Ariel Barnes

I’M THE MANAGER

Managing a pizza shop won’t kill you, but dealing with the people that walk through the door might. I know that running a restaurant may look like a bunch of socializing (which is definitely a part of the job) or tasting wine (also, a very important part of the job), but it’s mainly managing people that aren’t even your employees. It’s taking responsibility for other people’s actions and saying sorry for something that isn’t your fault just to get someone out of your face. It’s the art of throwing yourself under the bus.  

Assholes loved to come to this particular pizza shop: tall ones, short ones, ones with over 100k followers, ones with self-proclaimed streetwear brands, ones that had money, and ones that showed you a balance of $3 in their bank account to get a free beer. But no one had ever called the cops because of an asshole. There were fights—either customers with employees or the other way around. Drunk guys would come in all the time and yell at the cashiers and probably throw something at them on their way out. A bartender once spat in a woman’s face for throwing a glass at him. The pizza chef once yelled, “YOUR PUSSY PROBABLY TASTES LIKE OLD BATTERIES,” at a woman who said our price for a slice was too high. In his defense, she was very rude.

Then there was the night a Juggalo terrorized the pizza shop. He had streaks of black eyeliner running down his eyes to his chin, as well as being incapable of creating a coherent sentence. The Juggalo disappeared into the bathroom and clearly must’ve forgotten the push/pull situation because he attempted to kick down the door. (It was a pull, not a push.) He eventually found his way out of the bathroom by ripping the door open, breaking off our pathetic lock that really was as strong as a Cheeto.

The Juggalo started to yell at customers, who then immediately got the hint and shuffled their way out. They probably left with the same thought that I had: That is not my fucking job.

I called for my only backup aka the pizza chef. He yelled at the Juggalo and began to escort the him out, which was a great plan until it wasn’t. The Juggalo stopped moving. Our pizza chef tried physically pushing him out and the Juggalo began to push back. It reached a point that neither of them were really fighting each other, but just pushing all of their strength against the other.  This was going nowhere. I yelled at the Juggalo to leave and it came off exactly as pathetic as you think that sounded. He looked at me and slowly made a circle with his thumb and pointer finger. He put it in front of his eye and just stood there, shaking and staring at me right through the circle.

I did not sign up for this part of the job, but there I was, getting hexed by a Juggalo.

Our pizza chef eventually led the Juggalo outside or he gave up. I don’t think that was in our control at all. He walked down the block only to come right back with a black bodega bag in his hand. A guy at the bar asked if I should call the police. Then he handed me his phone like we both knew the answer.  

Five policemen surrounded the Juggalo and disarmed him with a zip tie. He sat there and looked bummed out, like his acid trip was coming to a halt. One of the policemen came in and asked how late we were open. The Juggalo was escorted into an ambulance and now that guy has an enormous hospital bill.

The contents of the bodega bag were left scattered on the floor. It was full of pornography and lighters.

THINGS MY DAD CALLS “CRAP-OLA”

1.     A bunch of napkins stuck together from the fast-food chain restaurant Wendy’s.

2.     A piece of sticky tape that has lost its stickiness.

3.     Whatever I’m looking at on my phone that is making noise.

4.     A pen at the bank that hasn’t run out of ink but is definitely on its way out.

5.     The Nickelodeon show, Rugrats.

6.     The lint and crunchy stuff that’s mixed in with the coins in his pocket.

7.     The earwax in my ears because I wasn’t paying attention.

COMING SOON: THINGS MY DAD CALLS “BOLOGNA”

INAPPROPRIATE TIMES TO TOUCH OTHER HUMANS

It turns out, people don’t really like to be touched. I’m not talking about handshakes or hugging. Handshakes are cool. You immediately get to hold hands with someone and confirm they’re not holding a dagger or something. They say this establishes trust.

Hugging apparently makes you feel something called “warm fuzzies,” but too long of a hug will achieve something else entirely. Did you know that if you hug a person for an extended period of time and recite the words, “Everything’s going to be okay,” that person will melt into your arms and weep? Because God that feels good. It should also be noted that people who wear pocket watches get zero hugs.

The thing about typical human touch, like handshakes and hugging, is that you can anticipate these interactions a solid 95% of the time. The other 5% remains unknown. It’s the reason you don’t slap a coworker on the back unannounced or playfully punch an officer on the shoulder when passing a group of cops. That’s what we call an inappropriate time to touch another human, or, as your lawyer would say, “battery.”

Sometimes I don’t think this feature was properly locked into my little human settings. I met up with a friend who had just ended things with his “lady friend,” which are his words and not mine. I went to touch his arm, you know, for comfort because that’s an appropriate time to touch someone. Or at least that was what the little alien dude driving my meat vessel that day thought. This did not translate properly. My friend looked startled, as if I was about to hit him. He asked if I needed him to move over. I told him I was trying out touching and he laughed in my face.

In all my years on this dumb rock orbiting through space, it is unequivocally clear that you should never touch people when they’re upset. It’s the proverbial “calm down,” which has never made anyone calm down in the history of war and other aggressions. And definitely don’t call the other person emotional. Emotional is the final boss of calm down. And touching someone’s arm while asking them to calm down is probably the fastest way to get into a fist fight. If you wouldn’t pet an angry dog, maybe don’t try to pet an angry human.

Can you believe there are some cities that are so crowded that you have to touch other people to get somewhere? For example, New Yorkers live in a city that might as well be a mosh pit at any MTA station between the hours of 5 and 7 PM. This is a form of transportation that has ignited people to cause actual murder. Wild stuff.

People are fragile, protective creatures. Figuring out when there’s a good time to touch is just too confusing, therefore I don’t touch at all. Unless you are medically authorized, we are on ecstasy, or we are for sure dating—there is a zero-touching policy.

I WANT MY MONEY BACK

A woman sits down next to a group of boys at a café. They are giggling about something that they won’t remember in ten years. They probably won’t even know each other in ten years. They whisper and laugh. Their laughter is the ugliest thing she’s ever heard. She turns to them. She thinks about patience, and what it’s maybe like to have some of that. And then she offers the boys $100 to leave the café immediately. They do not resist. They take the money and leave. The woman thinks she has paid for peace. She has skipped the line to salvation. She sits there and takes a long sip of her coffee. She places it back down. Her table is wobbly.

HOW TO GET FIRED ON NEW YEAR’S DAY

The interview to be a server at Cookshop consisted of a series of poorly answered questions. When inquiring about what to garnish a martini with, my first answer was, “those little onions.” This was a restaurant with frequent menu changes, pre-shifts that gave me stress bumps, and owners that threatened you to sell specials. I didn’t learn that serving was hard, I learned that I wasn’t good at it.

Cookshop was a trendy farm-to-table restaurant in Chelsea, a place where people would flock to after viewing galleries in the area. People did not address gallery night as the day of the week we know as Thursday. There was no “Thursday” at Cookshop. There was only gallery night. Celebrities with forgettable names who you’ve seen in a million things went there. People like Tate Donovan and Gina Gershon. The sommelier was a creepy, old guy with a purple mouth that preyed on the new staff. The uniform was a stiff, gingham shirt paired with a denim apron. This is the type of restaurant I hate now. I think they call it fine dining.

I met my first New York crush at this establishment. He was a barback, meaning he was in a constant state of sweat fetching six-packs from the walk-in or pint glasses from the dish pit. One time, he accidentally body-slammed me, hurtling me into a wall. He was overly apologetic, and I was just thrilled. Sometimes after a shift, we’d go out to our after-work bar. Every restaurant has this bar. Ours had sports playing in the background, green vinyl booths, and tables covered in white paper with cups of crayons.

On one of those nights, he admitted that he had a crush on me. It was one of the first cold days of fall and I only remember this because when we made out, his runny nose kind of oozed on my face.

After a few visits to his apartment, it seemed he had changed his mind about that crush. I used to look forward to the slight overlap between our shifts. After he clocked out and right before I clocked in, he used to linger and talk to me just long enough before our coworkers filled the locker room. Then he began to leave work as if he had somewhere to be. New York giveth and New York taketh the fuck away.

My crush and I were scheduled to work the brunch shift on New Year’s Day. I showed up drunk and he didn’t show up at all. New Year’s Day has the highest turnover rate in restaurants. Scheduling anyone to work that shift is an invitation to get fired. Will they show up hungover or not at all? Or are they that special type of person who comes in sober, without a trace of a night lived on them? That person is not better than anyone. That person is the antichrist.

I spent the entirety of the shift holding back puke. Tables turned and every server was double or triple sat. I fired courses too late, forgot to ring in items, and pestered the chef so much that he stopped addressing my existence. But I did not throw up on anyone and that, to me, was a huge win.  

I was called into the office in the middle of side work. The two managers crossed their arms and said a woman called to complain about me. They were tired of hearing my name around the restaurant. It probably didn’t help that I no longer played along with the sommelier’s perverted humor. They told me they had to let me go, but said it as if I’d fight for that job or give them some kind of excuse as to why I was a terrible server. I shook their hands and threw away my uniform when I got home.

I’m not sure if the moral of this story is don’t shit where you eat or be better at your job, but perhaps that it’s okay to shit where you eat if you’re not even that good at your job.

WILL YOU FIND PEACE?  

What do you think happens when the hardest you’ve tried and the farthest you’ve come cross paths? Will you find peace when those two hands meet? Will you find peace when you forgive yourself for living your own life? For spending money or spending the night in, for eating or drinking what you didn’t need to consume? For saying too much or not enough? For leaving too early or staying too long?  

Will you ever wake up and stop counting down the seconds until you’re the person you think you’re supposed to be? Will you ever think “I’m already there”? Will you understand you’re the person you’ve already been this whole time and there is no other version waiting on the other side? Will you find peace then?  

Do you grow tired of waiting for this other person to come and save you? Will you find peace when you learn who you wake up as and go to bed as is the only you?

Do you get sick of running away to different cities and hotel rooms? You’re running out of places to escape and you’re still the same you when you come home.

Do you think this kind of peace shows up on your doorstep in a box with a tiny bow? Will it come to you at night like a ghost? Or will it grow on you like a scab? 

Will you find peace or is that another version of yourself you’ve been chasing?

FAST CARS AND NO SEX: A SAD FAST AND FURIOUS

In the summer of 2021, I spent a lot of time wondering and googling if there’s anywhere in the United States without a speed limit. This was a direct result of watching Ford v Ferrari drunk in a hotel room one night. I also felt like a speed demon with a rental car at the time. Stop right there because I know you’re thinking of a sick convertible and you’re wrong. It was just a Mazda, but have you ever even driven a Mazda? It’s an unassuming vehicle that a dentist or a zoologist would probably drive. But I drove someone to the airport in that bad boy and shaved off three whole minutes from the ETA.

I admitted my desire to drive in speed-limitless place to a friend and he told me it’s probably because I wasn’t getting laid. Once the source of this sick obsession was revealed, I cooled my jets. Now the fastest I drive is a solid 75 on the highway, but I am still not having any sex. I may die soon. And that concludes the saddest Fast and Furious movie that will never get picked up.

CAFÉ AQUA BUG

My ex and I used to have coffee at the little space between his windowsill and the edge of his bed. We called it “Café Aqua Bug” because there was a dead water bug stuck in the track of his window. At Café Aqua Bug, we talked in French accents. It was one week into the pandemic, and this was how we made the most of the space quarantining in his Williamsburg studio. His French alter ego was named Henrí, and I was Madeline. We spoke in gargles of French nonsense and laughed into his sheets. He would always keep up the bit longer than I could, mainly because I ran out of fun French things to say. He was just better at it.

Sometimes he took his Henrí act too far. A few weeks later when I returned to my apartment, he called me to let me know the bread I left in his freezer was stinking up his kitchen—but he called as Henrí. I responded in my American accent that if it was such a problem that he should just throw the thing out. Also, frozen bread doesn’t stink. It’s frozen. It was one of those pandemic-bread phases and I regrettably made a whole wheat focaccia. He probably just didn’t like it. Honestly, I didn’t like it either.

During one of our Café Aqua Bug mornings, I left the windowsill to grab another cup of coffee. I watched from the kitchen and noticed him completely zoning out. He wasn’t Henrí and he wasn’t himself either, but it was a familiar sadness. Something that led to 1 AM fights and silent treatments if not handled delicately. The pandemic wasn’t going to bring us closer. Café Aqua Bug was not going to save us. Neither of us could keep up the bit.