Concerning Traffic

Ours is a popular restaurant. We are situated on a corner of the lot, there's only one real exit or entrance, but we are the thru-way to other businesses, so we get a lot of traffic through our parking lot. I would also like to point out that the architecture for the store was designed for a business that was expected to pull down maybe two million dollars a year, and we do about five million dollars a year, so it's a little busier than originally anticipated. My employers certainly aren't about to complain about it.

The fact remains that our parking lot is a teensy bit small for the level of cars that zoom their way through over the lunch hours. Also, it can be difficult for our dear patrons to anticipate the fact that we need them to circle the building to enter drive-thru, leave a gap so that the drive-thru patrons can exit and treat the building more like a round-about and less like an intersection. Round-abouts are HARD, so we realise that we're asking a lot. Every now and then, when the traffic gets particularly congested, we put a neon green vest on some hapless individual over the age of 21 and send them into the thick of it to politely indicate where everyone needs to go. This person is called a traffic controller, but that is occasionally a misnomer. Today, the "traffic controller" was myself.

Actually, I enjoy this position. I hate being in direct sunlight without my glasses or at least a hat, the position is like a cross between conducting music and herding dragons, you have to keep your eye on every single silly thing that happens which can be frustrating, but I still like it. I like being able to see everything, I like the moments, however brief, where I can simply enjoy the outside world and be helpful and watch people as they go in and out and about in their daily lives without having to bother them beyond a simple "STOP" and "GO" hand signal and maybe some smiles and shrugs. Many of our patrons really are kind, friendly people who are a pleasure to interact with, most of the rest are more like zombies, but I suppose it's because they're thinking less about you and the food you're trying to give them and more about the screaming baby at home, or the piles of work they have waiting for them when they get off their lunch break, and it's silly to try to hold these things against them. I've had guests make a point of thanking me for the job I was doing, this on an occasion when I felt I was doing it particularly badly, guests who, worried for my health in the heat and sun, had gone inside and ordered a large glass of ice water for me, guests with seven or eight kids in tow and grandma and grandpa visiting for the first time from Michigan who made a point of waving to me as I stopped a couple cars for them, and thats just the pedestrians.

The cars can be downright funny. The little cars will pretend to be so small that they are secret agents for the CIA, and try to zoom past me unnoticed. The mini-vans will stare at me, confused because they are chalk full of people and too much is going on inside them, some of the drivers in these will cling to my hands with their eyes, awaiting further instruction, terrified lest they miss my "GO" signal. There are sometimes, and these are adorable, great big, monstrous trucks that will very gently ease their way around me when I tell them to go, like a great dane trying to play nicely with an infant. Let's not forget that I'm directing three lanes at onces with two hands, and sometimes someone will get confused as to which lane they're in and try to go, causing me to leap about trying to avoid an accident. There are cars who will stop only at the last possible moment. Some will try to get away with not stopping at all, and there are cars which will inch forward every time I look away to check for pedestrians. Once I was nearly, but very gently, run over from behind by a large maroon SUV who was backing out of his parking space so quietly that I didn't hear him, and he didn't see me. One of the other drivers had to point him out to me, and the SUV driver couldn't apologize enough for what he'd almost done.

By and large, the guests seem to be pleased that I'm there, a trifle confused, perhaps, but pleased. Only about one car in fifty, maybe fewer, gets annoyed simply by seeing me there. I like to pretend that they're only annoyed because their boss just yelled at them and it has nothing to do with me. Some time ago, a lady got mad at me because she was in the parking lane and I told her to stop because the drive-thru car was about to pull out in front of her, she didn't stop, so I did the "stop stop stop" gesture, still smiling. She pulled up beside me and said "You don't have to be like that, ma'am, I'm not blind, I can see the pedestrians and I know to stop for them." Which was good because I hadn't noticed them yet. "Alright ma'am," I said, and I saw that she was about to pull forward again, "but if you could just stay here for another...." she zoomed past, cutting in front of the drive-thru car and nearly running over my foot. Soon after that the traffic cleared up enough for me to come back inside. Another guest who had seen me out there smiled and said, "you're taking your own life in your hands doing that, girl." I laughed and said, "it's not so bad, only..." I looked over and saw the woman who had yelled at me placing her order. I stepped forward so that she couldn't see my hand, pointed right at her and said, "only one person tried to run me down today." The other guest looked at who I was pointing at and laughed.

Today was a little slower, since it's only a Monday, the guests are more lethargic and spotty, and the need for a traffic controller was usually supplied by a power play worker. I only had to go out twice. Shortly before I finished up for the second time, a large, green SUV zoomed forward just as the drive-thru car was about to pull out, so I signaled for the SUV to stop. It didn't, it didn't even slow, and the drive-thru car was taking a sharp turn to exit which meant that I would have to slide into the parking lane, the SUV's lane, to give the drive-thru car as much room as it thought it wanted to get out. The silver grill of the SUV loomed before me, all hot breath and growling engine and not even slowing down. I pressed out my hand and said "Oh! Stop stop stop!" and at last it began to slow down, almost on top of me. The driver rolled down his window, stuck his head out and said, "ma'am, you don't need to treat me like that, I know how to stop. I've been driving for..." the drive-thru car had gone by now, so I said, "thank you, sir, go ahead," cheerfully.

James sent me back inside shortly thereafter, power play was slow enough that he could do what traffic direction was needed, and I wondered if, like the grumpy woman from days gone by, I would see him ordering at the registers, but I didn't. Perhaps my traffic directing ticked him off so much that he merely fled, fiercely angry with me for daring, at my young age, to tell him to stop, and wandered off to eat food somewhere else. Now, normally this would be a sad thing and I would feel somewhat guilty, but not today; I was rather mad at him for the fright he gave me and his subsequent attitude. Instead I reflected on what a safer parking lot we would have without him. For a while I devoted my thoughts to what, exactly, I should like to say to him if he DID come inside and began to take his argument up with me once again. I would blast him, verbally, into some nether universe of misery and shame. I would turn his world upside down and hand it back to him on a silver platter. OH! How dare he pull the "I've been driving since" card on me, as though that made me culpable for fearing he'd hit me. Did he think I was sixteen or something, that his ridiculous age would somehow make me feel ashamed of myself for telling him what to do? He had hand signals, he had the word "stop" emblazoned on the street for him with a large white stripe to indicate where exactly this stopping action must transpire, he had a woman standing right in front of his oncoming vehicle, still couldn't figure out when and where to stop (he was a good foot past the white strip) , and then had the audacity to pretend that he did. How was that my fault?

Then I realized that I was letting this green SUV'd peon dictate my mood and my attitude, and it makes no sense to give that much control to someone you dislike. I know, I thought cheerfully, I'll write about him in my blog so that all my friends can laugh at him. That'll teach him!

The Incredible Saga of the Exploding Coffee Machine

As the title suggests, this saga is, indeed incredible.

I begin: It was 5:36 in the morning. I'm the front counter opener, which means I start all the machines, make all the coffee, prepare all the tea and lemonade and all the other little necessary front counter things that are essential before the restaurant opens at 6. We were running a little late this morning because Chris was late and we can't get into the store until he arrives, and it was Monday. That means that EVERYTHING had to be done: the lemonade dispensers need setting up, the icedream machine needs setting up, and the diet lemonade, which doesn't keep over the weekend, needs to be dumped and made fresh. On top of this, there was a new, time consuming policy regarding the creamer for the coffee and how it is to be dispensed. This is a vile, ridiculous policy which fails to replace its predecessor in efficiency or sanitation, but is much, much more of a hindrance. I cannot wait until the scheme comes crashing down to land, a twitching ball of misapplied logic, in the middle of the drive-thru floor.

To my joy, I learned that the night crew had set up the creamer dispenser on Saturday evening, and I needn't bother with it. I flew through the store, plopping my work bag down in the break room, which is less of a room and more of a nook and since it was modified to be more of a prep table, nobody takes their breaks there anyway. My bag is stuffed full between my purse, books and the clothes I would wear after my shift is over because I hate wearing any pants, especially my work pants, when I'm not working. I set up the tea maker as fast as possible, then ran and began pushing all the buttons on the computer bagging screens, the coffee machine and the security camera. This part is wonderful: if you do it properly, you can get all the buttons pushed in a couple of very graceful pirouettes. In my case, it's graceful until the very end when I stop myself by stumbling into the drive-thru window, but since nobody is around to see me, it is satisfying nonetheless.

Next on the agenda is to set up the coffee machine as fast as possible. Today, as has been mentioned, is ice cream dispenser day, which is one of the most time consuming projects because it has to be sanitized and rinsed twice, and there's usually at least one part missing which you have to crawl about on your hands and knees to find, and when you do find it you have to sanitize it, and we were already five minutes late. I am an amazing coffee setter-upper, in fact, the term coffee setter-upper was made just for me. I know this is an exercise in description, but I think that the title would make any words of foreshadowing on the subject of coffee superfluous. You all know what's coming.

But it's not coming yet. As of yet, we have one happy pot of coffee on the brew. I remember, vaguely, complaining of how the night crew seldom puts things away in the same place twice. Why I should say such a thing at that moment, I'm not sure. I don't remember there being any problem in those early, innocent moments before the Great Event, when everything was still normal, indeed, when there still was a normal. Everything was where I needed it to be, misplaced coffee and tea nozzles flew into my hands with alacrity and submitted to my every command. I was, in those few, precious moments, the master and queen of the entire front counter area. I set up the soda towers, trying to race the coffee timer and get back in time to prepare the decaf brew because this time the key to the soda towers was NOT missing. I won with thirty seconds to spare, changed out the pots and pressed the button to brew the decaf.

Now was my moment, it was time to set up the tea towers, and then I would mix a diet lemonade (something that oh, so many monday openers could not manage for themselves, but had to wait, confused and near hysterics, for the 6 am person to arrive and do it for them) after that I would tackle the ice dream machine and emerge victorious, the best Monday opener ever.

Then I heard a popping sound that made my stomach jump into my throat for comfort. I turned to see the inside vent of the coffee machine providing a fireworks display just for me, with much crackling and a few hundred little stars going out. If I hadn't been so startled, I would have enjoyed it. The logical course of action, perhaps, would have been to unplug the machine before anything terrible happened. That was how I had responded long ago when my radio, in a fit of unbridled jealousy, attempted to set fire to my favourite throw pillow as it was resting nearby from recent, indescribable exertions of gore and flying bits of fluff. To do this, though, I would have had to move the coffee machine itself, as it continued to pop and splutter and send off sparks and, now, smoke, and if I had thought of it at the time, I probably would have pretended that I hadn't. I ran to the office door, I could smell the fragrant, abrasive aroma of ozone and wafting smoke as I fled, and shouted, "Chris! The coffee machine's broken!" This is how, in a world of superiors and subordinates, you turn your problem into somebody else's problem.

Chris emerged, flustered and highly inconvenienced, since he probably has his own opening system which I had thrown into disarray. I'm very clever like that. We ran back together, I might have explained further the level of damage to the coffee machine, but the situation was too heated for me to remember now what exactly I did then. He stood for a moment looking at the coffee machine as it sat, quiet, complacent, smoking only a little and not spluttering at all. Carla, as she tried to set up the kitchen, cried out "Chris, there's smoke!"

"I know," Christ shouted back, "it's our coffee machine." To me he added, "I'll call Paul." Paul is our maintenance man; he's the brother-in-law of the general manager, but this suggestion of nepotism should not in anyway imply that he isn't quite good at his job. Sandy, one of the managers, used to be in charge of maintenance, and she was very good at putting excellent, long lasting band-aids on everything, but she and the owner never found a good way to pay her both for maintenance and for her work as a manager without the two jobs colliding messily. Chris had also been in charge of maintenance but, just like the occasion when I specifically ordered my work pants from Luke, who sincerely promised that I would never again have to make due with cruddy, used pants that didn't fit me at all, his good intentions weren't quite enough. Paul takes things apart, orders parts that cannot be put back together, salvages parts from old machines and in general makes a very large mess, cleans it all up, sets everything into working order again and is very fun to watch in the mean time. I don't know his last name, even though he told me once, and if I remembered it I would probably refer to him as Mr. (insert last name that probably begins with an "h" or maybe it was an "m" here). Everyone else at work has a last name, and it occurs to me that this deficiency should probably be addressed.

Then the machine started sparkling again, not as magnificently as when it had put on its show for me, since Chris is but a mere mortal, but still with some traces of its raw, dangerous glory. This continued for a few strained seconds, then the smoke billowed out generously, beginning to fill the air above it with a gray haze.

"Should we unplug it?" I said, remembering at last the lesson of the radio. This is how I tell managers what to do: I pretend that I'm asking.

Bravely, he reached forward and tugged the cord away from the wall.

He called Paul then and I went back to my work as much as I was able. The diet lemonade was indeed mixed, and oh, how that mixing ensued! The speed with which I assembled the necessary components for my task, measured and mixed to precision and poured into the dispenser without losing a drop! The icedream machine was not set up in time, but since it never is, the loss was not great. The loss of the coffee was a terrible blow. I had to remind Chris and also Charise, my 6 am help, that I did have at least one pot brewed, the clamouring demands of our loving breakfast guests could be sated for a little while.

Paul arrived after we opened and examined the machine. He took it away as a warning to other seditious appliances and went to fetch the spare machine we had in storage. I had never heard of this machine and I began to think that it was only a myth, or a thing that was to be formed from the smoke of a geni's bottle, and as the hours dragged on, as the last morning cop received our last possible cup of coffee, and the lady in drive-thru who was only a few minutes too late had to be sent away mourning her morning joe, I learned just how gracious our patrons are. I've hear rumours of the dreaded coffee drinker on withdrawls.

Not being a lover of the substance myself, I cannot imagine how such a fluid can be used for such a purpose as an addiction, but I remember long ago when my sister's hands would tremble from the lack of it, and my spirit faltered at the thought of all the people, normally loving and devoted to our services, who had children at home waiting for them and small, fuzzy pets whom they loved, transformed into hideous, snarling creatures of wrath and ill humour. I am happy to report that aside from that first woman, everyone remained their kind, friendly selves, and obligingly changed their order to tea or coke or something. Only that first lady showed any signs of transforming into a gorgon and one can hardly blame her. There she sat in her car, squinting with the last dregs of her dreams still on her eyelids, reaching out her hand for the bitter ambrosia that would quicken her senses and revive her into functionality (it's a wonder some of these people even get in their cars without their coffee) and found, not a warm, steaming cup of coffee perfectly seasoned and flavoured to her taste, but a refund. It's enough to tax anyone's good humour.

At last, the spare coffee pot manifested itself: not an object of myth but a real thing made of metal and wire and plastic, and also covered in a layer of grime and dust from its interim in storage. Paul Sans-lastname and Chris chatted for a bit about the epic tale of how he discovered it and was obliged to replace its fuses or some such thing. I was battling the surly peach cylinders of doom at the time and hadn't much attention to spare for other people's exploits, so I do not know the full story. What I do know is that it was a long time before the coffee machine could be made presentable. Long minutes of waiting for the water to heat up were required, and many experimental brews as the grime was slowly flushed out of the insides, much prodding and speculating, and the frail promises that we might have coffee in ten minutes or maybe half an hour were poured out before at last, we learned that we did, indeed have coffee once again.

The front counter was in working order again as we were able to fill the morning demands of our patrons. The ice dream machine was happily purring in its corner, exploiting the second law of thermodynamics to the fullest as it blew hot air at anyone who walked past (I think it times these sudden bursts of air to suit its own amusement, personally) the lemonade dispensers were creating small fountains within their plastic containers and the coke zero dispenser didn't elect to spontaneously combust until sometime later: all was right with the world.

Fin.

I solemnly swear to be the worstest blogger evar.

Hi!

I have a blog now. What does one do with a blog, hmm? Well, one of my friends uses hers to write commentary on modern fiction. Her current mania is the twilight movement and in consequence, she produces many riveting and hysterically funny observations on the subject. One of her friends writes on the very same topic, but on a chapter by chapter breakdown of the series which isn't a saga. Although saga is a lovely word and worth looking up in the dictionary, once this activity is performed, the fact is elucidated that as nobody in the story is Nordic or Icelandic, as there is no great chronicling of heroic deeds because the heroine is always unconscious in time for the action, and there is no leisurely retelling of the activities of various families, Peter Ackroyd's "London" is a saga, "100 Years of Solitude" is also a saga, but Twilight is not. On the upside, calling it a saga makes it seem a lot more epic, which is a handy tool to use for later. The saga of the missing hairbrush, for example, became exponentially more awesome as soon as I tagged the word "saga" onto it, and one day I shall write it all down and share it with you all. Maybe.

Which brings us to the reason why I'm writing a blog. Well, my second reason. I was supposed to tell you what my first reason in the previous paragraph but got excited by my own use of the word "saga". SAGA! The first reason why I have now got a blog is because I enjoy reading what my friend's friend has to say about the chapters, but not being her actual friend I really don't know when she updates, and the easiest way to find out is to sign up with the system and follow her like some crazy stalker person with a dead rose in one hand and a half-full bottle of Dr. Pepper swinging by a string in the other. There probably was an easier way to keep up with her blog, but if you know it then please tell me nothing about it. I've gone to all this effort already.

Okay: second reason. I'm really going to tell it now. With this mighty blog before me, I shall practice my awesome powers of writing about real stuff! Oooo! Did you get chills just now? Because I totally did. Seriously, I've been writing fairy tales and fantasy worlds ever since I discovered my sister's story opening which she wrote in the back of her diary, never to be discovered by the world which is a sure sign that your little sister is going to find a way into it. I think I was, like, 6 years old at the time. Most of them are still kicking in a netherworld of unrealized imagination, but I've decided to thrust as many of them as I can out of their sad limbo and, you know, write them.

One of my weakest points is description, and not just description of people and scenes, but description of moments, of time, of emotion and spirit, description of things around which the mind can barely wrap its tendrils of thought. I blame the Brontë sisters. I could blame the fairy tales that I've weaned myself on, too, if I wanted, but I shan't do that because I love them so; therefore the Brontë sisters get all the blame.

I have no sympathy for them. Have you ever read a description by a Brontë? They sap the soul, my goodness. These are the women who can spend two calculating paragraphs telling you what the trees are not doing as the wind rushes through them; who cannot create an atmosphere because they are too busy sounding intelligent. They make the pages of a brand new paperback feel as dry and dusty as if it was an ancient tome found in some ancient tomb telling you that Balin is dead. Come to think of it, that particular tome had more vivacity in its tale of death and woe than anything the Brontës wrote. When I read them, I reached a point where I swore I would either have to start skipping the descriptions or claw my eyes out. I am currently performing an experiment to see how long it will take me to wear out my eyes by reading everything REALLY close to my face, and I thought it would be a shame to waste all that hard work, so I skipped the descriptions instead.
Ah, dear subject, how blissful were my reading moments then! How easily I glided from page to page, picking up threads of story between intermittent, bland rhapsodies on nothing very interesting. Could it be? Could the key to easy reading really be kept in skipping descriptions? Why, this was marvelous! Since I myself could not write descriptions to my satisfaction, why write them at all if everyone was just going to skip them anyway? It was as if I had found a pocket of air while I was trapped beneath the ice of literature. Yes. I just called Jane Eyre "the ice of literature."

Then I picked up another book. Specifically, it was a little novel that I had never heard of called "Precious Bane" written by a little woman I had never heard of called "Mary Webb" and her story, even while skipping the descriptions, dragged like a pair of iron shoes. No, really. I couldn't get into the story, I couldn't get into the main character, who seemed pleasant enough, I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. Then someone asked, "are you still skipping the descriptions?" So I reluctantly read the next description I found. That was like coming out of the ice completely, into an open, airy world of sunlight glowing green through new leaves, of a soft earth, of lives that had the capacity of feeling and thinking both at once, of dreaming not in words but in images. If you can find it, and can get past the accent in the prose and the dubious chapter 8 in book two, I recommend that you read it.

Okay, so bad description, no matter how intelligent, confounds and infuriates, but good description can put the things from your imagination into someone else's imagination. Ha! I have found another useful tool, and what a saga it was, finding it. I learned in college that drawing from reality makes it possible to draw the things of the imagination as though it were reality, too. I see a lot of parallels between art and literature, so I shall try to apply the same principle here, in this blog, for other people to read. You poor souls.

Now I will clarify. I'm not going to put any of the story segments or short tales that I'm always writing up here for you to read, so the people I've been peddling those off on can breath a sigh of relief. I'm going to spend some time retelling and describing the things I've really seen and experienced as though they were from my imagination, and occasionally I will also put up my unsolicited opinion on something or other because I'm pretty sure that that's what blogs are supposed to be all about. The updates will be about as intermittent and shoddy as when I update my notes on my facebook page, which happens only when I feel like it.

I'm also going to follow my friend's friend because it turns out that I have a half-empty bottle of Dr. Pepper on a string sitting right here, waiting for me. Be back soon. Maybe.