Gotta Speech These Folks ©2015 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     Hello and welcome to The Endangered Species Grill. They call me Joe and I'm delighted to be your waiter this evening. May I begin by telling you about our features tonight? Great. We have a terrific appetizer for you: Buffalo tenders. Please be aware that, of course, our buffalo tenders are made from the flesh of real buffalos. They have just a hint of spice and go nicely with a cold beer, perhaps a Falstaff® or Pete's Wicked Ale®. Our featured entrees tonight are tenderloin filet of Northern White Rhinoceros atop Tibetan Faro in an Iberian Lynx cream gravy with Thylacine bordelaise. If that appeals to you, I recommend you order it immediately; the Northern White Rhino is critically endangered and we expect to run out this evening. We also have our split Passenger Pigeon breast pot pie with heirloom Poke Sallet and a gravy made from Bald (like me!) Eagle entrails. You might feel that $250.00 is expensive for a pot pie, even one as good as ours, but it's actually quite a bargain considering how difficult it is for our chef to obtain quality passenger pigeon breasts these days. And it pairs wonderfully with a nice, chilled bottle of Bourgogne Aligoté...
     Maybe you work in a nice, upscale, fine-dining kind of restaurant and you have to spiel like I just did to every table all night. It's not a problem; it's part of the job and we're glad to do it. But if I ran a classy, upmarket kind of dining establishment I'd make it mandatory that the hosting professionals would be able to speech the features, et cetera, just as well as the waitstaff is expected to. Especially the good-looking, 19-year-old Junior College co-ed that just double-sat you fourtops on the busy night where the food runner called in sick, the dishwasher is crazy backed up and the kitchen is in peril of going down in flames at any minute.

Comfortably Dumb ©2012 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     I was already at work the other night when my work-friend Melanie showed up for her shift. She headed my way. "Hiya!" I said.
     She looked up at me with her big pretty brown eyes and grinned. "I am so stoned!" she whispered.
     I used to come to work with a bad hangover on at least a third of my shifts. I kind of regret how much alcohol I used to consume but oh well. And to this day if there's a can of whipped cream in the kitchen, empty of product but still charged with nitrous oxide, lemme at it! If you woof that shit down, it'll actually get you pretty fucked up but only for less than five minutes. If marijuana made me feel like N²O from food-service brand dessert topping does, I'd be hittin' the bong right now instead of composing the drivel you're currently perusing  (and thanks, btw).
     So other than those two exceptions—one really, since I've dialed back the boozing considerably—I don't consume anything intoxicating before or during my waitshifts. High (ha ha) on the list of fun substances for me to not be on while I'm slinging chow is cannabis and I've never worked a restaurant shift under its influence. Except for the one time I did.
     My friend Reilly and I were waiters at the same independent restaurant. One Tuesday afternoon he showed up at my door a couple of hours before our mutual clock-in time of 5:00. "Can I ride in with you today?" he asked. That was no problem but we still had a good chunk of time to kill before we had to leave. Reilly reached into his ever-present duffel and pulled out a big bag of dank, sticky buds. "Dude!" he exclaimed, "This is like, the best weed I've ever had in my life!" which was an impressive endorsement, coming from an inveterate stoner like Reilly.
     I declined Reilly's offer to partake—remember,I had a shift that night—but my girlfriend didn't. I sat there while they put a nice dent in Reilly's stash. A couple of neighbors showed up, bringing their own badass ganja. I watched as joints and bong hits were enjoyed like it was a 1978 prom night in La Jolla. American Beauty, or maybe it was something by Pink Floyd, played in the background as sweet, funky smoke permeated the tiny apartment.
     When it was time to go, Reilly asked if he could spark up another doobie in my car on the way. America's evil laws being what they are, that's something I never let anyone do ever. But I was in a strange yet pleasant mood, so I told him it was OK, "just this once." When we arrived and I strolled across the parking lot, I realized something: I was pretty fucking high! I'd actually gotten a contact high, which I'd never previously thought was possible. Uh-oh! I knew how to deal if I'd been hung over but this was something new (at work, not in my personal life) that I wasn't ready for at all. I was very apprehensive as I approached the 'staurant but I'm a big grown-up. I'd deal with it and try my best.
     I shouldn't have worried. Even though we were pretty busy and  went on a wait there for awhile, I had one of my three or four best waitshifts ever! All my clients were real nice. I was mellow and chill, yet remarkably efficient. I did almost no fucking up and what little I did I recovered from nicely. It was like playing a video game called Waiting Tables® and kicking its ass! Everyone involved was happy and I made great tips.
     I volunteered to close that night and my contact high was pretty much gone by the time I finally left work. And I've never been high at work since. How come? I'm not really sure; it's just something I don't do and that's that, I guess. But I've got a couple of hours to kill before my shift tonight. If any of y'all are holding and want a ride in, give me a call!