Waiting on celebrities.

The other week when one of my academic mentors was in town, we went out to the big tourist trap area to some (new) bars to go get beers, and not only was there the twice-weekly fireworks that night, but the patio bars turned out to be pretty sweet, and we hit three of them up and just hung out and had beers and sat out in the summer night.

At the very last one, a chain restaurant named after a celebrity, I was chit-chatting with the (black) waitress a bit (a taller woman with golden-brown skin and a fro dyed in places to match), and just as my teaching mentor got back from the restroom, she was like, “I would work here anyday, I love it, I’ve been in the high-class restaurants and I’ve been in the low-class restaurants, and the high-class restaurants are the worst, people have money and they think they can do anything.”

“You ever serve anyone famous?”, I was like.

“A few times,” she was like.

The first time was when she was working in Cleveland years ago at a really nice restaurant, and LeBron James comes in.

“Oh, I’ve always kind of liked him,” I was like.

“He is an asshole,” she was like.

As she told it, she comes up to get his order, "And he was like, 'Do you know who I am?'.  And I said to him, ‘Do you know who *I* am?  *I* am a single mother with five children and just this job, and I *still* don’t put up with bullshit like that.’  Then I went to the manager and told him to get a new girl on the floor or I was going to do something, and he did, but he still wanted me as his waitress, even after that.”

“Especially after that,” I was like.  “To show that he had the money and the power and could do that.”

She seemed to agree, though she was a little distracted from re-lived anger.

“Anyone else?”, I was like.

“Beyonce’s mother,” she was like.  “She’s the worst, just picky picky picky, nothing’s ever good enough for her.”

“Where’d you serve her?”, I was like.  “Ohio?”.

“That was when I was in California, a few times.”

                                                                                                                        

I then asked about Beyonce, and she was like, “She was cool, she realized her mom was that way, and she just kept rolling her eyes and trying to calm her down, every time they came in.”

I mentioned that a waitress I know had waited one time on Michelle Obama’s mother and had a decent little conversation, and a year later Michelle Obama's mother had been in the same restaurant and remembered the waitress’s name and everything.

“Oh yeah, they’re cool people,” she was like.  “Their daughter was just at [a music festival the past weekend in the city] just walking around and stuff.”