Bill didn’t say anything to Jackie. They stood next to each other on the loading dock turned toward the café. Finally, in a huff, Jackie said, “Men.” She angrily crushed out her cigarette with the heel of her shoe and stormed off back inside.
Bill stood a while longer. He watched the waitresses. They were not all new since the regular, year-round waitresses got their choice of stations and the smart ones chose the café. It filled quickly and stayed filled from late spring through the summer and into the middle of fall. They could make more money outside than they could inside.
Regardless, Bill had already picked a favorite of the newbies and was getting ready to mess with her. She was a college kid, maybe twenty, a dark-haired beauty by Bill’s standards, tall, skinny, small-breasted, a darker-skinned Caucasian.
Bill’s rule about messing with waitresses was simple. He would mess with them if they let him and leave them alone if they didn’t. Through his whole career he would never persist in messing with a waitress who did not want to be messed with.
Waitresses were a strange breed. In general, and for the most part, they would do anything and everything for tips. This meant things like rubbing their nipples with ice cubes to make them stiff and leaving the top two buttons of their uniform blouses open so male customers could easily see their cleavage. Some of them messed around with certain customers, and none of them ever let a customer feel as if he didn’t actually have a chance, even if he didn’t actually have a chance.
Of course there were some waitresses who were just waitresses, the professionals, the ones who were there to make money but not for the bull shit. These were the ones who didn’t flirt with the cooks. These were the ones who do their jobs quietly, efficiently, effectively. These were the ones who provided good service to customers with the expectation that customers would leave them good tips for the good service.
Jackie was certainly not of that latter class. Jackie was surely of the former class, although Bill could never say he actually saw her twist her nipple or put an ice cube to one to make it stiff so a customer could see it. But that day, at that time when she stormed back in from the loading dock, she was pissed at her boyfriend Wayne, probably hung over with a headache and surely very tired. So in the kitchen, even before Bill got inside, first thing she did was rip into Wayne.
“What the hell,” she said. “You got shit for him and he’s no one to you, but you ain’t got nothing for me? Damn you. You should have known better. You should have known I’d want some and you should have had some for me.”
Even from out on the loading dock Bill could hear everything. By the time she got to her last words he was already back in the kitchen.
Wayne was standing on the line by the stoves. Jackie was standing across the serving counter opposite him. Raul, the Mexican pantry boy, was standing at his pantry station in close proximity to Jackie because the pantry station in this kitchen was fit to the line at an L.
Wasn’t the first time Raul had heard a cook and a waitress have a tiff. In the scope of things, as far as it was at the moment, this one wasn’t bad.
Wayne didn’t say anything to address what Jackie had said. He was frying an order of Sunny-side up. “Want some breakfast?” he asked her.
“Kiss my ass,” Jackie said.
