I go to a café once a week-ish to upload Genius to the Internet and harass people with pointless emails. I sit in the upstairs section and pass the afternoon with headphones, drinking coffee until my colon tells me it is time to stop, signaling the beginning of the Working Class Chilean Beer Phase. As with the rest of the country, service here is a luxury item that only the rich can afford. If I want another beverage I need to go downstairs and order it, wait 25 minutes then go downstairs again and inquire about it before I have any chance of getting one.
This day however I was taken by surprise by a waitress coming upstairs. What did she want? Did she realise I had been eating snacks stashed in my backpack to avoid buying their Over Priced Old Fridge Tasting Selection? Or had someone gone Exorcist in the bathroom again (I bet it was a fucking Belgian)? She seemed to be making eye contact with me — so I put my attention back on the Google image search for Mud Wrestling Sisters and left the headphones in. Who knows, maybe she was just trying to take in the magnificence of my Chin-Defying Farm Beard?
When it was apparent that she wanted something from me I feigned ignorance and looked up spitting out Hola awkwardly. Perhaps my cow shit covered pants wrongly signified that I wasn’t a gringo and she asked a question I didn’t understand or associate with waitresses or cafés. Maybe she was asking me out? As long as I could keep my screen away from her there might be something in this. I smoothly said What? She decided to repeat what she said before, word for word, but faster. I wrongly attempted a shrugging reply (you’d be surprised how often that is sufficient). It got awkward. And her face gave birth to a scowl—which is a scowl slightly different than the regular scowl that sits unenthusiastically upon the collective faces of the Chilean Service Industry.
Then I realised I had to buy something else. Apparently one espresso coffee in four hours isn’t enough. Well maybe if you dragged you bagging jeans wearing arse up the fucking stairs every now and then you’d get a few more purchases sweet heart. That would have been a sweet-as thing to say but would require approximately 10 minutes to translate and cross reference with the dictionary. I don’t know what I fucking want — I’m busy looking for chicks fighting in mud. So I opted for a time buying request for the menu — but in the stress of the moment I couldn’t remember how that phrase went. Was it carta or menu and with what verb and which tense do I use? She was about my age, but I don’t know her, do I use formal or informal?
The seconds passed and I knew I was nose-diving into a Communication Arse Crack into which even English got sucked. So I drew a rectangle with my hands and shrugged. Her return blank I’m-doing-a-turd-like face (she was getting less attractive by the minute, as I assume I was — Beard Credit can only get you so far) indicated she wasn’t computing. What else could I possibly be signifying you incompetent fool — that I’m opening a portal to another dimension to flee through with my illegal snacks and semi pornographic pictures without paying for my one espresso or divulging my intimate knowledge of what actually happened in that bathroom? We were now perhaps three minutes into this shit storm with no way out. I had one headphone in playing Van Halen Poundcake thank God (a.k.a. Van Halen) to ease the pain. And you know what the crazy bitch did? She turned around and walked downstairs AND DIDN’T COME BACK. She fucking gave up! Did she even fucking work there? How is that acceptable? Oh that’s right service is a ‘If I feel like it’ thing around here.
If I had a hat on I would have taken it off to that amazing display of Extreme Service (and thrown it at her as she walked away, and in an ideal world it would have been a over-sized metal construction helmet with Rabies-laced Tiger Wire welded to it and copped her square in the lower back at the top off the stairs. When she’d finished falling to the bottom of the stairs I’d yell out Bring me a beer thanks.
And by the way, I am uploading this spicy entry from within the aforementioned café, beer in the hand — what delicious ironing.
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