“I was reading all your stuff but I was laughing so hard at your job at the retirement home story that I had to email you.”

“omg......fishman....a friend of mine pasted your article about ATRIA to me, because i currently work as a cna at a "rehabilitation center". i put that in quotes because it's just a euphemism for "nursing home". in all my years of enjoying the wonders of the www, i have NEVER laughed so long and hard over an email. i had tears rolling down my cheeks! my stomach hurt. i even got a bit of a headache from laughing so hard. i'm like damn...i'm finna have a STROKE from laughing at the plight of the old geezers.”

Okay, the first Atria story wasn’t THAT funny, but if the people like it, I’ll give them more of it. Let’s get rolling.

SHE SCREAMS FOR ICE CREAM

This one old lady always had ice cream for dessert. It was usually that lame Dixie Cup that comes with a wooden spoon. It’s half-chocolate, half-vanilla, and incredibly small even for a 5-year old, let alone a grown person. Well this elderly lady loved them to no end, but she didn’t love them completely. If you love something, you’ll love it no matter how it looks or acts…or even how frozen it is.

This woman absolutely, positively needed her Dixie Cup FROZEN. I mean, hard as a rock. If it was a little bit melted – and I mean an insignificant amount – she would throw a fit that would put a spoiled rich kid to shame. Hell hath no fury like this old hag if her ice cream wasn’t 100% solid.

Luckily for me, I didn’t work in her section. That was a good thing because her section was the furthest from the kitchen, so balancing all those plates while avoiding the wheelchairs, walkers, and my fellow waiters would be a challenge. I would often hear this lady screaming from her table about her damn ice cream. The nurses couldn’t calm this woman down! Man, I was happy that I didn’t need to serve her.

Except, I had to this one day. As I punched in, the head waitress told me to serve the coots in that section because their usual waiter was out sick. A more experienced (i.e. better) waiter would take my section along with another. Never the kind to argue with the boss, I agreed but prepared for the worse. The people in the section weren’t so bad, but I couldn’t help worrying about dessert and that crazy old lady.

Dessert arrived and I decided to serve the old bitch last. So if she flipped out, no one would be hurt when she threw her cane at the wall. Smart move, Fishman. The head waitress was psyching me up for the dessert. She was scared FOR me! She even had a special place for this old bag’s Dixie Cup. It was kept away from the small ice creams and put in a freezer that was used only for the huge tubs of ice cream. The small amount of ice cream in the Dixie Cup was like steel. The head waitress even gave me a fucking game plan! She would hand the cup to me, like a runner handing the baton to his teammate, and I would dash to the dining room to hand the old lady her shitty Dixie Cup. I wish I was lying but I’m dead serious.

The old woman was eventually ready for dessert. A nurse was standing by to calm the hag down in case her ice cream wasn’t just right. I went into the kitchen, the head waitress handed me the Dixie Cup, and I ran out to the dining room like a bolt of lightning. I handed the old lady her dessert in less than 10 seconds. She peeled open the lid and tapped the ice cream with her spoon.

“IT’S NOT FROZEN ENOUGH!” She screamed. “THIS IS ALL MUSHY! DON’T YOU KNOW HOW TO REFRIGERATE ICE CREAM? YOU CAN’T GET DECENT SERVICE HERE!” She went completely bat shit! She wailed her arms in the air, she pushed out the chair from under her, and she began berating the nurse about how we couldn’t take care of her. What a fucking psycho! There is no way her ice cream could have melted during the trip from the freezer to her table! Only mere seconds elapsed! I stared at this woman and wished that I wasn’t a waiter…because if I wasn’t, I would have smashed that ice cream in her fucking face. That would actually break several of her facial components because osteoporosis had probably ravaged her bones. I know that’s cruel because she’s old and all, but this woman probably pulled similar asinine stunts in the past. Slamming the ice cream in her face would have been just desserts.

MISTER…GIMME SOME BREAD

When they wheeled this one in, I knew it would be weird. A skinny old black lady joined my section midway through the summer. You could have told me that she was a skeleton and I wouldn’t have known the difference. They dumped her at one table that had opening and she sat there, twitching and shaking. Man, I’m scared to get old.

This lady was okay, but she had one disgusting flaw: she would always take out her dentures and just hold them in between her fingers, dangling them over the floor. Passing those fuckers by each day made me want to vomit. I was afraid the dentures would magically come to life and leap inside my mouth, spreading her geriatric mouth batter all over my tongue. Shit, I’m dry heaving just imagining it. GUH!

I could never understand what this woman was saying. “Oh why Fishman, because she’s black?” No, it was because she didn’t have her teeth in! Her speech was all slurred and spittle would be flying out of her gums. Shouldn’t mealtime be the one time that you put dentures INSIDE your mouth? During one of my few breakfast shifts, the woman kept telling me what she wanted to eat, but I couldn’t understand her. When I asked her to repeat it, she just waved me off. Whatever, I didn’t care if she starved. Everyone was eventually eating breakfast except for her. I kneeled down next to her and asked what she wanted again.

“Mister…gimme some bread,” she said.

“Bread?” I asked. “Is that it?”

“Mister…gimme some bread.” This woman apparently wasn’t completely with it, but hey – if the lady wants bread, bread is what I’ll give her. I went to the kitchen, toasted two pieces of white bread, and gave it to the woman for breakfast. Two slices of toast, folks. This woman was skin and bones and I gave her two slices of toast. When one of the nurses came by to check out how the residents were doing, she wasn’t too pleased. She saw the meager scraps I prepared for this lady, so I was reprimanded.

“This is all you gave this poor woman for breakfast?” She asked, slightly peeved.

“It’s what she asked for,” I shrugged. “Bread.”

“You can’t just give her bread! Give her eggs, bacon, and hash browns!”

“Maybe she doesn’t like them. She asked for bread.” The nurse actually laughed, but then commanded me never to serve people only toast for breakfast again. Let me tell you this – the old black lady ate like a champion during lunch. It felt kind of cool because I actually starved her! It was a power trip, man.

NORMAN

If there was one resident that I truly felt bad for, it was Norman. Norman was only about 50, but a stroke turned him into a drooling idiot. He could only walk with tiny baby steps and a nurse had to wipe his mouth for him. Norman could not speak. He would sit at his table – alone – and stare off into the distance and ignore everyone. His head would even be on a tilt, like he was dead.

I had to walk past Norman to get to a certain section. Every time I walked by him, his eyes would follow me. It FREAKED me out. This guy never looked at anyone. His favorite thing to look at was the wallpaper. Why me? Am I that handsome? This one time, as I walked by Norman, his entire head turned to me.

“Hello,” he said. NORMAN TALKED! HE NEVER TALKED! NORMAN TALKED TO ME! It scared the living shit right out of my body. Imagine a statue coming to life and saying something to you. That is the equivalent of Norman talking. I was carrying a pot of coffee and nearly spilled it on the floor because I was so startled.

“Hello,” I responded, forcing a polite smile. Norman just turned his head back to its original position and continued to watch the wallpaper.

SUNDAY, SHITTY SUNDAY

Working the breakfast shift on Sunday SUCKED. It was so horrible, so tiring, and I even got hurt one time. Oh, and did I mention that I also had to work lunch and dinner on Sundays? That’s 12 hours of non-stop work. Three hours in Atria was unbelievably tiring! Can you imagine 12?! I’ll take you through it. Breakfast is served at 7:30 in the morning, but we were told to come in at 7:00 a.m. As I said in Atria part I, we had to arrive 45 minutes early to work or you would never finish in time (although we wouldn’t be paid for that). That’s 6:15 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Since I needed time to shower and drive over to Atria, I actually woke up at 5:45 a.m. Nothing is on the radio that early on a Sunday. Even the local rock station is boring talk radio with no name idiot DJ hosts.

Anyway, if there is one thing that old Jewish people love, it’s bagels, cream cheese, and lox. Hey, I love it also, but usually my lox comes sliced. When breakfast started, a huge slab of uncut lox would be placed on a table in the kitchen. The salmon only had its head and scales cut off – the rest was up to the wait staff. All of the 25 residents in my section would want lox on a toasted bagel. They just didn’t want it – they needed it. They believed that the lox on toasted bagel kept away the Grim Reaper, like what Kryptonite does to Superman.

It was impossible to get everyone their lox quickly. There was a fucking line to get the lox because other waiters were cutting pieces off for their own sections. It took a damn long time and the crazy old kooks got real impatient. Apart from the lox, I also had to cut bagels. This is how I hurt myself. One Sunday morning, the crazies in my section were more cranky than usual, so I was rushing everything like mad. We only used plastic knives to cut the bagels since they were Styrofoam-like Lender’s Bagels. I was sawing through several at a time at incredible speed, when I cut through one like a samurai sword. It went right through the bagel and into my index finger. I sliced open my finger! I sliced open my finger with a fucking plastic utensil! I’m the only person stupid enough to injure myself with a knife that could barely cut butter.

Now I was bleeding all over myself. The old farts in my section were up in arms because they didn’t have their death-repelling toasted bagel on lox, but leaving myself bleeding was also a serious health code violation. I was screwed either way. I washed off my cut quickly and made a pathetic bandage out of a paper towel. No one minded until the head waitress saw it and gave me a Band-Aid. She said what I did was dangerous, but I was a healthy 20-year old back then. If my blood spilled into some food, it would have been entirely beneficial since some of the residents looked like the living dead anyway. They crave blood…

After breakfast we would clean the place, which is all described in the first Atria story. That part took a long time to write, so either go to the Archives if you don’t know, or just imagine a lot of work that’ll leave you exhausted and cursing your maker. Immediately after breakfast, we had to get ready for lunch. Every waiter and chef is already dead tired, apart from the residents, who are just pretty much dead. During the brief lull in between breakfast and lunch, I drank coffee. I HATE coffee. I try and try to drink it, but it just tastes so repulsive to me that I can never finish a cup…except in Atria. My body was so tired and in need of caffeine, I chugged a tall cup of burning hot coffee like it was nothing. Sure, it horribly burned my trachea, but I was awake. That’s how tiring the job was. To put that into perspective, I once drove from Buffalo to Long Island while having slept only 2 hours the previous night. I went to a Dunkin’ Donuts to buy coffee, but I couldn’t stomach it even in that dire situation. That’s how tired I was during the 12-hour shift at Atria.

You know what? Fuck the rest of this section. Just know that the 12-hour shift sucked. I’m having trouble making it funny.

THE STAFF

The Atria staff were good people. The girl who trained me, who I think was named Tamara, I had a major boner for. She was a 19-year old black chick and she was really hot. Hey, you know me – I regulate every shade of that ass. I guess I wasn’t the only one who thought she was hot though, because she was already a single mother. Tamara was an amazing waitress, too. She was incredibly fast and could clean her section within five minutes, even helping me out because she had so much left over energy. The head waitress told me that Tamara was a cocaine addict, which is why she was so hyper. I had no idea where she got that idea from, seeing that Tamara was always hyper and I don’t think coke addicts can remain on a high for 12 hours. She never sniffed either. Who cares – she was hot.

During my last day of work, Tamara took me by the arm and led me to the empty dining room. As we walked by the dishwasher, he gave me this look like, “Yeah, she’ll be giving you something good.” I was so excited. Was it a handjob? Blowjob? SEX IN THE EMPTY DINING ROOM? DID I DARE DREAM IT? I mentally struggled to keep my boner down, when I suddenly felt a painful punch to my arm.

“Goodbye punches,” Tamara said. I don’t know which hurt more – the punches or the blue balls.

One time I was on a brief break, sitting in the dining room with about four waitresses, who were old Spanish ladies. One was fat, and jokingly made these kissing faces at me, while the others went, “She likes white boys.” I was sick of being harassed, so I just blurted out, “What? I’m not white.” They all fell silent. They were amazed. I totally had them fooled. I quickly admitted the truth and they laughed their asses off. I was never bothered again. I guess I earned their respect.

My boss (also head chef) was a dude named Phil. I could never get a clear read on him. He was an awesome guy on some days, but a total prick on other days. For example, this woman ordered pasta one time. When I asked Phil for the pasta, Phil gave me the “look.” I hated Phil’s look. Phil would stare directly at me with a quiet anger on his face, like he was a cop and you were the suspect he was interrogating.

“The old lady at the corner table ordered pasta?” Phil said. “She never orders that.”

“Well, that’s what she wants,” I replied.

“Are you sure that’s what she ordered?” What the fuck do you think, Phil? I faked her order to save a total of 5 seconds? He always thought I was up to something. He often accused me of stacking six dishes onto the tray although the limit was five. He was always wrong, but he kept glancing at me, mentally counting the dishes.

“Pasta is what she wants, Phil.” Phil would then stare for a little while longer. I couldn’t look back at him. I kept averting my gaze, which made me look guilty as fuck, but what else could I do? This nut was staring into my soul! He then eventually slammed the pasta angrily on the dish.

When Phil asked me to work 12-hour shifts for the next two days, did I complain? No. I went, “If that’s when you need me, that’s when I’ll be here.” Did he say thanks? No! He clicked his tongue, rolled his eyes, turned to walk away, and went, “Yeah…That’s when I need you.”

Prick.

But when Phil was nice, he was really nice. Out of the blue during one meal, he went, “I’ve got to say, Matt. You’ve really caught on quick. You’re already better than most of the waiters who’ve worked here for years.” The other waiters looked like they were about to murder Phil, but I was happy.

Okay, that’s it. I didn’t even proofread this article because my eyes are killing me after writing it up, so I’m sorry for any mistakes. Will there be a part III? Only time will tell.

Questions? Comments? Gimme some bread? E-mail Fishman347@yahoo.com