But even as I stand there, fuming, my face flushes because my manager might be right. Do credits at Evergreen cost a hundred dollars each? I swear, I looked online and read that credits cost ten bucks a pop. If they’re actually charging ten times that, then I’m screwed. There’s no way I can spare four hundred dollars to take one class. Not when I’m hard-up to make rent and put food on the table some weeks.
But I don’t want to let my manager know, so blindly, I punch in some random things into the console while hoping one of them is the TripleMeat TripleCheese Slamburger. God knows, I could be ordering a chocolate ice cream sundae with whipped cream and cherries, but there’s no way I’m going to let on to Jimmy how hurt and disappointed I feel at the moment.
“Gotta get back to work,” I say breezily. “See ya, Jimmy. Thanks for checking up on me.”
His eyes trail over my form as I saunter off, giving me the creeps. But it’s just another day at the Second Star Diner, and I can’t afford to lose this job. So determinedly, I walk back to my area, stopping only to pick up an order at the kitchen.
“You okay, darlin’?” asks Mamie from behind the silver window. Mamie’s my best friend on the job. Looking at us, you wouldn’t think we have anything in common because Mamie’s about eighty, African-American, and wizened. She’s been a line cook since she was forty, which gives her forty years of experience on the job, and about thirty years of experience more than me. Many a time, I’ve cried on her shoulder after a shift, fed up with the daily indignities of my position. Many a time, she’s patted my head and made it feel alright again, even if it wasn’t really alright.
I smile bravely at her. Mamie’s the only person that I feel comfortable even being myself around here at the Silver Star.
“I’m okay,” I say taking a deep breath. “I’m fine.”
Mamie looks at me closely, her eyes a cloudy blue from cataracts. “You hang in there, darlin’,” she speaks gently. “The Lord will provide.”
I smile again and nod, picking up a giant plate of salad. Mamie knows that something is wrong, but right now, in the middle of a shift, neither of us can afford to talk. Plus, I know Jimmy’s still watching me with his beady rat eyes, and I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me break down. So taking a deep breath, I smile at my friend once more before balancing the salad plate on one forearm and stopping to pick up a full set of utensils. Then I walk delicately towards a table in the corner with a smile plastered on my face. My customer is a blonde girl, probably in her twenties, with hair so shiny that it’s blinding, and a nose tipped up high.
Carefully, I set the salad in front of her. It’s a giant chef’s salad with lots of tomatoes, two sliced eggs, cut-up ham and crumbled blue cheese on the side. My mouth waters. When I’m flush with money (meaning when it’s payday), sometimes I treat myself to a salad like this. Most other times, it’s the tiny house salad that has one tomato at best, and some sad, wilted lettuce leaves that are going to go bad if they’re not eaten.
“Here you go ma’am,” I say with a courteous smile. “Chef’s salad with the dressing on the side.”
Her nose wrinkles like she’s smelled something bad.
“I asked for the oil and vinegar dressing, and not the ranch,” she says flatly.
Oh right. Oops.
“I’m sorry,” I apologize. “I’ll get you some oil and vinegar right away.”
But that doesn’t satisfy my customer.
“No, no, take the whole thing away,” she says. “If you got the dressing wrong, then you got this entire salad wrong. I want them to make me a new one.”
I stare at her disbelievingly. Is she joking? There’s nothing wrong with the salad itself. I know for a fact that it was lovingly assembled by hand by either Mamie or Bert in the kitchen. They’re both expert chefs, and there’s no way they messed up this salad.
“Ma’am,” I say in a gentle voice. “I’m sorry, but this salad is perfectly fine. It’s me who made the mistake with the dressing, but I assure you, that’s the only thing that went wrong. Everything about this chef’s salad is completely okay. I’ll get you some oil and vinegar dressing right away.”
The blonde woman turns her chin away, refusing to look me in the eye.
“No,” she says in a flat voice. “You screwed up the dressing, and you probably screwed up the salad too. I don’t care if it was made by your friends in the back. You’re dumb and probably gave them the wrong order, and this dish is likely messed up because of that. I want a new one,” she says in a petulant voice.