Why don’t women sit on toilet seats like men do?

I decided to share with you a few of my favorite memories about working in the restaurant industry. They’re not my “favorite” as in, I tell them at dinner parties. They’re my “favorite” because it usually brings either a laugh or a disgusted look to whomever I tell. So, these are usually kept in the lock box at the back of my mind during Christmas breakfast.

Being in any food-related business, you’re going to have to deal with rude and disgusting situations. It’s just a fact of the business, people. As much as we’d like you to think the kitchen is spotless with no bacteria anywhere, but if you’re that naive, stay at home and cook a chicken breast on the George Foreman. Whether you’re a dishwasher having to dump out the garbage can filled with food remnants, or the busser who has to now clean up after you and your disgusting children because – obviously – this is a playground not a restaurant. Ultimately, anyone who does this kind of disgusting clean-up duty can call themselves a “bitch” for having to do the work that noone else wants to do.

My first story is probably just that: my first disgusting story. With my usual warning, I tell you that if you’re squeamish at all stop reading. Anyway, I was a busser at a local seafood restaurant. I only had this job for 6 months because the management was terrible, but that’s a different story. This particular night, my manager approaches me with a mop and bucket and tells me that I have to clean the women’s bathroom. This is usually a job left for the end of the night when all the customers are gone and all that is left is the serving staff to clean up the restaurant. But, this is the middle of the shift people. Something has gone terribly wrong. I push open the door to the women’s restroom and already I can smell it. Taking steps closer to the stall, the smell becomes so overpowering, I have to resort to breathing through my mouth. Opening the stall door, I realize the atrocity that has occurred in this restroom stall. It literally looked like a woman’s ass disintegrated and the remnants were left on the toilet seat and floor… and I had to clean it up. Using my own reasoning, it looked as if a woman had been hovering over the toilet seat – like women do – and had explosive diarrhea. So, I had to ask myself the eternal question that NO MAN understands: why don’t women sit on the toilet seat like men do? This, I tell you… made me feel like the “bitch’.

A lesser disgusting story (but still rather funny) didn’t happen to me. A year or two later, I’m waiting at the Italian restaurant and this group of people come in (maybe 5). They sit down at my co-worker’s section and they all order steaks. The steak that we had was a ribeye, which was the most expensive thing on the menu at the time. Now this group of people was your run-of-the-mill bastards when it comes to customers. The needy, “nothing is ever right” kind of people. At the end of the meal, one of the women at the table gets up, goes to the bathroom and proceeds to puke all over the place. Luckily, I was not the “bitch” but our busser ended up quitting that night. She comes out claiming that we gave her food poisoning and she wants everyone at the table’s food comped, along with her hospital bills when she goes to the emergency room later. My manager says to her “ma’am, noone else at the table got sick, so they still have to pay”, and “we’ll inform our insurance company, and if you bring us documentation that says that our food gave you food poisoning, we’ll cover the cost of the hospital bills”. Now, food poisoning is impossible to prove, being that it takes at least a few hours for it to settle into you and you don’t projectile vomit and then feel better afterwards. So, the customers ended up paying for 4 of the 5 steaks ordered. The worst thing about the whole situation? No tip.

My last story of this blog is the least disgusting, but still pretty damn funny. I wasn’t at work for this one, which happened a little while ago. One of our cooks ended up slicing the fatty part of his left pointer finger completely off while cutting the steak for a steak sandwich. We told him how to properly cut the meat, but he was being negligent. Now, being a black man, it was rather difficult to locate a dark piece of flesh among the remnants of steak on the floor. But like a big boy, he didn’t cry. This was probably because he was still in shock over slicing off his finger. He got taken to the hospital and because he was on the clock while it happened, the restaurant ended up paying for the hospital bills. You know, I’ve never seen someone actually get workers compensation for an injury happening on the job. He’ll be back shortly, and I’m sure when I look at his finger it will probably give me the heeby-jeebies. (edit: This guy, who was one of my playmates at work ended up quitting. I guess the memories were just too scarring.)