"Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat."
-Charles Bukowski
This ran, madly, through my head during my training in a Nashville Waffle House. 24 hours earlier I had been sweating in the sauna-like heat of a Greyhound bus coming down from the Yukon enroute to Tennessee… 12 hours before my travel companion stressed waffles as our first solid food in 4 days (we quick found that The Dog only stops at bars in Canada). As I eyed the grimy yellow menu covered in disturbing caricatures of high-rung Waffle House people (why the Vice President would OK a cartoon midget-in-a-Mardi-gras-head effect to be applied to his own body is beyond me) my friend squinted over his steamy, early morning coffee and said, “You should work here.” Being homeless and broke in summer time Nashville prompted my decision, but curiosity over what it would be like sealed it.
5 hours of Waffle House videos. Safety. Service. Smile. The Waffle House Way. I sat on an upturned milk crate in the back and chain smoked Lucky Strikes while my manager rattled off a long, deadpan, script of the duties and responsibilities of Waffle House workers, “Since our beginning in 1955, Waffle House has become a Unique American Phenomenon™ by serving Good Food Fast®.” 2 hours of open book testing to assess my basic understanding of the English language and the Waffle House secret code. Customer says, “I would like hash browns with cheese, onions and tomatoes and.” I write PCTD on my pad then stand on a designated tile behind the counter and SCREAM (a competent and happy Waffle house worker also screams a ‘hullo’ to every customer who walks in the door) at the grill cook, “POTATOES COVERED TOPPED DICED!!” Who places various diner food products in very specific orders on plates (jelly packet at top right of the plate for wheat toast, bottom left for white…) instead of being given tickets.
Between coughing fits of an old smoker, my manager told me that I would be, “A real good worker” and I was thrown on the floor with no more instruction than to smile and not smoke in the front of the house. Wage is $2.13 an hour to wear brown polyester and have your ass slapped by ageing good ol’ boys with coffee stained teeth. Waffle House serves over 80 million cups of coffee every year.