never cross a man who decapitates animals for a living


it took me three years six months and sixteen days to get out of that bed. or so it felt. my back burned like a paring knife had been positioned between the L4 and L5. my eyes as red as the snapper on last nights menu. my joints creaking and in dire need of lubricants from one too many cocktails...but i did it. i rose from the depths like a half drunk Poseidon poised to reclaim my kingdom, keeping my balance with a rusty trident and some sushi for nibbling. except replace the trident with an end table, and the sushi with a cigarette, and all his regal swagger with that of my clumsy fumbling nature.
the previous nights dinner rush had overtaken the staff at the restaurant, and it was i who took the brunt of it. the tables were turned three times over, the specials sold much better than anticipated, half the kitchen staff went missing due to some rare form of intestinal virus, and half of the half that was left were away on an off premise catering job. oh yeah...last night was fun.
so there i was, left with Tommy the "special-ed" dishwasher who once tried to de-brain me with a cutting board, James the erstwhile but completely incompetent 17 year old prep cook who was excellent at getting me beverages for my thirst but not much else, Steve the raging idiot saute cook who threw things...alot, and Kyle the moron- whose job title escapes me, as there is no job he's actually able to do, besides smoke pot and hit on the waitstaff- and even those two small tasks seem to overwhelm him most of the time.
I'm not going to lie to you when i tell you it was hot in that kitchen last night, we were catching readings of 135 on the line, and that was before the brown out during the second seating. Jesus, i thought i was going to die when the power went out. you cant just leave the food on the grill, or in the pans, or the salamander, or oven. hell no, youve gotta plate that shit! the customers like when the lights go out, its romance baby! plate it and then run for your life, as it gets to be 165 in a matter of minutes. scary hot. scary. and all the while that fat fuck owner is sitting in his air conditioned office on the second floor, insulated from the madness that occurs not six feet below his well cooled toes, refusing to fix the wiring because he spends the maintenance money on his coke habit. a fat coke head...who woulda thunk it.
so Tommy scrubbed away at that mountain of plates and pots and silver as fast as he could muttering death threats under his breath, James asked me if i was thirsty or there was anything he could do to help for the seventy-third time, Steve continued his nightly ritual of hurling his chef knives and anything else he could get his hands on into the wall in anger, and Kyle stood sentry -sweaty and bewildered- precisely in the middle of the action. i deduced that we werent getting out of this night in one piece. in no certain terms was this night going to end well. it looked to me like the end of the movie Platoon, where the Corey Glover character stabs himself in the leg just to get on that helicopter to home, various random soldiers are huddling together crying out loud and pissing themselves like babies in fox holes, and the Charlie Sheen character (read: me) is hunting down the Tom Berenger character (read: fat fuck boss) to kill him over murdering his best friend (read: my life).
it was at this point i devised a plan to get us all home safely. I called it operation overflow....

to be continued