No kidding -

Counter Creatures. The words reverberated in my head like the background music in a Freddy Kruger movie. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! I imagined legions of trolls and hags filing in the restaurant, planting themselves at the counter, and banging their silverware on the table like the orphans in "Oliver." I wasn't really that far off.

The first of them came in about an hour later. He was a harmless-looking little guy, with wild eyes and greasy, unkempt hair. He reminded me of that weird looking blue bird on the Muppet Show. Now I of course had been filled in on this guy a bit, because he was just too strange not to talk about. He had that mental disorder where you're afraid of germs, like Jack Nicholson in "As Good As It Gets." It was a great movie, but having met this guy, I found it hard to swallow that a person could just "get over it" and live happily ever after. Although I had been given some instructions on how to deal with him, I had to test it a little. I was, after all, nineteen. He ordered a bowl of soup and a glass of water, no ice. Ice is dirty. Judging by his hair, apparently soap was, too. The bowls were stacked next to the soup bin. I picked one up placing my finger on the lip.

"Excuse me, miss. Uhh, could you please use a different bowl?"

"Why?" I asked, batting my eyelashes a little. What a bitch!

"You touched the rim," he said. He looked very nervous. His eyes were in constant motion. Okay Sandy, show's over, time to lay off. It was too late. I had spooked him. I had to change bowls three times. He somehow managed to eat the soup without the spoon ever touching his lips. It was truly disgusting. I tried not to watch, but I was trapped behind the counter. He was watching me, assessing my every move trying to see if I was secretly sabotaging the food. I had to get out of there. I attempted an escape to the kitchen.

"Mamasita!"

Shit. No help there. I went back out to the counter. The man had finished lapping up his soup and wanted some chocolate cake. I had to cut the piece in front of him and carefully lift it onto the plate without again touching the rim or the cake. Having achieved this, I watched in horror while he washed his food raccoon style, swishing it around in his mouth with water before swallowing it. The human brain is an amazing organ. In the interest of personal safety it can manipulate itself into a thousand different neuroses including a never-ending list of phobias and multiple personalities. It has allowed rulers over the centuries to justify the slaughter of innocent people and scientists to develop things like the atomic bomb with a clear conscience. It makes mothers think their spit is a sanitary face cleanser for their children, and it allowed this guy to believe if he swished his food around in his mouth with water, it would be free of microbes. I wanted to ask him where he thought the germs were going but he was so jumpy I decided not. He might have a bottle of Lysol in his coat and an itchy trigger finger.

While Germ Man was at the counter, no one else arrived until he had almost finished. He must have planned it that way, watching through the plate glass window until the place cleared out. It was astounding to me that he left the house at all. Two lonely guys filed in and sat at the counter. The counter clientele mostly consisted of lonely guys. This is true of almost every counter I have ever worked. Are they pathetic? No. You are pathetic. You are working the counter, waiting on a bunch of lonely guys, watching them eat, cleaning up after them, for about a buck a head.

Another lone personage sat at the counter. She was dressed all in pink; from her gloved fingertips to her wide brimmed hat. I say "she" with some trepidation because she was not entirely female. At about one hundred and eighty pounds with skin like a mile of bad road under an inch of makeup, no one was fooled. She looked like Miss Piggy dressed up as Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady." The Lonely Guys gave Miss Piggy a sideways glance. She batted her eyelashes at them coquettishly. They resumed eating at a furious pace. I will always regret not having engaged this Creature in conversation. I would have loved to chat with Miss Piggy to find out what made her tick. Did she really think no one could tell, or did she just not give a shit? I hope it was the latter. Miss Piggy daintily ate her club sandwich and left, remaining a mystery forever.

Right about then, the counter filled up and I was suddenly buzzing around my little workspace like an angry housefly. There are few things more disgusting than watching people eat. They slurp their soup. They dribble on themselves. They chew with their mouths open. One geriatric couple sat down together, dressed like cute little mobsters and screaming at each other. It was obviously their normal mode of communication. When their food had been served, they began asking for condiments and extra gravy. Their gaping maws were full of food that they sprayed like bullets as they spoke. The horror on my face was as plain as the gravy on their chins, but they didn't seem to notice. I looked wildly up and down the counter for an escape. There was none. The counter was full.

"Miss! Where is my cheeseburger?"

"More coffee, please."

"Hey - I'd like to order TODAY if you don't mind."

The military waitress police shuffled around the floor smiling at me like Vincent Price. I had entered the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling would step out from behind the shake machine at any moment.

So much for editorializing

But, back to my chronology. I know I said I had restaurant experience, and I did . . sort of. I had been through a three-year maze of revolving doors; hostess here, cashier there, with about eight actual weeks of working "on the floor." What I had actually acquired was the ability to bullshit my way in the door. The waitresses at Junior's were like Marines, and they were all about a hundred and fifty years old. My trainer, the baby of the group, was forty something. She was a cheerful, Jewish gal who took extreme pleasure in explaining to me the uses of various animal parts in Jewish food and laughing at me when I turned green. I dutifully followed her around during my training period watching stupidly while she did twelve things simultaneously and at top speed. Training as a waiter is always a little embarrassing, but never so much as when you actually need it. And to make matters worse I have always looked a lot younger than I am. At thirty-five this is wonderful. At eighteen it sucks. So, smartly clad in brown polyester uniform and sporting a perky blonde ponytail, I followed this woman around the restaurant like a needy two-year-old. I could not have felt sillier had I been doing the bunny hop. She talked a never-ending stream of instructions peppered with bits of gossip about the customers.

"That's Mr. and Mrs. Goldblum over there, make sure he's looking at you when you speak because he's stone deaf. He always has brisket with the gravy on the side. We are going to Mr. and Mrs. Palisades table now and we'll get out of there as quickly as possible. They are going through a nasty divorce. She always has a chef salad, no ham, no tomatoes, extra turkey, with dressing on the side. He likes the pot roast, but he changes sometimes."

She rattled on and on about customers. She showed me where things were, where to look if they weren't where they were supposed to be, who was nice, who was possessed by Satan, all at what felt like a dead run. I was panicked. I knew as a matter of absolutes that I could not do this job. At one point she turned to me and asked me how many plates I could carry. She didn't have one on her head, but she seemed to have about five of them laid delicately across the span of her arms, like a pageant princess with a bouquet of roses. I felt certain she could have managed a float wave if she was asked.

"Two," I said quietly. To this day I can still only do three, four in an emergency with lots of prayer and dribbling sauces. A shadow passed over her face. Then she brightened.

"That's okay. You'll be working the counter for a while anyway."

I looked across the room to the counter. There was a row of hunched backs being served by the only other girl my age I'd seen so far.

"That's Candice," said my trainer. "You'll be working with her tomorrow."

I nodded dumbly. I went home a little dazed and returned the next day to train at the counter. Candice was a pretty blonde of about twenty one or so. She seemed more than glad to have a new ally. The counter faced the window to the kitchen line. The cooks' heads bobbed up and down, smiling at the new waitress a little too largely. With the distinct lack of women under forty in this restaurant, I just knew I would encounter few problems with the kitchen. Below the window was a work area with three kinds of soup, bins of bagels and breads, a cutting board, steaming bins of things like kashka (cooked grains with bits of noodle), a salad bin full of iceberg lettuce, ice cream and shake maker, refrigerators full of salad dressings and borscht, and a soda machine. Under the counter itself were rows upon rows of condiments in need of marrying, napkins, silverware, and salt and pepper. The counter would be easier than the floor, but it was still a lot of work. Candice told me it didn't matter that I couldn't actually wait tables because I would never get off the counter anyway.

"The other waitresses have been here forever I think some of them are already dead but they just keep showing up," she said, "and they don't like new waitresses so watch your back."

She said these things and pretty much everything else in conspiratorial whispers. I felt like we were in prison and the warden was always around the corner listening, just waiting for us to step out of line. I trained with Candice for a week, getting the hang of writing tickets and slicing bagels. I managed to slice my finger open with the bagel knife. It was lethally sharp and I felt the serrated edge grate on the bone. I stared in wonder at the inner workings of my finger before I went into a dead faint. At least I assured the other waitresses that I was no threat to their jobs.

Finally my training was over and I was placed on swing shift, lunch through early dinner. Candice and I would work lunch together, then I would be alone. Candice finished her side work and got ready to leave.

"Oh, I almost forgot," she said. "Watch out for the counter creatures."

"Counter Creatures?" I asked. "What the hell is that?"

"You'll see," she said and flounced out the door toward home where she moonlighted as a phone sex operator.

Back to work

I headed in the direction of restaurants like a lost dog returning to its master. We are all creatures of habit. The familiarity of pain is preferential even to abused wives than the great-unknown abyss of recovery. Besides I can't type. And let's not forget that I was still an aspiring Thespian. I pounded the pavement and landed a job at Junior's Deli. Junior's is not the little mom and pop place that the name implies, but a famous deli and bakery big enough for its own zip code with an equally large diner attached. It is well known in the entertainment community, which is largely Jewish. As a kid in Southern California I would hear snippets in the news about anti-Semitism and wondered what the hell could they possibly be bitching about. From where I stood they were the luckiest people in world. Entertainment Jews were the only ones I knew and I'd have killed to be a part of that club. How many of you folks feel sorry for Tori Spelling? It was years before I understood the world-wide historical scope of anti-Semitism, beyond the heinous butchery of WWII. That having little bearing on my work at Junior's.

"How can they eat this stuff?!"

Trays of food offensive to my stunted American palate loomed in the deli's display case. Kreplach, gefilte fish, chopped liver, tongue, and something I'm still not over; flanken. Boiling beef may not be against Jewish law, but there must be some culinary advisory against it. To me it resembled a quivering slab of zombie flesh. Mmm! I am fully aware that the food of my own ancestry is just as horrid. Scotts and Swedes are best when they stick to cookies and milk chocolate. But there was nothing in my household that approached traditional cuisine beyond Swedish Christmas cookies or Scotch and soda. While at Junior's I stuck to cheeseburgers and egg creams.

An egg cream is a New York delicacy, basically chocolate milk with soda water. One of the waitresses taught me the secret to a really great egg cream. It's half and half. You put equal parts chocolate syrup and half and half in the bottom of the glass, fill with soda, and stir. I learned a lot more at Junior's than that. The primary lesson I learned was that waiting tables could be really hard work. Over all, schlepping plates is not as physically tough as it is often made out to be. Its widely exaggerated stress levels are mostly mental emotional stuff: i.e. resisting the urge to use that steak knife on an unsuspecting moron. People often surprise me with their thoughtless abuses of service people. Not because I don't know the world is full of a-holes, but the public doesn't seem to understand that some of the servers they are belittling are just a bit unstable. You might want to re-think your tone. We'll return to them later.

As I was saying, as long as you wear sensible shoes and you're in reasonably good shape, it's not that physically taxing; unless - you work in a diner. If you cross a diner with a deli, you've got a long night ahead of you. In a coffee shop or a diner, you make your money in volume not sales percentages. In other words, you need to turn all your tables three or four times in a station the size of Manhattan over an eight hour period, to make enough money to justify showing up. You also do virtually everything yourself. A busboy in a coffee shop does little more than swipe the pile of dishes off the table and wipes it down with a questionably clean rag. You are responsible for everything else including order interpretation, pouring drinks, delivering drinks, delivering food, getting condiments and side orders, ladling soup, making side salads and desserts, refilling coffee, and arguing with the kitchen. In a deli you add to this list about a hundred and fifty menu items that need to be sliced, diced, toasted, roasted, broiled, iced, dished up, heated up, or just plain located.

Note regarding the above to-do-in-a-deli list: ALWAYS make friends with the kitchen. This means up to and including sexual favors if you really find it necessary. This relationship can make or destroy your night financially and otherwise. The kitchen lives in its own little world back there. They work for a wage and if you piss them off, they will get even. I think the kitchen staff in most restaurants isn't really aware there are customers out front. They think we are ordering all this food and eating it ourselves just to annoy them. I think that's why waitresses have developed the grating habit of calling everyone, honey and sweetheart. It comes from working the kitchen.

"Honey, could you please cook this a little more; the customer wanted it charred. Thank you, darling! I knew you could do it. You guys are the best! Sweetheart, a bus with fifty Japanese tourists just walked in and they need to eat and leave in twenty minutes. Think you guys can manage? You know? I wasn't even worried. You guys are amazing! And you all look so macho in those black and white checkered pants. Thanks, sweetie!"

Now in Los Angeles, this situation is exacerbated by the fact that restaurant kitchens are run by Latino men. These are not guys that like to be ordered around by a bunch of women. A little flattery will go a long way. On the other hand, a little gringa screaming and shouting orders goes over like a wet tortilla. Everyone's ability to speak English suddenly seems to disappear. Oh, go ahead guys, call your counsel men! Like I'm making this up. And as for any feminists offended by this, I have a newsflash. This is the reality of dealing with real people in the real world. Not just men of any particular background, but everyone. And women are far easier to offend for no reason whatsoever, than any sub-group on the planet. It's all about getting through the night without any explosions.