Friday, June 1, 2007

The Late Shift

I don't know whose idea it was to put a comic book store in a restaurant, but it doesn't work. Especially since the racks of comics, some of them looking pretty exciting, were set up where the servers picked up the food from the kitchen. In fact, the entire layout of the restaurant was a little odd. It descended like a cliff becoming a beach, like something you might see out of American Gladiators. The dining room was on level ground, then the kitchen rose gradually, and on plateaus of varying degrees were food stations from which you would get either a salad, or a inexplicably a bowl of peanut butter. It's amazing that anybody got any of their food to their tables with this set up. Especially since whenever you turned your back on a food item you were trying to get to your table, an old, curmudgeonly European lady would steal and throw away whatever it was you were needing.
Yes, i worked at this restaurant. All night. Sleeping is supposed to be a relaxing time. And sometimes it is. But other times you close your eyes after a long, caffeine-riddled shift at earl's and suddenly you are back at earl's, only everything is going wrong and the restaurant looks more like the set of Hollywood Squares than anything you've worked at. But of course that doesn't phase you in your dream. that's completely normal.
What is slightly less normal is how your table, really friendly older people obviously a variation of a some regulars you served a few hours ago in reality, got their entrees before they got their appetizers, when you, their server didn't ring any of their order in at all.
Which is when i apologize and go to the mountain that is the kitchen, looking to complete their order, which for some reason involves a tiny bowl of peanut butter, before they get too annoyed and decide not to tip me.
This earls-mare was so powerful i went back to it twice after forcing myself awake. My brain really wasn't ready to let my shift go.
Maybe it's because my internship at opulence is already a nightmare of disappointed possibilities, or maybe it's because not even my subconscious can figure out how to derive surreal stress from sitting at a computer all day writing about poor television shows, but i still haven't had a nightmare about my internship.
Which is too bad, I'm getting tired of the extra shifts at earl's. I'd rather be reading those comics of my dreams.