Two People Short
Thursday. Sandwich Night. Wonder if the place will be busy tonight? I could smell the French onion soup coming from the depths of the bowels of the kitchen already. Walking up to Jerry's Old Town I couldn't help but wonder how many useless hours of toiling I had spent in that damned building. I can already remember all of the torturous nights I had spent there; me and about four of my comrades seeking to conquer "the night" and survive to live another day. The only way that we could hope to survive was to work together as a team. Everyone was supposed to hold their own job, and when everyone was working together in harmony, all could be accomplished. But if even one of our allies decided to abandon and leave us to pick up after them, you could feel yourself start to break from the inside. And, as their responsibility begins to pile onto your shoulders, the burden becomes a mountain. As you feel that weight crashing down with merciless precision and power, your mettle is put to the ultimate test; abandonment and other impurities start to rear their way into your head. Any thought that is peaceful, or good just vanishes in these moments, leaving behind simply a shell of pure pain. All of this happens because someone decided that they were too good to work that day. If anything is to be accomplished with quick efficiency, an entire team must work together to accomplish what needs to be done, otherwise the team will suffer. Walking in the entry to the kitchen, I got my apron on; another layer of white armor to add to the white Dickies shirt and pants. I saw Tory's lanky figure already hard at work.
"Hey Tory."
"Hey Rob."
Tory was one of my greatest friends; always dependable and cheerful, the kind of guy that you can talk to about your girlfriend, cars, crazy dreams, basically anything. I said hi to the cooks, then punched in and got ready for another Thursday night. Who else was working tonight? Me, Tory, Nick, Noah, and Pablo. Wait-isn't Noah at Jesus Camp? Was that this week? Whatever; I didn't have enough time to ask myself anything more because Pablo was already hard at work.
"Pablo!"
"Roberto!"
For some reason, a stray "O" always got attached to the end of my name whenever one of the Hispanic workers pronounced my name. Pablo was a loveable guy; both his personality and his work ethic were great. He was very old to be working here, but he was an incredibly hard worker with a strong back and an even stronger will to get everything done. We three were the team so far.
Six o'clock rolled around. I could already sense that this wouldn't be a normal Thursday. No, today was much busier. Where was Noah? He is at Jesus Camp isn't he? At least Nick is still coming in, right? No such luck; Nick never came in. We were two people short. Two of our allies had encumbered us with the weight that they were to bear. Seeming that forty percent of our workers were missing, we had to split our tasks awkwardly. I was left to washing dishes with Pablo, while Tory was going to be making sandwiches for the bar next door. The unusual split would have worked well if the restaurant and the bar next door weren't busy. The hope that the place wouldn't be busy rattled through my head; the image of cute, little stacks of dishes appeared in my head, while in reality I was feverishly working to clear a seemingly endless amount of trays laden with dirty, disgusting dishes. Pablo and I got slaughtered-like something from a nightmare, the endless amount of everything came back to us. On the other side of the kitchen, Tory was having an even worse time with serving sandwiches next door. Minutes seemed like days. I could feel the sweat rolling off my face, but I was too busy, not to mention too dirty, to wipe the beads of sweat off.
My manager Tabitha came back to check on us, trying to get to the root of the reason that no clean dishes were going back out to the restaurant's dining room. "Looking kind of shabby here, Rob."
I had to belt out a fast answer; a short sentence to describe why I was expending so much energy, and yet going so slow, "Nick and Noah aren't here." I could hear the gears whirring in her head over the whine of the dishwasher.
"What?" She then looked at how badly we were behind. "Holy shit." For a short period of time, she helped out a little; not nearly enough to ease the anguish that we were enduring, though.
At about eight o'clock, Tory and I started to get loopy from exhaustion. "Hey Rob! Check this out!" I ran over to Tory's strangely motivated call. His entire ticket window was filled with orders. I had never seen that before. Tory, having probably twenty people to feed at the moment, started laughing hysterically pointing at his burden. I joined in the completely uncalled for laughter. As the trays kept on coming back, as more food was going out, and as more food needed to be made, Tory and I laughed at the fact that we were two people short. We had endured three straight hours of pure hell, and we were too busy to comprehend that we were forty percent understaffed. We knew the numbers, but we didn't have any time to realize that we were actually two people short. The thought of the atrocity of being short two people never had come across our minds ever, so we never had time to formulate what that would feel like. We spent a good thirty seconds laughing at each other, in which time we fell exponentially behind. My white armor was tarnished pleasant mix of yellow and black; Tory said that I just looked ridiculous. Tory, still relatively clean, had orders going on to eternity; I told him that he looked worse off than I was. Those thirty seconds felt good; we took our situation and slapped all of our problems at the moment right in the face.
I don't exactly know how we got to the end of the night, possibly through some supernatural force, or just pure enjoyment of knowing that three people were doing the work of five people. At around ten o'clock, the hell started to slow down by a great deal. One of the cooks came to see how we were doing.
"How you guys doin'? Who's still gotta go on break, yo?" Tory and I started laughing at him. "What's so funny?" Brian asked us with a sneer of his deep-set, tiny eyes.
I blurted out, "Brian, we were two people short all night!" then continued laughing at him. Brian did a replay of what Tabitha did earlier, looking at me, then Tory, and then Pablo. Seeing that we were telling the truth, all Brian could say was, "Holy shit." Shortly after, we got everything cleaned and everyone punched out.
Jerry, of Jerry's Old town-our boss, the man who was indirectly responsible for what we had gone through, caught us as we were almost ready to leave. "How'd you guys do tonight?" Tory and I did our best to not laugh in the face of our boss, but still a few chuckles came out. "What?" Jerry inquired.
Tory fielded this one, "Jerry, I served about 135 people next door. And, the thing was, that that was the busiest I had ever seen that place and I did it all by myself because we were two people short tonight!"
Jerry did a replay of what Brian did earlier; looking at me, then Tory, then Pablo. "Holy shit." Then a slight pause, "Tell you what-I'm gonna give you guys some ice cream. Nice job tonight." Giving us permission to scoop out some vanilla ice cream, he left. Jerry's Old Town serves over forty thousand racks of ribs per year, causing the deaths of over twenty thousand pigs and, on one of the craziest nights of the entire year, Jerry didn't have the heart to give three of his own overworked, exhausted, severely underpaid, battle-worn workers one free rack of ribs each. Although painfully dissatisfied by only receiving a few scoops of ice cream and our meager salaries for the psychological scarring we had just endured, we took our trophies and left that layer of hell. The air outside was cold and foreign underneath the sky full of cheerful stars and silver clouds; we were enjoying the adrenaline rush that was still racing through our veins. I couldn't remember a night that was so calm and peaceful. The moon was looking down on us, the brightest jewel shining through the blackness, reigning with supreme dominion over the rest of his astral cars. Tory and I looked at each other, the sound of our car keys tearing through the dead of night; I could hear what his azure eyes told me-everybody had better show up tomorrow.