The clientele at the restaurant where I work is quite varied. No one brings their kids, except for Sunday brunch, but we regularly serve just about every other age group. There is a single consistent characteristic in each patron that walks through our doors: They are all ridiculously lousy with money. Not “lousy” as in bad with money. “Lousy” as in infested with it.
The people I wait on can otherwise be charcaterized and grouped as such:
Music Industry Shitheads - These cool cats are always wearing jeans with their ties and waving around marked-on CD-Rs that bear the names of tomorrow’s hottest country music sensations. They order bottled water instead of drinking from the tap, and they answer my questions with things like, “Medium rare. Rock on.”
Totally Annoying Salespeople - They always, always need to borrow my pen.
Vandy Students - The Vanderbilt students who eat where I work are not representative of all Vanderbilt students. But the ones who eat where I work ALL LOOK THE SAME. It is some kind of freaky, I tell ya. The girls are thin. Endlessly, unbelievably thin with super, super shiny stick-straight hair. They all wear the same ponchos and flouncy skirts and kitten heels. Their tans are even the exact same, the kind of flawless tan that only truly rich people have time to achieve. The guys all have the same dopey, conservative haircut and Polo shirts and crisp khaki trousers. They are all so humorless-looking and stale.
Vandy Professors - Vanderbilt professors look like actors playing professors in some stupid movie. Bowties for the gentlemen and topknots for the ladies. They are usually very quiet in a cranky way, and often dine alone.
Doctor’s Office Ladies - Doctors love to take the nurses and assistants and administrative types out to eat for their birthdays and whatnot where I work. They come in dressed in their scrubs and order “tea punch” (which we don’t have) and ask for straws and baskets of bread. THEY MUST EACH HAVE A STRAW. Straws are apparently a pressing, urgent matter for doctor’s office ladies.
Anal Face Club - These are the women who’ve had so much plastic surgery that their faces have caved in to resemble the butt orifice known as an asshole. They did not have a face lift or little tummy tuck. These women have implanted their cheeks and crumbled their noses and stretched their eyelids all out. They often have the body of a 20-year-old woman with their fake tits and tiny, tiny frames. It is impossible to estimate the ages of any of the Anal Face Club, but I would guess the average age is somwhere between 65 and 108. Their hands give it away.
Lawyers - It has been my experience that lawyers are endlessly amused by how much money they make, bringing it up often in conversation. But only to other lawyers.
Wears-sunglasses-indoors Artists - We have our fair share of print artists and designers and gallery owners and painters who come in high, wearing their sunglasses. They are often so fucked up they have to be escorted to the table at which time they order something off the menu of the restaurant our owner had over five years ago.
The Mean Girls - They don’t frequent the place as much as some of these other groups, but on occasion rich teenaged girls’ mothers talk them into going out to eat as a family. These girls are also thin, but you can see just how thin they are thanks to the tiny swathes of Gucci material they call clothing. These 13-year-old chicks are carrying $500 Coach purses around on 6″ designer heels! They look like sorry, pre-pubescent Paris Hilton clones until they order Shirley Temples. Then it is easy to remember they are just little girls.
Waldorf/Montessori Moms - No make-up for these moms! NO TIME! They are just too busy being the most nuturing parent they can be to their OBVIOUSLY brilliant 5-year-old who finally learn to shit in a toilet. Montessori moms often talk about what fabric is best the for bringing out the genius in their toddler, and how they’ve taken away all the black crayons in the house because it’s best to give a child only cheery options. They always take their uneaten food to-go, even if it is just a few grilled vegetables lying limply on an empty plate. They drive Volvos. They tip for shit.
15 comments ↓
You forgot the broke-ass, barely employed college graduate who comes in twice a year when their parents and/or more successful sibling offer to pay. That’s meeee!
While I was early picking my daughter up from ballet class on mon and had a half hour I noticed some same “groupings”
Chronic sunglass wearers:
basically there was a parking lot of 15 cars with over half being giant red or black SUV’s piloted by chronic sunglass wearers. You know the type, they wear the glasses in the car, then out of the car, then inside, then back out with their kid. They all are over dressed & work in sales or some other job where they rip people off everyday. I see it all the time here downtown, people wear the blackest sun glasses or talk on cell phones so they don’t have to make eye contact, or maybe even say hi. Ignoring everyone around them.
God forbid we see into their eyes, then we could see into the vapid darkness that makes up thier lifeless souls.
I think having your vision darkened all the time can put you in a permanenty bad mode. I know they have studied this stuff in labs and stuff somewhere…
I mean, uh … crap what was i trying to say?… I lost track …never mind…
I happen to think Montessori is a positive educational approach. So I was beginning to become a little testy over your stereotype -
But then I just went back to the anal face club and everything was cheery.
It is not the Montessori school itself I have a problem with. It’s the Montessori moms that I wait on everyday.
That has to be the funniest post I have read on your site. “Anal Face Club” HA!!!!
Jesus Christ that’s good. I get tired of talking shit about people so I like it when other people can carry my thoughts for a while. I’m serious.
Yeah. I know. Seestore is a Montessori school teacher, and I’m sure she can testify to the authenticity of your remarks. I just get a lil defensive…
And when I said I started to become a little testy - I don’t want to obfuscate the matter — I didn’t mean to insinuate anything about little testes. I did in fact mean testy.
if we can’t talk shit about people on the internet, where the hell can we?
if we can’t talk sh*t about people on the internet, where the h@ll can we?
That post is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read…
You should do weekly reviews of
The Apprentice !
Hilarious. I think I just woke up my neighbors from laughing so hard. No wonder I ended up as I did; all my crayons were black.
I still love to eat at [the place where you work], although I must admit the rat story gave me a pause.
m.
Aah…that was damn funny. Now I can’t get this stupid grin off my face…thanks a lot!
Mapgirl,
The [place where I work] is by far the cleanest, most sanitary kitchen I have ever worked in. The food is handled with clean hands and lots of care. I work with artists, not cooks. They impress me all the time.
The place is small so dirt and unsanitary practices are seen by higher ups and cleaned up.
As for the rat, we’ve only ever had one. That was it. Fear not.
Thanks — I can’t go more than 3 weeks without a meal from [the place where you work], and I have never had anything but a great one.
I am at the Southern Festival of Books, logging in from a coffee place in Memphis. Brittney, I expect you to autograph your first book for me in the Festival’s “author signing colonnade” (TM?) when you are officially published.
m.
Lawyers who actually talk about it don’t make much of it. Since my income tends to oscillate wildly, I rarely talk about it and I’m never amused. It runs from burger flipping horrified (as in, I could have made more money if I spent the time I spent on that case flipping burgers instead) to guilt-ridden spectacular (as in, I know the case turned out well, but Holy Cow, if I tell people how much we made, they will kidnap us for ransome).
In restaurants, my lawyer friends are more likely to talk about football, concerts, movies and breasts. Yours? No, hers. At 10 o’clock. Not hers. HERS! Hers? No. Not that one, THAT ONE! Those? YES! THOSE! Oh. Yeah, pretty good ones.
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