This is usually how it goes:
I wake up to allow time for my
hobbies that separate me from the role I must eventually play in the
evening. Breakfast is never worth waking
up for. Liquid eggs, cold potatoes, and
chewy bacon await each morning. It is
better to sleep in and miss it altogether.
Around ten o’clock, my ritual begins.
I start with a bowl of Cheerios and
drink two cups of coffee while reading a book in the employee dining room (EDR). The desert mountain is still cool and replete
with morning breezes. The heat is yet to
come.
With only a minor break between
meals, it is time for lunch at 10:45.
The EDR cook frequently gives minimal effort and has a penchant for
serving dry chicken, unsalted green beans, and schizophrenic meals in which the
options seem borne from a blind-folded dart game. Sloppy joes and tuna salad. Roast beef sandwiches and penne pasta with
marinara sauce. There is hardly a soul
who cares for his food, and we would gladly wish for him to be given the boot
so that we may fend for ourselves.
Every now and then he bakes a
delicious cookie laden with gooey chocolate and asks everyone what they think,
and we cannot help but to tell him the truth.
This occasional treat briefly abates our frustration that this man
continues to disappoint us day after day, yet his job somehow remains secure. Any normal company that desires to make a
profit and yearns to keep its employees happy would have fired him for his
consistently sub-standard performance. A
teacher who fails to instruct his students would be asked to consider a career
change. An investment banker who
frequently costs his company money would be let go. But a cook who can’t cook still has a
job.
This is the nature of the company
we work for: an
unprofessional regime, a sorry excuse for a concessionaire comprised of ladder-climbers
with low standards, the burned-out, the bottom of the barrel, immigrants, and
the moneymakers who have grown less virtuous and more apathetic.
If the usual EDR cook is off, there
stands a chance the meal is appetizing, and I eat to the point of excess, because
one must take full advantage of the rarity.
If the usual EDR cook is working, I eat what I can stomach, with my
already lowered standards, or opt for a sandwich.
I sit at a square table surrounded
by three empty chairs. There are many
people whose company I enjoy, but there are more people I prefer to avoid. As far as conversations go, there are three
formats. Gossip: who got fired for drunkenness? This person of high authority was seen
rubbing the leg of someone of a lowly position. Complaints directed toward the company
accompanied by the necessary commiseration.
Or my preference: the
outdoors.
Like any job, we swap weekend
stories. For those of us who leave the
property during our two days off, we speak of slot canyons, dirt roads, Anasazi
ruins, mountain lakes, national parks. There
are some who seek adventure, and there are those who want to seek adventure but
for some reason don’t and replace their desires with a friendly form of envy
and a list of dreams delayed.
I started with a list of places I would
like to see, and I drove to the vistas, but soon I realized this was doing
nothing for me. What is the point of
seeing a place you will not touch or make no exertion to get acquainted
with? I might as well look at pictures
online. Not to mention I was behaving
like the tourists I despised. I made a
vow to get dirtier, to challenge myself physically, to up the ante of danger
and bravado, to go farther, to explore deeper, to climb, to swim, to paddle, to
hike into the remote recesses of the American Southwest.
I try to go as far as I can,
driving hours down two-lane roads littered with deer carcasses to reach remote
parks and monuments with the hope to find solitude, a sense of euphoria, and a
disconnectedness from my weekday self. These
two days are the reason I took this job.
At this point in my life, I want to focus on exploration while my legs are
strong, but this comes with a trade-off.
The job provides little to no
glory, and my week seems like a downer compared to the highs of weekend
trips. I must don my uniform: polish-able, nonslip shoes that look like
army boots, black dress pants, a white shirt with buttons on the collars, and a
gimmicky bolo tie. My cheeks are sheared
of their miniscule follicles. My nametag
hangs on the right side of my chest.
Everything must be in order according to those who make and enforce the
rules.
If my name tag were to hang from
the left side of my chest or if my tiny facial hairs were to sprout and cast a
shadow on my face, the manager would react with anger, as though this were a
travesty easily avoided and appropriately dealt with using aggression. Each time this happens, I want to remind him
of his own mortality and the inconsequential nature of his complaints.
This code of rigidity he is so busy
maintaining gives rise to an artificial world that contrasts starkly with the
one that exists outside the windows and beyond the parking lot. How can he see the stratification between us
but deny his own desires that we share: the
desire to rid ourselves of this orderliness and to shed our civility to bask in
the wild where nothing matters except hunger, warmth, and thirst.
In order to achieve this level of
peace in the outdoors, there is a role I must play and political battles to
fight. When the season started, I was
enthusiastic and inquisitive with guests.
I would ask them of their vacation plans and their origins, but now I have become
hardened and bitter. I am direct and
sometimes emotionless: a button-pusher
going through the motions to expedite an undesirable process. I deal with only the basics. Tell me what you want, and I will get it for
you. Like a loveless whore. And worse, I have become greedy.
The money in the beginning of the
year was ridiculous. There were lines at
the door, and tourists spending loads of money.
In a single dinner shift, I could clear three hundred dollars. If I worked a double, I could make over five
hundred. We all made thousands of
dollars with our manners and our fingers and our straining shoulders and our
aching legs and our stinking, sweaty feet.
And the best part was: it was all
so easy.
If you wanted more money, all you
had to do was move faster and connive your way for more shifts and more
tables. Prey on the lazy, or those who
have had their fill. But I always wanted
more. I picked up any lunch shift that
anyone wanted to give away. If someone
wanted to leave early, I would take their section and stay late.
Twenty dollar bills became Monopoly
money. I would go out to eat with
friends and pick up the tab, and, although I hate to admit it, it made me feel empowered. I started paying off my loans
aggressively. I would go on
thousand-mile road trips and spend hundreds of dollars in cash and still have
plenty left in my stash. But I was
generous too. Each shift I tipped out my
sever assistant much more than the usual amount. I had enough to eat, enough to make a profit,
enough to share and then some. And all
for what: bringing somebody a plate of
food?
But then the crowds disappeared,
and money wasn’t always so easy to come by. You had to fight for your money, and I became a
hardened individual devoid of my usual sentimentality. I protested to oust the sixty-five year old
server who consistently gets the best section.
I yelled at the hosts for not evenly distributing the guests. I called a server assistant incompetent for
working too slowly. I accosted the
bartender for serving glasses of wine with pieces of cork floating on top.
These were my friends, and I was
treating them poorly. I realized
something in me had changed, but my aggressiveness was paying off. I was still making the same kind of money
while others weren’t because of my pestering, conniving, and protesting, but in
the process I had made several enemies.
In the dining room, servers with
seniority are given the best sections near the windows, despite the fact their
skill level may not warrant such a bonus.
I was left in the middle, where nobody wants to sit. This system based on favoritism has been in
place too long, and I could not allow myself to remain quiet and become a
victim of the injustice. I am not
accustomed to this villainous role, so at first I was uncomfortable by the
uneasiness in which people treated me, as though my presence was not wanted
because I am threatening to destroy the order that has been created.
Now my motivation is waning and
apathy threatens to overtake me. I am no
longer angry when I see a ten percent tip from a French family who orders a
bottle of wine and two steaks. I don’t
wish to be heartless to my coworkers, although often my frustration mounts
inside of me to the point where I want to smash a chair over someone’s head. Instead, I do what I am told and say nothing
and walk away in defeat.
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