Becoming The Overman

AS YOU CAN SEE, I am now--as of today--an employee of Ruby Tuesday in Smithfield, North Carolina, where I will fill the position of server. My brother, not near the overman as I am, is a bartender at this same store....this could very well cause problems that any intuitive reader can see.

I spent seven hours there today, from 0900 to 1600, most of which was spent sitting in a wooden stool with a low back watching video after useless video (and by video I really mean a VHS) on a small screen suspended by metal bars from the ceiling; it was while watching this that I realized how much smaller of a scale Ruby Tuesday works in lateral comparison to, oh say, Outback Steakhouse, with their training DVD's on High-Definition televisions the size of walls. There were three others with me, so I was not alone in the physical sense, but I assure you we did not speak, so....

There was a young girl, immature and with too much eye shadow on, training to become an SPG (a.k.a. the Smiling People Greeter, a.k.a. the host/hostess); a blond southern boy whom I believe I had met somewhere before, and who laughed at my jokes when I told them, training to work in Take-Out; last there was a very young looking mexican boy who wore his dress shirt unbuttoned just a little too much so that you could see his wife-beater, his sleevs rolled up, training to become, just like me, a server. A very good looking young guy, I imagined he would do well with just that.

I only began noticing these things as we sat along a round table, with Fred the Manager on the opposite end of me, the girl to my right and the mexican boy, Jose, to my left, followed by the other boy. As we sat there and Fred the Manager read from our book of papers an inch thick the restaurant began to fill up with customers as the doors opened, and there I was for all to see--a common trainee wearing what I'm told and doing what is asked. I imagined, to soothe my pains, that people would think I were there to inspect Fred the Manager's training abilities. That perhaps I made the big money, that I was important, and that anybody who's anybody could see that was true when they looked at me and who I was.

I endulged in the fantasy for the longest time.

Eventually, I like to think Fred thought I had a pleasant speaking voice, for he asked me to read so that he didn't have to...and I did, pausing only to let him add. This, of course, did not help my visions of vanity.

Eventually, we were told to follow around somebody in our field. I was assigned to a ver impersonal woman who I knew immediately was a tramp, and I mean that in the sense of an all-around wretchedly indifferent woman. She began to mention to customers that she was pregnant, and I realized that she simply looked fat--she sat down when she wished "for the sake of the baby." I eventually left her and attempted to find my way alone, which I did, for everything tended to work just as it did at Outback, the only difference being that this place was much, much easier to be in.

After the end of the seventh hour, Fred the Manager asked for me to stay and work the night shift as well, helping anywhere I could, running food, and playing gopher (you know, gopher this, gopher that). I said I would need to call my mother to find out if I was avaliable and walked through the rain to my car, where I sat long enough to seem like I made a phone call, and came back inside. I lied and said it was my mother and father's 20th anniversary and that they needed me to watch the kids. A wicked lie, I am the youngest in our family, but he will never know lest he asks my brother, Tyler the Bartender. He won't, though.

I start again tomorrow at 1100 and will work all day; I believe this may be the beginning of something large and long-lasting, so I will try not to flirt too much, for my own sake.