come on baby, light my fire
I thought it was going to be funny because the angry Arab manager was skulking about yelling at people and waving a box cutter. The angry Arab is not Arab but that is what people call him because he is brown and no one can understand him when he is speaking. He yells a lot. I have not given him this name. It was just funny to see this tiny man yelling unintelligible remarks and waving a weapon around.
Today was indeed very tragic.
We have a manager at Second Job who has big hair from the eighties and this woman smokes like a chimney. She is personally putting R. J. Reynolds children through college. Well, this manager that we will call Charlene fell asleep in the break room with a lit cigarette and it caught her hair on fire.
She woke up as soon as she smelled the burning and felt the flames. She came running out of the break room screaming obscenities in her horror and pain that I dare not repeat too you. If you did not know what was going on you would have laughed at this woman running across the grill area, yelling.
Well, the other manager on duty, a stern Polish woman, was filling a soda (not a pop) near the drive through when this happened and threw in Charlene�s face but missed her hair causing Charlene to put her hands in her eyes instead of beating her head frantically as she had been to put out the flames. At the same time that this happened Charlene slipped on a bun that someone (being me) had dropped on the floor and not picked up.
It was a beautiful fall, indeed my favorite kind. You know the one where they go up in the air, straighten out and land square on their back with a thud. I was standing right when it happed � she went up to about my waist before falling back down. Her head hit the ground so hard it knocked her clean out.
I poked her to see if she were awake and we checked her to see if she was breathing and she was. The Polish manager said, �I tell her �smoking will kill you. She no listen!� While we are all huddled around Charlene trying to make sure she is not a customer came up to place an order and mind you this woman witnessed Charlene�s torch run and graceless landing on the floor.
This customer, one of the �greatest generation� we all have to endure when we leave our homes says, �Do they pay you all to stand around and gawk or do you make food here?� I looked at her said, �I am paid to stand around and gawk� She said, �I am a paying customer, I want my food!� I said, �You�ll have to wait ma�am� She replied, �Oh, no, I don�t!� I said, �Guess again.� She said, �No, I don�t. I�m the customer and the customer is always right.� I said, �You are in luck! You�re not a customer until someone serves you.� They call that the greatest generation because of what the men did when they were my age and because the women have the greatest chip on their shoulder.
Finally, the ambulance that someone summoned appeared and took Charlene away � she had woken up and tried to stand but we did not let her.
The amazing thing about all of this: She still had the cigarette in her hand, she never let go of it, AND she asked if she could smoke in the ambulance. This woman, in her burned, bumped scalped glory is my new hero.
