Always So Good For So Little

A car pulls into the parking lot, its driver lured off of the highway by the promise of a quick, cheap meal that toes the line between quality and fast food. Illuminated text on the front of the building paints the car a gaudy red, awash in light from the sign. Its owners, a perfectly ordinary middle-aged couple, step inside. They're met by a young woman at the host stand, her standard greeting called out with an enthusiasm that doesn't mask the apathy in her eyes. As she leads the couple to their table, their senses are assailed.

Repetitive Top 40 songs play over the din of the dining room from a dusty speaker that the owner's too cheap to replace. Glasses clink and knives scrape while servers repeat the same lines they will all night. Cheap art hung on walls painted to resemble brick goes unnoticed, overshadowed by four different sports matches blaring from televisions planted atop the walls like sentries. But the dominant, overwhelming sensation has to be the smell.

The aroma of chicken grease pervades every corner like a permament air freshener. It has the opposite effect. One server has been trying to wash the smell of signature sauce out of her shirt for weeks. Another gave up years ago. There's a sticky-sweetness lingering behind the bar, a combination of pints overflowing from the taps every night and the desserts housed in the fridge beneath them. The couple adjusts to the onslaught of sensation almost as quickly as it had come on, sinking into a corner booth decorated with cheap vinyl and stains that will never come out. They thank their hostess, and as she turns her back, her service industry smile is replaced by a cold indifference that developed after one too many years at the job.

As she heads into the server alley, she walks past a pair of gossiping coworkers, heads bent toward eachother in a poor attempt at discretion. The right side of her mouth turns up in a smirk as their manager stalks over to stop their squandering of the company's dollar. A shrill "If you have time to talk you have time to stock!" is punctuated by the squeak of the new guy's shoes against grease he's not yet learned how to avoid. The kitchen guys snicker when he stumbles, while fellow servers just groan and push past, continuing on their quest to satisfy guests that never seems to end.

In the kitchen, where the magic happens, the heat is stifling. A motley crew of 40 year old men and teenage boys bicker, swear, and burn themselves beneath a constant sheen of sweat. Their frowns deepen the longer the night goes on, serving up different combinations of the same food for hours at a time. The fryer oil sizzles as a new batch of pale yellow potato slivers is dumped unceremoniously in, sure to be gone again in the next 5 minutes. The cook calls out orders, struggling to be heard over warning shouts from employees carrying hot spits of rotisserie chicken that could be used as weapons if the night took a particularly bad turn. The smell of barbecue sauce from the rib station mingles unpleasantly with the brownie being microwaved six feet away.

There's a chorus of servers barking about chit times playing over the melody of an inccessantly dinging drive-thru sensor in the takeout department. Highschool students on headsets have multiple conversations while preparing orders for aging delivery drivers weaving tall tales of days gone by that no one is inclined to believe. Distant sounds from the dishpit ring out, pots clanging and cutlery shuddering through the industrial dishwasher for the third time in as many minutes. Boys in cover-alls scrub and soak back there, in the bowels of the restaurant. They dance through puddles of disinfectant and dirty water, mapping out strange steps only they seem to know. It's finally break-time for one of them, and he sighs in relief.

He exits through the heavy back door, taking a seat atop an overturned milk crate against the wall. With a practiced motion that says he's done this a hundred times before and he'll do it a hundred times again, he shakes a cigarette out of his pack and inhales. A wry, private smile splits his face before it's obscured by smoke on the exhale. "Not everything's better at Swiss Chalet." His voice is rough and exhausted.