Everything in my life needs to be a certain specific way.
Everywhere I go, whether I’m at work or at home, anything and
everything needs to be molded and crafted to meet my set of very
specific standards and practices. For instance, at home I have a vast
collection of books and CD’s and I can’t just put them on a shelf with
no rhyme or reason whatsoever to their placement. Not only that,
but the books and the CD’s both have completely different styles of
categorization.
The CD’s are categorized alphabetically by artist. Sounds pretty
normal, right? Wrong. When a particular artist has multiple albums
(LP’s, EP’s, splits, demos, etc.) they are categorized chronologically by
release date. That’s not the oddest example, granted, but you should see
my vinyl records. Remember this mnemonic device: ROYGBIV.
As for my books, they’re not arranged alphabetically at all (as
one would assume) but by their date of completion. I keep track this by
using a Microsoft Excel spread sheet with information like author, title,
publisher, date purchased, date completed, page count, etc. You may ask,
“But Averley, what about the books you bought but never finished?” I
can respond simply with: ROYGBIV (on a completely different shelf, of
course).
These two are just examples of what you can only imagine the
rest of my apartment looks like. With the color coded tooth brushes, one
for each of the seven days of the week. Clothing arranged by season,
starting with winter, which is then separated even further by, you guessed
it, a ROYGBIV sub-category. Any deviations from these and other
neuroses, we’ll call them, will throw off my whole way of life off. I’d
snap. My habits overflow from my apartment, into my car and they even
get to me at work. It’s like a tic or something.
I work at Michael’s Diner. Well, to be more accurate, I worked
at Michael’s Diner. I live about two minutes away. Just a few miles up
309, so needless to say it was convenient. But unfortunately…Well, let
me explain.
The diner was a place where I could really make sure that
everything was arranged my way. Nobody really cared, or rather,
nobody really talked about it—with me, anyway.
I had everything perfect, like a work of art. The pie display
case was arranged alphabetically by the type of fruit each pie was made
from and then further perfected by being placed from the smallest to the
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largest. The cookie case only had two categories: those with chocolate
and those without. I mean, I really added my own personal touch to
everything in the diner. Finally at that point there were two perfect
places in the world: home and work.
A few days back I was working a double shift. Sixteen hours. A
long, long day. I was working in a blissfully peaceful environment that
I constructed from the ground up. I couldn’t ask for anything more. For
someone like me who needs to have everything utterly perfect, I really
made something of that place. As a matter of fact that’s the exact thought
I had when I noticed the menus. There was something wrong with the
menus.
The whole menu thing made me feel like someone picked the
diner right up off the ground and shook it like an Etch-a-Sketch, erasing
everything I’ve worked for. The day turned from perfection to a scene
from a disaster movie in literally the blink of an eye (to use a cliché). I
was snapping at the customers, yelling at the bus boys. I even ended up
jabbing a fork into a table top after a sweet little old lady said, “You look
stressed, Miss. Maybe you should take a break.”
After I pried the fork from the table I saw the menu the old
lady left behind after I scared her out of the diner. I picked up the menu
and paged through it—and there it was, the problem. Just as fast as the
problem surfaced I realized how I could fix it. I realized how I could put
my racing, stressed out mind to rest…for the time being, at least.
I ran to my boss and asked gleefully, “Mr. Puccini, would it be
all right if I took an extended lunch hour?”
He rolled his eyes to the point where I thought they’d roll right
out of their sockets. “It’s always something with you, ain’t it?”
“I’m sorry but it’s urgent!”
Another eye roll. “Look, you have two hours. But when you get
back, you’re stayin’ until the end of your shift. Undastand?”
“Yes sir.”
And I was off to Kinko’s.
You know, I’ve got to hand it those guys because they had the
new batch of menus printed up, laminated, and bound all within my
allotted time frame.
I wonder if Kinko’s is hiring…
Now that I think about it though, I can sort of understand why
Mr. Puccini fired me. The menus confused the hell out of, not only the
staff but the customers. The customers then began to complain to the bus
boys. The bus boys then began to complain to the waiters and waitresses
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about the complaining customers. At that point Mr. Puccini would have
had to have been deaf or dead or something along those lines in order to
not to hear about the confusion. He would have also had to have been a
moron not to connect said confusion directly to me, knowing my track
record. So to say things escalated quickly, is truly an understatement.
“What did you do?” Mr. Puccini asked me as he was leafing
through one of my new and improved menus.
I didn’t hesitate to tell him what I did. I enthusiastically sang, “I
made everything in the menus rhyme from A to Z!”
“Why would you go and do something like that?”
“Because whoever wrote the old ones really did a terrible job.”
“I wrote those menus.”
“You really did a terrible job. I mean, come on, there was no
rhyme or reason—”
“Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner!” he cut me off.
“What?”
“Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner! That was the rhyme and the
reason!”
“That’s sort of lazy don’t you think?”
“Averley, you’re a nice girl, but I can’t take any more of this
crap. You screwed up the cookie case and the pie display. The salad
bar looks like it’s been arranged like the colors of a rainbow for God’s
sake…”
“I’m so happy you noticed!”
He just kept on going, “…the seating chart changes every single
night you’re working. These are just a few examples of all of the crazy
crap you’ve been pulling ever since you started here. And now the
menus? I can’t deal with this anymore—where are my menus?”
“I threw them out.”
“Out where?”
“Out in the dumpster.”
“You’re fired. No wait, go get the menus out of the dumpster,
then you’re fired.”
“But—”
“No buts! Just go. I’m the boss. You’re the waitress. Not the
other way around. Just go.”
So out I went. I sat on a parking block for a few long minutes
holding back tears because I really saw the whole ordeal as the end of an
era. I’d worked at Michael’s for so long it became a part of my life that
I didn’t want to end. But, then it was over. It was over because of a tic,
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or a syndrome, or just because of me being an obsessive control freak.
Whatever it was, it was because of me.
At that point I overheard a conversation in the parking lot. It
was someone who sounded almost frantic.
“No dude, listen, I have the CD’s in the center console arranged
in a certain way. You can’t just take one out and put it wherever the hell
you want to. I have a system! From left to right, man. Red, Orange,
Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet, okay? ROYGBIV, man, come
on! This is third grade stuff. If the colors don’t exactly fall in perfectly
you’ve got to sub-categorize!”
I stood up, “Hey! Sorry to interrupt but you do you arrange a lot
of your things like that?”
He looked a tad embarrassed. He said, “Yeah…I do that for
everything,” as if he thought I was going to laugh in his face about it.
I smiled, “I do the same thing!”
At the end of the night, he left the diner with my phone number,
and I left with a smile on my face without ever getting the menus out of
the garbage.
I suppose what it comes down to is that people like me are more
common than not. Everyone’s got odd little tics and tendencies and
weird little habits that sometimes get in the way of how they’d live their
lives. But what’s wrong with odd? What’s wrong with weird? What’s
wrong with having harmless obsessions?
Michael’s Diner
I just hope that Mr. Puccini isn’t obsessed with his car. Because
Soups
New England Clam Chowder
leaving the parking lot I might have “accidentally” backed into it.
Our famous clam chowder with chunks of potato
and clam in a creamy brooth.
Michael’s Diner
Potato Soup in Bread Bowl
$5.75
Chunks of potato in a creamy base with onions
and cheese served in a bread bowl.
$6.75
Soups
Sandwiches
New England Clam Chowder
BLT Special
Our famous clam chowder with chunks of potatoe
and clam in a creamy brooth.
Your traditional bacon, lettuce, and tomato
sandwich on rye bread. Yummy!
Potatoe Soup in Bread Bowl
Napa Valley Wrap
$5.75
Chunks of pptatoe in a creamy base with onions
and cheese served in a bread bowl.
All your favorite aspects of Napa in a wrap! With
lettuce, chicken, Sonoma Jack Cheese.
$6.50
$6.75
$8.50
Sandwiches
BLT Special
Your traditional bacon. lettuce, and tomatoe

sandwich on rye bread. Yummy!
$6.50
Napa Valley Wrap
All your favorite aspects of Napa in a wrap! With
lettuce, chicken, Sonoma

by Nick Gregorio, ’08