Dear Mike Tyson

Dear Mike Tyson, It's me, Rebecca Sanders. I recently saved the bald eagle population from a harmful plant bacteria, but that's sort of unrelated. I was volunteering for a zoo when I saw the most enchanting tiger. Its flaxin coat did shimmer in the dewy morning sunbath hovering low over us. Its four mighty meaty paws drumming the earth with each step, playing out a warriors march. It put a spell on me, you see. It is now apparent to me that my life's happiness depends (and not lightly) on my obtaining and maintaining a live tiger baby. I long to share an animalistic bond with she, god's most masterful creation. It is my understanding that you have a live tiger, and in fact have had one for some time. This suggests to me you must have at least an apprentice knowledge of the beurgeoning tigress. I am in desperate need of your sage guidance and advice as I embark on this most dangerous adventure. Most anxiously awaiting your response, Rebecca ps. I have great weed right now.

kids

This morning i was driving to school in a haze. It was that haze that you feel when youve woken up--but not really. I rolled out of bed and the next thing I knew I was in the car. I was driving without thought. At each red light I thought to myself "How the hell did I get here?". I thought about my lifestyle looking around my car. I had three to go cups, a pack of gum, a lighter, a duffle bag full of work clothes, gym clothes, sleep clothes. Running shoes. Dress up shoes. It seems like I'm so busy these days that I live out of my car. I've got coats and blankets and board games and everything else you could imagine in my car. It's depressing. I remember when I was a little kid, and my parents were still together. My dad and I wrapped towel capes around our necks and danced around the living room everytime the count made an appearance on Sesame Street. Life consisted of cookies, Sesame street, dogs, worms, snuggling, dancing, and adventures. My current life consists of school, work, crashing out after hours of homework next to my boyfriend. Waking up and doing it again. It's interesting. It's scary to think about how, the next time I feel that free, I'll be wearing old people diapers and confusing my kids' names. Just as the thought passed my mind, I pulled up to the intersection of jessylin and nicholasville, I looked over to my right and saw a four year old boy on a bike--just behind him his grandfather. They weren't on their way to school or work. They were just playing. It was reassuring.

Customers

More Schlotzsky’s stuff
By: Rebecca

I am the drive thru robot. I work automatically and without thought. I stand for six hours between a heat wave pizza oven, and the drive thru window. Anywhere from fifty, to a hundred fifty times a day---I press a little button on a headset and say “Thank you for choosing Schlotzsky’s Deli. I can take your order as soon as you’re ready” or sometimes I mix it up I say “Whenever you’re ready”. Anywhere from fifty to a hundred times a day I have to pretend to be polite to people who are not polite to me. There are several different types of impolite costumers. The first kind is the wham bam thank you mam kind. It would go something like this,
“Thank you for choosing Schlotzsky’s Deli I can—“
“Regular fiesta chicken on sourdough I don’t want the onions throw some extra chipotle on there give me two pickle spears on the side and a bag of chips—regular”
She drives away before I can tell her that her total is 7.83 because she already knows that her total is 7.83 because she’s already been through and gotten the same thing six times in the last four days. When she pulls up to the window, I’ll be busy hustling around inside the store trying to gather her things. 9 times out of 10 it’s a woman. 9 times out of 10 she’s already dangling her money out the window, but not looking at me. Just dangling it as though I were a bird that might swoop down and snatch it out of her hand, casually. There are several ways it can go from this point. I can either a, open the window take her money and say thank you, hand her food just as hastily as she ordered it. Or b, I can let her wait, let that hand dangle till it starts to tingle from poor circulation. This is normally my preferred method. I’ll take other orders; I’ll wait until the very last minute to take her money. I want to know how long she’ll dangle that little visa card out the window before she realizes I’m not going to take it. Then there’s also option C which rarely happens but is the most satisfying of all, option three is when the little bitch is dangling her visa card out the window, and I slam into the lever that opens the drive thru window and it knocks her right in the knuckles but she pulled her car up right to the spot, and dangled her arm out far enough to really get her hand slapped. That’s my favorite. They look surprised like “how did that happen?”
When that happens I have to walk around the kitchen telling everyone about it because I’m so overjoyed containing it within my small sickly body would be a health hazard.
But, what’s almost worse than the wham bam thank you mam customer is the “uhm” customer. Nothing is worse than an “uhm”er. or should I say, “uhmmm…erhh”. This is the person who doesn’t know what they want, wants to seem like they don’t know what they want, or has kids. I know if someone has kids as soon as they pull up because mothers are meanest in the drive thru. Little do they know that everyone in the kitchen can hear every word they’re saying in their car, even when they aren’t addressing the speaker. So the whole kitchen staff hears it.
“You better sit your ass down Johnny or I’m not going to get you anything. Now do you want a pizza or a sandwich! Pizza? Pizza huh? Pepperoni or cheese! Come on what do you want you want sprite? What about you Carrie you want sprite? Pizza? Say it already guys we don’t have all damn day! Don’t make me come back there! Hey! What’s that! What’s that face? Oh, no you didn’t. We’ll turn around and go home right now little missy—“
“Thank you for choosing Schlotzsky’s deli I can take your order whenever you’re ready”
“Yessss, thank you mam. Uhm… let’s see. Let’s have uhhh what’s on your original sandwich?”
“The original has ham two kinds of salami cheddar and mozzarella cheese lettuce tomato olives onions and mustard”
“no, no not that. I think I’ll just have a cheese pizza”
“Alright what else can I get you mam”
“I need two kids cheese and pepperoni pizzas, actually make that one cheese pizza and one pepperoni with fudge cookies and I want a sprite with one and a half and half sweet and unsweet tea with the other.”
“Is that all you need mam?”
“yes”
“your total is going to be—“
“and a large sweet tea”
“okay is that all?”
“yes I think that’ll do it”
“you’re total is—“
“do you have baked chips?”
“yes we have baked regular and baked bbq chips”
“oh, okay that’s all”
she pulls around to the window, and I know already that she is going to order the chips.
“sorry mam would you mind adding a back of baked bbq chips to that?”
“its not a problem mam your new total is 16.24”
She reaches into her purse, it’s a big purse. She spends four or five minutes digging through it before she hands me a Macy’s gift certificate. I say to her “mam this is a Macy’s gift certificate”
she looks at me like a deer in headlights for a second and bursts into drunk laughter.
“oh my god silly me, here’s the actual card”
and she hands me her visa card, its expired, she hands me her MasterCard, its expired, she hands me her American express. it takes four days to authorize. by then her food is sitting cold on the counter. I hand it to her. I say thank you. She looks at me like I just slapped her across the face and drives away. I look up at the clock which times each car so that my boss gets to know how well I’m doing. It’s about seven minutes passed a good time. I sigh.
But that’s not even what bothers me the most. The thing that bothers me the most isn’t slow costumers, or fast costumers, its dehumanizing costumers. Costumers forget that I am a human.
This isn’t just drive thru it goes for anyone who works in the restaurant industry or even retail. They walk up to the counter, you say “Hi, how are you” and they say “regular original”. they don’t even look at you they look up at the menu board behind your head and look possessed. its a big dis. it’s the ultimate rejection. you offer someone your kindness and they ignore it. you say “how are you today?” and they say “uhm this is to go , I’m going to need a blahhh” and you realize that to them you are as emotionless as the register or the counter top. You are just another piece of the restaurant machine.
It is as though the manners their parents engrained in them as children slip under the rug as they step into a restaurant to order.
If only people realized that if they were the customer who walked in and looked me in the eye and said “I’m fine, how are you?” I might just give them free food. Or shine their shoes, or something. I’m ten times less likely to spit in their chicken noodle soup. not that I’ve ever done that. I haven’t. but I’ve thought about it.
What people fail to realize is that I have to pretend to like 50-150 customers a day. I have to pretend to be happy and surprised to see each frowning face. I have to ask each person how they are doing. Most of them don’t respond. Of the ones that do, no one returns the question like you might in regular social conversation.
I know that the world would be a better place if people would only treat the people of the service industry like humans, with respect. The system would run more smoothly. But that isn’t ever going to happen. I know it.

How to Poop

Recently, I was aimlessly wandering through a verizon wireless store. I found myself intranced by a touch screen camera phone with internet access. I managed to google search the word "poop". Google results listed thousands of results for internet pages which in some way discuss the term "poop". One of those was a Japanese video on how to poop. It took too long to load and I have an American teenager's attention span of about .6 seconds, I didn't wait long. I heard the video begin to play just as I was heading out the door. I didn't realize how honestly interested I was until I got home and saw my computer sitting on the bed seductively. "Not right now" I said to it. I went to the bathroom and then I grabbed some apple juice and my computer continued to cat call from the bedroom. "Alright, Alright" I said. I sat down on the bed and opened the ole thing up and my fingers began to type as though I were posessed. "How to poop" I typed it in the google search engine and waited. The result appeared. My heart fluttered. My computer is much faster than a cell phone, it loaded in an instant. I nervously clicked play and awaited my visual adventure. The video was shocking. japanese Tigers jumped up and down as they encouraged their tiny tot tiger to use the toilet for pooping. dancing poop in the childs mind let him know that there was a brown fiesta in his colon waiting to be released. he cheerily heads towards the toilet, speaking in rambling japanese the whole time, and lets his brown friend escape. He then waves goodbye to it as it dances around in the toilet bowl joyously, and then he and his parents procede to sing outrageous random japanese giberish. As if this were not crude, or invasive enough, the next step is more ridiculous. The people responsible for making this video managed to convince some attention hungry japanese family to donate their real japanese boy to the production of the video. They sat this little three year old japanese boy on a toilet and told him to pretend to poop. he grunts and grunts and holds on to the handles on his toilet and then finally with a climactic sense of relief, gasps and sighs. He gives the camera a face like "hell yeah!" and then throws up the peace sign and yells in japanese.

no wonder these people are the people who came up with pokemon.