Fatties at work 2 More stories of piggies who ruin everyone's days. Today's subject is a squat little hog whose name I don't know (you couldn't pay me to care) so we are going to call it Grimace. Both like the McDonald's character, and the face you make when you have to deal with it. Here are some facts to set the scene for you: First allow me to introduce Grimace. It is a short, (about 5'4?) brick shaped butter golem which may have once been female before the adipose tissue's hormone secretions caused such an imbalance that it also may be a young male with long hair who was castrated prior to puberty. Either are equally likely as you'd see from the beast. Possibly 280lbs, as a conservative guess. It glares out at you from squinty, piggy eyes behind its glasses, which rest on blotchy red cheeks. A permanent scowl puts the phrase "resting bitch face" to shame. Its pasty skin is so lacking in pigment from Grimace's lack of outdoor extracurricular that the skin literally looks like yellowing cottage cheese in a white garbage bag. Thin, straight, mousy hair. Grimace looks the way a cold, wet, grey winter day makes you feel. So Grimace works (yes, works!!) at a hotel. Our restaurant, while not affiliated, is inside this hotel. Due to past theft issues in the restaurant no one but the owner, manager, and head cook have keys for the back door from our parking lot, meaning if I arrive at 6am before anyone else to open I have to get a key from front desk to open the restaurant from the lobby side. The key lives in a drawer behind the desk so you have to ask their staff to give it to you. Hotel staff also get 10% off any orders they make in the restaurant.  So let's get to a few incidents, shall we? A few days ago I was running late for work due to an unprecedented errand sending me on a new and congested route. I attempted to call my coworkers from my car, as I typically arrive a half hour early and it was already ten to. No answer. When I finally arrive with three minutes to spare I find that the back doors are still locked meaning no one has begun opening the restaurant. Confused and a little panicked I run to the front to get the key, thinking the cooks must have overslept, only to find them and our dishwasher standing beside the locked door in the lobby. Me: "What are you guys doing out here? We open in two minutes, is everything ok?" Cook 1: "thank god you're here, you have a key right? None of us have keys!" Me: "No? Front desk has the key," sees Grimace working, "she hasn't let you guys in yet?" Dishwasher: "She says she doesn't have a key, should we call [owner]?" Me: "No, they have the key. For fuck sakes." I storm over to the desk, which is about two feet away so it wasn't much of a storming... But of course Grimace heard everything. Grimace: pitiful sigh "look I have a lot of work to do, the hotel is full and I-" I interrupt: "We ALL have work to do, give me the key so we can get our damn restaurant open."  I stick my hand out at the beast with my demand and it pouts while it digs out the key ring and hands it over. Grimace: whining "I don't know which key it is..." I snatch the key, open the door, and throw it back at Grimace saying to my coworkers, "come on guys, we're late. Some people's useless children..." Cook 2 proceeded to mutter about how lazy and careless people don't care who's life they make harder. Being French he said it in ways I can't figure out how to repeat here but that's the gist.  We opened 15minutes late because Grimace was too lazy and self centred to open a drawer and hand an object across a desk. It was too much work, guys. It was too stressful to accomplish that task.  But life goes on, and we all make it work despite fatty sabotage. Today was another incident. Today, I arrived an hour early to open. I'm not usually such a jobsworth but my bf had to drive in early and he was my ride. Took the key, unlocked the door, then closed it behind me, leaving the "open" sign off since we don't open for another hour.  I'm sweeping and shit when a guy walks in looking around to take a seat, and I have to explain that we are closed for another hour. He leaves and I follow him out to lock the door from the inside to prevent any more stragglers. I see him gesture to the restaurant and say something to Grimace who makes a sheepish kind of "Oh... Oops" face. I realize it had sent him in as though we were open. See guys, when I see a door that is closed and an open sign that is unplugged, I assume they aren't open. If the open sign is on, and the door is open, they're probably open. This fucking tardass of a ham couldn't seem to differentiate between the two and the guy seemed pissed off at Grimace and embarrassed for trusting her over our signage. I felt so bad for him having to interact with the beast that I comped his coffee when he came back for an omelette an hour later. Here's another thing I dislike about Grimace: remember its aversion to taking keys out of drawers? The hotel lobby has a washroom that needs a key from the front desk to open. Instead of handing out the key to hotel guests and passers by, Grimace tells them to walk past her, through our restaurant, to use our washrooms. That way, we get to clean up after non-paying people, and are constantly distracted to see if the person who just walked in is seating themselves or not. Because the ham is too lazy to hand out keys to the hotel's own washrooms.  On top of that, the ham has no qualms sending severely inebriated hobos from the bar across the street into our washrooms, and offering them water on our behalf (we do not under any circumstances serve people who are that drunk, not even water, or we become liable if they cause trouble.) Any normal person would call the police so they could take these guys to the drunk tank to sober up in a safe environment where they can't cause trouble and get arrested on actual criminal charges. But that takes effort, too hard for poor Grimace. Hmm what else.... Remember how I said hotel staff gets 10% off out of the kindness of our own hearts? Well Grimace gets a daily feeding out of it. It makes us deliver the food to the desk out front even when we are packed and busy, but never tips. And Grimace ALWAYS COMPLAINS. Our nachos are huge and require a pizza box. Grimace apparently felt humiliated when guests saw it shovelling handfuls of cheese into its gullet from a pizza box all to itself. It proceeded to complain and call the box ridiculous as though it's the box's fault that it chose to eat a plate meant to be shared by an average family. Another complaint was that it took an hour for us to deliver it a fully stacked burger (no tomato, no greens) and side fries with all the ketchup is the fucking world. Because it thinks it is a higher priority than a reserved table of 20 plus other tables with one server and a new trainee. It was disappointed to learn that it was, in fact, our lowest priority customer. We give zero shits about a ham that eats for a discount and treats the servers like crap. Too fucking bad.  Everyone complains about this beast after interactions with Grimace, but since we are all adults who understand that stupidity is a part of life we must contend with once in a while, we just deal and continue on our merry way. It certainly wouldn't be worth the effort to complain to hotel management because in this town it would be too much effort for them to replace any staff who are just complainers. As for inhibiting our work by not giving us the keys, a firm hand is all you need, much the same as with moody children.