Lobster Tales

Every year, about Mother’s Day weekend, I get to remembering my friend Kathy Pitts.

Kathy used to be a cook at the Red Lobster in College Station, Texas, the home of Texas A & M University, the infamous Aggies.  Now Aggies are Texas’ version of Polacks.  Just about any Polack joke you ever heard can be told as an Aggie joke, and vice versa, without losing any of its point.  Thing is, as Kathy found, there was a certain amount of basis for all those jokes, because the Aggies she encountered at the Lob tended to prove the adage that Aggies are too dumb to pour piss out of a boot with the directions written on the heel.

Not that the Aggies were the only idiocy to shake her head over.  Other co-workers and restaurant patrons provided her fodder as well.  And when it was too much to keep to herself, she used to write her “Lobster Tales” to entertain the members of the Fidonet COOKING echo (i.e., newsgroup).

The following post appeared in May, 1995.

Hi guys—sorry for the absence, but thought I’d give you a blow-by-blow report on the Weekend From Hell.

It began when we realized that Texas A&M University had scheduled its graduation activities to coincide with Mother’s Day weekend.

I clocked on for my first shift on Thursday night.  We got slammed.  Ran out of food, were back there prepping things to order for the last couple of hours (not a good sign, as there was a 2 p.m. graduation that guaranteed a busy lunch the next morning, and the prep cooks were gonna walk in with NOTHING to start with).

Had my second shift Friday night.  Since the latest Kid (her assistant; she had a string of ’em in her time at the Lob, each one known as “the Kid” -sw) had departed for his internship in Michigan on Wednesday, I had no trained help.  Instead, they gave me a server who had baked bread a couple of times in the past, and supposedly was bright enough to master baked potato quickly.  Didn’t work out that way—spent the night running my posterior off, reminding my alleged help to stick the potatoes in the oven SOMED###TIME, and generally going crazy.  Again, we ran out of food . . .

Since we are short of prep cooks (one of our breaders sorta got quit midweek, when she decided to no-call/no-show for two consecutive shifts), I “volunteered” to come in at 8 ayem on Saturday to help get Saturday lunch up.  One of my tasks for the day was to assist a recent hire who was allegedly getting salad prep together.  Somehow, new-hire could not QUITE grasp the fact that when the pasta has cooked for 8 minutes, it needs to be removed from the fire, drained and cooled.  After asking him to do this task twice, I finally picked up the pot, carried it to the sink myself.  (Please note this is a BIG pot, which when filled with water and pasta, weighs about half as much as I do.)  Got it to the sink, screaming “HOT” all the way, and was starting to dump it, when Mr. New Hire decided to zig when he shoulda zagged, and stepped in front of me.  Wound up dumping about 10 gallons of boiling water over my front, left arm, right foot, etc.

What I screamed is not repeatable on a family echo.

Fortunately, the burns were not serious, and there was nothing sharp in my hands when I confronted New Hire.  I didn’t QUITE kill him, but probably enlarged his vocabulary by several colorful (and largely unprintable) descriptions of his character, heritage, future, etc. . . .

About 10 minutes later, we got slammed . . . .

Wound up clocking off for 23 minutes before I clocked back on for my night shift (which was SUPPOSED to be slow).

Right . . . .

Another Night From Hell (assisted by the same server).  Ran out of food AGAIN, and dragged outa there at sometime after midnight.  Because we were starting from nothing, it was decided to bring the key prep cooks in at 6 ayem to start prepping for Mother’s Day lunch.  I got “volunteered” to help.

At this point, I was running on Automatic Pilot (didn’t even KNOW there was a 6 ayem, let alone consider the fact that I might have to function at that hour 🙂 ).  Spent 2 hours in salad, then turned it over to Mr. New Hire (who came in at 8).  Think I shocked our GM when I refused to work with him again, on the grounds that I considered him dangerous.  Did leave him set up so that even an idiot could have gotten through the shift without problems, though.

Went down to broil prep, and helped down there until about 5 p.m., when I took a 15 minute break.  Went back to work, and ran my tail off until about 9:30, when I sat down and realized that I could NOT get back up.

Informed management that I didn’t care . . . . someone else could close the back line, or they could leave it trashed . . . . I was NOT going to move any more that night.  They found someone to close the line for me, while I sat there and sipped lemonade until my legs functioned again (about an hour later).

Fortunately, I had Monday and Tuesday off.  Don’t remember Monday, although I know I must have gotten up to go to the bathroom at some point, as I didn’t wet the bed.

Should give a lot of credit for surviving this to Wes, who saw that I was fed, clothed, and generally cared for through all of this.  I appreciated the hot meals, clean clothes, general moral support more than anyone will know.

Kathy in
Bryan, TX

And now I bet you know why I always think about Kathy on Mother’s Day.

I was reminded of her even more forcibly because tonight I took L out for a Mother’s Day dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack (a small regional chain).  Because I’m deathly allergic to all shellfish, we rarely go out to eat at fish places, but she loves seafood of all kinds and I wanted to do something special that she particularly liked.  Hence Joe’s.

L said her redfish Pontchartrain was quite good, if more peppery than she liked, but the catfish platter I ordered . . . well.  The fish was watery and short-fleshed, the French fries were mealy and chewy, and the whole thing was just plain tepid, not warm at all.  And then the margarita I ordered came to the table with much too little lime juice, just about sickly-sweet and way unpleasant.  That, at least, I sent back to be fixed.  The food was beyond fixing, however.  I did make a point of pulling the manager on duty aside afterward to explain what I’d found wrong.  To his credit, he didn’t try to make excuses, and said he’d go back and have a word with the line cooks to make them understand that food served at eight-thirty in the evening had to be as good as what they’d served at eleven that morning.