I'm back and I'm employed!

I know it's been about a million years since my last post but I thought I'd post a bit of nonsense before I come back swinging.

I was away in Toronto visiting my parents over Spring Break. Upon my return I was granted a full-time position split between the local alternate school and the locally developed homeschool program.

It's been a little crazy and quite daunting getting started in my first week but things will calm down soon. I'm sure...

I also picked up a whole slew of comics over the break so I'll be coming back to review those in the next few days.

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Vesper has been posting a bit about the trials and tribulations of working in retail and I was reminded of working in the food and beverage service industry. Too often people treat those in the service industry, and retail, like slaves. We are ordinary people who have this job to: pay the rent, get through school, raise a kid, pay for an expensive habit, or, like many of the people I worked with, all of the above.

In particular, I was reminded of the old lady and the tea incident:

It was a busy Sunday. The busiest shift of the week at the restaurant I used to work at. An older couple at a table ordered drinks - he had a coffee and she ordered tea. I always prided myself on getting drinks to the table almost immediately.

I delivered the coffee, the paraphenelia (spoons, sugar, cream) and the tea to the table. The way we served tea was on a 10 inch plate with the boiling hot water in a steel tea pot with the cup laying on its side with a tea bag inside.

Upon delivering the tea the woman looked at me like I was born with a tail. "This is NOT how you serve tea!" she said with venom and derision.

I politely looked at her and said "Ma'am, this is how we serve tea."

I was desperately trying not to crack her face off of the table when she got her back up and said "Why don't you go take the tea into the back, put the bag in the cup and let it steep for a few seconds before bringing it to me?"

Having already spent way too much of my valuable time with this cretinous woman with delusions of grandeur I turned around and muttered the first thing that came to my mind as I walked away: "Burn."

She shouted "Pardon me?!"

I quickly swiveled on my feet, stared at her pompous face and said with the most rage I could muster "Burn!"

For a moment I'm pretty sure she thought she was going to burst into flames. I felt like Carrie or Drew Barrymore in Firestarter for a second and was a little frightened that I might actually set her on fire pyrokinetically.

She backed off and looked at her husband hoping he'd do something. But he, wisely, shrugged and took a sip of his coffee.