After we were done at the end of the night I went in the office and said to Renee, “We're done, can you check us out?”
“Oh, my god, whatever.”
I left the office and stood in the kitchen. Diego stood near me staring at his shoes. Every night we had to get checked out. We COULD NOT LEAVE until a manager had checked us out. We were adults but we needed to be checked out by another adult.
Renee came out and said, “Oh, you think you boys are done?”
She walked up the line and kept saying, “This is disgusting. This is so disgusting… don't you have any self-respect? Don't you take any pride in your work?”
We listened and wiped down the areas she designated.
It was the same thing every night. She would come out and say the same things, about how everything was disgusting and how we needed to take pride in our work.
And every night we didn't care if it was disgusting or about taking pride in our work.
It never occurred to me how to take pride in cooking at a restaurant when I didn't own it. They didn't give good raises and didn't pay enough to afford the crappy health care offered to their employees. None of the cooks had gotten a raise in a year since the hiring of the new head manager. Before we got raises every four months if we did a good job. And especially since the economy had recently collapsed raises were really out of the question. The only thing keeping us at that job was the fact that there were no other jobs. The area factories had recently sent out several 1000 workers into the labor pool that didn't mind working 50 hours a week and had kids to feed. The classifieds were empty. Craigslist was silent to our needs. The only thing that kept us there was the phrase, “At least I have a job.”
But I liked the job. Or maybe I liked working. It gave me something to do. It was thoughtless. It was an escape. You went somewhere and did things you didn't care about. People told you what to do. You had a level of responsibility. If you performed their tasks the way they wanted them, they never cared. Without work I felt bored. I didn't really like work when I was younger. Taking shit and doing things I didn't want to do. But I got used to it after it awhile. One learns to suffer after a while with stupid shit. I recognized this is what everybody does and what makes the world. People going to work. Everyone doing their own little part; everyone agreeing that everybody else needs to find something to do. Each with their own little thing.
It was around that time that I noticed the strange relationship co-workers developed. My mother always mentioned it. She had worked at the Chevy plant for 33 years and always talked about how she watched her co-workers grow old. But what was strange to her, was that they didn't notice it happening. It was slow over the course of 30 years. Like time lapse photography. Watching each other slowly wrinkle up and droop.
I had worked at the steak house for two years and had already watched four women go through complete pregnancies. They even came in and I held their babies. I had attended birthday parties, cookouts, college graduation parties and a New Year’s bash with my co-workers. They had slowly become my friends. People I thought and even worried about. There were some I disliked at first, but eventually after spending 30 to 40 hours a week together, for years, they become like a sibling and you learn to put up with it.
Six
I walked in the house. Amanda was sitting there pissed that I took so long. She was dressed in tight fitting clothes ready to get drunk and look sexy while dancing. Her make-up was on perfectly, hair modeled into a messy yet organized formation on her head.
She said, “Where you been, we gotta go.”
I thought, “What the fuck is the hurry,” but instead said, “Okay, I'll hurry.”
The response made her happy.
I didn't feel like making her mad. Making her mad could make her cry. And making her cry was something I didn't want to deal with. It was better to choose to play along most of the time with people and their insanity. I had grown tired of arguing and crying and all the misery that goes along with conflict, so I threw my dirty work clothes off in silence and took a shower.
When my father would come home from work it was the same every day. He would come in the house in silence. He wouldn't say hi or speak to anyone. He would shit. Every day he would shit when he got off of work, perfectly timed; it was amazing the accuracy of the time he would shit. Afterwards, he would leave the bathroom and go to the kitchen to pick up a newspaper and carry it to his La-Z-Boy chair. He’d hit the handle on the chair and lay back reading the paper. There was still no talking — no hello… no how are you… no how was school — he would read the paper for a little over 20 minutes and then fall asleep with the paper in his lap. He would wake up a half an hour later and do something. He would go outside and feed the rabbits and the chickens; he would collect some brown eggs and bring them back to the house. He would mow the grass or weed whack.
It was the same thing every day.
My mother would come home around midnight and slam her car keys down on the kitchen table. She would talk endlessly to my father about her day at work. How it was a tragedy, how everyone was conspiring against her. How her back was killing her. How she had a sinus headache that wouldn't go away. My father never even spoke back. He would play along and say nothing. She didn't require any responses.
When I got home from work, it was a shower and then I would check my email. Amanda and I might say some things to each other, but not much. It was a moderate amount of talking. Neither of us were silent nor babbling morons. We just said things when they needed to be said as opposed to my mother who talked endlessly about nothing, and my father who needed to say things but refused to even say hello to his children.
Amanda and I arrived at the bar we go to every Sunday. It was down in Niles near where we work. It used to be an Italian restaurant but it closed and became a bar. It was the new hip bar on 422. All the restaurant workers on 422 were going to it. 422 was where the mall and all the restaurants were. There was Red Lobster, Outback, Olive Garden, Max and Erma's, Road House, and one called something like Fattie's in the mall. People who work at restaurants are notorious drunks. All the bars were full of us drinking ourselves stupid every night.
The bar was newly remodeled. It was shaped like a box with a low ceiling. There were tables, booths, and chairs on both sides with a nice horseshoe bar in the middle. Three flat screen high-definition televisions hung above the bar that played the highlights of the Steelers game. Young attractive bartenders that attended the local colleges who had bright futures and didn't consider bartending their destiny served the drinks.
The bar was new and shiny. It was unlike the other bars in the area. Youngstown had a lot of bars with cheap drinks but those bars were old looking; they haven’t been remodeled since the seventies. They had high ceilings built back in the 30s. There was too much history in those bars. Nobody was into history there that night. Everyone had cell phones, newer cars they were making payments on, new clothes from the mall, new hairstyles; everyone was singing new music. Everyone was really into ‘the new.’
Over half the people there were wearing Steelers jerseys and hats. The Steelers had won. People expected the Steelers to be good that year, but no one expected them to be that good. Everyone was getting drunk celebrating the victory of the Steelers. Libations were poured, sacrifices were made; everyone believing that through the purchasing and mass consumption of alcohol the Steeler Nation would appease the football gods and be granted more victories.