In which the tides begin to turn...

It was a blessed and magical time at the restaurant. Captain Rig for whatever reason had decided to be rather reclusive and spend some quality time in his office. His absence lightened the mood in the kitchen considerably. The cooks, who I thought of as beaten drones actually showed some personality and senses of humor. Most of the servers spent the side work time chatting and having a laugh instead of being stressed to the M-A-X. Not to give the wrong impression here, Capt Rig world make his authority known several times a night on no uncertain terms. The cooks were lined up and publicly berated for making the salad dressing pink (mysterious) and for burning the meatloaf (unfortunate.) The servers turned on them in an instant, proclaiming that they would NEVER make mistakes and wouldn't DREAM of being such irresponsible f**kwits. Keeping my thought to myself, I considered how swiftly the tables could turn and we could be the ones getting strung up and beaten.
Another interesting development had taken place as well. There were now several new girls on staff. Any by several, I mean myself, two other experienced sassy servers and a gargantuan spectacled Shrek. Oh dear. Bonding together as only new, slightly overwhelmed staff can the 3 of us formed a tentative alliance. Swearing to have each others backs thru the good times and bad we kept a close eye on each other and tried to keep each other from befalling the wrath of Capt Rig. Shrek, on the other hand is simply dreadful. She is a close talker, a space invader and loves to butt in on conversations. She also stands at the end of her section and watches her customers eat which is creepy,and would make me uncomfortable. I could forgive her gigantic thick glasses and her messy scrunchie tied hair if she was fun, or a really terrific waitress but honestly she's just all around bad. It's a sad sight. My hope is that perhaps the 3 of us who are new, cool and do not have solar system sized chips on our shoulders can keep our heads above water and perhaps teach some people manners. We have decided that using please and thank you loudly might be a good start, since those little words do not make regular appearances in the kitchen. "THANK YOU" I shouted at the cook last night "THE FOOD LOOKS GOOD." "You're welcome?" he said, looking at me like I was fully insane. "COULD YOU PLEASE RUN THE SILVERWARE" I asked the dishwasher "WE ARE OUT, THANK YOU" See, it's really not hard.
The tides might be turning in my favor with the head harpies as well. Ashley has decided that she is going to be my new BFF, something that makes me recoil in horror. However, she is very good friends with Bobbi the manager/owner so it is in my best interest to listen intently to her romance-gone-wrong stories and to smile and non (but not agree, or disagree) when she gripes about every person who works in the restaurant. Jan continues to run around being a big old bag but I am at the end of my rope with her shenanigans and have started to break out the sarcasm with her. Usually I save the sass for my friends. The more I like you the more likely I am to banter on with you and give you a hard time. I feel that I am wasting perfectly good cutting remarks on her but it is getting her to back off and pick on someone her own size. Most of my responses to her crabby little questions go a little like this: "why did I leave that in the sink? for you to take care of, obviously." "why did I do so and so? clearly to try to make you mad." That's just the tip of the iceberg (an iceberg. Like Jan's heart.) I had fully intended for my motto at work to be "keep your mouth shut and your head down" but that wasn't cutting it. Ever since I declared full blown war on Jan and her craptastic attitude everyone has been treating me more like the goddess that I am (thank you, thank you.)
So bring it on people. You might think you can mess with me because I'm small and middleaged but I'm up for it. And I fully intend to take this place over, kick some booty, reign terror over Capt Rig and give Shrek a makeover.