Whilst shopping online for my friends and family, I came across a really cool gadget that I have been looking for. It is an interface for a cassette deck and turntable. It allows the sound to be recorded onto my computer. I can finally get rid of all the tapes I have stacked up! Another cool attribute is that I can record the old songs and rarities I have collected over the years and play them on the air during my radio show.
I have some old Cure, Depeche Mode, They Might Be Giants and China Crisis I would love to play right away.
I guess the only negative side is that I have to sit and record all this stuff. I have years worth of music and feel like it’s gonna take years to record it all. Well, at least I only need to do it once. It’s kinda like switching out photos into a new album. Only a lot longer. And using your ears instead of your eyes. No. It’s not like switching out photo albums at all really.
My job is becoming more challenging every day. The company is being bought out by another restaurant chain and our days are numbered. The employees know that and have been increasingly defiant. The apathy is spreading like a grass fire. Even my subordinate managers have a touch of the "I don’t cares". That is making it harder on the rest of us to get the job done. People are coming in late, leaving early, not cleaning up and sometimes just not showing up at all. Some are hoping to get fired for poor performance so as to collect unemployment insurance. The hiring pool has been thinned due to rumor of our closing. Not to mention the fact that we require a criminal background check and hair drug test. Even for dishwashers. Yeah, I know.
I had a situation with a pain in the ass customer last week. This guy keeps coming in and causing a ruckus. He cusses at the employees, bangs his cup on the table, stands up and yells throughout the dining room like he’s Paul fricken Revere. "The British are coming! I need more coffee! The British are coming!" The first time I walked past him, he said the color of my shirt "looked like shit". Then he bragged about how he tells everyone the "way it is". I let it go.
Again and again, I let it go.
Then I found out that he had been banned from returning to many other restaurants in town. When one of the servers came to me and said that he was in the dining room, screaming at the top of his lungs, I went out there. He was sitting down, so I sat next to him. I leaned over and said "Is this the point where I ask you to leave?" He pointed to his hearing aid and leaned in. I said it again: "Is this the point where I ask you to leave?"
"You only know half the story!" He quipped.
"I don’t care." I snipped back.
He leaned forward and placed the tip of his sausage finger less than an inch from my nose. With the stalest breath and gruffest voice he said "You step outside right now... and I’ll break you!"
I paused for a moment - then I stood up. "Okay. Let’s go then." I said. A look of bewilderment overtook his expression.
I stood up behind his chair and made a gesture of welcoming someone into the house. He stood up and headed for the door. I walked in front of him. As I got to the front door, I stopped at the phone and called the police. He just continued out the door.
I told the police the story and they said a patrol was on their way. I waited inside. He came back in a few moments later and returned to his seat. When the officer arrived, I met him at the door and explained the situation. He met the man and told him to come outside with him. The man said "I ain’t signin’ nothing" and followed the cop. He stopped in front of me and said "I’ll be back to get you!" I said nothing. I just gave him stink-eye.
The officer gave him a trespass warning and told me he was just a crazy old man. I hung the warning in the office and thought that would be the end of it.
Boy was I wrong.
Dude came back again. He yelled at the manager on duty and left. Then he came back again to speak with my boss. My boss told him not to come back. He came back again anyway. He yelled at one of my other managers. I called the police again. They said they needed to catch him on the property. An officer came out and made a complaint against him with an affidavit signed by me and one of my assistant managers. The cop said he had quite a history of this around the area.
We already knew that.
Then he came back again. I missed that one. The next time though, Saturday, I was front and center. He was out front, pouring himself a cup of coffee when an employee came and got me. I went straight to the phone and called the 5-0. I told him he was not allowed inside and he called me "Nuts". I walked away from him and went outside to wait for the Sheriff. I called my District Manager to let her know I had a situation on my hands with an unstable dude. He walked out the door and started to come up behind me. I hung up the phone and turned to see him holding a cup of hot coffee in his hand with no lid.
He was coming at me so I backed up. I pointed to the cup and said "Don’t even think about it!" He was yelling at me, telling me he was allowed inside and I told him he was not. He said he would bet me $50.00 he was, and tried to reach into his pocket to take money out. I kept walking away from him, never taking my eye off of the steaming coffee cup. He kept following me around the sidewalk, calling me boy and telling me he would "mess me up".
Then he said "How would you like this cup of hot coffee in your face?" I kept backing up. I pointed at him and said "Stop right there or I will Fuck you up!" "I will Fuck you up old man!"
He walked toward me and in an instant, like a flash from Kung Fu Theater, I knocked the cup out of his hand and pushed him away from me. He stumbled backward with a look of shock and then, like a raging bull, he put his head down and charged at me. I braced for impact and shoved him back again. "Stop!" I yelled at him.
Then a woman, who had been sitting in her parked car, came across the walkway, yelling at me for pushing an old man!
"What?!"
"He was gonna throw hot coffee at my face! Didn’t you hear him?" I yelled back.
Then the old man said "No I wasn’t..."
He reminded me of Dr. Evil on Austin Powers. "What?... no... what?..."
"You were attacking him!" she said.
Since the police weren’t there yet, I had no choice but to go back inside. I went to the phone and called my DM back. A few moments later, my assistant came to me and said that the police wanted to talk to me. I told them what happened. The officer asking the questions just so happened to be the same guy that came out the first time. The same cop that was standing there when the old man said "I’ll be back to get you!" He knew the trouble we’ve been having with him and said that he’d come back to talk to me if he needed to.
I went back inside.
That was two days ago and I still have the adrenaline coursing through me.
I received a phone call yesterday morning. My boss told me that he called up there to say he was pressing charges against me.
Classic.
So I am in the middle of recording my cassettes to mp3 files. I am also recording my radio shows, so I can listen to the music later. That’s the weird part. Listening to myself on the air. I don’t think I am very funny and don’t really care for my voice. I am very critical of myself and wonder why I am saving this shit anyway? Oh well. I can always delete them later if I wish.
So I go back to work tomorrow. I have no idea what to expect. I wish they would hurry up and sell the joint so we can all get on with the rest of our lives.
As for today? Music and food should soothe the savage breast.
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