Marie
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It was four o’clock on a Friday afternoon, and my night was just beginning.
As usual, I was spending my evening at Chili’s, serving the good people of my county such delicacies as Country Fried Steak and Fire Grilled Chicken Fajita Quesadillas. Guests trickled in at the front door and were seated throughout the restaurant, but twenty minutes into my shift, I was still standing uselessly in the back of the dining room, leaning against the wall. There were rows of empty tables and chairs pushed up against the frontmost wall, beneath a row of windows. The blinds were open, and the last of the fall sunshine fell across the floor, giving a picturesque view of the parking lot and the highway beyond it.
It seemed to me that far more of my coworkers were showing up than actual customers. I watched as each walked by the windows before entering; Trish, Joey, Marcus, even the newest manager, Chris: the typical Friday night crew. It was nearly 4:30 before the hostess managed to get me a table, and as I collected my silverware and made me way across the restaurant to my section, I passed the windows and noticed Marie outside, limping toward the front door and carrying a pan of what I guessed were cupcakes.
Neither sight was that odd. Marie was always baking for the people she worked with on Fridays, bringing in dishes of cookies, brownies, cupcakes. The limp had also been a regular feature for months, after she’d hurt her ankle over the summer. Everyone had gotten an earful from her over her financial troubles due to her injury; she couldn’t work full time anymore, her insurance wouldn’t pay for the brace she needed and she was forced to pay $900 out of pocket, etc. etc. It’s not that I didn’t feel bad for Marie. I honestly believed she was in pain. But she was always playing the suffering martyr to anyone that would listen, demanding their attention and sympathy, and after several months of the same story, it seemed that everyone had become immune to her troubles.
Marie ambled inside, and I turned my attention back to the task at hand. I went through the motions with my guests, fetched their drinks, took their order. I headed back through the kitchen and saw that Marie had placed her cupcakes in the back and everyone (Trish and Joey and Marcus and even the newest manager, Chris) was helping themselves. The frosting was orange to celebrate Halloween. That was the kind of thing Marie thought about.
I bypassed the cupcakes and headed toward a computer so I could enter my order. With that complete, I once again found myself stuck doing nothing and walked back into the dining room, strolling in a circle throughout the tables and chairs so that it looked like I was doing something. In the corner, Marie was seated across from Greg and Chris (how had he finished his cupcake so fast, I wondered). Their voices were low and serious; I could hear Marie’s voice rising slightly in pitch. It was the tone she used whenever she told anyone about her problems.
I kept walking, checked my table’s drinks. The night didn’t seem like it was going to be very busy; it was trick or treat in Lancaster, so everyone in the restaurant seemed to have resigned themselves to boredom. I chatted with my coworkers, put my customer’s meals on a tray as they came up, and brought the dishes out to them. After ensuring that my guests were okay, I made my way back to the kitchen, passing the table where Marie and the managers had been a moment ago. It was empty.
I looked up and around, only to see Marie and Greg through the windows, standing outside. He was giving her a hug. She hugged him back, limped away. Strange, I thought. What could have upset her so much that she’d need to go home for the evening? I’d heard about Marie’s financial difficulties too many times to think she didn’t need the money.
After I returned the tray to the kitchen, I idled around, pretending to be busier than I was. I stood by one of the computers in the dining room, using it as a shield to check my cell phone when Trish approached me and whispered, “Did you hear about Marie?”
I shrugged. “I saw she left.”
“She didn’t leave,” Trish said, quietly, “she was fired.”
It didn’t seem to register in my brain as possible. Marie had been a server there for more than three years. She was beloved by guests and was regularly known as the most popular server in the restaurant. Her limp only endeared her to them more. She was also a stickler for the rules and highly critical whenever any server chose to take short cuts in their work. She was, well…faultless.
“Fired?” I asked, “But why?”
Trish shook her head. “Dunno.”
Suddenly, the things Marie had told me about her struggles with money came into sharper focus. “But...Marie isn’t doing great, you know, financially. Isn’t that kind of shitty of Greg? I mean, he knows what she’s going through. She tells everyone.”
“Yeah, but…Greg has a business to run.” She answered casually.
“But Marie’s a human being.” I said emphatically. Trish nodded toward the table that had just been sat in her section, gathered up some silverware, and walked away.
Throughout the night, I tried to forget about Marie. It wasn’t too hard. I liked her, but she was not my favorite person at Chili’s. Once we finally got a few people in the door, it was easy to lose myself in the monotonous task of work.
And then I saw the pan of cupcakes.
They were just sitting there. Most were gone, but there were still a few remaining. In the hustle and bustle of the shift, everyone had forgotten about them. The orange icing had dried out and looked hard and unappetizing. It was for Halloween, Marie had said. I remembered Chris eating one of them right before he’d sat by Greg as he'd fired her.
I had a terrible feeling in my stomach as I stared at those stupid, festive, forgotten cupcakes. All I could do was wonder how Marie was ever going to get her pan back.
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