Restaurant HELL

Work tonight made me want to stick my head in an oven. The only way I can cope with working here is to have a rythem. Greet, drinks, order apps, provide chips N dip, order real food, provide apps, provide salads, provide food, remove plates, ask re: deserts, provide desserts if ordered, provide check, take money, bus table. Insert next table somewhere around "drinks" and we are good.

Whenever we have a party my boss decides to change this order. And then gets on to us for not making this transition flawless. As in screaming. As in tonight, I think she grabbed me so hard my arm got a bruise. Look, I have to behave myself on here because  I KNOW this woman checks blogs and facebooks and twitters and such, and the only mercy I have is she thinks I am so very vanilla and boring, she doesn't have to check mine. But this job? Is not a good place to be. And the only reason I haven't blown yet is I'm making 20K a year minimum. It's an insane amount of money given the town I live in, and it's more than I've ever made at any other job. And I know she knows when she crosses the line, because right when I start thinking "One more word and I am GONE" she starts being super uber nice to everyone. And then we check our tickets and realize we made a hundred bucks tonight, and everything is kind of okay. Except for the arm bruising part. That's not okay.

But nights like tonight? Are why I've begun to drink more than I ought to.

MOVING. ON.

GODDAMN this story is so much fun. Brutal and a little on the uncomfortable side, but I really, really am hearting this thing. But it is being irksome to edit. I call the job done when I can read through the whole page and not put more than two-three red marks on the page (and only if one of those marks is that gee-do-I-want-this-word-or-this-one crap I tend to do a lot. Put the word in. Take the word back out. Put the word back in).

IT WILL BE DONE. BY THE END. OF THIS MONTH. SO. HELP. ME. GOD. I am going to keep this goal GOING. Which means what will eat my lunch come September 1st will be cover art and not book. I promise promise promise promise promise. And even if I have to use a blank placeholder you guys WILL be able to buy The Scifi Story Of Mystery by September 15th. This is my oath to you.

Now. I am going to take what I call a break from life...and CONTINUE editing...while watching Kingdom Hospital and drinking copious amounts of Moscato. It would be whiskey sour, but I have no whiskey. Cheap-ass Moscato is a good compromise. 

Not dead

Depression sucks. Spending two SOLID MONTHS in it? Sucks even harder. Not saying it's over now, but I am enthusiastic enough about my life now to dedicate a blog post to it.

(And for once, I can't really point at any identifiable trigger for the depression. Chemicals. And work. More work than chemicals, probably)

Work has been...slow. Winter in south texas DOES equal an influx of (old) people (sorry snowbirds, but if I go for a bike ride, six different people almost run me over and four of them have white hair, it's the kind of thing you notice. But to the young woman who ONLY looked left before she pulled out, thus almost hitting the cyclist on the sidewalk (I know I know, bikes shouldn't be on sidewalks, but we have no bike lanes on the highways and I don't want to be strawberry mush) because she couldn't be arsed to look right? Fuck you. I could have been a kid, that was a big ass truck you were driving, and you wouldn't have seen an eight year old running after something at the last second the way you did me. Also, this hypothetical tot wouldn't have gotten the hell out of your way like I did, because kids are not fast like bikes are. Remember what you learned in kindergarten next time, and look BOTH ways. Driving cars does not absolve you of that responsability. And Again: FUCK. YOU.)

My boss, on the other hand, has proven that She. IS. AWESOME. It is not often that a boss will call a customer an idiot TO HER FACE (online) but when they do...it doesn't hurt that we were already talking about this particular lady BEFORE she posted a bad review of the very thing that made her an idiot. Her complaint was that we didn't know what a Cosmo was. Which would be reasonable IF (reasons in order of stupid):

1.The waitress wasn't two weeks new, having never worked at a restaurant before.

2. The waitress wasn't twenty years old. That is, too young to drink AND too young to remember (and have watched or been interested in) Sex in the City. (trust me. She's a nice girl, she looks cool, but you only have to look at her to know she never came within sixteen miles of watching Sex and the City) the show that made Cosmos into a Thing.

3. IF WE ACTUALLY HAD A FULL FUCKING BAR. Apparently, not having a full collection of booze is the most offensive thing a restaurant can do. Yes, eaters of the world, we, the waitstaff of this humble, family-owned restaurant, went out of our way to PERSONALLY INCONVIENCE YOU by not carrying liquor AND not knowing what your muddle of a drink is.

I actually watched this happen, and it was kind of amazing. New girl hands woman menu, woman hands it back, demands Cosmo. The waitress, not knowing that a Cosmo contains vodka, takes the order and then has to go back to the table to explain that we cannot serve strong liquors here, as we have no liquor licence AND NEVER HAD. We had NO indications that we served anything other than beer and wine. I will concede that having to go back to the table was the error on our part, but the girl literally did not know that a Cosmo was something we could not legally make. Lady then goes berzerk. How DARE we not know what a cosmo is. How DARE we not be able to serve it to her when she condescended to explain it to us. How DARE we not have a full bar. She got up and left. Good riddance, says the boss. We don't need people like that in here anyway.

And then we read the review and found out something interesting: Cosmo-lady had been here before. And loved it.

Thing is? Up until recently, we've NEVER had a liquor licence. We've NEVER been able to serve anything stronger than Port or Sake. So the first time she was here? There would have been no Cosmo. Come three years ago? No Cosmo. Ironically, about a week later? We DID get our liquor licence, though we lied our ass off to customers and said it was still in the pipe (Had to buy the booze before we could serve it. Oh, and Fun Fact time! Texas law requires you buy restuarant booze from a liquor shop licenced to sell to restaurants. So if the only licenced shop in your county is the single worst store in said county? And they give you a really pathetic bulk discount? And continually either forget portions of your order or get the wrong stuff? Tough shit.)

So if Cosmo-Lady had come in AFTER we got the licence, installed the bar and purchased the booze? She could reasonably have held us accountable for not knowing what a Cosmo was (vodka, cranberry juice, something else I forgot. We don't get a lot of orders for the things). But she would never have known that her waitress didn't have a clue what a Cosmo was, because we also got a couple of great cheat books to go by, and when someone orders an incomprehensible mess, we can either figure out what the hell it is, or fake it.  

So no, Lady. Even if the waitress had been a fully trained bartender with awards for her skills and services, you would not have gotten your boozed up cranberry juice. You would have been told that immediately (Sorry, beer/wine only!) but you wouldn't have gotten it. You can complain about bad service. You can complain about the decor (though why you would want to is beyond me) and you can complain about the food. But it's REALLY unreasonable to complain that you didn't get something that, by law, we cannot give you.

It's like the more recent time when a pair of customers threw the menu back in my face and asked for something not on the menu at all. I think it was bacon wrapped shrimp. Sounds awesome, and IF they were someone we knew and IF it were not a busy-as-hell Friday night (time taken out to wrap shrimp in bacon is time better spent making the things that ARE on the menu that we ARE prepped for, for regular customers who don't have the brass-faced gall to dictate our menu to us) I might have tried to sweet talk the cook into doing it. IF the customers had not gotten bitchy with me for not immediately going "OH, Sure! I'll just zip on over and ask the cook to make something he's never made before on the busiest night of the week!" and instead saying, "Uh...I have no idea what that is" (they didn't even say "Shrimp wrapped in bacon", but gave it the title we apply to fish in crawfish sauce. And we have several other dishes named things that mean something completely different in another restaurant. How the fuck should I be able to translate your Dish X into "Shrimp wrapped in Bacon" when Dish X means something else here?) "but I'll see if we can do it."

This is like going up to a foot doctor and, spur of the moment, asking him to operate on your kidneys. He could probably do it if he had to, but probably not the way you want it, and it's not a very smart thing to do. And if the doctor, or in this case, the cook, is not your friend and is already elbows deep in the stuff he IS good at doing? Door's over there. Don't let it hit you in the ass on the way out.

*deep breath*

Okay. I'm better now. And having a boss that will back you to the hilt on both occasions? IS. AWESOME.

Tipping on the credit change

Okay, so I haven’t posted in a while. This is due to my having nothing of either a positive or negative nature to report—seriously, what do you talk about when every day is the same, and same=tons of work for pretty decent money?—and having an internet connection that sucks so bad logging into Blogger takes about fifteen minutes and a TON of refreshes, let alone actually getting to the posting part of the dashboard. I’m switching carriers next week, I swear to GOD.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about today. What do I want to talk about?

Tips. And how they can sometimes annoy me.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind getting not-tipped. It’s a scum-sucking, selfish thing to do, not to tip your waitress, let alone your barista (coffee gals don’t get tipped as much as waitresses. So when I am in coffee-mode I am not as "FUCK YOU KILL IT WITH FIRE" about tables that don't tip as I am when I'm a waitress. Just an FYI) but I don’t mind. I don’t even mind small tips. A tip is a tip.

What do I mind? Well, I’m gonna assume that all of you have, at one point or another, paid for food with a credit card. And you’ve seen a nice little place on the white slip for you to write your tip in, so that the waitress can take it in the back and adjust it and you don’t have to screw around with cash. Some people leave cash and ignore it. Some people put a nice tip in there, some people put a small tip in there, some people just write the original total into the slot, which is really really stupid because I COULD interpret that as leaving a 100% tip—I’m smarter than that, but I could if I wanted to—and all of the above do not bother me.

Not even when I can’t read the tip because your handwriting sucks.

What bothers me are the people who tip on the credit change.

This is when you get your credit receipt, and instead of writing a nice, round number, like $1.00, or the obvious 15%, you write a tip that, combined with your total, adds up to a round number. You stick me with your credit card’s spare change.

Example: on a 29.17 bill, they tip 5.83. The new total is 34.00 even and I have to figure out what the fuck I’m going to do with eighty three cents in change. I do not mind if you have paid in cash and decide to leave your change in the tip jar, because I don’t like carrying change around either. But credit card bills are imaginary money. You are not getting any spare change out of my register. There is no reason to give me change. You have a little slip of white paper on which you are to either write a tip, or not write a tip. Today I sold a guy a cup of coffee. Cost 3.25 (hey, the boss does the pricing) and he decided to pay with a credit card. I did not expect a tip, because it’s a three dollar cup of coffee and he already tipped me on the other six cups of coffee he bought for his party. He writes .75 in the slot. I didn’t even bother processing it because I didn’t want his fucking imaginary spare change.

“But CW!” you say. “Surely, he was just being considerate. He tipped you!  He was trying to give you money! What’s wrong with being given money?”

True, but remember what I said: This is not real spare change. This is not that handful of pennies and dimes that you don’t want to stick in your pocket. This is any amount of money he wants to write in the total, from 0 to $100. So let me ask you this: Why couldn’t I have the other quarter? And if I couldn’t have the quarter, why do I have to take the seventy-five cents? Why couldn’t he just, like, not tip? Why do I have to deal with an uneven number?

Because he wanted to see $4.00 on the bottom of the card, and not 3.25 or 4.25. No. He wanted to see that nice, even 4.00. Wasn’t about giving me a tip at all. It was about making his life look neat and orderly, and so what if the barista doesn’t want another three quarters sloshing around on the bottom of her purse, or to have to make yet another trip to a Coin Star to get folding money out of her tip jar? He’s got a neat total at the bottom of his credit receipt, and that’s all that matters.

Tipping the change tells me you are a considerate person who wants to tip, and who also doesn’t want to carry six tons of change in your pockets. Tipping the change plus an extra dollar makes you my BFF and I will probably give you a free refill when the boss is not looking, and sometimes even when the boss is looking because we throw out a heck of a lot of coffee. Tipping on the credit change tells me you are an obsessive compulsive asshole who wants to look like a decent person who tips, but who can’t bother giving me a whole fucking dollar because then the total on that piece of white paper would bother you.  So thank you. Thank you for making my tip jar all about you.

There is no reason to not use round numbers on a credit check, unless you want to tip a full 15%. In which case I am still annoyed at having to lug change around, but I understand it. But if it is obvious you only gave me that fifteen cents so that your check will be a nice, even 67.00, you know what I’m going to do? I’m not processing the goddamned fifteen cents.

Yes. I know it’s self sabotage. Yes. I know it’s petty. Yes. I know I am throwing money that you willingly gave me away because I’m irritated over spare change. But you know what? Credit-change tippers are also the people who run me ragged wanting their beers “dressed” and their salad done with no-fat lactose free blue cheese dressing (seriously), and the meat cooked rare plus plus (Medium rare just not good enough for you?)  and the fish cooked with no seasonings, just oil, we like to taste the fish (Oh, hey. Let me quote our cook/owner: FUCK YOU.) (Seriously. That’s like asking the artist to leave all the paint off the canvas because you want to look at the fabric. If you want plain fish, save our time, save yours, go eat at a restaurant where they’re not going to charge you twenty bucks for the privilege.) They’re the ones who complain about the dish being tasteless (Again: FUCK YOU. THAT’S WHAT YOU ASKED FOR) after they ate every bite of it. They are the ones who look over the menu, see what we have, and then ask for a triple-shot no foam no-fat venti mocha latte (WE ARE NOT FUCKING STARBUCKS) but could I please leave room for cream? (Seriously.) And you know what? One of them is going to be so fucking OCD, they’re going to go down their credit bill with a red pen and check every single one of the totals, and they are going to see that I did not charge them for that fucking fifteen fucking cent tip, and they are going to twitch.

And they can’t do a goddamn thing about it.

And for the rest of you kind, considerate people: Tip, or don’t tip. Give us your tired (coins) your poor (pennies) your huddled masses (of real money) yearning (to be in my pocket). But if you have a credit slip, and you have to write something in it, put in your percentage, or a nice, round number. Don’t give me your imaginary spare change. I really, really don’t want it, and it makes you look like an obsessive-compulsive ass.

And if you really are that OCD, you can let me know. Mental illness isn’t fun, and I feel sympathy for you. I still won’t process your change, but I won’t call you an asshole either. And you could probably talk me into putting chocolate in your latte.

Alcohol

I have decided that my boss's new mission in life is to get me drunk.

She's really an interesting person and I'm glad that I know her. I almost wish I wasn't working for her so I could be out of the "employee" category and in the "friend" category because friends get free food and employees get lectures on why Asking Customers Questions Is Bad. She spent most of last night trying to take care of a very obviously sick dove we found on the doughnut shack's outdoor tables. The poor thing was puffed up to half its size and it showed no interest in the large pile of cracker crumbs she gave it, and it was perfectly willing to get on her hand and let her put it in the live trap she not-incidentally covered with a silk sari. It probably is not alive now, which makes me very sad because it was a cute dove.

Most of the time she is in dictator mode, in which the correct response is nod and get out of her way. Every once in a while, though, she reveals that way down inside she has a core of fluffy marshmallow, and this, in my case, manifests in her ongoing campaign to get me drunk.

Admittedly, she has an ulterior motive. People ask me about "good red wine". IMHO a good red wine has sugar in it, and has been cut by sprite and peach nectar (AKA Sangria). I wish that merlot tasted as good as it smells, but I can't quite get past the fuck this is grape juice that's gone really bad factor.

White wine is worse, because there are a few kinds that I actually like. We have an incredibly good Riesling that our local grocery store carried for about three minutes, long enough for me to decide this is My Brand. Mom smokes Pal Malls, my brother is a Guiness guy, I like R10 Brahmen with a little bit of rose water syrup. And now the only place I can get it locally is at work. Anyway, every time I try a white wine that I don't like, my brain automatically fills in the flavor I really want, and I stare at the lovely blue bottle and yearn tragically for its sweet, sweet flavor. (which really is sweet)

Yesterday we had a wine rep show up, and after the "This is what my boss wants me to sell" conversation (a Zinfindel that no one will drink because it is summer and the heat index is already in the triple digits) they got down to business. It was a really, really slow Monday, which meant that all the make-work stuff we usually do, we couldn't because we were out of food. I had already dusted all the glasses, stamped all the menus, and my standard make-work, organize the beer shelves, I had already done on Thursday. So I am standing there with absolutely. nothing. to do. The boss brings out a bottle of "green" wine, which is identical to white in appearance, but not so much in taste. She thumps two glasses down in front of the wine rep, fills both with a nice swallow of wine, and hands it over to me.

"Try it!" she says.

I try it. I think I inhale wrong trying to explore the flavor and start choking. I get a long drink of water, wait for the burn to die down, and try another sip. I don't choke, but the burn is definitely a feature of this particular vintage and I have no idea how to sell it, except to say "dry" and "not sweet."

A few weeks ago she went to Hawaii for a family emergancy. She came back with a case of champagne, where the grapes "had been pollinated by bees carrying orange flower pollen", and she filled two glasses (filled!) and set one down in front of me. "Try it!"

And hey, it was really decent. A little on the too-sweet side, but very bubbly and something that could easily be improved by a little rose syrup. This is when I realize that I am developing a taste for wine, something that I promised myself I would avoid because I couldn't imagine ever drinking this much rancid grape juice.

Another thing she brought out yesterday was the rose wine. No one tried it (thank god. I probably would have gotten plastered) but the bottle she chose to show off was the same rich, ripe pink color as a Lisa Frank folder, and she handled it as if the fake-gold label were real gold leaf. It is a bottle I have been eyeing for several weeks because it looks really good. Now I know it is not only incredibly good, but probably something that could pay for a lot of dental work if you sold it.
 
Also, her employees who are drink-legal can have one alcoholic beverage a night, for free, without having to ask. And if you don't take her up on it, she will begin making suggestions.

I have decided that wine, to her, is like a book to me. I read very quickly, so a book suggestion for me is a two or three hour occupation. Other people? That's their free time for the next week, bound up in nice black ink. She knows wine. I know wine is something you keep in a glass as a prop so other people will think you're really an adult, but that you don't have to drink if you don't want to. A woman yesterday ordered a "Santa Margarita". I had no idea what this was. The boss knew not only that it was an expensive Pinot Grigio, but that it was an unwarrentedly expensive Pinot Grigio, and that it had become the Tommy Hilfiger (her words) of the We-Have-Too-Much-Fucking-Money set, and, because the customer ordered "Santa Margarita" and not Pinot Grigio, she didn't know anything at all about wine but wanted to pretend that she did. Go get the customer a glass of our house Pinot, charge her half price for the first glass, and see if she didn't like it better.

She did.

(Also, this particular customer announced she wanted to order her appetizers by saying "We're getting Appies!" Guys and girls, if you go into an upscale-pretending-to-be-casual restaurant and order "Appies", the only reason the waitress didn't puke in your lap was because she really wants your tip.) (Seriously. Who says that?)

At this point my boss and I are at an impasse. After the Great Mother's Day Champagne Tasting, I refuse to have more than one glass of anything while on the premises. She continues to make suggestions about wine I ought to try, which I continue to dodge on the excuse that I am working and she is not paying me to drink. However, there are hints that she may abandon alcohol as a point of attack and move on to food.

This is horrifyingly scary.

Last night she made something involving smoked eggplant and flatbread and let me try, and I spent the rest of the night ducking back for another piece. The backup cook already knows that I will take all the overcooked shrimp they make. I have yet to dream of our incredible curry, but that was only because I only got to have it once.

My job is humiliatingly difficult, and yet I am surrounded by food so good, it's practically pornographic. And if my boss decides to fatten me up, I am totally fucked. And fat.

God help us all.

Memorial Day.

So it is now summer, and I have discovered a spectacular thing.

Other than the heat. Of course.

My job? Has just gone from six hours to something more like sixteen. And I don't get to complain, because it's "summer".

I am trying not to turn this into a reason to complain until my ears bleed. Because this is boring.

Memorial day weekend was an ungodly stretch of exhaustion and rude people who expect our Shack to carry Cafe Americano and triple shot expresso lattes. Which we do serve, under a different name (Cafe au lait. You pronounce it "Oh Lay". It means the exact same thing as "latte")

I think my favorite are the people who show up and, without glancing at the menu, order a venti triple shot no-fat latte with a vanilla syrup shot for good measure. And then stare at me in puzzlement as I try to explain that we don't do Expresso shots, we don't do no-fat milk (It. won't. foam. Excess periods indicate extensive attempts to get no-fat milk to foam. It won't) and we don't have vanilla syrup. It is as if they are thinking "What the hell do you serve, then? Just coffee?" only they don't want to say it out loud because then they would be rude assholes.

Too late.

Look, I understand that we need you to buy our food so that we can get paid. But needing to be paid does not mean we need to do every single fucking thing you ask us to.

When you order the fancy french doughnuts, the coffee and the fancy fried sandwich, it takes time to make all three. It would take time to make them if you went to Macdonalds, and unlike fast food we do it cooked-to-order. We cannot just take your money and then hand over food that isn't cooked yet. You can't wait? You can't eat. Yelling will not make food magically appear. Go away.

We will open and pour your wine for you because this looks classy. We will not give you samples of said wine before you commit because it is a fifty dollar bottle of wine.

Also, we cannot serve said wine before 10am on Sundays. This is not a will not. This is a cannot. It's called "Texas Blue Laws", sunshine. Asking will not help you. Threats to go somewhere else won't help you, because no one else can serve it either.

We will make you coffee and fancy french doughnuts at seven am. We will not become Starbucks. We had a Starbucks. You did not go get coffee often enough, so they left. We are not going to replace a coffee shop you could not keep afloat. Not if you ask nicely, and certainly not if you start whinging about how much you want that Venti mocha cafe americano.

PS: Americano means expresso diluted with water. You just ordered something with extra water. Buy a fucking cup of coffee.

And it's large. L-A-R-G-E. You can say it. Starbucks has not permanently damaged your vocabulary.

Don't ask for a frappuchino. Especially not in front of the boss. She will offer you a Viet Coffee (which you should take) and will just shrug and go to the next person when you refuse and start whining.

And no. We're not bringing your food to the table for you. We can't run the shack AND maintain full service AND still keep our prices low enough for you to eat here. You can spend five minutes outside and come up to the window to get your food just like everyone else. Yes. I know we used to have a full service brunch. I know we were the only people in town who ran a full service brunch. We hated the full-service brunch. We will start doing the FSB again when Babe the pig gets his pilot's license. Yes. I know you won't come here anymore if we don't.

This is not a threat to us. It is Memorial Day. Sunday broke all our records and you are one more person standing between us, food and bed. We have made our money. We just want to go home. Stop being an ass, order what we offer, get it when its cooked all the way.

As for the rest of you lovely people who came up to the window and ordered food exactly as presented, who did not go all "Well...just leave off the (thing that is insanely hard to leave off). I don't want to be too much of a bother" but who actively wanted the ham on the Eggs Benedict, and who only returned to get another cup of coffee and to tell us it was wonderful, you are the reason I will be back next weekend. Please stay nice. Please.

Thank you.

Lonnegan's Limp

Probably the greatest, most perfect movie of all time is The Sting. It's one of those awesomely good character studies and, if there is any flaw in it, it is that the secondary FBI plot isn't as good the second time around (or third, or fourth, or fifth) and that maybe a couple of scenes lose all tension because you know the actors are misleading you (a great writer would have been able to inject something there IMHO. Kind of how Dumbledore's death in HBP is more dramatic when you knew that Dumbledore had it planned, ya know? "Severus. Please" He is asking to die OMG I was bawling)  The score is iconic and the combo of Paul Newman and Robert  Redford is just ... yummy.

However, this time around I was distracted from all the awesomeness by Lonnegan's limp.

For those of you who have never seen this movie (and why haven't you) the plot is that Hooker (Redford) and his mentor/buddy Luther con a gentleman out of ten thousand dollars. Unfortunately the gentleman belongs to Doyle Lonnegan, an irish gangster in charge of Chicago, who has Luther killed in retaliation. Hooker hooks (heh heh) up with Henry Gondorff to con Lonnegan out of half a million dollars.

Lonnegan is a very bad man, and throughout the whole first quarter of the movie this is built up wonderfully (and I need to watch it again to analyse how they did it). By the time the con is enacted, you realize this man is pretty much unbreakable. He's physically impressive, he's got guns, he's the kill-at-a-distance-type, he's got no conscience whatsoever, and if he wasn't fond of playing cards on this one specific train, Gondorff and his buddies wouldn't be able to get to him at all (speaking of which, your confidence in Henry as a con artist is a little shaky at this point, but that's a thing for another day).

And then Lonnegan starts walking, and you realize he's got a limp. And even though consciously it doesn't register as anything except a limp, subconsciously it changes just about everything.

Our brains are a lot smarter than we are, and they are constantly reading different social cues that we don't ever pick up on. Good writing plays on this, and slides 90% of a story right in under our noses. An incredible example that I blew off as total nonsense the first time I heard it was a specific shot of Darth Vader in Empire Strikes Back. A commander gives Vader a report when he's in this giant white space bubble ... thing. You see Vader without his helmet on, and you see a mass of scars and hoses and other things implying that this person is not in the greatest shape. Commander leaves. End scene. But up until this point Darth has only been seen in positions of overwhelming superiority and almost robotic single-minded evil. This moment tells your brain that under all the wires and circuits, he's human. And not just human, but badly fucked up and broken, and (by implication) that there is probably more to him than just evil. That he might want something. About an hour later, "Luke. I am your father." What makes this moment so impactful, so mind-shatteringly huge is not that Evil told Luke he's got a dad. It was that instant when you realize this thing is human, an hour before Vader pitched a paternal relationship to Luke Skywalker. What's shattering is not ONLY Luke's perspective on the world, but our view of Vader as a wholly evil, mindless, inhuman force to be reckoned with, and it all started with him taking his helmet off an hour before we got here. The shock is our own minds processing the ten thousand hints Empire walked right past us and realizing He's telling the truth.

It wouldn't have worked half as well if those scenes weren't in there.

Same thing with Lonnegan's limp. Up until the train scene, Lonnegan is never seen walking. Oh, he might be moving, lurching around an office, but we never get a good, long view of Lonnegan walking until we get to the train. Also, up until now, Lonnegan himself has not been beaten. We've seen his minions, who will kill without worry, nearly shit themselves because he comes into the room. We've seen him casually discuss murdering a friend of his during a friendly game of golf, and we ourselves are just a little bit scared of this tall, imposing man. We know that the only vulnerable spot Gondorff and Co. could find was his frequent games of Poker on this train, and that the whole rest of the con relies on them getting to him during this game. We know that everyone involved in this is scared out of their wits. We know that if they get caught, they'll be found in the baggage car with ventilated skulls.

And then we see Lonnigan get on the train, and he's limping.

Again, short scene. Not something our brains register consciously for more than a couple seconds. But subconsciously? We have just realized that this man has a weakness. The limp. His facade of imposing mob boss has this chink in his armor, a physical imperfection he can't get rid of. This implies that there might be other, deeper flaws that Henry Gondorff can take advantage of. Three minutes before the Con begins, we are told that taking Lonnegan might be possible--not by words, not by character confidence, but by a limp.

I don't know if the actor who played Lonnigan has a limp naturally or not. The only other movie I've seen him in (Jaws) is probably not a good reference. But Lonnegan's limp, real or an affectation is incorporated and becomes a critical part of the movie. It's a tiny detail that makes the scene that follows (Gondorff out-cheating Lonnegan in a game of cards) very tense. Because we know it's possible to take him. 

Oh, Gondorff doesn't get off easily either. There's a scene right before he goes into the poker game. After he dresses, after he has a girl flawlessly pick Lonnegan's pocket (building on the weakness of the limp; he doesn't catch her do it) and after he explains the best liquor to drink with a mark, he sits down and does card tricks for Hooker, flawlessly, with a smooth flick of the wrist and a wink of those charming blue eyes. And then he flubbs the last one. Cards go flying everywhere. And the same part of your brain that read the limp as hey, we can take this guy thinks Oh, shit. Gondorff will blow it at the very last second. Lonnagan can lose...but so can Gondorff, and so far Gondorff has done more loosing than Lonnegan.

None of this ever registers consiously. You're too wound up in the David and Goliath story unfolding before your eyes. But what makes it interesting is not the charming blue eyed David or the imposing and irish Goliath and their completely bullshit game of poker (the only question is who cheats better?) Rather, it's those little details. The limp, followed by getting his pocket picked. The smooth operating Gondorff and his swift education of Hooker...followed by blowing that last card trick.

The rest of the movie is, thematically speaking, just a repeat of the train scene. We build upon the weakness implied by the limp, and also the blown card trick. The FBI subplot also implies that Gondorff has blind spots, and one of these might blow the con (and get him arrested). Lonnegan is never given a weakness other than the card game, which was completely and totally built on his limp. You could say that the entire conflict of the Sting was constructed on a bad knee that may or may not have originated with the actor himself. A thing that you never really notice, because the movie is just that good.

Good writing is not about picking a decent plot, good, likable characters or using pretty, flowery phrases. Oh, yes, don't get me wrong. You need these things. But you can have these things and still have a flat story. Good writing is about manipulating your reader into seeing things the way you want them to. In the hands of a decent writer, sparkling vampires or a demon possessed car (not to mention a can opener) can be terrifying. Not because we are scared of glitter or can openers, but because there were little hints thrown into the plot before we got there. Things that our brains registered that we never really saw.  It's about setting up an unlikable protagonist by making him your best friend for thirty seconds at the opening. It's about setting up a trustworthy mentor by making him a drunk. It's about telling your reader one thing, because it lets you slip fifteen other things in under the carpet. A good writer will hold the reader in the palm of their hands and make them think what they want them to. A good writer will react to a reader saying "This was my favorite scene because you did this in it" by saying "Damn. You shouldn't have noticed that." and rewriting the whole book.

In short, Good writing is about Lonnegan's limp.

Dear General Public (of the eating kind)

There is a reason restaurants take reservations. It is so that we can function as a business and prioritize both seating and food consumption. Meaning the people who are kind enough to call ahead? They get a good table, or at least a guaranteed seat during our rush hours, and (most importantly of all) when we run out of food, they get to eat.

So when the Owner is going out of town? And purposefully under orders so that food will not sit in the walk in and rot during the week no one is cooking? And then on Sunday night we have ten reservations, two of them over four people? And we start running out of food? We stop bringing people into the restaurant. This is not because we don't have enough food for YOU. It is because we might not have enough food for the people coming in at eight, and you, I am sorry to say, do not get preference over the people who took the time to call ahead.

So lovely people, if it is your wedding night, and you show up at eight on this particular Sunday night, and you have seven people, and a cake, and you did not make a reservation? You're not eating.

I do not care if it is your wedding night. I do not care if you have been planning this for six months--in fact, I am pissed off because if you HAVE been planning this for six months, which I highly doubt because I know that cake you are holding is the out-of-the-case-Italian-and-cream-cheese-buy-in-two-minutes cake and not a wedding cake, or even a special order cake, and you could have accomplished that purchase in two minutes, you could have taken two minutes BEFORE YOU WENT TO YOUR FUCKING WEDDING to call ahead.

I am a waitress. I have two jobs: make sure the people who either made reservations or are already here have a good night, and follow the boss's orders. Boss says no. Answer is no.

Screaming at me (literally. As in red in the face .Nice going, dude, your new wife is standing RIGHT THERE) will not get you a table.

In fact, you see that woman walking over in the t-shirt and apron? That's the owner. That's the boss. That's the woman who told me "no, don't seat them," and that's the woman who is coming over to see if maybe we can't swing it after all. She just heard you scream at her staff.

NOBODY screams at her staff.

You're telling your friends? She hopes you tell ALL your friends.

And slamming the door in her face as you leave? Yeah.

You're not coming back.

Work, or: How my boss got me drunk on a Friday.

So the first thing you learn in a customer-service based job is that you no longer have a life. This is because normal human beings have things called "Weekends" and "Holidays", and they like to use these days to do things like shop and go to restaurants because when their free time is over, they will go home and die. So you are scheduled to work when all of your friends and family are doing the beach thing, or planning their celebratory dinner at the restaurant right next to yours. And on your days off, nothing is open, because you get the slow days off. The days when it is not cost effective to be open. The days when all your competition are also closed down and you have to stay at home and get caught up on your movies.

You can adapt around this. Obviously going to that hot new restaurant is out. But, as you have been hearing stories about this restaurant for months now, and your only reason for going would be to attend the train wreck in progress (As of right now, the disaster indicators are paying waitstaff in excess of $600 a week, plans to be open seven days a week from eight till late, HUGE, HUGE floor, owner with no plans of working kitchen/floor duties--as indicated by the presence of three kids under five--and total inability to get appetizers out during free appetizer night. Closing-Restaurant-gossip rocks) this is not a huge loss from your life. HOWEVER, this does leave you relatively unprepaired for the unmigitated fluster-cluck of holiday service.

Which brings us to mother's day. Originally created to celebrate the womb that birthed us and the very real human being in charge of said womb, and currently used to sell cards, flowers and very expensive dinners to justify ignoring Mom the rest of the year. Our restaurant has declined to be open tonight (THANK. GOD.) and did brunch instead.

The lunch crowd is not an improvement. Oh, we survived. Don't get me wrong. And aside from a long adrenaline rush and aching legs, there was nothing notable about it. No, it was the days leading up to it that sucked.

The fluster cluck began three days ago. Thursday. Our slow day. Not at all slow. The phone rings at four oh-two (we open at 5 pm. The idea time for the phone to ring IMHO is 4:30. This means tables. 4:02 means OH FUCK WHO IS ON CALL why are they not calling WE ARE GOING TO DIE). It is answered cautiously.

"Are you doing anything special for Mother's Day?"

This confuses me. First of all, my restaurant is not exactly Joe's Crab Shack. There are several dishes that are worth crawling over hot coals for, and if you like wine, we have some pretty incredible selections. We can also make sake do things that sake cannot normally do (this gets around our lack of liquor license). But I assume that Mother has already been here and would like something super extra to jump up her life.

"We're running brunch out of our (outdoor) stand."

Pause. "What about dinner?"

"We're going to be closed for dinner."

Pause. "Okay." Longer pause.

*Deep breath before customer can regroup* "We will be having Eggs Benedict (and trimmings) along with (lunchity items not normally served in outdoor stand) in addition to the outdoor stand menu." And I hope desperately that they have been to Stand and know the menu.

No such luck. "And that is?"

There are several jobs I need to be doing right now. Including getting both restaurant AND Stand ready for customers. "Several kinds of coffee, (Fancy fried doughnuts), (fancy french sandwich), (fancy bagel preparation) and adult beverages if you come after ten." Thank god for Texas blue laws. If I had to deal with mimosa orders at eight am I would probably start drinking them and throwing things at the customers.

"Can you give me more detail?"

I tried, twice, burning about five minutes each time. Now, normally you would think that five minutes on a customer call isn't bad. But that was ten minutes I needed, desperately, to do basic set up work, spent on people who would not show up on Sunday. You can always tell. The people who will show up start foaming at the mouth at the mention of the fancy doughnuts and the Eggs Benedict. The people who won't say "is that all you have?" and get you to  repeat yourself in the desperate hope that your litany will change.

Then a caller got our owner.

Our owner is one of those spectacular people that you underestimate on first meeting because she looks nice. And outside of the restaurant, she is nice. There is a whole shelf of books spread behind the celebrity booth (friends of Owner only. It doesn't matter if we are cramming two-tops into the bathroom seats, you have to ask her before anybody goes back there) and it is approximately 1/2 cookbooks, 1/2 Kurt Vonnegut. She also has a large collection of oil paintings of pills. There is a fascinating story attached and she will tell you the first chance she gets. But if you are inside the restaurant, god help you.

One of the more interesting floor shows is when one of Owner's friends shows up for dinner. Owner has special people who we are not allowed to take money from, ever. My mother is one of these people. I once poured a glass of Riesling that wasn't properly cooled, and gave it to Mom. She paid for it. Owner told me if I ever took money from my mother again, she'd fire me. She was only half joking. Unfortunately this particular friend is the kind of person who likes to give gifts and/or spend money on her friends. She delights in taking me and my mother out for pricey sushi and she popped my sake cherry long before I came to work for Owner. The last time she ate here I went back to Owner and said (wild eyed and a little desperately. This was not our first run-in) that Friend wanted to pay for her meal. After a few moments of deliberation, Owner told me to just charge for the alcohol, and only because she didn't know the third person Friend had brought with her (the second was, of course, my mother.)  I brought them their check, set it down gingerly, ran back to my post and waited for the invariable "Oh, HELL no."

Fortunately, Owner was right there. Force, meet object. I stayed out of the way.

So Owner is a little stubborn, and also a little volatile. Even more unfortunately for our "menu" caller, this has been a particularly bad day for her. Owner had the roof of our deck removed, no fuss, little mess, but the posts that are left still have old lumber stuck on them and don't look very nice. She wants a privacy fence added and the left over roof bits removed. Today the guy she hired for post removal has finished, four days over schedule (he charged by the day) and he added his broken chainsaw blades to the total because, in his words, "there were nails."

He also left the mess for her to clean up. Bad idea. I could hear her from the front desk.

At this point I am desperately running ice between our water cooler (AKA the Tin Can) and our ice machine. I'm not strong enough to carry the whole thing and I don't like getting Dishman to do it. He's got enough to do. Also, he's not here and if I wait for him, I will forget. So I miss the first part of this call. Then I hear her giving our hours and a brief summery of the menu.

And then I hear a pause. It is the kind of pause one feels when the tsunami crests and has begun to fall towards you. And then I hear "No. I am not going to read you the whole menu." Said very calmly.

I can hear just a little of the other caller.  Someone has shouted at Owner. I set down the ice and listen.

"I do not have the TIME to read you our whole menu. It is posted OUTSIDE, beside our door, and you can come by and read it anytime."

She can also make a wireless handset make noise when hung up. I was not entirely sure this was possible.

"The next time someone does this," She told me, "you say that we are busy." And she repeats the call, and her response, verbatim, to every regular she sees. Everyone laughs. All of our regulars know the Owner.

I have gotten very good at saying "we are busy". In the middle of Friday night I say this four or five times, juggling salad plates, lettuce and the handset. Number two says, "I know you are very busy, but," and continues to ask questions about our dress code. We've had millionaires come in flip flops. If you can pay for the food, there isn't one. 

Then I get the person who thinks we are an all you can eat buffet. And who refuses to be disabused of this, no matter how much I explain. "What do you mean you charge by the item?"

"You order at the shack. You pay at the shack. You sit at a free table and we call out your order."

Pause. "But...how much is it a person?"

I think I have finally hit the nadir of stupidity (not counting Train Wreck: The Restaurant) but this happens twice more. Then the night is over, and I must race around to get the Shack ready for Saturday, which I expect to be particularly grinding.

Owner has other ideas. She sits down with my brother, my mother, a canister of strawberry puree, several kinds of syrup and a bottle of champagne. She calls me over and hands me something with a strawberry stuck on the rim. It is official Champagne Tasting Time. I discover that strawberry puree is good, rose syrup and sugar cubes are better, and that she used too much orange petal water and turned the champagne into perfume. "We won't do that on Sunday," she says.

I then discover that restocking food is difficult, when done on three glasses of champagne. Also, someone has hidden our ham. This is not good. I need the ham. It is when I begin tearing strips off the destined-for-soup bone left over from last week that I realize, my beans-and-rice binge at four wore off about five thirty, and I just drank three champagne cocktails on an empty stomach. The ham bone will begin talking to me any minute. I guestimate that I have enough ham for five fancy sandwiches, locate enough mint for twenty iced teas or two sake mohitos, and decide to leave before the ham and I have a stimulating conversation.

I still don't know why people choose to do that recreationally.

Next morning I wake bright eyed and bushy tailed. Being drunk agrees with me, which is sad. I have pledged never to do it again. And having valiantly survived Mother's Day with only one more glass of Sangria to alleviate the crushing pain, and no more notable morons (other than Train Wreck: The Restaurant's owner coming by for a pep talk from Owner. Floor show was particularly good this time around) I can now curl up with Hamburger Helper and a piece of chocolate pie.

God bless capitalism. It's a great show.

Naked Retreat

So I entered a contest by Janet Reid, and won a new audio book. And still can't quite believe it. 

However, as a writing exercise,  I decided to take my Award Winning Story (BTW I feel like the dad from A Christmas Story. All I need is the goddamn leg lamp and I'll be right there. It's an award, damn it. IT'S A MAJOR AWARD!!!) and flesh it out a bit...meaning that the opening paragraph is the part that won, and the rest of it is me trying to understand the kind of characters the story made. I had three specific characters in mind when I started, and wound up with three kind of almost-the-same characters when I finished it ... and oh just read the goddamn story already.

Comment if you love me. Or the story. Same difference.

*dies*

85 dozen doughnuts.

Somebody ordered 85 dozen doughnuts. For the next two weeks.

This is one thousand and twenty individual pieces of fried dough. This is also on top of what I normally make for the store. You remember a couple days ago when I ranted about SI and acute stress? This is that.

What's interesting is this little side drama that comes with. See, my boss doesn't want to do this order. In reality we are doing half of what the customer wants. It's a catering company and one of her customers is a refinery. Our store boss really wants to (it's a three hundred dollar order with potential to be six) and one of the gee-I-wanna-supervise ladies really REALLY wants to do it. The only other time the woman has been in this good of a mood is when we failed our sanitation audit. She will do whatever it takes to ensure this order gets done, up to and including sacrificing her days off to help, and when she's here, she talks about two subjects:

1. How much this order could bring and how happy the customer is with us (apparently it is too much work for another store. Dude. If I can manage to fry eighty-five-dozen doughnuts in one night, YOU can fry them too. And sorting them out into boxes for the customer should not be too much work. This woman is paying you three hundred dollars, which is more than you can expect to make on store doughnuts in a single day.)

2. How little confidence our boss has in her staff. Which I agree with, but I think her reluctance to do this order lies less in no confidence in staff and more in not wanting to run the logistics for making this work. We basically have to double our order for doughnut supplies, doughnuts and boxes, and arrange for help to box (and god it would be so nice if we had someone to help fry). The order WILL pay for the supply increase, so the only work for the boss is ordering the doughnuts and arranging the schedule so someone is there to help me every night.

Have I mentioned yet, that I have run out of doughnuts at some point for three weeks in a row? Yes, one time they were on a pallet in another department's freezer (as they were tonight when my helper discovered them. On the bottom no less.)

In reality, I don't care. I stopped caring at about two a.m. last night when I forgot about how my shoes don't go all the way under my pants and I dribbled hot grease through my sock. (ow) The social dynamic in my workplace is so dysfunctional, it makes my family (including my alcoholic racist aunt and alcoholic OCD racist step-father) look like a model for healthy mental development, and it just got more interesting. And for once, it's not pointed at me. So as long as I can keep up with the workload (see title of post) I can just sit back and watch the show.

Yes. I am a bitch. Not a miserable one, though. Rather pleased and self-satisfied, actually.

Peace. Out.

Sometimes I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE my job

Oh, it's not that it sucks eggs (though it does) but for some reason I have been DYING of boredom. My usual cure for falling asleep over the doughnuts has been buying new music. Problem is ... this is not working as well anymore. I have discovered new bands for painting (Abney Park. Holy flying awesome STEAMPUNK BAND!!!) but nothing to keep me awake while I'm making soggy, fried, teeth rotting bread (have I mentioned lately how FUCKING SICK OF DOUGHNUTS you get when you do it for a living? Because you get fucking sick of them. My dad will pick me up if I buy them for him, and I would rather walk back to my apartment in the rain than encourage the sale of teeth rotting doughnuts. I have glaze on my fucking ear again, I swear to God.)

Evil. Sugary, sugary evil.

Well, out of desperation two nights ago I discovered that my MP3 player has audiobook samples, and one of them was Duma Key. I love Stephen King and I loved the ink out of Duma Key, and I discovered that a five minute sample of a Stephen King novel is TOO FUCKING SHORT. I came very close to having to buy an eighth MP3 player, I was that irritated. So to make a long, boring OMG get me away from the computer I am too tired to be writing now, story short, I am going to test-drive audiobooks for a while to see if that can keep me entertained while I hunt down new music. Or let the old music dry off a little bit so I can go back to it once I'm done listening to Duma Key.

And my Trainee is surviving. I am very surprised. It's like having a potted plant and figuring that you're going to come back one day and find this crispy dry thing in the corner, you forgot to water it for a week, only to discover that its worked its way through the foundation and is draining the city water from a leaky pipe somewhere.

If this goes according to plan, I will only need to fry doughnuts twice a week. (please god let it go according to plan I do not want to do this anymore please). Also, somebody needs to invent wrist braces that you can wear when you're doing food service work. There HAS to be a way to sanitize them.

I'm going to go die now.

Dear Universe

Thank you very much for the multiple gifts sent my way these past few days. LOSING MY CELL PHONE has been a lovely adventure, I never knew trash bins could store so much. Also walking in the tropical storm because our parental unit is in Tulsa is an invigorating experience. Perhaps when you return our cell phone you could also send the umbrella back with it?

However, not to complain about the gift-giving you have preformed, and not to imply that I am not grateful for the new bakery trainee, but if one must provide a "new person" who is old enough to be my mother, could she at least have learned the value of LISTENING TO DIRECTIONS? I get that we only get three days together, Universe, and that it was quite important for her to get these things on her own, but my god I have never seen anybody work so hard and accomplish so little. She is going to quit by Sunday, I swear to God.

ALSO, the woman who almost ran me over because she was fucking with her GPS as she pulled out of the parking lot? AND NEVER LOOKED UP AT ALL EVEN AT ONCE? I do not wish her death, or even serious bodily injury, but can she please total that fucking red BMW? Jesus Christ people PEDESTRIANS HAVE THE RIGHT-OF-WAY, LOOK UP FROM YOUR ELECTRONIC DEVICES OR BETTER YET TURN THE FUCKERS OFF YOU CAN DRIVE BETTER WITHOUT THEM THANK YOU.

(And the cool, totally top-secret thing that happened yesterday? That's a God thing, not a Universe thing. So thank you God. :D)

Writerly ... stuff

I've been revising (again) in the hopes that perhaps people will like the revised version a bit better. Trying to get a book published is a lot like fishing, in that you get to bait a lot of hooks and reel in bupkiss while the mosquitoes suck you dry. I must repeat to myself, it's business, it's only business, it's not supposed to be pretty and they're not supposed to like you. It's just really hard not to take a form rejection personally. If writing = business, there are two kinds of product: Good, which sells, and sucky, which does not sell. A form rejection means I suck. End. Of. Fucking. Story.

But that's not what I wanted to discuss/ ramble about. In my internet wanderings I ran into Laurel K. Hamilton's blog, and one of her posts irritated me enough to rant. So here we go.

One of the fun things about revising is being able to take a scene apart, figure out what I was trying to do with it and then try to figure out how to make it better. I have no problem taking a scene and making it worse. A little more tense, a little more extreme. Something I've played a lot with the last six months or so is just using body language to convey emotion. Rather than "The blank made her nervious," write "The blank sat there with blankety running down its sides. She felt the spit dry on the back of her tongue." I have no idea how much more effective that is, but it means I have to spend a lot of time role-playing what my characters do. Even if it's just eyes closed, hands on keyboard, wandering around hallways in my mind. I have to feel something of what my characters feel emotionally so I can work out what they would feel or do physically.

One thing I have no problem doing, though, is shutting that off when I'm done with it and moving on. My characters aren't friends, my world isn't real, it's a fun box I can take stuff out of and play with, and then put everything back into when I'm done. Part of this, I think, is because I know exactly where I'm going with this, and it's hard to, say, feel scared for WBR's protagonist when I know she's gonna have a (relatively) happy ending. But most of it is, I don't go for creative bullshit.

Fiction writing is fake. My characters, all of them, are little psychological constructs that are plot dependent, just as the plot is character dependent (IE situation a requires weak link represented as character A) and if I don't have the capacity to alter them at will, as required by book/story/editor/reader/whatever, then I am not doing my job. I do not speak for my characters, I am not the voice of my own invention. In fact, I would say that when I write for somebody other than me, I am not doing something creative with words. I'm doing something creative with you.

A writer who is effective plays their audience like a violin. Or to put it more bluntly, when you read what I write and it has an impact with you, I am fucking with you. I am screwing with your emotions and your mind, making you have the reactions that I want you to have. In the beginning you become interested. In the middle, you may laugh, you may cry, you may become angry, but if I am doing my job, you are doing what I want you do to, thinking what I want you to think, believing what I want you to believe. And in the end, you ought to close the book thinking, simultaneously "That was a good ride" and "I'mbackonplanetearththankyougod (post roller-coaster ground-kiss) I wanna go again. Later. Like, tomorrow." and you wind up re-reading select passages a few hours later. Ideally, of course. The primary goal of a novel is to take the reader's virgin mind and do a great many things to it, hopefully enjoyable.

IMHO, a writer who places anything over reader reaction in the writing hirearchy has lost the plot. Even if all you're writing is a teaching manual, your goal should be expressing the idea to the reader. If you're writing horror, the reader should be horrified. A mystery ... whee, you really get to jack with your reader there. Fantasy should be exhillerating and scary as hell. Sci-fi should have a sense of wonder and speculation. Christian fiction should express Christian ideals, as should any other religious novel. 

The absolute last thing an author should do is fuck with themselves. It is not shallow to be able to set your tools down and move on. It's sane. First, because reality is a demanding, bitter, nasty bitch that requires your full attention, and who probably considers your novel to be a nasty two dollar ... yeah, we really shouldn't carry the sex metaphor any further than that. Second, because if you go pro, you have to deal with little things called "editors". Who may require you to kill significant portions of your book. I'm not talking about your darlings. I'm talking about their families, right down to their second cousins. And if you've gotten yourself so wrapped around your fictional universe you don't want to hurt your little babies, your boss might go "Well, that debut novelist is really more co-operative" (or if you are debut, "That midlister is much easier to work with"). Pro writing is a job. Half of the paycheck is to create something. The other half is earned by murdering significant portions of that something so that it is made better and more appealing to a general audience.

And for the record, I have to wonder just how deeply one really can "feel" a novel, as LKH's stuff is the shallowest stuff I've read in a really long time.

Short Post

Dear Employer/co-workers/customers (may you all rot in hell for all eternity):

1. If one has sudden orders from corporate re: doughnut case that involves rearranging shelves and cutting storage areas and otherwise doing bizzare things to my workspace, LEAVE ME A FRICKIN' NOTE, Kay? I mean, you do that every time you decide you don't want to break down the freezer load, which adds fifteen minutes because they always put the doughnuts on the bottom of a shitload of boxes. Also, explain what the mystery dough is, and what I am supposed to do with it. Otherwise it will go in the oven for 15 mins at 380 F with fifteen seconds steam, just like everything else. Because if I don't cook it you will chew me out for leaving work for somebody else (kinda like when you leave the frozen load for me to fuck with)

2. I know you only have two settings: Humming and "Where's my glasses?" What you may not realize is that both are annoying, and squeeking is not an acceptable alternative. Also, I have just worked an eight hour shift overnight, whereas you just got on shift five minutes ago. I DO NOT KNOW WHERE YOUR FRICKIN' GLASSES ARE.

3. It is three am. No, I will not place your cake order for eight a.m. tomorrow, as tomorrow is TODAY and you missed our deadline. Also, TAKE YOUR CHILDREN HOME. THANK YOU.

Happy Birthday Rejectionist + Essay

First off, if all one of you are not reading Rejectionist religiously, convert post haste and begin reading. She is funny, she is spectacular, she is an agency assistant which means I must find some way to bribe with shippable foodstuffs (Preferably whiskey filled chocolates).

 This stuff.

She's having a Birthday Uncontest, which I guess is related to an Unbirthday Contest somewhere (probably via Alice eating the wrong side of the mushroom) and has decreed that all us loyal slaves readers shall write an essay on a predetermined subject, and that subject is ... "What Form Rejection Means to Me"

Your reaction. Sorry.

And you just rolled your eyes because you already know what I'm going to talk about here. So I'm going to start off with a story I have not repeated to ANYBODY, ever. Deepest, darkest, soul buried secrets, unveiled for the universe to see, point and laugh at.

I was a huge slacker when I went to a normal school. Back then I thought it was because I was a failure and  there wasn't much point in trying. In reality, I was bored. As a homeschooler I got to read whatever I wanted, study whatever I wanted, WRITE whatever I wanted, and as a consequence, I was diagramming sentences and reading the encyclopedia for fun when I was nine, playing at what I now recognize as fan fiction, and doing many arts and crafty stuff in my bedroom, which usually looked like a tornado had gone through a Christmas wrapping plant and a yarn factory. Also, dates and names bored me, and history and science in that school were little more than a recitation on who made what discovery and why.

They wouldn't let me get away with this, either.

So when we had to choose a Project (I still don't remember what the fuck this was, exactly) I delayed until the last possible minute and settled on science fair. Initially, I was going to repeat an old experiment from a homeschooling book where you mixed supersaturated salt- and sugar-water, as well as that blue crystal stuff, and stuck them in different temperatures to see which one grew faster (salt and sugar grow fastest in fridge, the other stuff grows fastest in the oven. Totally contrary to my hypothesis. Rocking Awesome). However, I decided this was too non-creative ... and I also ran out of time. I read the guidelines I'd been given, figured out that nothing said it had to be an experimental, and spent the next week or so studying, researching and basically obsessing over monarch butterflies. My display won second, and qualified me to go to the regional competition.



Suddenly, I was excited about school. Here was something I did reasonably well, as judged by the science fair committee. Here was evidence that I had brains! Here! Was! Proof! That my family could be proud of me! Somehow! That I could do more than read! (a full sized novel a day, at thirteen, which made my mom grumble because she was tired of buying me books and/or driving me to the library) This was great!

I redid my display, made it look better, and had my mom look over everything. She assured me it was perfect. We went to the regional competition (and missed Crazy Hat Day back at school, which sucked. I had made a real crazy hat, peacock feathers and all) I stood proudly beside my in-depth study of monarchs. The judges came by, looked at the maps, the text, and the little butterflies I'd pinned everywhere, and asked me where the hypothesis was.

It turned out that I was one year too old to get away with a display sans-experiment and this fact was mentioned nowhere in the information our school had been given. I should have been disqualified at the school level and was not. I got a green ribbon at regional, an honorable mention. The only one in the entire competition. Everybody else placed. Hundreds of other students placed. I think my ribbon came off somebody's purse, now that I think of it. I threw all of it into the trash on my way back home, and I don't think I tried hard at anything else that year. I figured I'd just fail anyway. There'd be a line or something I skimmed over, something I didn't check. Even if I did do well and I was good enough, it'd get sabotaged somewhere along the line, either by my own stupidity or chance. I passed with a C average. The only time anybody in that school discussed anything with me, good or bad, was the day after my Dad kept me and my brother out of school so we could go to flea markets (his idea. I spent the whole day being sick inside the car). The principal asked me what my problem was.

Whenever I get rejection from anything, I feel like I'm thirteen and I've got that goddamn ribbon in my hand again. I feel like it will never matter how hard I try, or what I do, there will always be someone who does it better than me. Someone who has figured out what "Good enough" is. They have the training, or the experience, or that little extra "umph", and I will always be outside, the imitator, the second rate. Not worth the time for a reason. Maybe it's because I suck. Maybe it's because I read the directions wrong. Nobody cares, and they're right not to. I should have done the work, I should have tried harder. I should have revised eight times instead of just seven.

I guess my reaction is betrayal. (and I know I've discussed this before, I'm sorry) that ... you know, there's an unwritten rule that your family checks you over before you go out in public. Make sure you don't have toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoes.

Or, ya know, other places too.

Yet when we start doing creative stuff, our family stops doing their job. Like when I started focusing on my art, I would bring my work to my mom for critique, and she'd say it was lovely. It didn't matter if I sucked or if it really was good. It was lovely. Obviously, now I can paint. Kind of. But ... you know, can I really trust it? If they say the same stuff now that they did back when I really sucked at it ... how do I KNOW if it's any good? Yes, I'm getting more good compliments than bad, now ... but does that really mean anything? How do I know that I don't just really, really suck?

Same thing goes for my writing. I give it to my family and my friends so they can go "Hey, this part doesn't make sense. You need to fix it!" And I get it back, unmarked, with good reviews. So my little heart is glowing and my little brain is floating, and I show it to a professional, because my family made SURE that everything was wonderful. You know, they're your family. They wouldn't let you go outside in gold lame' pants, so surely they wouldn't say your writing was good when it actually isn't.

There is, of course, a natural result.

After the crying, I revise and give it BACK to my family, saying "You REALLY don't have to worry about my feelings. Just critique." And I get it back. Glowing reviews. So I show it to another professional, who kindly points out that he's getting a totally different ending than what I intended.

Dry tears. Revise. Bring it back, crawling on hands and knees, with a small supply of red Sharpie pens and a plea of "Please do not worry about hurting my feelings. Please tell me what I need to fix today." Mother leaves several messages on cell phone throughout first reading that consist of heavy breathing, the words "Oh My God" and "Bestseller" dotting the incoherent mess like islands in a sea of spooge. I seriously do not feel it is safe to listen to these messages, given that this is my MOTHER and there are certain lines our little brains ought not cross. Father reads it, opens every single conversation post-read with "So have you gotten any offers yet?" and tells me I am an "idiot" a "ding-a-ling" and "hysterical" for being less than enthusiastic in my answers ("Dad, I'm serious. I don't think anything's going to happen. Ever. It's just not ... something enough." "Well, then you're an idiot.")

Take one last shot, package everything up, and receive the by-now predictable result. Short-term kindness, short-term ego trip, long term crying jag. "You're there! You're ready! STOP WORKING ON IT AND JUST SEND IT OUT ALREADY!" *send* *rejection*. And me looking at my support system and wondering why I should even bother giving them another chance at supporting my career and not just my ego.

But wait! There are professional authors who are willing and able to give good advice! So let's go to them! And work with them! For months and months and months at a time! And they tell me it's ready, and ...

...I stop. Because if my mom would lie to me about my writing ability, why the fuck should I trust somebody on the internet/in a writer's group/total random stranger? Maybe they don't want to hurt my feelings either? Maybe they're as genuinely nice as they seem on the internet and they decided the best thing they could do is polish the shit out of that turd, except you can't really do that because then it dissolves into a lot of little tiny pieces, which makes flushing a lot easier but doesn't really help when you have a BOOK. So they lied too. Of course they would. All genuinely nice people lie. After all, my mom lied.

Okay. Hire a book editor. Surely that will help! Surely he won't lie to me.

... unless he happens to be a scam artist, and making me feel good is how he makes sure he gets paid.

So a form rejection, which basically says "not for us," leaves me wondering WHY is it not for "us"? Is it because I screwed up and you don't look at my genre? Is it because I screwed up and left a couple of typos? Is it because the plot makes no sense? Too fast paced? too slow? Too much description? not enough? Is it completely and totally nothing more than a giant, polished and steaming turd, or is it ALMOST there, and if I had just worked on it another six months you'd take it? What did I do wrong? Obviously whomever I query is too busy to explain (justifiably so, as they have another six hundred queries to answer) and I must work this out on my own. Also just as obviously, I can't see it on my own. So to whom must I go for help?


Mom. Dad. Other assorted people who have read it and told me that it's READY TO GO three versions ago.

...yeah, fuck this shit. Book, go in trash. I'll just get started on the next one.