Chapter Text
Prep work was calming. Relaxing. It let Chloe just chill the fuck out and be zen for a minute. Repetition, basic tasks, and simple goals hit her the same way a good hit of weed did. Chop parsley, make rouxs, peel potatoes, everything had a place and everything was in its place. Ingredients stacked up on one side soon became prepped items stacked up on her other side, the hours passed by, and two 3-minute smoke breaks later everything was done.
“Ay yo, Chloe, you get your shit done?” Mike waved at her from the other end of the line, draping pasta over a rack.
“Banged it out in record time, Mikey,” Chloe replied. “What, your slow ass need some help?”
Mike laughed as linguine hung from the rack like a set of louvers on a shitty 70’s car. “Hell nah. Chef wants a two-by of honey mustard ready for tonight. Liam was supposed to do it, but-”
“Liam’s fucking late, got it,” Chloe said.
“No, called out. Whip some up real quick, yeah?”
Chloe gave a mock salute, turning heel and gathering the shit she needed to make honey mustard, double-checking her recipe book since it’d been a hella long time since she ever made honey mustard. Right, lemon juice. Always forgot that. Just needed to get all this in a bowl and… “Yo, where the fuck’s the immersion blender?!”
“Check dish!” Mike called. Chloe rolled her eyes as she headed to dish anyway. They wouldn’t fucking have it. They never had it. They always looked at her like she was nuts and tell her somebody else had already grabbed it, why don’t you go talk to them? Of course, the dishies were always so blazed or lost in their music they never knew who had come to take the blender. Chloe waded her way through the muck of a well-used dish station perpetually drowning in a sea of errant water spray and lost chunks of half-washed food, confirming yet again that dish didn’t have a fucking immersion blender. Evan didn’t even say anything since he was too busy headbanging to notice Chloe was even there. Not that she’d even be able to hear him over his music. He’d amped up his usual JBL speaker by stuffing it awkwardly inside a deep third pan, kicking the sound up so loud Chloe could barely even hear herself think.
Okay, if I were an immersion blender, where would I hide? Bake didn’t have it. Natch. Harper was about as useful as a hog roast at a bar mitzvah. She circled the fucking line three times trying to find the damn thing, looking under hotboxes, up above the stainless, even trying the fridge because God knows fucking Lance was dumb enough to toss it in there one night, who’s to say his dumb ass wouldn’t do it again?
“Oh, fuckin’ finally,” Chloe muttered. Who the hell was using it by the grill anyway? No time to think too much about it, she’d spent too much time trying to find the stupid blender she was starting to get behind. Chef would show up any minute and want to know where the fuck her honey mustard was. Time to get this bitch of a batch blended already. If she was lucky, she could even get all this in third pans before doors opened.
The wonders of a stupidly powerful immersion blender. What was once a pile of honey, mayo, off-brand mustard and lemon juice was now a perfectly creamy and smooth sauce. Almost made her want to fry up some chicken and have a snack before open.
“Uh, excuse me,” somebody said. Chloe turned around to see a girl with caramel blonde hair, hazelnut eyes, and one of the wildest earrings she’d ever seen. Was that a bird’s feather? Where’d someone even find something like that?
“Sup?” Chloe asked, setting up third pans to start distributing the honey mustard into. Must be new. Chloe didn’t remember seeing her around here before.
“I’m starting here today,” the girl said. Yeah, definitely new. “Where’s um… Gary?”
“Oh, yeah, manager Gary. Uh, I dunno, check near the host stand I guess?” How’d she even get to the back anyway? Most new people usually came around the front. “He should be over there.”
The girl looked out across the kitchen, staring through the pass window to the front. “Oh, cool. Thanks.” She disappeared almost right after that, like a ghost that had never even been there. No problem – Chloe still had to label all this shit anyway. Who cared about a new server?
“Hey! Huddle up!” Chef Gage’s voice cut through all of the kitchen noise that infected Chloe’s ears. Time to get this shit kicked off right. Chloe smacked the last of her labels on pans and went to the line to meet with Chef Gage, Mike, Danni, and Harper. “Alright, listen up, y’all. I want us to have a good service tonight, yeah? So don’t be making me look like a dumb bitch, get shit out fast, and let’s make some good fucking food tonight. Doors open in fifteen, let’s get ready.”
“Heard, Chef!” came the enthusiastic reply from the line. The second Chef nodded, Chloe and the others broke off to make final preparations on their stations. Chloe was on salad tonight, and only really missing a spatula to mix up caesar salad with. Time to venture off to dish again to find a fucking spatula. Another dip into Evan’s moshpit of water and ceramic later resulted in one spatula that Chloe was fairly confident was clean. And if it wasn’t, well, it’d be dirty by end of service anyway, so nobody would ever know.
The fifteen minutes came and went faster than she expected. Tickets started printing with the ever-familiar buzzing Chloe heard so very often in her nightmares, rattling off their first orders of the day. All easy shit, just house salads that Chloe pushed out in three minutes flat.
“Yo! Hands!” Chloe yelled, shoving salads out into the pass window. Two different servers walked by without even looking at them. “Hey! Run your fucking salads! Come on!” Two sets of hands whisked the salads away and out of Chloe’s window, leaving her free to make more salads as tickets continued to ring in. More house salads, a few caesars, all usual and normal and nothing too insane. Thank god people were being easy, simple fuckers tonight.
“Let’s pump this bitch up!” Mike yelled. Chloe glanced over to the main expo window, where tickets cascaded down onto the floor. Chef Gage was rounding them up in her hands, pulling them apart and sticking them into the rail with a speed that’d beat some of the best Old West gunslingers. Someone kicked up the volume on the communal kitchen speaker, ramping up the sound of either Mike or Danni’s playlist of trance-like EDM beats. Just like doing prep, Chloe found herself entering a zen state. Chef Gage called shit out, she responded with “heard” every time, put her head down and banged out salads. Occasionally she turned around to drop fries when Harper got swamped with breading or pivoted to help Chef plate up a dish.
“Who the fuck wrote this ticket?!” Chef Gage screamed over the droning synth beats. “Which one of y’all was it?!” Chloe wandered over to check the offending ticket. Cheeseburger no cheese. Who and why in the fuck?
“I did!” someone said. Same girl from before, that new server that’d asked her where Gary was. “What’s wrong with it?”
Chloe didn’t even have to look to know Chef’s face had just twisted into the purest display of “what the fuck” anyone could ever muster. “What’s wrong with it? What’s your fucking name?”
“Rachel, Rachel Am-”
“Don’t fucking care, Rachel. What do we call a cheeseburger with no cheese, ma’am?”
Chloe stifled a laugh. It was almost comical at this point to listen to Chef yell at servers in her deep Southern drawl. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rachel shut her eyes. “A burger, ma’am.”
“A fucking hamburger, chef. Don’t forget for next time, and don’t fucking scam our customers doing this bullshit.”
Rachel’s attempts at a defense folded like a house of cards pretty quick. Chef was already busy calling for protein off Danni’s grill and relaying another set of salads to Chloe. Fun moment over. Time for Chloe to keep fucking grinding. Before she even knew it, three hours had passed and she’d sent out over three dozen salads, set up seven entrees for Chef, and dropped more fries than she even knew they had in the entire restaurant.
Fuck. Not enough salad mix left. “Stepping off! One minute!” Chloe yelled, to a reply of “heard” from the line. She sped-walked through the muck and grime of the kitchen to head to the walk-in cooler to get another lexan of salad mix, throwing open the fridge door that almost never stayed open long enough and slipping into the cooler. Within seconds, the sweat that had accumulated on her arms began to chill, and each huff of breath reminded her she hadn’t had a smoke break since before service started. Where the fuck had Danni put the salad mix today?
Somebody behind her stifled a sob. Wait, she wasn’t alone in here? Chloe turned around and saw that one server… Rachel, right? Rachel was leaning against the racks, head buried in her hands and pretty close to tipping over a third pan of simple sauce. Was… she crying? Fuck, she was. Chloe stood there frozen for a minute, not really sure what to do. Part of her wanted to shrug, not say anything and grab her salad mix. But the other half… she looked really fucked up. Chloe cautiously approached, putting a hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “Yo, are you… okay?”
Rachel turned to her, makeup starting to run and ruin itself from her tears as hints of the marred, puffy skin underneath showed through the cracks of her eyeliner. “No,” she muttered.
Was this all because of that shit with Chef? “Hey, listen, if this is ‘cause of Chef, well… Gage is like that with everyone. She’s kinda a bitch, but she doesn’t really mean it, you know?”
“No, it’s not because of chef,” Rachel said, shaking her head. “Everything out there’s fucked. People are being dicks to me, I’m getting stiffed on every fucking table, and I can’t remember shit about anything!”
Okay… I’m not prepared to handle this. “Uh… I’m sorry. Do you… want a hug, or…?”
Rachel shook her head, drying her tears as best she could without further ruining her makeup. “No, I’m just… I needed to do that. Thanks, though.”
Fuck. “Dammit, I need to get back…” she muttered, grabbing a lexan of salad mix. Hopefully Chef hadn’t noticed that she’d spent time fucking around with Rachel in the walk-in. She heard someone – no, it was definitely Chef – yelling as she went just a bit faster than normal around the corner, nearly fucking slipping on some bullshit as she scrambled to get salad mix together. Tickets were falling all over the place from both her printer and Chef’s. Fuck.
“Where the fuck were you?!” Chef screamed.
“Sorry Chef, I-”
“Fuck off, I don’t wanna hear it! I need a filet salad to sell, fucking now!”
“Yes Chef!” Jesus, for a woman that was maybe 5’3 with her combat boots on, Chef could scare damn near anyone into submission. Everything that had happened to her in the walk-in with Rachel faded away as the dinner rush went into full swing.
About eight million fucking salads, two shouting matches between Mike and Harper, and one entirely too short smoke break later, Chef Gage called last check and the line breathed a collective sigh of relief. Danni started breaking half of her station down, Harper and Mike made nice with each other, and Chef Gage put down her apron for the night. The time to sell was over, now it was time to break down and clean to do this all over again tomorrow. Chloe glanced up at the clock, just after 10. If she was lucky, she could get out of here at 11 and get some decent sleep in.
By now, Danni had cut her phone’s connection to the speaker and handed control over to Chloe. Chef had a pretty simple system – whoever wasn’t scheduled the next day got the fun of closing the kitchen down and doing the floors for the night. She called it a “reward” for everyone else, the chance to get some good sleep in before they came the next afternoon to do prep work and grind. Time for Chloe to clean like never fucking before and put her music on. She wrung out a towel, soaking with water and soap, and set to work wiping down all her stainless and brushing away all the debris of making salads for the day.
“Hey, Chloe,” Danni said, wiping her hands on a towel. “Need me to do anything else before I go?”
Chloe glanced over at her station. Grill looked pretty good, she’d just have to take a brick to it and get some of that shit off. Floor looked alright. “You sweep under the grill yet?”
“Yeah, got all that taken care of.”
“Hella. Get me another bucket of sani and you’re good.”
Danni nodded and headed off to dish, while down on the other end of the line, Mike slung his backpack over his shoulder and shot Chloe a victory sign. “Peace, Chloe. I’m out.”
“Yo, you working Thursday, Mikey?”
Mike paused for a second, squinting as he tried to remember. “Yeah, I’ll be there. Why, you wanna pick up for me?”
“Nah, I’m scheduled too. Hadn’t seen who else was on.” Shit, she’d really fucked this station up. Probably gonna be here a while. “See you around, dude.”
“Aight, see you then.”
Pretty soon, Harper left as well, Danni dropped off the bucket of sani, and Evan called out “no more donations,” his signal that if you had shit that needed to be washed, now was the time to get it to dishpit otherwise he’d leave it for Morning Walt to take care of. Chloe went ahead and checked her station, expo, grill and hot prep just to make sure nothing had been missed. Looks like Harper forgot to take his spatulas back to dish like he was supposed to, dumb motherfucker.
She looked back at the line from dishpit. Not much really left to do other than clean the stainless and bring up reset. And the floors, of course, but that shit was easy. Fifteen minutes of wiping down stainless didn’t take too long with a bucket of hot water and soap, and another bucket of sanitizer to make sure everything was properly clean. Reset didn’t take too long either, since Evan had gotten swamped and hadn’t run most of the utensils she’d need. Well, that’d be a problem for them tomorrow, she didn’t have time to wait for Evan to clear out his shit. It’d take him at least another hour anyway even with her asking him to speed shit up.
Chloe swept up what was left of the debris of cleaning everything off and underneath everything she could reach with a shitty, frayed broom that they should have replaced last summer. Errant tickets, stuck to the floor by a combination of water and gray whatever-the-fuck, went to the wayside as she got together lost fries, chunks of chopped up food and gloves that missed the trash can and dumped them back where they belong, in the trash. Squeegee time. With the magical power of a gallon bucket of hot water and soap, Chloe pushed whatever the broom couldn’t get up down the line and made the floor turn from covered in patches of brown, disgusting shit water to clean gray textured… what the fuck was this floor made out of anyway? Was it concrete or something else? No clue.
Just to be thorough, Chloe did a once-over on the line and made sure she hadn’t missed anything. Perfect fucking close, just like always. Hell yeah. Chloe could put her shit up, clock out, and get the fuck out of here, go home and bake. A day off tomorrow gave her all the time in the world to chillax and just zen. “Yo, Evan! I’m out, later dude!”
“Aight!” Evan yelled, putting on that weird accent he always did. Did dishies grow up like other people, or were they just created fully grown and weird? Chloe pulled on a jacket, already stuffing a cigarette into her mouth and lighting up as she went out the front door.
The night was chilly, kind of weird for this time of year but not terribly bad. She’d survive until she got home anyway. Chloe checked her phone, realizing she’d forgotten to before clocking out. 10:48. Not too shabby. Her own personal record was closing everything by 10:30, but that was also on a stupidly slow Monday. Real service always took longer.
“Hey,” someone said.
“Fuck!” Chloe yelled, nearly dropping her phone as she jumped. Rachel appeared at her side, one hand on a bag and the other holding a set of keys. “Jesus, dude, don’t do that to me! Fucking freaking me out…”
“Sorry,” Rachel said, sounding really apologetic. She looked pensive. What was up with her? “I didn’t really know we could park here, so… I kind of parked across the street. Can you walk with me to my car?”
“Oh, yeah, sure.” She’d heard Manager Gary tell servers to keep to a buddy system, especially if they were leaving late at night. “What’re you doing here so late anyway? You guys usually leave way before I do.”
Rachel readjusted her bag as they started walking toward her car, shivering a bit. “I had to roll like, forty sets of silverware. It just took me a while, is all.”
Sounded reasonable enough. She’d never done it – serving was the one thing Chloe would never fucking do in her life – but she’d seen how obsessive some of these people got with silver. All of that went by the wayside the second she laid eyes on Rachel’s car. “Yo, dude, is this really your car?”
“Yeah, why?” Rachel asked, giving her a curious look like this wasn’t a weird thing. How and when did she score a fucking classic Mustang? When did any server have a cool fucking car like that? “Okay, well, it’s actually my dad’s car, but it’s pretty cool, right?”
“Dude, the fanciest car here is like, Mike’s Punchbug. Everyone here drives some shitbox. You’re here in an old Mustang, like, that’s hella cool.”
Rachel laughed, getting in and setting her bag in the passenger seat. “Well, maybe you and I could hang sometime. Take a ride in my dad’s Mustang or something.”
“Yeah, that’d be cool.” Chloe said, letting out a puff of smoke to the side. “See you later, Rachel.”
“Later, Chloe.” With the rumbling of a Mustang’s engine coming to life, Rachel dipped off into the night, leaving Chloe alone in the middle of the street and only with her cigarette for company. Fucking wild. Who’d have thought one of these servers was actually a cool person?