I generally tried to maintain just enough contact with Allie so that she wouldn't start gossiping about ME behind my back, as she did about those at Brady's whom she judged as believing they were better than she. Well, Allie, if "better" means not addicted to painkillers, lies and bad-news boyfriends, then, yes, I guess most of us were indeed better. But we didn't want to set her off, delicate as she was, and always ready to launch into the next desperate and unbelievable story at any moment.
Not that any one person or thing could actually set Allie off. You just never knew when the tirade would begin. She would appear out of nowhere, arms around your patrons, and spill entirely Too Much Information on the helplessly captive audience. Usually she was trying to work the sympathy card, sadly relaying how hopeless and desperate her life was, just to work the good tips. But when she invaded another waitress's (or even mine, as bartender) section to unload her personal baggage on the poor unsuspecting diners, we weren't really sure what her strategy was.
We just knew that she was awfully close to insane, but could push that aside and expertly rattle off dinner and wine specials like she was born to wait tables. (Actually, this was her life's calling since she was a naive and fresh-faced 16-year old). Then she would throw in an awkward snippet of Allie drama, and customers and waitresses alike would cringe. At the end of the night, when we'd head over to Charters for a drink, we had to unload the night's "Allies" onto each other -- each one embarrassing us more than the last, especially when she turns on that awful half-Boston, half-uneducated accent:
"She grabbed that poor man's hand, placed it on her stomach, and said 'I didn't get fat like this by passing up on the frickin' FAB-u-LOUS deserts here.'You gotta try 'em!'" Gina told us last week.
"Gross!!!" we'd all agree, in unison.
"What about when she said to that judge, "Helloooooo Counseloh - is this your beautiful wife -- or maybe it's youhr mistress?"
And there were always a few "Hows would youzzz like some coffees" and "How youzz doin' tonight?" Those were par for the course - just a regular night of dealing with Allie.
She would often size up our customers for their buying power, and then slyly (not really) pull us aside, if it were our customer, and say, in her famous Irish Whisper, "You've got a MILLIONAIRE there!" or "Don't bother being sweet to him; he's a CHEAP bastahd." Most of the girls would tell her to get lost at this point. That's just what she would do, but she would remember to punch into the system later just to check what the millionaire or the cheap bastard actually did tip us.
And how she knew each one of our I.D. numbers was a mystery to us. Either, she had an in with Jason, or was actually a lot more clever than anyone gives her credit for. Whatever the case, we didn't like that someone like Allie had access to all of information. Once she actually changed another waitress's order, and then swooped in with the correct dinner, which she just so happened to have hot and ready, when the customer started to get angry about the mistake. Then she said to him, in front of the other waitress, "Next time youuz come in, you just ask for me, and I'll take good care of ya," with a wink and a pat on the back.
We could never actually prove that she messed with the computer. And she of course denied any wrongdoing. But things like this over the past few months, have not endeared Allie to me in the least.
And Jason can't be unaware of all her antics, but he sure acts like it. Maybe there's more to Jason and Allie than anyone really knows, too. That could also explain Allie's obsession with Leslie's rumored affair with him. And that would explain why Allie cornered Leslie last week and asked point-blank, in "Allie dialect" :"I hear you're F---ing Jason. Is it true?"
Friday, December 11, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Meet Allie
"I asked Leslie if she was f---ing Jason," was the first thing that assaulted my ears as I walked into work last weekend. Allie couldn't resist the gossip. Or the drama. I wasn't surprised she was the one to ask Leslie. In some ways, you had to respect the courage. In others you had to cringe because it was Allie.
Allie is what they call a full-timer. Someone who became a permanent waitress at the fresh young age of 16, right after she dropped out of school, and just a year before she got pregnant, married her boyfriend, and resigned herself to a full-time life of waiting tables. Some decisions were her own. Other things that happened were the result of some unfortunate fate. Her boyfriend turned out to be a deadbeat who stole her tips from her as she was sleeping, and then snuck out to buy drugs, and slept the days away, "caring" for their child, while she worked doubles to make ends meet.
But that was decades ago. And Allie was now a hardened forty-year-old, who looked about 15 years older. Her latest boyfriend (whom she sometimes referred to as her husband - we weren't quite sure which he was -- or maybe she had both.) was a professional workingman's compensation angler. He would work somewhere just long enough to get just hurt enough so that he could sue for disability. He was decent at this trick, but also liked to supplement his income with a few odd scams here and there. His most famous one was having Allie call her waitress friends and ask them to deposit checks in their bank accounts, and give Allie the cash, claiming she and Brad didn't have their own bank accounts.
Besides questionable financial habits, Allie and her boyfriend also had a fondness for prescription pain killers. So much so, that when Allie heard that Gina , another waitress, had called in sick because she slipped a disk, Allie went to visit her the next day and beg for a couple pills because she, too, had slipped a disk, and didn't have the insurance to go to a doctor to get treated.
Gina was so surprised to see Allie, and was caught so off guard, that she did give her a couple pills. That was all the encouragement Allie needed, because for the next week, she must have called Gina four more times to ask for more. Gina cut her off after the first visit, and finally stopped answering her phone altogether. Apparently, Allie was still getting her stash from some other connection, because one night last month, she was so doped up while working, that two waitresses had to hold her up, dab her forehead with cold compresses, and do all her work for her, hoping that Jason wouldn't notice she was spending an awful lot of time in the back room.
Yes, even though Allie drove them all crazy, the camaraderie of the women at Brady's overcomes the judgement and disgust that we all often have for Allie. We know she's had a tough life -- and it started with those first mistakes in her teenage years. Since then, she has had one more child of her own, and married into being a mother of 3 more. She tells stories about them -- each one sadder and more heart-tugging than the next. One's missing at war in Iraq, one ran away, the other is getting kicked out of high school. Oh, and add to those miserable details the fact that she has had 3 different kinds of cancer, is now married to (or girlfriend of) a disabled man ("He's not THAT disabled" she never hesitates to share with us), and living with her "in-laws," and one can't help but feel terrible for Allie.
But wait. She fooled me with all of these sob stories when I was one weekend into my first month at Brady's. Since then I have come to know that the "soldier in Iraq" is a mechanic on an Army Base in South Carolina; the "run-away" is in boarding school in Connecticut, and the one flunking out of high school is actually a normal, well-adjusted teenager (as normal as one can be as a by-product of Allie). And no, she has never had cancer of any sort.
And now I don't believe her when she tells me she is 5 months pregnant; is leaving her husband after the holidays; or is depressed because her mother-in-law passed away last night in her arms. Because, she will then turn around, tell Rodrigo, the very proper waiter, as she grabs him from behind, that she loves his "Italian ass" and that she is so horny because she hasn't had "any ass" whatsoever in 9 months. Allie, in a nutshell.
So when it was she telling me that she had confronted Leslie about the rumored affair with Jason, I didn't know what to say. Really, I try not to talk to her at all, as I do not want to be associated with that kind of crazy. But she was dying to talk, so, making sure that Chris, the bar back was there to overhear the whole thing, so that later, when she changes her story, he can corroborate, I did what every other waitress (or patron) tries so hard to avoid -- I engaged her in conversation. Must be the bartender in me.
Allie is what they call a full-timer. Someone who became a permanent waitress at the fresh young age of 16, right after she dropped out of school, and just a year before she got pregnant, married her boyfriend, and resigned herself to a full-time life of waiting tables. Some decisions were her own. Other things that happened were the result of some unfortunate fate. Her boyfriend turned out to be a deadbeat who stole her tips from her as she was sleeping, and then snuck out to buy drugs, and slept the days away, "caring" for their child, while she worked doubles to make ends meet.
But that was decades ago. And Allie was now a hardened forty-year-old, who looked about 15 years older. Her latest boyfriend (whom she sometimes referred to as her husband - we weren't quite sure which he was -- or maybe she had both.) was a professional workingman's compensation angler. He would work somewhere just long enough to get just hurt enough so that he could sue for disability. He was decent at this trick, but also liked to supplement his income with a few odd scams here and there. His most famous one was having Allie call her waitress friends and ask them to deposit checks in their bank accounts, and give Allie the cash, claiming she and Brad didn't have their own bank accounts.
Besides questionable financial habits, Allie and her boyfriend also had a fondness for prescription pain killers. So much so, that when Allie heard that Gina , another waitress, had called in sick because she slipped a disk, Allie went to visit her the next day and beg for a couple pills because she, too, had slipped a disk, and didn't have the insurance to go to a doctor to get treated.
Gina was so surprised to see Allie, and was caught so off guard, that she did give her a couple pills. That was all the encouragement Allie needed, because for the next week, she must have called Gina four more times to ask for more. Gina cut her off after the first visit, and finally stopped answering her phone altogether. Apparently, Allie was still getting her stash from some other connection, because one night last month, she was so doped up while working, that two waitresses had to hold her up, dab her forehead with cold compresses, and do all her work for her, hoping that Jason wouldn't notice she was spending an awful lot of time in the back room.
Yes, even though Allie drove them all crazy, the camaraderie of the women at Brady's overcomes the judgement and disgust that we all often have for Allie. We know she's had a tough life -- and it started with those first mistakes in her teenage years. Since then, she has had one more child of her own, and married into being a mother of 3 more. She tells stories about them -- each one sadder and more heart-tugging than the next. One's missing at war in Iraq, one ran away, the other is getting kicked out of high school. Oh, and add to those miserable details the fact that she has had 3 different kinds of cancer, is now married to (or girlfriend of) a disabled man ("He's not THAT disabled" she never hesitates to share with us), and living with her "in-laws," and one can't help but feel terrible for Allie.
But wait. She fooled me with all of these sob stories when I was one weekend into my first month at Brady's. Since then I have come to know that the "soldier in Iraq" is a mechanic on an Army Base in South Carolina; the "run-away" is in boarding school in Connecticut, and the one flunking out of high school is actually a normal, well-adjusted teenager (as normal as one can be as a by-product of Allie). And no, she has never had cancer of any sort.
And now I don't believe her when she tells me she is 5 months pregnant; is leaving her husband after the holidays; or is depressed because her mother-in-law passed away last night in her arms. Because, she will then turn around, tell Rodrigo, the very proper waiter, as she grabs him from behind, that she loves his "Italian ass" and that she is so horny because she hasn't had "any ass" whatsoever in 9 months. Allie, in a nutshell.
So when it was she telling me that she had confronted Leslie about the rumored affair with Jason, I didn't know what to say. Really, I try not to talk to her at all, as I do not want to be associated with that kind of crazy. But she was dying to talk, so, making sure that Chris, the bar back was there to overhear the whole thing, so that later, when she changes her story, he can corroborate, I did what every other waitress (or patron) tries so hard to avoid -- I engaged her in conversation. Must be the bartender in me.
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