Archie sat on his throne, which was fashioned from that crappy material that sticks to your legs if you happen to be wearing shorts. Archie happened to be wearing khaki pants and a Hawaiian shirt. Though the outfit screamed out the absolute obscenity of his character, no one would dare say a word to the big Arch. This was his restaurant, and this was Sunday morning. Archie cast a baleful miasma upon the place, a seeping gaze that tore into happiness and ripped it to shreds with the dire threat of judgment.

I happened to be in the kitchen, though I was “lucky” enough to be in a position, from which I could share glances with Archie when necessary. He eyed me, tempting me to forget an order or forget that someone had wheat toast rather than white. I was prepared for Archie to come in and yell about the toast being too burnt, or not burnt enough. I had two years of experience dealing with the infamous Arch-rants. One of the most noteworthy of his rants was over an oversized piece of lettuce, which he exclaimed to be too big. Though I found it absurd that he was yelling at me over lettuce, I held my temper. I held back the biting comment, and the insults I could have swung at the now mostly bald, somewhat chubby restaurant owner. Yeah, his eyes were fixed on me. It was getting close to eleven in the morning. Eleven o’ clock Sunday morning happens to be when the city of Davison gets out of church. Eleven fifteen is when the city of Davison comes to Archie’s Family Restaurant for post sermon breakfast. Needless to say, it’s a miserable time to be working there.

This Sunday was already building up to an overheated kitchen, crabby waitresses, and an even darker mood from the Arch man himself. I knew I had another five minutes before meal tickets would stream through the computer and into the kitchen, offering every sort of meal from eggs to pancakes to steak and cheese sandwiches. Rich was the head cook. He read the meal tickets and we each knew that an omelet would be taken care of by Josh or Randy, while hot sandwiches fell under Tom’s jurisdiction. My main task was toast. They called my position “the toast bitch”, because the person doing toast rarely had an opportunity to do anything else, and when I did have time, it was usually to get more bread.

Time zoomed to eleven fifteen, and the tickets started pouring in. A torrent of them hit the kitchen, and we prepared ourselves for the breakfast onslaught. I heard Rich call out for three wheat toasts, four whites, and one rye, and I started throwing slabs of bread into the toaster. We did pretty well in the initial onslaught. I went through an entire loaf of white bread in the first five minutes, but Rich knew what we could handle, and how to organize us so that the food could get out there.

Of course, the ten minute wait with a full restaurant was far too long for Archie. He burst in with his commanding khakis and billowing Hawaiian shirt to tell us to speed up our time. We were short-handed, but the last thing we needed was Archie’s help. Regardless, he gave it. He took the position of dictator, sending Rich to a free spot on the grill. At times like these, it’s easy to see the difference in leaders. Where one understands the capacity of his crew, the other thinks that the impossible is possible, and views himself as the one thing that can hold the ship together. When the Arch took point, he tried to make me keep up with toast, and help make omelets, and clean the grill whenever I had “free time”. What happened next can only be described as the breakdown of the entire restaurant. The wait on meals jumped from ten to twenty minutes. This made the waitresses a living Hell to be working with. The kitchen fell under a tirade of misplaced orders, and complaints by the wait staff. With Archie still dictating, I remarked, to myself, how quickly he could ruin the efficiency of his own place.

The next thing I remember is Archie yelling at us for our slowness, and disorganized nature. He turned to me and told me to clean the grill, even though a fresh torrent of tickets were pouring in. I did the best I could with a spatula to scrape the sizzling remnants of greasy waste off the flat open grill. After I returned to my rightful position as toast bitch, I realized that I had at least ten orders, and that I was oblivious to what kind of toast to make. There was no stopping Archie, so I threw bread randomly into the toaster and hoped for the best.

Of course, we had a few mess ups. A mountain of unused toast, several pancakes, and an omelet sat in the window. We had made a few items too many, and this, apparently was the way in which the entire restaurant would collapse. Archie exploded. I’m inclined to note that the explosion seemed literal, because his face turned bright red, and the steam of the kitchen swirled around him like a black thunder cloud. Then he called us all stupid. I don’t exactly remember what was said, because somewhere deep in the recesses of my own brain, a switch flipped. I recalled all the times He yelled at me when I washed dishes, all the times the Archerific Arch-man yelled at for falling behind after He told me to do something. The mountain of evidence against Archie’s character turned the tide of my temperament. The flipped switch was the difference between a calm, collected individual, and the person that I became.

I slammed a spatula down on the counter, turned to Archie, and said “Well, if we are so stupid, you can run the kitchen by yourself.” As a horrible anger contorted my face, I grabbed every single meal ticket that was left to be made, threw them into the deep fryer, and walked away. I imagine that Archie’s face was some sort of color that choked off all logical thought, because I didn’t get chased out of the restaurant, nor did I hear the ranting I expected. My best guess is that it varied between white, red, and scarlet.

Despite the fact that I had bills and tuition to pay, I smiled. I had just walked out on the man I had both worked for and hated for the past two years. It felt good to know I’d never help him make another dollar.

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