If you went to Crossgates Mall today, I hate you.

Working in a mall restaurant allows one to fully appreciate the broad spectrum of insanity the general public possesses and displays on a daily basis.  Take for instance today, the 8^th of January. I had to be to work at 10:30a.m.for the morning slopping of the cows at Ruby Tuesdays.  When I got outside I found that it was snowing pretty heavily already, and the roads had already accumulated a large amount of what could only be described as “snow diarrhea”.  You know what I’m talking about, where the snow is really wet and, mixed with the mud on the roads, resembles what jets out of my ass after a visit to Hooters, both in appearance and in ease of driving through.  Granted, I don’t have snow tires (in fact, these tires are the same ones I got when I bought the car), and I take that into account every time I peel out or fishtail.  But I also have experienced many a New York winter and with that in mind am able to back up, with experience, my argument that the roads today were butt-fucking terrible.  I don’t care if you were driving a Sherman Tank, if you were on the roads this morning, you were spinning that big bitch out.   

So through a miracle of God I got to work without getting my shit wrecked by some other less skilled driver (that’s everyone, I rule at driving in this crap), clearly expecting it to be an absolute dead workday.  Who in their right minds would possibly go out to the mall on a day like this?  It wasn’t just snowing, it was like Mother Nature was tossing snowballs at the Earth, that’s how big the flakes were.  I got a concussion walking from my car to the front door of the restaurant.  Yet sure enough, five minutes after the doors open, there was my first table.  Then my second.  “What the fuck is going on here?” I think to myself while I look from my growing number of tables, to the television clearly stating a winter weather advisory has been put into effect for the Capital Region, then back at my tables.  It just didn’t make any sense.  The harder it snowed, the worse the roads got, the fuller the parking lot got and the quicker my section filled.  For a while, my entire section was filled, which means nearly everyone else’s was full too, which means we nearly had to go on a wait during a day when the closest anyone should have gotten to their car was when they looked out the window at it and said “Ain’t no fucking way I’m driving in this shit.”  

Was there a “Crazy Asshole” Sale where if you were a crazy enough asshole to drive in this shit, the whole mall was 50% off?  I apologize to every one of my co-workers for my griping today.  It’s not that I was bitching about having to work.  I hate when people do that, and I try to avoid doing it as much as possible.  It’s just that, for the most part, I have a pretty logical mind, and can for the most part figure things out when they at first don’t seem to make sense.  But I just could not figure out why people were hitting the mall like it was mid June.   Did everyone make a New Years resolution to drive like fucking retards?   

And so I hated everyone. Didn’t matter if you were nice or a douche.  Didn’t matter if you tipped horribly or you hooked me up.  If you were in my restaurant, you were a careless dipshit with no regard for human life because you risked life and limb to buy some fucking cheese fries.  Even on a day like this, two groups of people were able to elevate themselves above the masses of clinically insane and earn a special place in my heart dedicated to a select few, such as Carrot Top, or child pornographers:  

1)      The people who walked directly into the restaurant from outside

2)      The nuthuggers with children, especially infants.  

Here’s my problem with the first group.  They just drove at least a half an hour to get to the mall. I don’t care where you are coming from, in this weather it takes a half an hour to go anywhere. It took me 20 minutes to get from my car in the parking lot to the front doors, and only because I found a good dog team driver to give me a lift.  It wasn’t a winter wonderland out there, it was Hoth from “Empire Strikes Back”.  People were sticking their hands in disemboweled Taun-Tauns to keep warm.  A Burl Ives song, this was not.

So you drove to the mall at a 20mph clip tops, passing accident after accident, and your very first destination once you got to Crossgates was Ruby Tuesdays.  This is different from people who stop in after shopping.  People come to the mall to shop.  People who come to the mall specifically for Ruby Tuesdays need frontal lobotomies.  Listen, I get paid to be there, and even that won’t always get me out of bed and willing to drive through this shit.  I guess I shouldn’t underestimate the overwhelming drawing power of the various produce and pasta items cooking under the hot lights of a salad bar.  

“Snowing pretty hard out there.”

”Yeah, but I just can’t get that Ruby Tuesdays Salad Bar out of my head!”  

“I know!  Come on honey, I can’t stand it anymore!  If I don’t get some warm bow-tie salad in me soon I might go crazy!”  

“If we leave now, we’ll get there in 2 and a half hours!  Warm up the car dear.  Overpriced salad bar, here we come!”

People like this need to get eaten by that big abominable snowman in “Empire Strikes Back”.   

My problem with group two isn’t just because I despise children in the workplace.  Sure, whenever I get sat with a table full of children I want to put my head in one of the fryers.  Children in restaurants have no redeeming qualities.  But on days like this, I can completely justify my hatred for tables like this as coming from a genuinely decent standpoint.  I don’t hate the kids, I hate the parents of the kids, who would risk the lives of their children for a sale at Payless Shoes.  What the FUCK, people?  Is your life at home that overwhelmingly depressing that you would take your infant child into elements Eskimos don’t even fuck with?  Do you need that new Loony Toons jacket so bad that you would risk your baby’s life on the all-weather abilities of an IROC-Z?  Is this scene so far from the truth?

*knock knock*  

“Yes?”  

“Hello ma'am.  My name is Mr. Crossgates. I’ve come to your trailer today to make you an incredible offer!”  

“Oh really?  What is it?  Turn down ‘Judge Judy’ Hank, I want to hear this man.”  

“I am here to offer you this home manicure set, a new pair of “Voit” sneakers from Payless shoes…”  

“Oooh.”  

“…as well as this cheap imitation perfume, all at the low cost of full price.”  

“Hmm, I like it so far. What’s the catch?”  

“All you have to do in this amazing deal is risk the life of your infant child.  A simple coin flip. You win, you get to keep your baby and buy these things at full price.  I win, you still buy at full price, but I get to throw your baby out into that snow-bank over there where I’ll leave it for a few hours.  What do you think?”  

“Hmm...I like my chances. It’s a deal!”

If you’re angry, it’s because you know I’m right.  All I could think about driving home after work was how I was going to get into an accident with one of these intellectual black holes coming to the mall.  Even if it was the tiniest of fender benders, my first question when we both got out of the car to check the damage would be “Where you headed?”  If I got a response with the word “mall” in it, I would have set their car on fire. Crazy people don't deserve to own cars anyway.

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