Health Inspection (Part Two)

After leaving Pedro in charge as the head waiter, and promoting Pooba to rank of sous chef, I returned to the meat freezer where I had left McPenry a few minutes earlier, minus his testicles. He was still alive – just – in the negative 40 degree chill of the freezer.

‘So, still think I’m a fool?’ I asked him, still seething over the health inspector’s eariler comment.

McPenry writhed in slow agony on the ground on the freezer, frozen icicles of blood clinging to the void between his legs. Disgusted by the sight, I decided the time had come to put him out of his misery, and I decapitated him with the aid of an icy meat hook. McPenry was no more.

I quickly stripped the corpse and donned McPenry’s regulation health inspector outfit. It was a bit loose, given the extra large nature of the garments designed to suit McPenry’s tubby frame, but other than that it was a good fit. I collected the inspection clipboard, filled with dark crosses. Finally, I trimmed off some of McPenry’s hair from his decapitated head and pasted it over my hair. I returned to the kitchen to witness Pooba’s stunned expression.

Satisfied that my disguise had fooled Pooba, I left the restaurant through the back door and progressed rapidly through the alleyway to the subway station. On the way, I observed a blind man taking a piss against some garbage cans. Normally I have nothing against blind people, but this was an obscene act to take part in near a restaurant. Luckily for me the man was blind, so he didn’t notice as I picked up a set of garden shears lying conveniently nearby and carefully trimmed the offending body part off the blind man. He was mildly peturbed by the intrusion into his urination ritual.

I reached the subway station and boarded a train to the health inspector’s offices, located two stops away. Nobody gave me a second glance as I was dressed in McPenry’s regulation inspector outfit, although the blood and semen stains covering the jacket did raise a few eyebrows in the elevator. I reached McPenry’s personal office and found a sheet to replace the one which was covered in black crosses. I carefully placed the new version (filled with ticks) into McPenry’s in tray. My work here was done.

As I left the building, I felt a buzzing in my pocket. It was McPenry’s phone! I took it out and answered the call, trying to imitate McPenry’s girly voice.

‘Hi, Henry McPenry speaking’ I said.

‘McPenry you fag, I need you to make sure the Bistro fails the health and safety test. If they aren’t closed down within a week, I’ll have your balls’ said a voice, before suddenly disconnecting.

‘Too late’ I said.

Health Inspection

There is one thing ever waiter dreads more than anything else…

And that’s waking up and finding an enormous green and yellow turd smooshed all over his face with chunks of corn in it.

Running a close second would be having a visit from the council health inspectors. That’s exactly what happened yesterday. Allow me to share my sorry tale of woe:

 Just after the busy lunch period at the Bistro, I noticed a short, tubby man wearing dark glasses stroll up to the reservation counter. I immediately thought he looked blind, so I ignored him for a couple of hours, choosing to re-varnish a few pieces of scrap metal in the kitchen instead. When I returned to the counter, I was surprised to see him still there.

‘Hello sir, sorry about the wait, I thought you were blind and had accidentally wandered into our Bistro thinking it was a guide dog clinic’

He looked at me in a furious manner.

‘No, you fool, I’m Henry McPenry, the health inspector. I’ve been given a tip-off by a member of your staff that the kitchen in your so-called bistro is filthy, swarming with fleas, cockroaches and vermin. I’ve been granted a permit to search the premises and prepare a report to Mayor Im A. Poofta’

I took great offence to being called a fool. Nobody calls me a fool, least of all some short pudgy fellow with a gay name like Henry McPenry.

‘I don’t know why you’re worried about the roaches’ I said ‘They are the special of the day’

McPenry sneered at me and dashed into the kitchen. I followed behind him, carrying a nutcracker which I had obtained from under the bar counter.

The sight that welcomed us in the kitchen did not please McPenry. True to his word, there were roaches, and large black rats gnawing on food scraps on the ground. Pedro, our sous chef, is fond of rats and often throws them scraps. In return, they generally don’t shit in any of the diner’s meals. As I walked through the restaurant with McPenry, he began making big black crosses on a sheet of paper he was carrying.

We approached the ovens, where our new apprentice was working. His name was Pooba, and he was quite a clumsy chap. He was trying to fry a gumboot sirloin, but the damned thing kept slipping out of the pan and falling onto the floor. Each time he scooped it up and tossed it back in the pan McPenry added another black cross to his list.

‘Well, I have come to the conclusion that this restaurant breaches numerous health guidelines and I shall certainly be advocating the immediate…AHHHHHHH!’

McPenry didn’t finish his sentence. With a swift movement, I applied the nutcracker to a sensitive region and extracted a small pouch of McPenry’s anatomy. I tossed the sack of flesh into Pooba’s frypan and dragged the hysterical McPenry into our meat freezer, slamming the door on him. Pedro and Pooba looked at me blankly.

‘Pooba, the gumboot sirloin will be served with mushrooms today’ I said, gesturing at the vital part of McPenry which was sizzling in the pan. ‘And Pedro, you’ll have to be the waiter this evening, I’ve got something important to do’

*** To Be Continued ***

Fresh meat

Today we had a new waiter starting work at the bistro. His name was Klaus. Being so close to christmas and all, we all had a jolly time calling him Santa Klaus. He had to wear a floppy red hat and a red nose all day.

 At about 7pm, I seated a blind man at a table in the corner. He glanced briefly at the menu and ordered the specialty of the house, gumboot sirloin.

‘Very good sir, our finest dish. Would sir like to see the wine list?’

Sir declined my offer, so I went out the back to take the order to Karlos, our gay chef.

‘Karlos,’ I began. ‘We have an order for the gumboot sirloin, medium rare’.

Karlos looked at me sadly.

‘I’m sorry, but we just ran out of gumboot sirloin!’

In the 45 years I have worked at the bistro, we have never ever run out of gumboot sirloin. In fact, we’ve never had to order it in. 45 years ago the boss accidentally ordered too much beef, and we’ve been selling the half-century old meat ever since.

‘Blast!’ I cried, not wanting to ruin the blind customer’s night. I thought about this predicament for a while, and then came up with a rather innovative solution.

 I went over to the microphone connected to the Bistro’s P.A. system and said “Santa Klaus, please call to the meat freezer. Thank you, Santa Klaus to the meat freezer.’

Before heading over to the meat freezer, I made a quick stop at the local hardware store and picked up a couple of useful items. I then returned to the Bistro and entered the freezer.

Klaus was in the freezer already, and looked as though he had been there for some time. Icicles had begun to form on his beard, and his face looked blue. He seemed glad that I had arrived, but looked somewhat puzzled when he saw the chainsaw I was carrying in my hand.

A few minutes later I served the blind customer with our specialty dish, the gumboot sirloin, cooked medium rare. A little later I asked him how his meal was.

‘Tender’, he replied.

Double O in P-oo-py

I was serving at our restaurant’s bar last night when a suave looking gentlemen dressed in a tuxedo approached me.

‘I’ll have a vodka martini, shaken, not stirred’ he requested.

I just about crapped my pants. Firstly, the guy had the nerve to dress up exactly like James Bond. And secondly, he had the balls to ask for his signature drink. I decided to punish him for his gay behaviour.

‘Certainly sir’ I replied. ‘I just need to grab a new jar of martini olives from the fridge’

I grabbed a martini glass and ducked into our kitchen.

‘Alright, Pedro, over here!’ I called. Pedro is an illegal immigrant from Mexico who weighs over 700 pounds. He’s also our sous chef. We pay him $3.50 an hour, plus all the leftovers he can eat.

‘Pedro, I need you to take this glass out the back and do a poop in it. If you do a nice big one I’ll get the chef to make you a couple of steaks.’

Pedro didn’t need to be asked twice. He grabbed the glass and waddled off to the toilet, which is actually no more than a bucket in our vegetable fridge. A few moments later he returned with the glass half full of a semi-liquid brown substance. Pedro is great for shitting on command; whenever we have a rude customer we serve them a ‘Mexican special’

I thanked Pedro and grabbed the glass, heading over to our spice rack. I selected a few choice herbs for the double O wannabe, throwing in some jalapeno peppers, chilli flakes and adding a generous dosage of vinegar. I decided that it would be an ironic touch to add a couple of laxatives, so I grabbed a couple and ground them up into a fine powder, adding them to the concoction in the glass.

Finally, I remembered the martini olive and popped it in the top. My masterpiece was complete!

I returned to the bar to find ‘Bond’ waiting impatiently, glancing at his no-doubt priceless rolex.

‘Here we are Mr Bond, your vodka martini, shaken, not stirred. Would you like me to charge that to MI5?’

He glanced at me for a moment. ‘Do I look like I give a damn?’ he asked, before grabbing the glass and downing the poopy cocktail in one long swallow.

I shuddered at the sight of him drinking Pedro’s turd. Bond didn’t look too impressed either and dashed off in the general direction of the male toilets, pulling his Walther PPK out of his shoulder holster and shooting a blind man who was sitting at a table in the corner.

Nothing else of interest happened after that, although one customer reported a large pile of throw-up in the male bathroom.

Well done.

Today I had a customer order a gumboot well done.

I kid you not. My fellow waiters out there reading this blog will no doubt shudder as they read those two words in combination with gumboot.

It was a disaster from the start of the meal. The customer arrived during our busy lunch period and requested to be seated in a reserved table…

 ’I'm sorry sir, but that table has been reserved. However, if sir would be so kind…’

‘Don’t give me that sir bullshit! Listen to me, I want that table and I want it now! I don’t care if the goddamned Sultan of Brunei has reserved that table, it’s mine now!’

The gentlemen leaped into a chair with a triumphant grin. Just then my restaurant mobile started to ring. I answered it.

‘Hello, waiter? This is the Maxwell from the Hyatt. I’m calling on behalf of the Sultan, he’s just left our hotel and will be at the restaurant shortly. Good day.’

I cursed and hurled the phone in a random direction. Sadly it ricocheted off a brass lantern and conked a blind man on the head. Having no time to attend to the blood spurting across his table, I rushed off to the manager’s office to see what I could do about the chap sitting at the Sultan’s table.

 After hearing my story, the manager peered out into the restaurant and spotted the irate customer who had stolen the reserved table.

‘Ah, that’s my gay lover, don’t worry about him, he can have that table. Put the Sultan at the table in the corner’

‘But there’s a blind man sitting there, with blood all over the table!’

‘He’s not likely to notice’

And so I ushered the Sultan across to the blood stained table and took the order of the bosses’ gay lover.

‘And what would sir like today?’

‘For the fifth time, stop calling me sir you pansy! And I’ll be having the gumboot sirloin please. Well done.’

And that pretty much sums up my day.

Pants rant #1

So you want the best pants in town? You, my waiter friend, are not alone. I used to work in a clothes store which sold pants for waiters. I can’t tell you which one because the owner is a regular diner in the restaurant I work at. But it was a pretty good store.

 The best pants are only for the best waiters. Waiters who know how to serve food properly without pouring the soup of the day on the fat man taking up two seats on table 14. Waiters who get the big tips get the best pants. It makes sense.

 The worst offenders are usually male waiters. Who get small tips.

 They used to walk into the shop, take a look at the luxury triple-weave trouser section and demand the most pricey pants on the rack. I had this skinny waiter waltz in one time and ask to try on a pair of $8,500 Coblett trousers – made in Nepal from the tail-hairs of the world’s rarest breed of cow. I mean, just to touch any clothes from that rack you have to make a $500 deposit. And that’s non-refundable.

 I can only hope that one day I can wear some of those Coblett pants.