Man is by nature selfish and greedy.
My father-in-law said this and he was right. I’m fond of the expression and use it often. It kind of provides an overview of all that goes on in this world.
Of course not all people are like this. But generally it’s a good sense of the human condition and what mankind is about.
If you’re part of the PCP police, note there are two PC errors in that last paragraph. If you’re from my generation, it’s all quite all right.
I’m beginning to think, and have actually been thinking it for a little while now, that we’ve reached our limits in sensibility as well as being selfish and greedy. Sometimes I think that as regards us as a species, this is it, this is us. We get more sophisticated scientifically and more advanced technologically. But as our science and our technology get more complex, we get more stupid. We just can’t seem to make sense of what we’ve got.
Sure, the United States has its faults. But still no country with our super-power status and military might has been less imposing upon the world overall and has given to the world what we give in terms of aid all over the world.
So why would we want to get rid of the very economic system that works when we can see that the choices don’t work? It doesn’t make any sense.
In effect, those who would have us become socialists, who propose ridiculous notions that cost more than we can possibly afford, even if we take all the billions from those horrible, horribly rich billionaires who actually employ the rest of us on some level or other, are simply whacked out or driven by that greed and selfishness. And of course they’re driven by the desire for power, for them to live like kings while we plod along like slaves a la Hunger Games.
So we come to some New York stuff. Do me a favor, don’t blame me for using the expression do me a favor. It’s a New York thing, something said there that doesn’t really mean one is asking for a favor. It’s just an expression like soda pop there is soda whereas it’s pop in parts of the Midwest.
Partisam schmuckery! Do me a favor and forgive my expressions, but the Democrats are acting like schmucks. The biggest part of their schmuckery is expecting us to believe that they actually are doing what they are doing for the betterment of the country or for anything that President Trump has done wrong.
No. They were talking about impeachment before Trump was inaugurated and have stated openly that they can’t beat him at the ballot box so they have to impeach him. Yes. That’s their game.
The schmuckery part of it is their thinking that we go for it, that we believe it, that we actually accept it. They’ve never named a crime because they are still looking for one.
Like Trump or not, you can vote him in again or not in less than a year. Why take us, the American people, through what they’re taking us through if that option is right there?
Partisan schmuckery. The Despicable Democrats! Go team go.
Do me a favor, do something for America instead of tearing it apart.
By Peter Weiss
Day two.
Bill parked his car on the loading dock and headed inside through the employee entrance.
Déjà vu.
Paul, the fat old security guard, met Bill at the door. He was standing inside, right by the door. He said hello to Bill and this time didn’t bother to lead him to the time clock window.
Inside the window, Steven asked Bill his number. Bill told him. He got Bill’s card and gave it to him. Bill punched himself in, gave the card back to Steven. This was the routine and now Bill knew.
Bill walked alone on toward the main kitchen where he saw people at work. Victor and Jimmy Banquet Chef were by the rotary oven. They weren’t doing anything, just kind of watching what was going round every now and then, as Bill could see while he approached them. Every so often they looked inside.
“Yasou,” Victor called out. “Tikanis?”
“You say Eímai kalá,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said. “It means you’re good.” He laughed. “You can just say kalá if you want.”
“Eímai kalá, Bill said. “What you looking at in there?”
“Couple of prime ribs and some chickens roasting,” Jimmy said. “Nothing much.”
“You should go straight to the locker room,” Victor said. “Then to the laundry. See your little girlfriend Millie.”
“She’s waiting for you,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said in his nasal voice. He slapped Victor, his uncle, on the back.
“Good to be young,” Victor said.
“When you’re changed, come up here,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said. “We’re cooking chicken for us. And I’m counting on you for that breakfast banquet.”
“I’ll be there,” Bill said.
“You know how to get to the locker room?” Victor asked.
“I’ll find it,” Bill said.
And he did, after a few wrong turns.
He went to the locker that he’d chosen, one next to Jimmy’s. Today he brought a combination lock and so after he’d taken out his dirty uniform, he locked the locker and headed off to see Millie.
Millie was sitting reading a comic book when he got there. He could see her behind her counter off to the side. She was sitting on a metal folding chair, in her laundry dress, like a house dress, more or less. She had bobby socks and bedroom slippers on her feet.
Bill dropped his soiled uniform on the counter. Only when he did this did she hear him there. She quickly tucked the comic book away and stood up.
“Thirty-four, thirty-two,” Millie said. She sidled up to her counter, a little too sexually maybe, and leaned herself on her elbows on it. “Hey, honey,” she said.
“Hey doll,” Bill said. He smiled at her, noted her lips were painted dark purple. He liked that. He’d liked it on Mary’s dark chocolate skin and he liked it on Millie’s cinnamon, darkish-cinnamon, skin. “You look pretty,” he said.
Millie stood upright and spun herself around. “Think so?”
“You bet.”
“How pretty?”
“On a scale of one to ten? Absolutely edible.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You bet.”
“Mmm,” Millie said. She looked at Bill dreamily. “I will if you will.” She laughed. “I will even if you won’t.”
“Will what?” Bill asked.
“Will whatever. Wherever. Whenever.”
“Good to know.”
“And I know places to go too.”
“Bet you do.”
“Don’t think I flirt like this with everyone,” Millie said. “I ain’t easy and I don’t mess around a lot. But you’re pretty,” she said. “There, I said it.” She ran her tongue around her lips. Then she blushed a full crimson.
“Come here,” Bill said. He signaled for her to lean over the counter, and when she did, he leaned in and whispered something in her ear, his lips as close to her ear as Rosie’s were to his the night before.”
By Peter Weiss
Bill would never understand why the girls would let Caesar scold them. He would never understand why they would put up with Caesar’s bull shit. He did not understand how the union let him do what he did. Eventually, and he’d already made a note of this, he would ask all of these questions and he would learn that some things are just better left alone.
Having said good night to Caesar, Bill found a moment to approach both Rosie and Edelgarde. He caught them in a corner of the dining room and said a polite and quiet good night. They were both doing pretty much nothing, pretty much making themselves look busy without being busy.
Edelgarde said a simple good night. Rosie stepped up close to Bill and fussed with his chef’s jacket’s collar. Bill thought she was going to kiss him. Instead she leaned in and whispered a kind of sexy good night straight into his ear, her lips so close to him that he could feel her breath. She knew she was starting something and he knew she was being effective.
The main kitchen was quiet, mostly dark. Dark did not mean black. Red exit signs and some low night-lights lit the way around.
Bill and Jimmy went happily about their closing rounds. Jimmy was jovial, clearly glad to be getting toward out-of-work. He stepped gingerly now as they made the same rounds they’d made at opening time, only this time just one go-round during which they put away everything from the cart making sure to close all walk-in boxes fully. The last thing they did was park the truck back where Jimmy had gotten it from.
That done, everything put away, the truck parked, they headed off not to the locker room but to the chef’s office where the banquet chef was.
Jimmy the Banquet Chef sat at the chef’s desk. His big chef’s hat was parked on the desk. Since they did not have a sous chef (Jacques would be hired about a year after Bill), Jimmy the banquet chef served that function. In this capacity, mostly all he had to do was be there when the chef wasn’t so if anything came up he could handle it. Technically he wasn’t management. But in the chef’s absence and with no sous chef he could make executive decisions regarding anything except hiring/firing.
Jimmy was drinking. He had a bottle of scotch and six beers, five of them unopened on the desk. First thing Jimmy G did after saying hello was grab a beer for himself and hand one to Bill. He told Bill to sit down, which he did. Bill found himself in the same seat he had been in when the chef had spoken with him earlier.
Jimmy G and Jimmy Banquet Chef spoke a moment very quickly in Greek. When they were done Jimmy G sat in the chair next to where Bill sat and Jimmy Banquet Chef looked Bill up and down.
“My aunt really likes you,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said. “She doesn’t like many people, so that’s good for you.”
Bill didn’t say anything. He noted, same as he’d noted before, the nasal sound in Jimmy’s voice.
“My cousin says you can cook,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said. “We have some stuff coming up, a breakfast later in the week early in the morning. You want to work?”
Bill looked at both Jimmies, first one then the other. Jimmy G nodded his head yes. Seeing that, Bill looked to Jimmy Banquet Chef and simply said, “Sure.”
“Nothing much,” the Banquet Chef said in his nasal way. “Scrambled eggs and sausage for about four hundred people. But you’ll make a lot of overtime. Good biscuits too.”
Jimmy G poured both Bill and himself some scotch. The three of them clinked glasses and drank. Then they all finished their beers and drank another one.
By Peter Weiss
So I got a part-time job. It just kind of happened and I wasn’t really looking for it, but it seemed to fit in pretty well with other responsibilities I have. It’s on a 1099 so there are no benefits. Because of the nature of the position, my tax guy told me that when all was said and done the government would be helping itself to a full 30% of my meager earnings.
Every morning now my thought is: why bother to work?
Truly, on top of the government’s 30% I have expenses and wear and tear on my car, and there’s a whole load of things in my life I won’t get to do, things that are important to me.
So I have to pay the government 30% of these earnings on top of the taxes they take out of my pension and Social Security. I have to double-pay Social Security on my new earnings and my own benefits won’t go up.
WTF?
Know what I mean?
So it works out like this: I really wouldn’t mind paying the government if it was doing something. I don’t consider what the Democrats are doing something. I consider what they are doing and have been doing since Hillary lost as less than nothing. Apart from the fact that they are undermining the very pillars of our Republic, what they are about is the very antithesis of all America stands for.
Then, as it stands, I don’t want to pay for benefits for illegal aliens, especially when American citizens can’t get the services and benefits they need and in many cases have worked and paid for.
I don’t want to pay for loafers and system-beaters, for those people who can work but choose not to, those very same people who are benefiting from my hard-earned, life-long working, my tax dollars, those very same people who laugh at me for working and don’t work even though they could.
I don’t want to pay for someone’s abortion or their birth control. That’s not a judgment on either one. It’s a simple statement: if those things are free choice, then the chooser should pay for their choice.
I don’t want to pay for our ridiculous political class to squander our money when they don’t take care of the things that we need taken care of in this country.
I certainly don’t want to pay for their indiscretions, you know, the slush funds they use to pay off the people whom they’ve harmed or abused sexually.
I don’t want any of my tax money to go to sanctuary cities, sanctuary states, or wars that we should not be engaged in.
And on and on.
But they don’t care. They’ll take the 30% from me whether I like it or not. Many of the 50% of the people who don’t pay any taxes at all will wear better shoes than I do, have bigger TVs than I have, will spend their benefit money on drugs, alcohol and cigarettes and still laugh at me while I trod to off to work to pay for their benefits. They’ll laugh when I have to pay for my medical care then pay a co-pay, and they’ll laugh when I can’t get a medication I need because it is too expensive and I can’t afford it, one they get for free.
And then that new Politburo political class that we have wonders why people in America don’t respect them, trust them or like them. Maybe they’ll wonder again in 2020 why they lost.
By Peter Weiss
Henry Lee and Mr. Jim at Suburban had been very meticulous about teaching Bill the proper way to use the sharpening steel. Most cooks Bill knew never bothered to master this kind of thing. They just used the steel by running the knife along it one stroke on top, one stroke on bottom in a mostly parallel motion to their body, to the little protective steel piece right at the start of the steel, at the end (top part) of the wooden handle.
Proper way to use the steel was to run the blade along the steel from the top down toward the protective guard. That’s what the protective guard was for. But many cooks were afraid of missing and cutting their hand so they did it the safe way.
Bill had been taught right, used the steel the right way. That had been Jo Ann’s first clue as to Bill’s experience as a cook. He’d heard her say, “This one knows what he’s doing.”
Working together, they did all the wrapping in about fifteen minutes. It was easy duty. When they were done, Jimmy told Bill to hang out while he went to get a kitchen truck, a two-shelf cart with a full handle, upon which they would place everything so as to only make one trip back to the main kitchen.
Bill did not bother to keep any knives on this his first night but he made a mental note to have Jimmy show him where all the knives were the next day so he could start making some choices for himself. He was also thinking about the ease of this cleanup procedure. No more changing French-fry grease. No more emptying the Garland’s grease drawer. No more scrubbing down stainless steel. All he had to do was wrap stuff and keep his area clean as he went along through the night.
When everything was loaded on the cart, all aboard that was going on board, Jimmy told Bill to say good night to whomever he wanted. This was a no-brainer. He would say an earnest good night to Rosie and Edelgarde and a screw-you good night to Caesar. He didn’t quite understand exactly how it worked, or why it worked this way, but he knew he had Caesar where he wanted him, in that position where he could now kill him with kindness. Now that he knew how much Caesar didn’t like him, he knew how much he could piss him off by being nice to him.
So he marched right up to him where he stood at his little maître d’ table at the entrance to the Falstaff Room. He put out his hand to shake hands and said “Good night, Caesar. See you tomorrow.” He said it as if they were best of friends.
Caesar did not put out his hand. Caesar mumbled an almost-indistinguishable “good night” and purposefully, Bill thought, did not make eye contact. Bill took this as a sign of victory.
With the last customers gone, that last table Rosie had, and the room closed, Caesar turned up all the lights. Jo Ann had done all the opening setup. Bill had seen her, watched her, not looking at her as much as looking at what she was doing. Rosie and Edelgarde did all the closing cleanup, the clearing and new setup.
This rule never changed. No matter where you worked, the wait staff did not leave until everything for the next day was as ready to go as they could make it. While the girls here did not have to cleanup, to sweep, vacuum, etc., they had to make sure all the tables were set, the table cloths and napkins clean and neat, just so, and all silverware straight. Caesar would double-check them, scold them if he saw something he didn’t like, if something were out of place.
Bill would never understand this.
By Peter Weiss
So a few things have come up which have kept me away from here for a bit.
Bill Wynn will return tomorrow.
Fun with words and words for fun. More CPS articles and more rants to follow too.
