many readers of this site, my stories could be complete horseshit. I could be the worst server in the world and could just be using that to fish for customers to get pissed so I have material to work with.

But I’m neither. I’m a decent server and a good guy. And I wanted proof that, regardless or my attitude and quality of service, I was going to get stiffed on my tip by a black family of four that is just looking for a way to “get back at the man” for all those things white people did to blacks before I was even conceived.

So out comes the bill: $110.98. Pretty hefty bill for four people. The boyfriend of the black woman that argued with me earlier gave me $115 and sad, verbatim, “Keep the change as your tip.” My fate was sealed. They were going to leave me a $4 tip on over $110 worth of food. That’s about a 3% tip on some damn good service.

It was here that I. Just. Lost it.

I looked the boyfriend in the eye and asked him point-blank, “Do you want your four-dollar tip back?”

He didn’t respond. In fact, I said it so loudly, patrons at the bar looked over and started giving the man dissapointed looks. He looked a little embarassed, but instead of facing it like a man, he took the path of a coward and walked out the door.

Then the black woman with whom I argued passed me and I said even louder, “Do you WANT your FOUR-DOLLAR TIP BACK.” She replied, “No” and kept on walking.

It was then that I stared in the eyes of the father with whom I had taught to use chopsticks. I looked at him, beet-red in the face, and asked just as loudly, “Would you like the FOUR-DOLLAR TIP BACK. YOU GUYS OBVIOUSLY NEED IT.” He just frowned and kept on walking.

Finally, the mother walked by me. I just stared at her, still beet-red, still furious. I didn’t say a word to her until she was so close she could hear my louder-than-normal heart rate. In a whsiper, I said:

Me: “How dare you.”
Her: “What?”
Me: “How dare you and your family.”

And then she as well walked out the door.

It was a slower-than-usual night and they wouldn’t have made that much of a difference if they had, indeed, tipped me well. But it’s ignorance and downright social idiocy that gets my blood boiling.

My manager told me after they left that the father came back in looking for me. I saw him open the door, but I didn’t want to look at him again. I knew I couldn’t hide the obvious disgust from my face.

Don’t pin the strained relationship between whites and blacks in this country solely on white people. True, it is mostly past white’s faults that blacks are still at a level of inferiority economically, socially and academically in this country. But there are those still in this country that revel in the strained relationship and feed that beast the ignorance and stupidity it so craves.

If they treat me, a white man that put forth an effort to provide great service to them, with this kind of disrespect how do they treat people the way they treated me?

At about 3:50pm last week, a disheveled woman in her early-40′s came in through the backdoor as we were loading food and drinks from the supplier’s trucks. We thought she was a girlfriend of one of the chefs or truck drivers.

Apparently, the woman saw all of us working out back and decided this was as good a time as any to pop on in and ask, no…yell, for a manager.

Her: “Are ya’ll HIRING!?”
One of our chefs: “Uhh…who are you?”
Her: “Is there a manager here?”
Chef: “Yuki!”
Her: “YUKI! YUKI! WHERE ARE YOU!?”

In walks Yuki, our manager for the day. He gives the woman a quick lookover and informs her that we are, in fact, not hiring. She insists on filling out an application anyway.

It takes the woman almost an hour to fill the thing out (comparitively, it took me and many fellow employees about 15 minutes to fill in every box). She then walks out (with our pen in hand, mind you) and we never hear from her again.

It’s probably because Yuki put a big “NOOOOO!!!!!” on the top of her application.

A woman in her late 30′s, early 40′s comes into our restaurant quite a bit. She gets excessively drunk and acts like a complete douche. The only reason we haven’t banned her from the place is because she always orders $50+ of food at one time and because she tips rather well.

She also lets little secrets slip about her personal life that we would otherwise not need to know, nor want to know.

For example:

Her: “Yea…when my husband met me, I was working as a prostitute. He picked me up and we’ve been together e’er since!”

Her: “Man, I got so much money, I don’t know what to do w’ it.”
Our Bartender: “How’d you get all that money?”
Her: “‘Cause I suck a mean…”
Our Bartender: “That’s quite alright, ma’am.”

Her: “You think these teeth get all pearly white on their own.”
Our Bartender: “Ummm…what?”
Her: “To get this white, you gots to…”
Our Bartender: “Whoa whoa whoa!”

Her: “I have a girl that’s about your age.”
Our Bartender: “But…that’s impossible…that would make you how old when you had h…”
Her: “12.”
Our Bartender: “Wow.”
Her: “Yea. Wow.”

And so on and so forth.

Me: (As I pass out the salads) “Would you like some chopsticks, ma’am?”
Her: “Oh. Just because I’m Vietnamese, you think I’d want chopsticks?”
Me: “Ummm…no?”
Her: “Oh, so now you’re a smart-ass.”
Me: “Excuse me?”
Her: “Just give me the chopsticks.”
Me: “So…you…do want them?”
Her: “Yes.”
Me: “Does anyone else want chopsticks?”
Everyone Else At The Table: “No.”

Take last night for example. I’m serving a party of four and two of the people order food from the kitchen and two order sushi from the sushi bar. It’s busy, so it’s next to impossible to time it out to where they get their food at the exact same time, but I’m a decent enough waiter to where I can get the four dinners out within ten or so minutes of one another.

“Ten or so minutes” is obviously too long for some people. Particularly, old people. Hey, I understand…you’ve only got so long to live and you need SUSHI in those precious twilight years!

And I knew they’d be like this, so I explained ahead of time: “Alright…just so you know, the sushi chef and kitchen staff are very busy, so the dinners may not come out at exactly the right time, but I’ll try my best to have it so you get them within a few minutes of one another.”

I was greeted with the same scowles and frowns I would have received had I told them Murder She Wrote was off the air.

The kitchen staff gets the dinners done first so I rush to the back, get the dinners (with steam still rising from the freshly-cooked food) and take them to the four geriatrics at Table 9.

Grandma 1: “What is this?”
Me: “Um…Steak and Scallops…I believe it’s…”
Grandma 1: “Why are we getting ours before them?”
Me: “Well, you see…the sushi chef is making theirs right now. It should only be another ten…”
Grandma 1: “Take this away and DON’T bring it back out until THEIRS is ready.”
Me: “But, ma’am…the food will get c…”
Grandma 1: “No excuses!”

What is it with old people and the phrase “No excuses”?

Whatever. She wants her food cold…let her have it cold. The sushi gets done a mere NINE MINUTES LATER and I go to bring out the sushi and the dinners at the same time. This does not sit well with the brontosaurus of a woman on my right.

Grandma 1: “This food is LUKEWARM! I demand an explanation!”
Me: “You told me to put it in the back until they got their sushi.”
Grandma 1: “But why isn’t it hot?”
Me: “Because…that’s what…uh…food does?”
Grandma 2: “My sushi’s fine, Evelynn.”
Grandpa 1: “So’s my filet.”
Grandpa 2: “Can I have some chopsticks?”

Dammit.

DIGG This!

1. http://www.pointsincase.com/columns/michael/12-20-06.htm

- This is my roommate Mike. I think he writes non-fiction much better than I do and his life, at face value, is much funnier than my own. Those two things make for much better articles than my troubles with a crappy customer at my restaurant. The only problem is, he doesn’t get himself into enough trouble to write with the sort of regularity that I or his adoring fans clamor for. Read this column first and then try out his others. Oh yea…and comment the hell out of them.

2. www.violentacres.com

- If you ever wondered how Maddox’s vagina would sound if you taught it to read and write, you’ve found your answer right here. This woman (or man…no one knows for sure) writes anonymously and with a lot more frequency than many other internet writers (5-6 articles a week) of her caliber. She’s as smart and quick-witted as any blogger out there and deserves the book deals and critical acclaim that lesser writers (see: Tucker Max) have garnered over the years.

3. www.chadsreviews.com

- The only problem I have with this guy is he’s a fake and some (if not all) of his articles about his life are downright lies. On the other hand, he’s funny and I could give two shits if it’s fiction, non-fiction, barnyard pornography…if it’s funny, it’s funny. Check this guy out immediately. He, like Violent Acres, writes with a lot of regularity but will take month-long (or sometimes two-month long) breaks every once in a while. There’s a lot of good material here, though, so you should be entertained enough reading the past articles.

4. www.ashersarlin.com

- One of the funniest cartoonists on the web today. It’s surprising the guy is still in college. I only wish he’d make a cartoon more frequently than once every two weeks. There’s years worth of stuff to keep you busy while pretending to do that paper on The Bay of Pigs at the school library.

EDIT:
5. www.thegirlwho.net

- It’s the only site on this list to not be focused solely on comedy, but it’s honest. And above all else, I value honesty in a writer’s work because it’s honesty that readers can relate to and take something from more than anything else.

Tell me what you guys think.

DIGG This!

Me: “Here’s your bill, sir.”
The Boyfriend: “Uh…ok…here you go. Keep the change.”
Me: (Looking inside and finding $70 on a $67.63 bill) “Was there something wrong with the service, sir?”
The Boyfriend: (Looking around nervously) “Uh…no…why?”
Me: “Because you only left me a 2 dollar tip.”
The Girlfriend: “You did what?! (Looking at me) I’m a waitress over at the Red Lobster down the street so I’m really sorry about him. Here you go. (Hands me a ten dollar bill to go with The Boyfriend’s tip).

(A few seconds later, they get up to leave).

The Boyfriend: “Listen…I’m…”
The Girlfriend: “Just drive me home.”

P.S. I’ve heard excuses regarding this story in terms of maybe the guy was broke and the girlfriend picked the restaurant, etc… Well, for starters, the guy ate the second-most expensive meal on the menu and the girl had the second-cheapest. The guy also ordered three drinks and the girl had water and an un-sweet tea. No excuses.

DIGG This!