My Two Weeks

This is the actual letter of resignation I turned in to South Beach Grill

To whom it may concern, regarding further employment at the South Beach Grille

Theodore,
It is with great disdain that I write to you this letter, as it signifies the end of my employment here at South Beach Grille, a job that I have grown to love dearly over these past one-and-a-half years. It pains me to inform you that my last day of employment will be on August 14^th, 2010, as I will be pursuing greener pastures in the shapely form of drunken sorority girls in Gainesville – specifically those in Delta Gamma, who have a reputation for being especially slutty. But I must confess. The real reason for my departure is not just my dislocation from the greater Saint Augustine area. No, I have decided to seek further employment elsewhere, where the employees are rewarded for their heroic efforts in the workplace with shift drinks; where the shift drinks flow like the waters of Ponce De Leon’s fountain of youth and into my mouth; a fountain of shift drinks. My untimely employment here at the South Beach Grille did not properly prepare me for the removal of the shift drink. For three months I toiled and slaved into the spring season, eagerly awaiting the arrival of my 21^st birthday, anxiously anticipating that ice cold, alcoholic token of appreciation: a draft beer. And then, in a flash, it was gone. Ripped from my tired and thirsty fingers, a certain anxiety set in. Without the promise of shift drinks awaiting me at the end of a busy Friday night shift, there was no light for me at the end of that perilous tunnel - only endless droves of Southerners requesting – nay – demanding that I bring them a four-ounce cup of ranch for their twelve-piece, fried shrimp dinner. The endless refills of sweet tea, the recanting of our (unlisted) salad dressings six times per table (why, why, why doesn’t anybody listen to me when I explain to them our menu! Hell, why aren't the salad dressings listed on the menu!?), and enduring the endless repetition of the phrase: “What do you mean you’re out of seafood platters?” Yes, without that lukewarm Bud Light glowing for me on table seven, I can simply bear it no longer. And it’s not just the customers that have lost their sheen – even the past times here at the Grille have grown dull and stodgy. Gambling on sporting events, whispering “balls on chin” past the tables, singing along to the original South Beach musical “weeded in the square,” even the penis jokes, at one time making me burst into uproarious laughter, have gone (much like their counterparts) flaccid and soft.

But it wasn’t all bad times at South Beach Grille. There were good times. Losing $100 dollars in fantasy football, burning my fingers on our shoddily poured hot white chowder (hilarious!), getting roofied at the Christmas party, fifty percent off food, stealing corn bread, 86’ing happiness, and last but not least, all of the sexual harassment - truly glorious amounts of it. (Although, I must admit, I am disappointed by the fact that every single time I stood naked in the supply closet, covered in our pasty bulk-order whipped cream, the only person to ever walk in and partake was James, from the kitchen. And I mean no disrespect to the man, but I simply cannot be involved with someone whose face is ninety percent beard.)

South Beach was so much more than just a job to me. It was a test of my truest character. Something changes about a man who drinks until four A.M. and then wakes up at six o’clock for a breakfast shift (still drunk), where he is again hassled by Southerners for a 4 oz. cup of ranch to go along with their pancakes and early morning cup of sweet tea. Seriously, Ted, whose idea was it to serve breakfast at a seafood restaurant? To quote the famous philosopher, Daft Punk, South Beach has made me “harder, better, stronger, faster.” The accumulation of so much rectitude in such a short period of time has been, to say the least, truly awe-inspiring. I will never forget my time here at South Beach Grille. All of the memories at table seven, all of the laughter, all of the hangovers, all of the write-ups, being weeded in the square, and how you totally didn’t fire me. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, a thousand times, Thank You.

Sincerely,

Ian C. Rowe

P.S. The purpose of this letter was to inform as well as to entertain. Most of these “facts” are made up. Nobody whispers balls on chin past tables, never have I waited naked in the supply closet (although James’s face is ninety percent beard), and never have I waited tables still drunk. (Or have I?)

Seriously though, please don’t fire me before my two weeks.

The War - Chapter One

I didn’t mean to start the war.

In no way was that my intention. Mostly, I just wanted to be left alone, which is why I had them turn their attention elsewhere in the first place. The ants and the bees, that is. The Puerto Ricans didn't really buy into it, but my track record with them really wasn't ever that great to begin with. It started the summer before my twenty-second birthday. I was working three jobs then, and I really didn’t have time to clean up after myself. That was the same summer I switched to drinking hot tea, too, because all of the coffee I was drinking was starting to make me anxious. But I really can't go blaming it all on the hot tea. Mostly, it was the honey. Really, that’s the only way to drink the stuff is by sweetening it with honey (the tea that is) otherwise, it tastes just awful. I really have been going off on a tangent here. Let me get back to how the beginning. The day the war started began like any other day before it. I had woken up before sunrise to complete a brief shift at a broadcasting station, where the only other employee I worked with was still drunk from the night before. Once finished, I would change into restaurant attire and drive across the bridge to wait tables by the ocean. Depending on what day it was, once my shift had ended, I would either go home and drink until I fell asleep on the floor, or, I would sit by a tall door and check the dates on people’s driver’s licenses.

"Five dollars please," I would say.

"Forget it," they would say, and they would then proceed past me through the door I sat in front of.

Ultimately, the job lacked certain pleasantries.

But again, I am getting ahead of myself. It was not that day. The day in question – the day everything started – was my evening off. I had come home late in the afternoon, reeking of fried fish and potatoes, showered, and then pulled out a bottle of clear, sweet rum to drink. Tiptoeing through the clutter in my apartment (remember, I’ve been working three jobs and haven’t had time to clean yet) and making my way towards the cupboards, I sagged with disappointment after opening them to discover I had no clean glasses to drink from. I was actually going have to wash something. Setting my rum on the counter, I made my way to the sink and turned on the hot water, grabbing a jar of green scented soap and pouring generous amounts of it into the sink's deep, steel basin. Only when I reached over to pull from my dishes did I finally notice the ants.

There were two rows of them marching over the counter, each with their own different agendas. The first row, a neatly filed uniformed row, marched purposefully back and forth over the grout between the tile, busily making their way into my empty tea cups, scouring at their bottoms for dry crackled flakes of crusted and neglected honey. The other line marched forwards only, making no attempt whatsoever to march back with all the others. Instead, they danced drunkenly in circles around glasses half filled with my clear, sweet rum.

“What in the hell is this?” I said angrily to the small moving lines on my counter. The ants pretended to ignore me. I cleared my throat. "Excuse me," I said. "But what in the hell is this?" One of the ants rummaging through the honey stopped what they were doing and twiddled their antenna in my direction. As if inconvenienced by my question, the ant begrudgingly pulled out of formation and scuttled to the edge of the counter to peer up at me.

“What in the hell is what?” He said, in a small yet unmistakably self-important voice.

“What in the hell is all of this,” I asked him, pointing to the other ants and stretching my arms out lengthwise to emphasize to him that “this” was, in fact, the intrusive manner in which he had entered my home. “You can’t just invite yourself into someone’s house like this.” I said. “It’s rude. Don’t you ants have any manners?” The ant clicked his mandibles and shrugged his shoulders. His rudeness, and blatant disregard where my feelings were concerned, was incorrigible. But this wasn't really what upset me. What irritated me most about the situation was the way the other ants managed to collectively ignore me as a whole. Even as I stood there in front of them adamantly protesting their being in my home, they continued to march coolly between my tiles in rows of two, and dance ludicrously around my cups in the kitchen.

“It’s never been a problem before,” the ant replied, clicking. “Why all of a sudden is it such a big deal?”

“Before?” I asked, squinting. “How long have you been coming here?”

“Oh, for weeks now,” the ant exasperated, further twiddling his antennas and shaking his head from side to side. “You’ve just been so busy, so busy you haven’t noticed. But you can’t blame us. We’ve got all the sweet golden flakes and magic dancing water we could ask for. The hill has never been happier.”

“Yes,” I said, “that may be so, but, what about me? What will people think of me if they discovered that I allow ants to come and go as they please in my house? I’m sorry, but such behavior is intrinsically frowned upon in my society and deemed unsanitary. I'm afraid you have to leave."

The ant stood defiantly before tromping rows of apathetic brethren, clicking his mandibles, antenna wiggling. He shook his head from side to side and said: “No. I don’t think so. We like it here too much. We like to eat here, we like to dance here, and we intend to keep it that way.” Unfazed, the ant spun around and fell back into formation among the vibrating score, charging dedicated and steadfast to his hill. I responded to this rudeness promptly, by wiping all the ants into my sink with a sponge, drowning them in apple scented suds and hot water.

A story to come based on the following sentences.

When she told me what happened I was cheating on the New York times crossword puzzle. I wasn't listening the way I should have been because I was trying to figure out thirty-four across and staring at Theresa's legs. I was trying to think of an eight letter word for Greek column while at the same time trying not to think about sex. I wasn't trying to think about drowning.

I wasn't trying to think about anything.

?

There is a kind of therapy called "Free Association Therapy," (Freudian psychology or psychoanalysis) I think. No, I need to correct myself here, I don't think that it's real - I know that it's real. I'm just not sure if I'm doing it right now. I very well may be, but I very well may be wrong too. More often than not, I am wrong. Who knows? Maybe I just wanted to talk to myself. Or maybe I just wanted to tell a story. Hell, I don't know, maybe I just wanted to tell hundreds of abstract autobiographies about myself.

Their plot summaries would read, as follows.

1. There is a boy who longs for something.

2. He does not know what it is.

3. He never finds it.

4. He dies hungry.

For commercial purposes, sometimes the stories will go like this:

1. There is a boy who longs for something.

2. It is purpose.

3. He falls in love with a beautiful woman.

4. Death is inevitable but never mentioned within the story.

Here is flash fiction I wrote based on a word I saw in the dictionary:

I remember the first time I was to ride an elephant.

"Father," I said. "I'm scared. What if I fall?"

My father shut his eyes tightly, and his head fired backwards from the sheer force of his own ferocious laughter. He ran large, ringed fingers through his thick, tamed mustache.

"My son," he said. "You do not want to fall. If you do you will break your neck, and if that does not kill you then the elephants feet will surely trample you. Hold on tightly to the howdah and you will be fine." He proceeded to place his hands around my frail wrists, pulling my palms up to his face and placing them onto his plump, round cheeks. "If all else fails Nima," he said, "You can grab hold of my whiskers!" He laughed again, and with a mighty rumble, shook the earth. As he roared, I watched his mustache dance happily above his many crooked teeth. Two charcoal handles doing a boogaloo over an open smile, his face growing redder and redder.

- I may be going, or very well already may be, insane.

Advice.

Keep away from women who self indulge.

On the young.

There was once a little girl named Zooey who used to play with toy horses. She stopped one day after finding her mother fast asleep in a bathtub full of warm tomato juice. They never spoke again.

Paste.

My dream is to write a story so hilarious it will land me on the Conan O’ Brien show. After being invited on to the show, they will lead me into a room where I will be powdered and prepped and prompted. A stagehand will walk into the room - at some point - and say, “Five more minutes, Mr. Rowe!” and I will swallow a knot that has been clotting in my throat for the past hour. I will crack, “Okay!” back to the stagehand before he leaves, and then spin my chair around to look at myself in the mirror. When the door is closed, I will reach up to stretch out my shirt collar. I will pull, and I will tug, and I will sweat, realizing only too late that I am being cooked alive inside of my suit. I will brush this notion off as ridiculous. I will try to locate the source of my soaring body temperature as something other than my nervousness, coming to the conclusion that my suit is actually several sizes too small. I will realize that my pants are too tight, my tie is too tight, my shoes are too tight, and my belt is snapped on so tightly that it is cutting off the circulation to my penis. My entire suit will be filled with water, essentially transforming me into an Indian sweat lodge. I decide to myself that I will charge anybody who hugs me 100 dollars. I begin to shift uncomfortably in my seat.

“We’re ready for you Mr. Rowe,” a man says to me, poking his head into the room as he holds a clipboard tightly out in front of him. He has on a tiny black headset with a tiny black microphone rooted sternly in front of his tiny black mouth. He will be wearing a tight black T-shirt with a tight black belt and tight black pants and shoes. I will walk too closely behind him and be overly aware of the swishing my footsteps are making as I shuffle my feet down the hall. He will sweep me beside and I will be catapulted onto the stage and into a million people’s living rooms. I am now stumbling towards an eight foot tall Conan O’ Brien. I will stick out my palm for his handshake only to have my hand swallowed by his own. He will start to shake me. He will shake me with so much ferocity that I will feel overwhelmed and begin contemplating striking him in the groin. This way, if I run, he cannot chase me. I decide to not kick him in the groin. When we go to sit down, I suddenly realize how large Conan O’ Brien’s head is. I realize that Conan O’ Brien has the largest head in the entire universe. It is huge. If Conan O' Brien wanted to, he could swallow me. That’s how big his head is. His head is bigger than I could have possibly ever imagined - bigger than should ever be humanely possible; bigger than I could have ever written about. They don’t make font big enough to describe it. 3,677 of the earth’s suns could be fitted into just one of Conan O’ Brien’s pores. His head is that enormous. I will then realize that Conan O' Brien has been speaking to me, and I haven't heard a word that he's been saying. I have completely forgotten that I’m live on the air.

“What!?” I will shout, panicked, my voice cracking like an eggshell because of how terrified I am. He will just laugh.

“So, Ian,” He’ll chuckle, that famous Conan chuckle. “How big is my head?”

And then I will blink. I will remember that the entire reason for me being on the show is because he has read whatever it is that you just read. What I just wrote, this, right here, now, is the entire reason that I’m on the show. I will have forgotten that I wrote this excerpt to be funny, only I didn’t realize how large Conan’s head was going to be. Bigger than I could have ever imagined.

Bigger then I could have ever written.