-Who the fuck Big Swole?
A ticket had just come back for a Triple Dipper and three orders of cheese quesadillas. Three stations, three printers. We all saw the name and all thought the same thing. Bones expressed that thought:
-Idiots and assholes.
To Bones and the rest of us in the ‘back of the house,’ the ‘front of the house’ was comprised almost entirely of idiots and assholes. The front of the house included all the servers, greeters, bartenders, and FoH-only managers. Mostly all were idiots, but we excluded from the label a hot greeter and one of the bartenders — he made us big to-go cup margaritas to sip during our shifts on Fridays and Saturdays, when it was harder to trace the liquor.
We considered them all stuck up. They acted like we were lower-than. They barely spoke to anyone in the back, and when they did, it was yelling for an order or bitching about how an order was wrong. When someone cried about fucking something up like forgetting to put in an order for their table, what were we supposed to do besides passive-aggressively moving very slowly for service?
We were rather stuck up, too, though. Put any one of them in the back and we knew they would fall down dead at the work. We knew they couldn’t cook for shit, work for shit, or be trusted for shit. We knew our shit. We took pride in that. We weren’t haughty (we were cooks at fucking Chili’s), but we truly believed that we could go toe to toe in cooking against any ‘chef’ at any of the fancier restaurants in town. We were all rather big guys, too, and so we felt we could kick people’s asses after killing with our cooking and presentation. I’d been in a fight that summer with real fist punching and shit like that and came out with no visible bruises, so I, too, felt good about the kicking ass thing.
We didn’t want to talk or hang out with any of those assholes anyway and we surely weren’t sharing our weed connections or splitting a bowl after work. It happened every so often that some shit would think that by stooping and slumming to smoke a cigarette out by the trash with us that we would go smoke with them after work and maybe hook them up with someone to call for a quarter or whatever like as if we shared a moment by puffing on a peace pipe together, in silence, of course, because they thought we were clueless losers. Indeed it was they who were the clueless losers, and we wouldn’t have given a shit anyway as it was pointless to try to communicate with an idiot and asshole.
The worlds rarely collided.
I never really put a face to a name at the restaurant; I just associated the steady stream of tickets from Kate, Brian S, Rachel, Stephen, Brian C, etc. with the orders. The names were just added descriptors for sections of the restaurant.
Looks like Brian S has that 7–15 section today. Must be slow. His 4-top tables 9 & 10 haven’t come back for anything. Ain’t got nobody or maybe Brenda M I think is hostessing and I heard from Luke the bartender she hates that guy so maybe she ain’t sending anyone his way.
I had no real concept of the actual layout of the seating area, though. Just table numbers with their orders and a server name.
Through the expo shelves where we put up our plates to the FoH I just heard snippets:
-Table 18 going out — Jenn.
-Reburn for Tom, 5.
-Hahahahah. I’m a sucker prick.
-You done on the three Blossoms on the three-top for Rachel M?
(Each person at that table got their own Awesome Blossom. A whole fried onion per person. That’s all they ordered, no entrée. Well, no, that was their entrée. What the hell.)
-You saw the chick at the end of the bar?
-Red shirt?
-I hit that.
-Bullshit.
-Nah, really. I did. Laughs like a horse though.
-Ya’ll 86’d the cheese sauce AND the salsa?
Maybe no one really voiced the sucker prick statement, but it came through anyway.
Someone who named himself Big Swole was certainly a sucker prick.
Big Swole basically means someone who is muscular, strong. Swole up — ‘swelled’ up muscles. Big — big ‘swelled’ up muscles. It also has the connotation of being cocky — strong attitude and personality, strong sense of entitlement. And it’s used self-referentially by someone who thinks they have a big dick. Swole.
We pondered for a bit about who Big Swole might be. It warranted an explanation because it was ridiculous, but it was so dumb that we kind of didn’t really care. No one fit the ‘good’ connotation of the term, and, negatively, it worked for many of the servers.
When BS’s Table 20 order was complete, the FoH manager manning the distribution of food from the expo shelves said:
-Big Sw… Who the fuck Big Swole? Table 20. I’m not addressing anyone as Big Swole. Who has Table 20?
Tonya R walked through.
-Ben has that.
-Tell Ben his order is ready.
Ben really was a sucker prick. Frat guy. Loud. Fake. His posture was annoying — shoulders back, head tilted a little back so he could he could look down on you with nose up in the air. His hair was elegantly, prissily coiffed. He was an average dude with a chip on his shoulder. He was neither big, nor muscular. He was cocky, though. And, honestly, dumb. Made sense.
When BS came back to the kitchen, the manager said
-Ben, who changed your ticket name in the system?
-I did.
-How and when and why?
-I just tinkered with it for a bit before I clocked in. Easy. And I’m Big Swole. That’s what my brothers call me around the house and all. I’m Big and Swole!
-No. No you’re not. Your ‘brothers’ are idiots.
Bones in background to the BoH line
-And assholes.
-Ben, I’m changing this back now.
-Come on, man!
-Ben. No.
As he walked away to his table
-That ain’t cool, man.
-Kid. No. Just no. Bones, tell him what you call people up here.
-Idiots and assholes.
-That’s right, kid. Bones is the man. He calls it like he sees it.
Bones didn’t give up his weed connection to the manager.
db 