Gretchen had a box for comment cards. You know the drill. Did you get efficient service? Was your food nice and hot? Was your food nice and hot even though you ordered ice cream? Did the server have sex with your spouse in the washroom? How was it?
I know what you're thinking. Nobody ever filled them out, right? Wrong. Lots of people filled them out, and the majority of them even had useful criticism on them. Because of this, we stopped putting them on tables.
When we did have them though, I used to write them out and stuff them into the comments box. Instead of any commentary about the restaurant though, I would talk about how I really enjoyed the poems of W.B. Yeats and compare them to Tennyson (once my friend who was an engineer put a complex math formula on one). Sometimes I would just write pure psychedelia. Stuff like "The Pink Aardvark tells me stories. I like the Pink Aardvark. The Green Elf pinches my toes. I don't like the green elf." I rarely signed these things. I didn't have to. One of the managers once came up to me and asked "Jason, why do you waste time by writing these things?" To which I said defensively "Good literature is never a waste of time! Savages."
Once, I wrote an entire song, but not on a comment card. A little background:
Being a diner, Gretchen's had a jukebox. One of the songs on this jukebox was Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. I used to like that song. Naturally, working their night after night, you heard a lot of songs on the jukebox over and over again. Servers would groan when they realized a song they liked was on the jukebox, because by the end of the shift they would hate it, having heard it 2000 times.
But there was an additional complex. Bohemian Rhapsody was added to the jukebox in 1992.
Shortly after the movie Wayne's World came out.
Oh yeah.
Every bloody teenbopper in the place just had to recreate the scene in the movie where Wayne and his pals head bang along to that song. By the way, I have notarised court documents that prove that I was listening to Queen in 1984, the year Highlander came out (Ah, Who Wants to Live Forever, One Year of Love). So those albums in my music collection are from a band wagon I jumped onto long ago, all right?I digress.One night, after hearing that song for the 6 billionth time, I snapped, and I wrote my own version of the lyrics. I typed it up on my handy Atari 520 ST (oh Atari, where did we go so wrong?) and put it in the comments box. It was discovered later that night, after the restaurant was closed. The staff read it, then went over to the jukebox, selected Bohemian Rhapsody, and began to sing along to my lyrics.Here they are.
Gretchen's RhapsodySung to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody by Freddy Mercury. Copyright 1975 by whoever owns the rights to Queen songs now (it ain't me).
Is it close yet?
No it's just 7:30
Caught in a cheap section
No 15% for me
Open your wallets
Get out some cash and tip me...
Tip me.
I'm just a poor server (poor server)
I get no sympathy
But I am overworked, underpaid
Overtired, underfed
I don't care if there's a moth in your salad,
It doesn't really matter to me
To me.
Sandy,
Just killed a customer,
Put a gun against his head,
Pulled the trigger now he's dead
Sandy
My shift had just begun,
But already I've gone and blown someone away
Sandy
Didn't mean to piss you off,
If I'm not back again this time tomorrow,
I'll be in bed, be in bed,
Because sleep really matters...
It was real late
We were almost closed
Sat a table of fifteen
In my section that was clean
Piss off everybody
My section's closed.
Gotta leave you losers behind and get some sleep
Sandy, ooo-ooo
I don't wanna work
Sometimes wish I'd never been started at all
(Passionate yet morose guitar solo)
I see a little rugrat in Chicago Bulls' hat
Scaramouch, scaramouch, will you do the Fandango?
THE FOUNTAINEER WON'T LISTEN AND THE BUSSER'S DISAPPEARED!
Gallileo, Gallileo,
Gallileo, Gallileo
Gallileo figaro
Magnifico!-
I'm just a poor server, nobody tips me
He's just a poor server with a cheap section
Spare him his sanity, cut him, be free!
Easy come easy go, will you kids go home
Fuck you! Will not go home (Go home!)
Fuck you! Will not go home (Go home!)
Fuck you! Will not go home (Go home!)
Fuck you! Will not go home (Go home!)
No, no, no, no, no, no, no
Mama mia mama mia, mama mia go home
Table 120 left a five cent tip for me, for me, FOR ME
(Head bashin' guitar solo)
So you think you can sit in my section
And spit in my eye?
So you think you can order nothing
But Pepsi and french fries?
Whoaaa mallrat
Can't do this to me mallrat
Why don't you get out, why don't you get out
Why don't you get the fuck out of here?
Nothing really matters,
The only exception I can see
My paycheque really matters,
My paycheque really matters
To me.
Anyway the wind blows...
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