confession

Of course, my favorite thing to do at Tim Hortons is to frazzle annoying customers, but I have a confession to make about my second favorite thing to do at work.

Every night I mop the floors, which includes both the men and women's bathroom. In the bathrooms (also in the dining area) we play oldies music. We don't play just any Dick Clark lame collection either, we play some pretty badass oldies - Santo & Johnny, The Flamingos, Question Mark and the Mysterians, T. Rex, Bob Dylan, Broker T & The M.G's, Etta James, etc., etc.

And every night while I am mopping the floors in the bathroom I pause, take off my headset and just dance to a whole song in each bathroom. There is nothing better than just letting it all hang out to some badass oldies tune with a mop in your hand and a uniform on your back while staring at yourself in the mirror acting crazy.

When I'm really shaking it down in the Tim Hortons' bathroom the stress of the lonely housewives, who order 6 ice caps, and the anal business men, who order a cafe mocha with half regular coffee and other with decaf, goes away - no customer exists, money isn't a problem and I don't have any late-night checklist to follow.

the doors won't lock

So last night we couldn't find the keys to lock the doors, so we were forced to leave dining area open all night. I have heard they keep the doors open all night at the some 24-hour Tim Hortons, but in the surrounding where I work robberies are somewhat commonplace , so we lock the doors at night.

A lot of shady characters come through late at night: strip club customers, strippers, truck drivers and drug dealers. All night, I heard yelling noises and I swore that I saw I people's faces in the store front windows more than a couple times. Basically, if ever there was I night that I would try to recapture in a horror movie it would have been last night when we couldn't lock the doors.

Alas, no one tried to come in, and on second thought: I am starting to think that I over-reacted to the situation and I kind of feel like a pansy. I have to go back into work in like half-an-hour and I kind of hope that we don't have the key again tonight and some grizzly trucker, strung-out stripper, or hopeless bottle-collector comes in. I mean, at least tomorrow's blog we be extra exciting.

revenge on the muffin man

Every late shift that I have worked there is this old guy that drives-through at 5:15 a.m. and orders the same thing. He orders three blueberry muffins, which sounds like a very sensible and, I guess, cute order; but for some reason the muffin man is unable to make the transaction without pissing me off.

The first time the muffin man, who I'll assign the name of Dick, came through for his muffins I handed them to him. In reply to my muffin offering, Dick said to me, with his right arm in the halt position, "Oh, no. This won't do. The bag is too small." This signaled to me that the muffin man's real name is probably Dick.

Another one of Dick's tricks is to tell me what his total is before I get a chance to, which is probably one of the most annoying things on this planet. I don't care that you know what three blueberry muffins costs: $3.27! If your life wasn't so boring, Dick, then you wouldn't know what your total was before you ordered.

It's obvious that Dick has a gut-wreckingly boring life and he only finds salvation in picking on the little guys, so now I mess with him each time he comes through. It brings me joy. You can judge me if you want to. I just to throw him off because he's such an ass-munch and never orders anything different.

So last night I saw him driving around, so I answered the beep,"Thank you for choosing Tim Hortons, would you like to try five blueberry bran muffins?"

"No, just three."

"Okie dokie, three blueberry bran muffins, $3.27, pull up."

"No, no, no, I don't want bran muffins. Just three blueberry."

"You said bran, no problem."

"No, no, regular blueberry."

And then I didn't say anything and pretended not to hear him, then I heard Dick's truck pull up. Next thing, he was pounding on the window. I took my time walking over to, and opening the window.

"Here are your muffins, sir," I said and handed the muffins to him. He gave me the halt signal.

"No, no, no, I wanted three regular blueberrys."

"I know. That's why there are three in the bag, with a couple napkins. Have a nice day."

killer mosquito

Some of the drive-thru customers may have thought I was practicing Karate this morning, but in fact, there was a kamikaze mosquito that just wouldn't die. The devil-worshiping insect repeatedly dive-bombed into my hairnet and ear. This left me itchy, agitated and thirsty for revenge.

I had the bugger in my sites a few times, but each time that I had the killer mosquito in the cross hairs another customer would ring-in at the drive-thru and I would have to fill the order.

It should be mentioned that I was forced to work at the Tim Hortons in, let's say Springfield, which is across town from the one that I usually work at last night. Apparently, the Springfield Tim Hortons has double the customers and to compensate for the larger number of customers the workers only do about half the cleaning.

Whenever I fast-food restaurant (I don't care what you say, Tim Hortons is fast-food. Our coffee is just better than burger joints) doesn't keep up on it's cleaning the bugs come. I haven't had any major problems with bugs at the regular Tim Hortons that I work at, but the Springfield store had ants and killer mosquitoes, so my advice for all you Tim Hortons lovers out there: Go to the most out-of-the-way Tim Hortons because as the service may be slower the inside of the store will be cleaner. Those heavy traffic Tim Hortons are dirty, my people.

crazy little kids (part 2)

I wish I could say that there was only one instance of bad behavior by little kids on Sunday in the dining area at Tim Hortons, but then I wouldn't be telling the truth. I should note that this instance was much more enjoyable for me because I was able to laugh at the little brat, not with him, but at him.

Apparently, there is this mom that comes in with her kids after church every Sunday - we think that they are Lutheran. She brought her two kids, a boy and a girl, but she also brought along two other boys about her son's age, which I would estimate to be around 9 or 10.

The mom, a very cordial lady, wanted me to put the kid's donuts on separate plates since they would be eating in the dining area, which was fine by me. She had each kid tell me what they wanted and I put it on a plate for them, also fine by me.

The drama went down when the bunch sat down. Perceivable one of the boys, that wasn't the son of the cordial mom, only ordered two donuts; whereas, the other two boys ordered three. The mom stood her ground and didn't let the boy order another donut because really all he wanted were two; he only wanted three because that is what the other two boys had (by the way, three donuts seems like a lot of donuts for a nine-year-old, but the kids did have to sit through a church service and probably deserved a little extra treat).

So the boy with only two donuts started to whimper, then some tears ran down his face and then it was full-blown sobbing. And still the mom didn't give in; rather, she removed him from the kid's table and made the cry baby sit with her - haha.

Now, I don't know how the rest of you, out there in cyberspace, were raised, but I never cried when another mom was taking care of me unless I was seriously hurt - it's just rude. This mom took a little brat to Tim Hortons - a treat for all ages - and bought him donuts and a milk. I could have brought the kid out an extra donut free of charge for the baby, but I didn't because the mom was right in laying down the law. Plus, I think I would have been laughing too hard at the little brat to give him an extra donut.

crazy little kids

So I finished off my second morning shift for the week today and I found more reasons to hate the morning shift. The most blaring annoyance came as a result of an abundance of crazy little kids in the dining area.

First of all this family - mom, dad and two little ones - came in and started demanding breakfast sandwiches as if the family, as a whole, wasn't fat enough. This wasn't a big deal because I have gotten used to fat people demanding breakfast sandwiches. It's just part of what you sign-up for if you work at Tim Hortons. I could start a whole new blog about the fat people getting their suspenders in a bunch about the breakfast sandwiches, but I won't go there.

Anyway, the problem came when the foursome sat down with their food. The problem was that the two little ones didn't sit down; instead, the roamed around the dining area looking for anything that they could displace while their parents just thought it was the funniest thing since the Borat movie.

Their kids opened a cabinet in our display area and started pulling out travel mugs and placing them randomly around the dining area - hilarious. Then the little ones moved on to the coffee canisters and did the same - absolutely amusing.

The best part of the whole ordeal is that the parents made no attempt to put back the displaced items, rather they just informed me, as they were leaving, that we shouldn't leave stuff out for their kids to move around - thanks for the heads up, assholes.

(There will be a part 2 of the "crazy little kids" blog tomorrow)

different types of stoners

For whatever reason my Mundane Manager put me on the morning shift the other day. I had to work from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and tomorrow I have to work from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. - bummer. I need the hours so I won't complain too much, but when I was hired I made it clear that I wanted to work the late shift. I don't like a lot of customers and I'm not a morning person, simply as that.

One thing I did notice when I worked the morning shift the other day was that the stoners act much different in the morning compared to the restful hours between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. I was actually a little surprised to see stoners up so early. What I witnessed was the construction-worker-stoner crew.

A pick-up truck, filled with three construction workers, pulled into the drive-through at about 7:30 a.m. They knew exactly what they wanted - two Ice Caps and a black coffee - which is very different from the stoners who drive through at 3:30 a.m. and change their mind about what type of donuts they want at least three times.

When these three construction-worker stoners pulled up to the drive-through window a cloud of pot smoke bellowed into Tim Hortons. The girl who handed the guys their drinks and change said, "I think I'm stoned and I don't even smoke," after they pulled off. This stoner behavior was in complete contrast to the late-night stoners. The late-night stoners are almost always paranoid and don't want you to know, at any cost, that they are stoned; whereas, the construction crew could care less because they know that the 5-0 aren't looking for stoners at 7:30 a.m. like they are between midnight and 3:30 a.m. Plus, the construction crew feels entitled to be stoned because they still plan to be productive - build a house, lay some cement, or something to that effect.