soup is good food (463 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.66 on 9 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by <Art> (View user info) at 2006-11-29 21:46:56 EST
Working at a high scale restaurant is a taxing job for us laborers. Just like any faceless machine in this country, ironically their business flourishes based on aesthetics. As I sit on a creaky bar stool out back I hear an order being rang up.
Ah, the French onion soup. I always grin as I bring the customers their food, if you can call it that; it has nothing to do with my tip, and everything to do with the puzzled looks of bewilderment I receive. Little do they know all of the soup is poured from the same vat. Just nuke some in the microwave and you have a seven dollar bowl of smoke and mirrors.
A lot goes on behind closed doors, sometimes I don't know how the owners can live with themselves.
Looking out through the kitchens massive swinging doors with submarine windows makes me wretch, as I watch the animals stuff their gullets with vapid waste disguised as fine dining.
Every so often I check up on the kid's room. This would be less of a problem if the ages weren't so mixed. You have five and six year old angels that will leisurely stare at the medusa box for hours.
Freezing the intellect of the older kids becomes a bit of a problem as they are the esoteric few, the one eyed men in the valley of the blind. Since they're all forced to congregate in the same room I've bestowed upon myself the role of alpha male, much to the chagrin of these gremlins. I decide to play a quick round of cemetery with the lot. All lay quiet and still; the first to move loses the game.
At this point I was feeling rather clever and my migraine was beginning to fade, until I looked down at the floor, at a bare spot, seemingly staring right through me, as if the empty space were the only focus with substance.
"Where is that little wiener in the green sweater?"
Crap, I could hardly tell if these kids were breathing, let alone pump them for information. Either they were being uncanny smartasses or they were really enjoying the game. Panic swept over me as I ran frantically through the restaurant.
As soon as I made my appearance in to the dining room I immediately had every set of eyes on me, mentally screaming "get me the check already" or "grovel in my presence bourgeois scum". Just as soon as all of these thoughts began penetrating my mind, I hear a very faint and distant giggle. I turned around to see the kitchen doors swinging ever so slightly, and I began to flee the room before making eye contact with any patrons. I went through the swinging doors in to the kitchen, and checked all of the hot spots.
If I was a kid, where would I go? The words "buttons, hot, shiny, and sharp" all came to mind like a tidal wave of monolithic proportions. I don't know quite what happened at this point, but from my minds perspective my body decided to run in four or five directions simultaneously.
The child was nowhere to be found, and I was dreading the end of the night. The last ditch effort was to check the outside freezer. The second freezer is not attached to the restaurant and is directly out back near the dumpsters, usually locked except during business hours. I opened the metal fire door and hoped beyond all hope that I would find a sickly green rug rat that got in to the wedding cake of the newly wed Estevez family.
Instead I was confronted with a hollow chill and the stale, chemical stench of the nearby dumpster. Coming up empty-handed, I began easing my way back in to work mode. I see that a younger waitress, Alice, has taken it upon herself to mask my shortcomings with children by deciding to watch over the tykes alone.
"It looks like I'm off the hook, but what about her?" I thought to myself. Can I live with what I know when I'm alone behind closed doors?
*Ding*. It looks like another order is up. The French onion soup seems to be a popular choice tonight. Sluggishly I made my way over to the largest vat. The steam was billowing up and out to a degree that I have never witnessed in all my years behind the culinary cuisine scene. The smoke detector would most definitely had been going off, had the owner not instructed us to remove the batteries from all of the grease fires and accidents that would've sent a room full of sloth's out the door and up the largest tree their lazy asses could climb.
The temperature is usually alarmingly high, so I decided it must just be an extenuating circumstance, and since soups should be hot to begin with I continued, grasping a nearby ladle and a small bowl fresh from the dishwasher. As I began pouring, I stared off in to the distance, suddenly wondering if this moment is all there is to life. Times like this seem all too common to me, and perhaps it's human conditioning to accept mundane life as inevitability to the shackles of a consumer driven lifestyle.
I snapped out of my state of mentation and looked down in to the bowl. I reached down with my thumb and my index finger, making a small claw. I pinched at something, something that seemed to have absorbed quite a bit of onion broth.
A shoelace? I've seen, colonies of hair, bodily fluids, and even the occasional rubber band, but how could a shoelace possibly make its way in to the..
"Hey! You have a table waiting on their food!" It was Alice.
I can't quite explain the mixed feelings of epiphany with dread. My heart was beating faster than it ever has, yet was skipping every other beat.
"By the way.." she inquired, "Have you seen a small boy running around? I just double checked the list for the nursery and I'm short one."
"Oh man, really?" I gulped and tried to sound as comforting and nonchalant as possible. "I'm sure he's around here somewhere, did you check the bathrooms?" And with that she was off.
Quickly I lifted the steaming vat and dragged it outdoors, where I dumped the bubbling brew in to a nearby sewer. Out he came, in pieces. Everything was either melted in to something else or simply non-existent. I couldn't bear to stand how pervasive the steaming dish was in its exploration of this innocent youth's body.
I realized that time was of the essence, and the sooner he was out of my hands, the better. I looked over towards the dumpsters and a sadistic smirk crossed my lips.
"I could get away with this yet!" I whispered to myself as I dragged the small body across the gravel on to an unassembled cardboard box.
"Fuck!" the dumpster was locked.
Stricken with panic I sought a Plan B, and sooner rather than later, my eye caught the freezer. The plan was brilliant. Stash the poor sap for the time being, and deal with the problem the next chance you get.
The freezer was chock full of animal hides, upside down, and inside out, disheveled on hooks. I found a vacancy, a discreet little nook, and with a swift downward motion, my meat locker angel was floating on a hook. My new friend fit right in, and now I can't stop licking my fingers...
User Reviews
Submitted by LongestPants (user info) at 2006-12-03 17:04:31 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I barely read this post.
I just like french onion soup.
Submitted by _God (user info) at 2006-12-03 16:24:29 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by Falafel (user info) at 2006-11-29 23:12:56 (#)
Ranking: 1
I demand you redo this with an attached picture of the soup nazi
Agreed.
No 2 for you!
Submitted by lungfish (user info) at 2006-12-03 16:04:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
But this was good.
Submitted by IntangibleHands (user info) at 2006-11-30 07:03:29 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 because it's one of my favorite Dead Kennedys songs.
Submitted by sexualchocolate1984 (user info) at 2006-11-30 06:02:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
This could have been a +2 but I totally missed the whole how the kid dies bit, so you find a shoelace in the soup, then all of a suddon you have a dead kid? In the vat of soup? In the bowl of soup? In the drain that you pour the hot soup into? WHERE IS THE DEAD KID!
Apart from that (which could have been my skim reading missing a couple of words) this was good.
Submitted by Falafel (user info) at 2006-11-29 23:12:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
I demand you redo this with an attached picture of the soup nazi.
Submitted by ilikesteak (user info) at 2006-11-29 22:38:57 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
But the real question is why didn't you put in anything by Andy Warhol?
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2006-11-29 22:15:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
totally suprised me
Submitted by garudave (user info) at 2006-11-29 22:12:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Creative.