Ever Been So Bored That...

So there I was working one boring as hell Sunday morning in a “Never-To-Be-Named” pizza place. It's not that I don't want to advertise the place or that I am ashamed of where I worked, but rather I am scared of the assholes I used to work for suing me for naming the place without paying them first. They hated me and I hated them so we had this mutual respect for each other on that level. As much as they hated to admit it, I was one of their best employees and as much as I hated to admit it, they allowed me to go further than any other employer ever did. Well, ever did up to that point. My boss reads this blog. My job is great boss and I love you!

I got into the “Never-To-Be-Named” pizza place around eight in the morning to begin the prep-work for the day. We were a buffet restaurant so we needed quite a bit of prep-work done before the eleven o'clock opening time. There was a church right across the street that ended their first service right as we opened so we were guaranteed to have custies first thing in the morning.

“Custie” is a a word we used for customer. Dehumanized them just enough for us to make it easy to despise them, but kept them human enough to remind us they were the customer. As I learned in Hotel Restaurant School- the customer is not always right, but they are always our guest. It may not sound right, but in a restaurant it is definitely “us versus them” and the custies are always the enemy. A hostile invading force looking to take as many of our resources as humanly possible with as little damage to themselves as possible. Our jobs- defend the home front and just try to make it through the day. But I digress...

I was doing my morning prep-work with about three or four other employees; most around seventeen years of age. I was an oddity to them, but in some ways they looked up to me. I think I was the first adult they ever saw who refused to grow up. It gave them some hope about growing older I think. Or they just had fun with an adult for the first time in their lives, or maybe I was just a slacker boss and they dug that. Who really knows? Maybe they mocked me behind my back. Doesn't matter, we were doing our prep-work and it came time to make the dough for the morning.

I liked to do the dough as late as possible while still giving it time to rise. The bags of flour were fifty pounds each and I really hated lifting them at eight in the morning. I needed at least an hour to wake up before I could even think about doing any actual work. Usually closer to two hours if I could allow myself to be the “asshole manager” who smoked while everyone else worked. I did that once or twice when hung over.

This day I was making the dough all my by lonesome. I walked over to the stack of flour bags and stopped in my tracks. I never saw anything like what I saw before in my life. I had heard about it plenty of times of course, but never saw it nor known anyone who knew anyone who had. It was always just an expression up to that point, but no longer for there, on a bag of flour, were two flies going at it.

I called all my seventeen year olds over from the myriad of jobs they were doing to come and gaze with me in this once in a life time sight. I had to share it with them. I mean it took me twenty-nine years to see such a spectacle, so I was saving them the years of anticipation. They did not exactly take the same delight in it as I did, but they were young after all. I would take a few years to fully sink in I think.

The flies kept at their business completely unphased by the crowd of voyeuristic giants staring at their insect porno. It was like “National Geographic Live” or something. That could explain why the seventeen year olds were so uninterested in the fly freak show. Maybe they thought this was educational or something. I felt some explaining was in order.

“Don't you understand,” I asked the blank-faced children before me. “We are so bored at work that we are watching flies fuck!”

The reaction you are giving me right now after reading all of that is the exact same reaction the seventeen year olds gave me. I actually heard booing. The flies even stopped their mating to go somewhere more comedic.

“OK, back to work.” Playing the boss card was my only way out.

Why exactly did I just tell you this story?