Actually, I was not joking.

I think it is, at the very least, evident that most of the staff here has never worked in a high-volume restaurant, and the assumed truth that the bulk of them have even been in a restaurant of any kind, much less worked in one, is questionable at best. The employees are only a part of the problem though, I am reminded, as the reality that my salads are not finished after fifteen minutes of preparation and the reaction to it by the equally restaurant unsaavy guests at table 404 tag-team me on my way back to the kitchen. I am tempted to say that each of these elements represents half of entropy's rape of this establishment; however, there is the dilemma of the salad guy, as I've come to call him, though his proper title is probably something like pantry man, no pantry attendant--we can't be sexist in any way--or perhaps just kitchen associate, though if he can botch a salad as he can, and as slowly as he can, and as apathetically as he can, I would hope he would never transcend the pantry. But the dilemma of his presence in this place is several more grains of salt in the weighing boat on the right, the one for "lost cause" to counterbalance the grain of salt I deposited in the hopeful side to counteract that black morning chef's attitude given to me after waiting 45 minutes for two pieces of chicken he had failed to realize existed.

And then there is, of course, the secretly gay sous chef who, knowing that I know his secret and that I'm aware his former, supposedly preferential treatment of me was the result of my being young, more attractive than he ever was, and seemingly available to someone twenty years his younger, decided to be--with all due respect--an asshole to me and yelled at me for going behind the line to faciliate the dropping of the Panko-Crusted shrimp, which I assumed were not yet frying as a result of the aforementioned salad slave's incompetence. His anger makes a little more sense due to the fact that my presence behind the line was a result of his incompetence. It makes sense in magnitude anyway, if we think of it as simply as in terms of a vector; its direction was the problem all along.

I now direct your attention toward the hostess, dressed in a green, flowered skirt, gay and peaceful behind her wooden desk, her only care in the world the reversal of the constant disarray plaguing the poor, cork-backed menus and the reality that most tables don't want a wine list just because we have them. She cannot count; I have been cut for one hour and she has seat my window tables--401 through 406--four times since then, claiming first that she thought 401 was 301, then 406 601 and so on and so forth and then had the nerve to seem sympathetic when I told her a server has to clean tables that are sat even after they are gone; an ignorance so blissful need not be burdened at all by truth. Where is the bartender?

I am addressing all of this because the squeaky wheel, in my mind, gets the grease, if we conduct our lives by virtue of cliché, and as a matter of fact I do think that the Democrats are not squeaking loudly enough in Congress. Perhaps we would not be two-thousand--by "counting" anyway; what on Earth do people know about counting in the age of calculators?; look at that incompetent idiot server having to count here money using a calculator--in the hole if some wheel in there had squeaked and been greased and became part of a vehicle that could spread the truth; perhaps if I was given some grease I would not stagnate so badly here and we could all move forward instead of backward and yes, I know, the world is not near that simple, the world is not simple at all, but with the exception of myself and maybe one or two other people in here, we are among simple minds and we must move forward simply, we must end the death on our side at least so that perhaps they won't die as much too; we must at least try to sail West before abandoning ship with the unproven assumption that the world is flat. But the trick is to pull out before we are all the way in, but the Republicans just want to send it home. Sometimes, though, it's good to go all the way in, isn't that right Roxane?

A sign at the bar. My grandfather has died. I might be back later.

Surely you are joking, I say as I see blond hair, white skin, and green eyes come inside from outside. Surely you are joking.

She said nothing.

Surely you are joking, I say again.

She said nothing.