"waitress @ shitty rural restaurant" : a story about the worst job i've ever had and how it pushed me into selling my used socks to internet perverts

i have worked many jobs throughout my life, including at burger king, a speed dating company, a hedge fund, a bar trivia company, and multiple psycho law firms, and no job even comes close to my job as a waitress at a shitty Italian restaurant in the middle of rural Pennsylvania. it was a job so soulcrushing that it made me rage quit and start selling my used socks and shoes to sex pests on some rudimentary early internet fetish auction site. if you're a pervert with ADHD you can go ahead and skip to the end of my post (i bolded where that part starts), but like with most things, i think the journey is as important as the destination.

this was 2007/2008, and i was around 20 at the time. being of poor stock, i had matriculated to some crappy mid college in the middle of rural Pennsylvania that had given me some money to attend, but not enough money to live. i had worked a few temporary clerical jobs at the university, and my latest one was was coming to end b/c the person i was filling in for was getting off disability/returning to work. with that job ending, i determined to obtain a waitressing job. as someone who had primarily worked in fast food, "waitressing" was a truly glamorous job in my eyes. i set out to apply to all of the restaurants close to campus, places you could actually make some decent money b/c parents were always visiting. but they all wanted "experience" and rejected me outright, sending me further and further away from where my school was. i applied to like 10 restaurants, but even the Friendly's by the mall rejected me. a decision which was not very friendly of them. eventually this italian restaurant like 35-40 minutes away was like "ok you can work here, no experience no problem." no red flags there at all. it was owned by this fat greasy red-faced sicilian mook, who was also the chef. the resto was about 10 minutes away from this broke-down amusement park whose mascot was this turdy looking gerbil. the clientele was awful, my tips were abysmal, and the owner had rage issues (which i guess is just sicilian culture) and he did not hesitate to call me a cunt and bitch when he was stressed out. the cherry on top was that the minimum tipped wage was $2.83 at the time, so i'm sure i had days where i broke even after accounting for gas.

my second week on the job my shitty little car broke down and a friend of mine was kind enough to lend me her car until I could get mine fixed. i closed that night, at at the end of the night the owner was asking if anyone could give the line cook (a grizzled man in his 40s) a ride home. everyone made up some excuse about why they couldn't do it. i felt bad, so i offered to take him since it his place really was on the way back to my dorm. so i'm driving him home and it's super awkward. just dead silence. in an effort to break the ice i asked him "....so what made you get into cooking?" i have no idea why i asked that question. i was so naïve i think actually expected him to respond that he was inspired by a bowl of carbonara that he had in Montepulciano or some shit. instead, he straight up said "well to be honest, i got out prison a few months ago and this was the only job i could really get." the rawness of that response hit me like a ton of bricks. i had no idea how to respond, so i just said the first thing that came to mind, which was: "damn. this was the only job i could get too." i remember him laughing at that, and the ride was significantly less awkward afterwards.

well, while driving home on this desolate highway one of the tires on this shitty little car that does not belong to me just straight up exploded off. i was still green at this point in my life, and had always thought that a "flat tire" was a tire slowly deflating until you heard a weird flapping sound. i had no idea that a tire could just blow off your car? it was incredibly jarring and i immediately pulled over on the side of this rural highway at around 11 p.m. i completely panicked and was like "dude, this isn't even my car!" and prison cook was like "What?!" and i had to explain the whole situation. real poverty hours here. prison cook said not to worry because there's probably a spare in the trunk. i opened the trunk, and lo and behold there was a spare.

prison cook started changing the tire, and i'm just nervously hovering around him being useless. i remember it was a full moon, and zero cars drove past us. i started to feel a little better after realizing that prison cook being with me was probably a blessing in disguise, because i would have totally freaked out if this happened when i was alone. i had certainly never changed a tire at 20. i'm 35 now and i've still never changed a tire and frankly have no intentions of changing a tire ever. but that feeling of ease started to fade when i saw him really struggling with getting the spare on. he was grunting a lot...like definitely more than a normal amount of grunting i would expect from a tire change (based on tv/movie tire changes, which never involved any grunting). when i hovered closer i saw that he somehow sliced his entire hand open trying to get this motherfucking tire on the car. like COMPLETELY open, huge gash, gushing blood. ofc I'm like "oh my god, are you ok!?" and he cried "it's nothing!!!" but his hand was COVERED in blood. so i went into this stupid little lemon and start going through the glove compartment/back seat looking for something to wrap his hand with. i found an old rag to give him (and probably some tetanus). when i gave it to him he just had the most absolutely miserable look on his face. he just sighed and solemnly said "this is not the right tire for this car." apparently my friend's shitty car just had random spare tire made for a much larger car/truck in the back??? like what the FUCK?

i'm not a particularly practical woman. i've kind of lived my life like a leaf aimlessly skimming across the top of a large pond, not particularly concerned where it may land. at this point though i was like "enough. i am calling triple A". to this day i have no idea what "triple A" is or what you need to do get serviced by triple A. you could tell me that it's a division of the government. you could tell me that it comes automatically with all car insurance, or that you need to specifically buy coverage from triple A. i would believe any of these things. the only thing i knew was that there was a "triple A" and that they would "help with car" because of one time when i was six my mom locked her keys in her car outside the little caesars and after failing to punch thru the window she called something called "triple A" and they pried the window open for us and then my dad screamed at her bc the pizza got cold.

waiting for triple A to come felt like an eternity. when the truck finally arrived the guy took one look at the spare and confirmed that it was not, under any circumstances, to be put on the car. the Triple A guy didn't have another tire for us so he told us to just leave the car here on the side of the road and that he'd give us a a lift to town and so we could can call someone to pick us up from there. so he dropped us off in the closest town and we went to a bar, ordered beers, and started dialing up some people to come get us. i could tell you that hanging out with prison cook in the bar was fun and we bonded over love and loss or whatever, but it was straight up miserable. at some point when we were halfway through our beers, i realized that prison cook probably thought he hit the jackpot with me getting him a ride home. and then it probably very slowly dawned on him that i am, indeed, cursed. i'm not even sure when he even got his ride... hell, i had to call like 5 people before anyone agreed to come and pick up because it was a Wednesday and everyone had class the next morning and people b shitty. while "flat tire prison cook night" wasn't the worst night of my life, it probably clocks in around #9 or #10 for sure.

the next day i talked to my friend who had lent me that demon car. she's a 5'1 little stoner chick that sounds just like shaggy from Scooby Doo and barely graduated college, i love her. i told her "hey, your car's on the side of the road b/c the tire exploded off and the spare tire in the trunk was apparently for a monster truck." and i remember her being high as hell just calmly saying "man...that's crazy, thanks for letting me know" come to think of it i'm actually not sure if anyone ever went to get that car. it probably just got towed and junked. that chick works at a float tank place now.

prison cook quit like 4 weeks later (actually he just stopped coming in) but i continued to work at this hellhole for another 4-5 months until i reached my limit. let me tell you, this place was absolutely fucking disgusting...real biohazard/restaurant impossible vibes. all of the salad lettuce was kept in one of those big grey plastic rectangle bins that was so dingy from never been washed. i have no idea where this lettuce came from but it always had tiny snails in it. little tiny snails with little tiny shells, and you would just have to flick them off and then throw the croutons on the salad and serve it on a glass plate.

one i went into the walk-in cooler and the 15 y/o Puerto Rican dishwasher kid was sitting on the boxes and eating an entire lemon merengue pie with a spoon in the dark. now here's the rub, i could see that a HUGE chunk of it was covered in MOLD. my boss would order those pies and cakes and thaw them out whenever someone wanted a piece, and then just throw them in the cooler that never stayed cold enough. nobody ever ordered the lemon merengue pie so that thing was probably pretty old. idk if he just didn't see the mold or what because he was eating it in the dark. the best part was he just stared at me wide-eyed like a deer in headlights and then said "DON'T TELL!" i am cackling even typing this, the thought of that boy eating mold pie in the pitch and then begging me not to tell... it was crazy! who am i gonna tell? the CDC? i was like "ok you got it bro, enjoy" and walked out. our boss was such dick, he was always convinced staff was stealing the food & threatening to fire people for stealing. frankly i always thought he was paranoid because that food was always old and foul as hell...but i guess he was right?

this place was always a revolving door of employees b/c it sucked it so bad, there were two other regular waitresses there during my time, one of whom was "sandy." she was a dowdy woman in her mid 50s with a comically large ass. she was a chunky in the way middle-aged rural white women tend to be, but this absolute dumptruck did not belong on her body at all. she was a local that had apparently been waitressing there since the restaurant opened. she might have even waitressed at the failed restaurant that was there before this one. i hated this woman. for opening prep, she would just scuttle around the kitchen murmuring things...i don't think i ever saw her do any actual work in the entire 5 months i worked there. like after i filled up the salad dressing station with wholesale slop (a truly disgusting task), she would waddle over to it, flip up the lids, peer into the containers, and grunt "yup...ranch. yup...bleu cheese" like bitch are you checking my work? you SAW me fill it up.

the other regular waitress was this 16/17 year old hot chick who was so unbearably mean. not just to me, but everyone. she was like 5'8, tan, blonde hair, the whole package. you know when you watch high school movies and the hot popular girl is so outrageously mean that it makes you say "come on, no one is that mean IRL." well, sometimes they do be that mean. they do. i tried so hard to be nice to this bitch and talk to her, and each time i was met with outright hostility. in retrospect, maybe she interpreted my kindness as weakness and i should have just slapped her shitless one day to establish dominance. she definitely would have kicked my ass tho...she had those strong walnut-crusher cheerleader legs.

because this restaurant was so goddam filthy, i once got this horrible rash on my arms from carrying the dirty trays that never got washed. this hideous rash just materialized very suddenly on my underarms and i was like "oh my god what is this?" sandy in all her wisdom insisted "that's diaper rash!" i have no idea why, but her so matter-of-factly proclaiming that i had diaper rash on my arms absolutely enraged me because how stupid it was. an hour or so later, the bartender came in, saw my arms, and gasped "oh my, what is that??" sandy, who was like 10 feet away, overheard and murmured "it's diaper rash to me!" which sent me into a fit of rage. i snapped at her to shut up, and she got so upset she *had* to clock out and go home, which made me wonder if the boss wasn't calling her names too. like was i the only one he was calling a cunt? sandy was probably too old and retarded to be disrespected like that and i believe he feared the cheerleader, so probably.

the absolute most awful day was fridays during lent. the restaurant did "seafood buffet night" on lent Fridays, and all of the waitresses had to help set up the buffet by going upstairs and lugging these heavy tables down a flight of stairs to put the food on because the boss was too cheap to buy real buffet equipment. sandy purposefully avoided working fridays for the sole reason that her gargantuan pixar ass could barely fit thru the stairway. also because she was lazy as fuck and the tips were always shit that night because "iT's a BuFfEt." the one time she DID work a lent friday, she carried down exactly 1 table and loudly exclaimed "OOooHH I DON'T LIKE THIS!!" over and over again as she inched down the steps with it.

one particularly traumatic lent friday, the boss screamed at me to go refill the clam chowder. he pointed to a huge metal vat that i was supposed to carry out and i was like "uhh...are there gloves?" and he screamed "just fuckin carry it by the sides!!!" so i was like "ok" and carried this big metal vat of piping hot chowder by gripping the little 5 centimeter metal lip / rim and slowly walked out to the dining room. but there was a crease in the crappy carpet...like an evil little carpet ripple just in the middle of my path. obviously i was destined to stumble over it and when i did, all of this 7000 degree lava chowder spilled ALL over my one hand. i remember the pain so vividly, more vividly than any happy memory in my life. on my death bed i'm sure try to remember the soft lines of my late husband's face but my brain will go "hey remember that chowder vat lol" i had two options: i could drop all of the chowder onto the floor, get berated by my mucinex booger boss b/c he'd have to make MORE chowder ("you think clam chowder grows on trees, ya cunt?!"), and THEN have to clean it up myself. or i could just let my hand be melted off by the scalding clam goo while i carried the vat an additional 15 feet to the buffet table. i chose the latter, and definitely had about 20 seconds of my own personal Dune "fear is the mindkiller" hell. but instead of space witches testing me, it was just some evil greasy wop who owed seven figures in back taxes.

fast forward to my last day, the day that broke me. it was a sunday and i was working noon to 8 p.m. with 1 other random waitress (not sandy or cheerleader). sundays were typically pretty slow, but we usually had a handful of tables come in after church and then maybe a few for early supper. but this sunday was unusually slow. NO ONE was coming in. so, naturally, me and the other chick were just hanging out, playing on our phones (yes and eating hot chip/lie) when bossman flipped out and started ranting and raving about how he's hired the laziest waitresses in the world, and if we didn't have any tables we should be making ourselves useful and cleaning the restaurant, yadda yadda yadda. he threw me a rag and told me to scrub the baseboards in the dining room, and told the other waitress to start cleaning the refrigerator (where we kept the snail lettuce). so i was like "ok" and started scrubbing the baseboards, earning my ~$3 per hour.

let me tell you, these goddamn baseboards had not been cleaned in decades. as i scrubbed, eons of scum just sloughed off like the skin from a boiled tomato. i scrubbed that shit for hours, until around 7 p.m., at which point this big family came in and asked "hey, are you guys open? we weren't sure because the sign outside says closed." there was a big electric sign outside that, when we were open, said OPEN in giant florescent letters. the switch was in my boss's office and this dumb ass motherfucker forgot to turn it on. as soon as that happened i took off my apron and was like "aight, i'm out," walked out the door, drove away, and never went back. i didn't even go back to pick up my final paycheck, which was probably only like $45. that cheap son of a bitch didn't even mail it to me, which i'm pretty sure is required by law.

the "spicy" part i guess

and so, this was by far the worst job i've ever had. it's the only job that made me say "literally anything has to be better than than this." i made shit money to get bullied by some goomba and highschool cheerleader, burn my hand off with clam chowder, scrub gunky baseboards & yeet lil snails off wilted lettuce all day. it fucking suuuuucked and i should have quit when prison cook did...assuming he did in fact quit and didn't die or go back to clink or something.

after that, i had that "ok, what now?" panic that any indigent who's ever quit or been fired has after losing their income source. but i live for the hustle, and in my dark 3 a.m. internet hours i came across this website called "ebanned." it was like ebay but for fetish items, with a focus on used socks, hosiery, and panties. yes there were also some more "fringe" items for sale, but that's for another post. if you read my other posts, you guys know about my love affair with ebay, having made some coin after selling fake handbags and those antique nazi dolls. after browsing the platform for a few weeks, i definitely went into ($_$) mode after seeing how much some of this stupid shit went for. most of you would probably assume that used panties were the #1 bestseller because they had pussy jus in them or whatever. but most of you would be wrong. the bestseller was, by no close margin, used socks and shoes. never underestimate the footboys! they are a different breed and have more conviction than the medieval anchorites.

some of the socks went for $300-$400 on the high end and like $20-30 on the low end, which is a pretty broad price spectrum. after doing some research, i determined that a lot of the top selling ladies were just good at marketing...their feet weren't any more special than the $20 bitch's feet. their auction listings were just more aesthetically pleasing, they purposefully didn't saturate their own market with too many listings at once, and their product descriptions were some real Draper/Olson tag team stuff. the one thing that was non-negotiable, though, was the foot funk. these sickos only wanted socks/shoes that were really smelly with that particular musk that only comes from feet. unfortunately, i've never been afflicted with swampfoot so that was going to be a hurdle for my entry into the highly competitive used sock/shoe market.

HOWEVER, my roommate's boyfriend had heinously stinky feet. so much so that i had banned him from taking off his shoes in our dorm room. you don't have to be a Wharton grad to see where this is going: yes i worked out a deal with him where he would wear my socks for a few days and i would cut him 15% of the net profit from the sale. as can be expected, the money, greed, and footboy drama tore our relationships apart and the whole operation eventually broke down approximately 3 months and a few thousands of dollars later. with stinkboy out of the game, my sock sales plummeted and like a hungry grizzly i was forced to wander into more exotic and unchartered territory to survive. i am not ashamed to admit that i became that bilbo baggins meme but with saying "After All, Why Not? Why Shouldn't I stick a toothbrush up my ass for $150?" i promise it's not because i didn't have any self respect at the time (i swear i did). it's just that i did the math and by my calculations 1 poop toothbrush = 53 hours of baseboard scrubbin. when i mentally framed it that way, the choice was easy: i am sticking that toothbrush up my ass and shipping it to germany.

anyway, i'll save the rest of this sordid tale for a separate post, but it was really, really funny what some of these guys wanted. some of the requests i was willing to accommodate, but others were just totally beyond the pale even for me, a person who will do mostly anything for a cheap laugh (and a buck). in any event, 15 years later i'm still giggling about a bunch of men unknowingly jerkin it to the sweaty trotters of some guy who played "Settlers of Catan" and wore those weird mexicali blues baja hoodies.

♤ ♥ ♢ ♧