I'll Take My Gun to Go: A Buffet Boy Story
By Aron White
Copyright 2011 by Aron White
Published by Morning Paradise Press
Cover Image Copyright by Marco Costa, Dreamstime.com
Check out Aron's website for more stories at http://www.aronwhite.com
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I'll Take My Gun to Go
“You got any string beans? Hey, buddy! Any string beans in this place?”
The increasing volume of the scratchy voice snapped me from my thoughts as I glanced down at a gray-haired, hunched over grandma-lady standing before me, silver walking cane in one hand, plastic plate stuffed with food in the other.
“We uh, let me see,” I responded before walking around the side of the nearest buffet counter to see the empty silver tray sitting beneath the heated lights. Pulling out the tray, I brought it back towards the grandma-lady and nodded towards the dumbwaiter in the nearby wall.
“Sorry about that, ma’am. We’ll have another tray ready in a moment.”
Grandma-lady’s nose wrinkled upwards with indignation, something not easy to discern considering she was covered head to toe with sagging skin and I mentally prepared for some sort of verbal thrashing.
“You know, Old Country Buffet never runs out of food. Everything’s fresh and available when I want it. I never have to wait.”
“Then why don’t you go to Old Country Buffet instead of coming here, you old bi…” Oh, how I wanted to say that out loud, but the customer service part of me knew better and instead I smiled while apologizing.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. We’ll have more string beans available shortly. If you like, I can stop by your table and let you know when they’re ready.”
Grandma-lady eyed me as if I were plotting to snatch one of her social security checks and walked away, heading back towards the dining room with her silver cane tapping against the tiled floor.
“Be sure you do, buddy,” she grumbled.
Did an eighty-year-old woman just call me buddy? My hands rolled into fists and I knew it was bad to want to pound a senior citizen into the ground, but oh how much better I would have felt if one could. That stupid, “the customer is always right," garbage. Why couldn’t this be France where the customer’s always wrong and I could swear at them in a way that would have sounded crude yet classy in the same breath? Guess it wasn’t my lucky day.
Looking down, I realized the empty silver tray was still in my hands and moved forward to the dumbwaiter, placing it on the small counter while calling out, “more string beans.”
“Gracias, Senor,” Miguel said as he popped up on the other side of the window dressed in his white cook’s coat and accompanying hair net. Miguel’s worked here at the buffet since I was a toddler, back when my father supervised the main counter and dining area, a job I inherited as only son a few years ago. Miguel never bothered to learn much English so we always communicated back and forth with bits and pieces of slaughtered Spanish and severely broken English. Whatever works, I guess.