So, there is this woman who has been coming to my restaurant for years now. In that time she has grown. Not as an artist. Not spiritually. No, she has grown horizontally...and I feel like it's kind of my fault.
When I was a bartender I was required to complete a training program designed to keep me from letting the customers get too f'ed-up. Knowing when to cut them off was what the training was all about. Now, I can't say that I ever utilized this training...okay, I used it on David Hasselhoff (by avoiding him and pretending to forget that he had ordered), but other than that, I was never given authorization by my bar manager to tell anyone they had had enough. And there were plenty who had.
Now that I'm slangin' food instead of booze, I'm wondering where the training to cut people off is. Living in the US during this obesity epidemic and serving up pizzas and fries is kind of getting to me.
Back to this poor woman. She comes in several times a week and orders either a pizza and a pasta and a diet coke. Then, she makes me refill her diet coke at least 10 times, PLUS she makes me give her one to go. Now, I'm no doctor, but I know that a twelver of diet coke a couple days a week isn't doing this woman any favors. And it certainly isn't keeping her from getting larger and larger.
With each refill I feel more and more guilty. I desperately want to cut her off. I imagine how her heart rate must increase. I imagine little synapses firing off in her brain, I imagine her liver going into over drive and damn it...I want it to STOP! I want to save her. I look at this as a form of slow suicide and I'M THE ONE letting her do this to herself. I see it going down. I'm putting the weapon into her hand and I'm accepting money while I do it. It's terrible. But, she is free to do whatever she wants and I have no right to tell her my opinion or to halt her actions in anyway. In essence, I'm a drug dealer and the drugs that I am selling are sugar and fat. And I make a pretty decent living at it.
There was this other guy who used to come in all of the time and he was VERY VERY VERY large. His t-shirt couldn't even cover his entire belly. He looked like a deranged Baby Huey, and he pretty much acted like one too. I'm fairly certain that this man was "slow" and he hardly ever spoke except to make his order which would usually go as follows:
"I'll start with a Root Beer Float, then I will have a Caesar Salad with extra dressing, the Pork Porterhouse, and a Peach Cobbler."
Now, this man didn't need any of those items. Maybe the salad sans dressing, but what could I do but smile and say, "Okay!"? This man was also a smoker. Each time he would order I would have one of those Ally McBeal moments where I pictured his heart exploding all over the restaurant. My manager once joked that if this man went down, I was the one who was going to have to give him mouth to mouth since I was so concerned. All I can say is, I'm really glad it never came to that. I'm not sure I would have been up for that. It's my job to be nice. It's my job to pretend like all is right in the world, when clearly it is not. My theory with this man was that he was going to kill himself "Leaving Las Vegas Style", but instead of drinking himself to death, he was gonna eat himself to death.
I haven't seen him in a while.
I'm wondering if he succeeded.
What is worse that these adults poisoning themselves and being as gluttonous as possible is the parents who feed their children nothing but crap. I cringe every time I have to bring a Shirley Temple to a three year old. That is the equivalent of handing a crack-pipe to an adult. And yet I do it. I have to. They make me.
There are even those families that severely cross the line and let their small children order Coke, Iced Tea, and even DIET COKE! Number one, they are all loaded with sugar (or chemicals), and number two, they are all loaded with CAFFEINE! I mean, people....one of those products is called COKE! HELLO?!?!?!?!?!? In this day and age we cannot plead ignorance on these things. These parents MUST know that they are drugging their children. And yet, they carry-on and wonder why 10 years later they are abusing alcohol in high school or go on to become meth addicts or cocaine freaks. It's the same thing no matter how you slice it.
It kills me.
I want so badly to implement rules that say that we will not serve these beverages to children, but it's not my place. I guess it's nobodies place. Better yet, if we were to just not serve those items at all, but alas, not my call.
I'm a drug-dealer for better or for worse, and yes, I sell to children. I don't want to, but I do it. Am I a bad person? I dunno. If you aren't a part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.
All I can do at this point is smile and nod and make my living and work very hard to get myself into a place where I don't have to do this anymore. And of course, with the adults in question, that's their call. I don't feel as bad for them because that's their choice. I don't always put the most healthy things into my body, but EVERYTHING IN MODERATION seems to be a good rule of thumb and I try to stick to that as much as possible.
When I have kids though, mine are going to be different. There will be no sugar on my watch. And yes, they will probably hate me for it, but that's fine with me. Those little people don't have the capacity to make tough decisions until they are much older and it will be my job as a parent to decide what's best for them.
Until then, I'm your pusher:)
No comments:
Post a Comment