Then ...

I always work the holidays, so Monday reminded me that a college graduate shouldn't be waiting tables anymore. You begin to think it's impossible to consider seriously doing this as "your job" any longer.

So, I actually remember how I probably stopped taking the profession seriously many years ago. An e-mail from two years back:

When you wait tables, you don't get holidays off. Instead, they just sort of bang you over the head with constant reminders that, "Yes, it is a holiday," and, "Yes, you are expected to be productive and visibly chipper the entire time you are here on said holiday."

The boss (well, one of three of them actually), the one with the bad B.O. who works himself into a mad, quivering panic about the least concerning of issues, did not seem content with my decision to sit in the wait station and read a book during the nearly two hours that there was absolutely nothing to do. Shuffling up to me and waving his shaking hands by his sides, he said, "Uh, uh ... Derek. Why don'tcha help fill the balloons."

The balloons. Ah, yes. You see, we had jammed the country club with a needlessly over-the-top amount of red, white, and blue balloons for Memorial Day. Each table or any post, be it on a stairwell or outside—nothing was free from the duties of our patriotism on this holiday. "It's for the kids, I guess," I tell myself. The boss does love those kids.

After some four hours of various employees operating the helium tank and even managing to find time for more creative efforts (inhaling the gas seemed so cliche, but when the Chef suggested we inflate a condom, we couldn't resist), the balloons were to be released at the end of the night. The boss—same smelly one—desingated me to the disposing of our just-for-the-day efforts. "Uh, uh ... Just . . . set them free . . . you know," he said, before waving "spirit fingers" (Bring It On reference) in the air and retreating to the kitchen to find something else to overly worry himself with.

Standing in the garage with a collection of red, white, and blue balloons, I wondered what could be done to enhance the moment. The day's efforts would sail into the sky, likely never to be seen or though about again. This funeral of sorts, I felt, needed something bigger. Not just an attachment of a childlike desire for a pen pal, or perhaps a gag memo about being stranded on a desert island and needing just a drink of water. Grabbing some scratch paper (made of old menus which had
been torn in half), a permanant marker (purple—it's all we had), and the arm of the nearest liberal
sympathizer (another waiter, and not a member of the club—go figure), we began tying the ends of balloons to little notes I scrawled. Each read the exact same thing, the three words I openly hoped
would perhaps fly past some commercial jet where a line of people seated in the window would see red, white, and blue balloons. Squinting their eyes, they could read the words attached on that
opposite side of that old menu:

"ANYBODY BUT BUSH"

I added "2004" on some, but the smelly guy came and told us clowns to wrap up our tomfoolery and punch out. "It's not even holiday pay," I thought. We must've sent out about 20 of 'em suckers before I thought we had mustered enough of an effort.