Applebee somebody!

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:04:01 -0400

Thanks to that menace Daniel Dougherty, I'm having flashbacks to my days working at Applebee's in high school. It was exactly like "Friday Night Lights" except with bad skin, fat, angry customers, and platters of lukewarm nachos bigger than your head.

I'd wake up in the morning and spend the entire day dreading work that night. Then at around 4 p.m., I'd dash around the house, trying to get ready in the 100-degree heat (my house in Durham, North Carolina didn't have air-conditioning when I was growing up. Don't get me started!) (I've decided this blog is going to be filled with the most irritating clichés in the universe.) (And lots of stupid parentheticals.)

Then I'd put on my black Applebee's shirt, which smelled like an Applebee's Sizzlin' Fajita Platter (which is to say it stank) because I never had the brains in my head to wash the stupid thing, and I only had one Applebee's shirt. The shirt (which stank) would stick to my body (which also stank) immediately, and I'd sit there sweating in my mom's car (which also didn't have air conditioning, naturally) as she drove me to work (humiliatingly enough) (actually that didn't humiliate me then, but it should've).

The second I walked into the darkness of Applebee's Neighborhood Bar and Grill, a wave of Fajita Platter smell would hit me, and it would greet the Fajita Platter smell of my shirt like an old friend. ("Dude! How have you been? Long time no smell!") (That was another cliché, in case you're keeping track.) It was an icy wave of Fajita stank, too, one that would immediately freeze the sweat and the facial oil onto my body like thick (stinky) second skin.

Then I would serve people food. Delicious!

Needless to say, I was a seriously shitty waitress. Often, people would look at me like, "You're kidding me, right?" I was that bad. I spilled things. I forgot stuff. I apologized too much. I didn't make casual conversation. I stuttered. I mumbled. I smiled nervously. I checked back too often. Who doesn't want a waitress who makes them uncomfortable throughout their entire meal? The only people who liked me were the drunks. I was a drunk in the making, so they made sense to me. Everyone else I saw as scary adults who hated me without even knowing me. They hated me because they were about to spend $50 on bad, lukewarm food, served up by a teenager. I would've hated me, too.

The food at Applebee's is, dare I say, bad. At the time, it was about 1/3 as good as Chili's, which wasn't all that good to begin with (except for that vat of melted cheese dip they have - that thing is damn good). Applebee's is sort of like a cross between Red Lobster and Chevy's -- you know, bad meets worse. Lots of terrible combinations of overcooked chicken and fatty ribs and so on, all of it barely warm enough to eat. BAD! When people asked me for recommendations, I would have to say "Our x is popular" or "People (who have no fucking taste) really seem to like x" because I had nothing to recommend. I hated the food. Keep in mind, I grew up in a small town with not that many food options. I had the palate of a toddler. But even I knew that the food at Applebee's was seriously shitty.

And I hated working there. And let's see, this guy I fooled around with a year earlier, who never talked to me again afterwards? He worked there, too. And all he did was talk to me at work, talk, talk, talk. Maybe to make up for what a tool he was before? Or maybe because it was clear I thought he was gross a year later? Or maybe because I stank, both literally and figuratively, and he felt sorry for me?

Who knows? I heart Applebee's! Get it together, people!

I heart my grouchy work blog! Pet peeves, humiliating walks down memory lane. When will the fun end?

Pet Peeve Du Jour: I'm well!

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:04:12 -0400

Come on baby, light my William Safire.

I know I'm alone on my own little planet, "Little Prince"-style, with this one, but I'm going to sally forth anyway: I hate it when you ask people how they are, and they say, "I'm well."

I'm sure a few people reading this say it. But you know what? You're not well, you're good. If you were well, you would've been well 15 years ago -- you know, back when everyone was just good?

This one is driven by a handful of sticklers (who are wrong, by the way) and a herd of people who are paranoid that they're stupid. And you know why they're paranoid? Because they are stupid.

It's perfectly fine to say "I'm good." It's grammatically acceptable, and you know what? It doesn't sound obnoxious and prissy, either.

I have a thing for conversational English. Yes, I recognize that rules are important, because everyone is getting more and more stupid and bastardizing the language. We can discuss those irritating bastardizations later, I'm game.

But I hate prissy English that doesn't sound remotely like conversation, particularly in informal pieces and blogs and such. I don't like to sit just quietly and smell the flowers. (That's an actual line from "Ferdinand The Bull," a book my daughter and I both love, a book whose author dare not split the sacred infinitive, so I stumble on that line every time. Sit just quietly? Come on, you're an enormous bull! You might like to just sit quietly, but you most certainly don't like to sit just quietly.)

So that's my pet peeve of the day: I'm well. Oof, it makes me want to kick someone just writing those words!

I think this is going to be my grouchy work blog. Turn the screw, motherfuckers!

Heather Havrilesky's Open Salon Blog

Applebee somebody!

Pet Peeve Du Jour: I'm well!