The five strangest people I've ever served
I am, of course, referring to my work as a waiter.

These are stories long untold that reveal a fascinating and horrifying look at my work in the food industry over the years. We'll start from the days at Red Rock in Oklahoma and move from there...

Lemonade lady

At Red Rock, we dreaded waiting on the lemonade lady and her mummy of a husband. Not only did they tip no more than 10 percent; she insisted on making her own lemonade as well. Her unfortunate server was forced to bring out (exactly) 12 lemon wedges, (precisely) 24 packets of sugar and 3 glasses of water.

The geriatric pair refused to speak to a hostess and insisted on seating themselves wherever they pleased. They never so much as smiled at a server, instead opting to complain about things ranging from the weather to the color of the sugar packets ("Have they been sitting out in the sun all day or what?").

However, things turned sour for the pair. One night, while the restaurant was on a long wait, lemonade lady and Mumm-Ra decided to seat themselves. I immediately told the manager, who informed them they'd have to wait for a table. The corpses threw a fit as best they could in their malnourished state and vowed never to return.

Suction cup woman

Another Red Rock regular was the completely plastic suction cup woman and her ogre of a boyfriend du jour. Her leviathan lips were permanently pursed into a fake smile that betrayed her unfathomably bitchy nature. While her eyes never shifted from the penetrating glare she gave servers, her constantly gyrating vaginal region seemed determined to undulate its way into her lover's wallet.

She ended her dining experience by mounting her lover in the booth and using her collagen-kissed lips to suck the life out of him. This accounts both for the high tab and small tip. In her alien language, communicated through the venomous toxins in her saliva, suction cup woman said, "Buy me the most expensive bottle of wine but don't you dare leave a good tip or I'll show you my real face."

Crazy crustless pizza Persian

At CPK in Brentwood (the sanitation tank of Hell), one particularly nasty Persian woman regularly brought her brood of seven to dine. Each individual item was modified to the point of the bizarre until nothing resembled a pizza. The pies de resistance, however, was the queen bee's order. She requested a vegetarian pizza with everything on the side (including cheese and sauce), and no crust. None. Not even a few pieces of bread for spreading.

She would simply manhandle the cheese with her hairy fingers and dip it into each of the ingredients. It reminded me of those school-sponsored haunted houses where you would, blindfolded, reach into a bowl and guess which part of the human body you were holding. Crazy crustless pizza Persian's tip was commiserate with the amount of crust she ordered.

Zulu woman and her expressionless assistant

Though this list is sequential, I would put this woman at top if I were categorizing these diners in order of their oddness. I don't even know where to begin.

For starters, there was the attire. The zulu woman, probably in her mid-30s, wore an extravagant outfit that was Grace Jones meets Boy George by the way of an Iranian refugee poster child. She had these hideous braces that held captive every morsel of food she'd ever consumed, an uncomfortable situation exacerbated only by her straight-from-the-shithouse breath.

The assistant, by contrast, was mousy at best, comatose at worst. She spoke in an Eeyore-like monotone that had apparently won a game of Hide and Seek with her emotional intelligence. She wore an extra large gray T-shirt tucked into a pair of beltless khaki pants, complemented by a pair of white Keds. Her long brown hair was pulled back into a tight pony tail held by a white scrunchy.

I spoke only to the assistant, who politely warned me that her guest viewed the US custom of dining in public to be "inappropriate" and "confrontational" because of the "aggressive" nature of waiters. I was not to speak to her.

I looked at the Nairobian princess, who laughed and said to her companion, "I have to go to the bathroom!!!!!!!!!"

I found excuses to silently approach the table (refills, clearing plates, etc), because I wanted to hear how these two characters could possibly hold a conversation. Sensing my intrusion, zulu woman wielded the power of her demon breath like a freshly sheathed sword.

I did manage to overhear the following dialogue, which I thought only existed in Fellini films or Cinemax's soft-core Emanuelle movies.

Zulu: "I love mah pree-tty, pree-tty new bracelet. Pree-tty, pree-tty."
Woman: "Yes it is pretty."
Zulu: "Lee-sten to it, it jeeeeeeengles. Hee hee hee hee!"
Woman:
Zulu: "I have to go to the bathroom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

For me, the highlight of the encounter happened when the assistant went to the restroom. Zulu woman began playing with her food, pretending to feed her side of rice to the glazed rotisserie chicken, laughing all the way.

I think I got a 20 percent tip. I didn't care. I witnessed the incipient signs of the apocalypse.

The swingers

Saturday night I waited on Mr. and Mrs. Beautiful Couple, both pumped up from a day of snowskiing up north. We immediately hit off, particularly when the couple bought me two very strong shots in the middle of a busy shift.

Then came the proposition. The gentleman, after smiling at his lady, asked me what time I got off work and if I would be interested in coming over to their place. The naive part of me thought, "Sure, they're cool. They're probably in the industry and they like me and want to help me out."

Then the gentleman asked, "So. How big are you? We'd both like to know."

I got nervous and dropped a tray of dirty plates. I continued waiting on them in absolute silence.

Perhaps someday restaurant managers will require training courses and etiquette classes before allowing people to dine in their establishments. Until that day, I'm here to report the peculiar and fantastic.