I pulled onto West End Avenue and headed east. I drove past an attractive bistro that spelled its name with art deco lettering. It captured my attention, but looked too fancy for a first timer like me, but I did keep it in mind. The next restaurant I came upon was the highly popular Houston’s. I know that, because Cal told me, it was best to apply for work in the downtime between lunch and dinner–between 2 and 4 pm. Even at 2:15 the place was still on a wait for seating. So, I looked diagonally across the street at a strip mall. There was a Honey Baked Ham store, a posh hair salon and a chain restaurant called Mozzarella’s. I parked, slid on a shade of too dark brown lipstick and hit the double doors.

Once inside I was quickly greeted by a server whose first words to me were, "One?" It took me a second to realize he was asking me if I would be dining alone. I told him I was interested in applying for a hostess position. The young, clean cut waiter who was terse with me at first broke out into a huge grin.

"I don’t know if we are hiring, but let me get you an application," he said, his head buried in the stand that held the menus. He came up with an application that he presented with a flick of his wrist.

"The manager isn’t in until 6, but you should definitely fill this out and leave it here," he informed.

"Will do," I assured him and made my way back out to Piece of Shit car.

"No, seriously, you should come back," he almost pleaded with me. I laughed and swore that I would.

I left my car in the lots and walked the 50 feet or so to The Cooker. I was greeted by a lovely blonde who said, after I asked, that they were always hiring. I was glad to hear it at the time, but looking back now, that should have been an enormous red flag. After filling out the extra long single sheet piece of paper I sat smoothing out my new skirt and waiting to talk to a manager. After half an hour or so he asked me to join him at a table in the middle of the dining room.

He looked over my application for what felt like forever, just nodding. He sat silently for the better part of ten minutes.

"You live in Ashland City," he told me, like I wasn’t aware. I nodded at him.

"You have your own car?" He eyed my suspiciously. I told him that I did.

"What happens if you get stranded in Ashland City? Don’t expect to call in just because you don’t have a ride. We schedule you and we expect you to be here. We expect you to act like an adult," he said in a distinctly assholeish manner.

"I think I could handle it," I said, snubbing my nose. This ass wasn’t going to get gruff with me without me at least being on the clock. And I wasn’t yet on the payroll.

He cocked a lip at me in a pitiful excuse for a smile. He wanted to make sure I had a little bit of fight in me. He didn’t have to push too hard to find out.

"We have some host positions open, but we could really use servers. I’ll take you on, but only as a waitress. What do you say?"

"Sure," I blurted, knowing the money was infinitely better than what hostesses made.

We shook hands and he left me to look over copies of the menu, all the bar drinks and their descriptions and an outline for rules and dress code. Flipping through the papers I realized that he’d handed me about 75 pages of information.