The Kimmy Chronicles

As the loyal readers of this blog know, (both of you) I work several jobs. I DJ weddings, I work for a national chain restaurant and I teach college. By far, the strangest stories, as of lately, have come from my workings within the restaurant. What we will do today is focus on one person. Her name is Kimmy. (Her name has been changed to protect, well, me. She doesn’t use protection, from what I understand.) All that I’m about to or have said thus far in this blog post is alleged and I’m not legally bound to anything written or said or implied or whatever.
Kimmy is like Paris Hilton. She just doesn’t have the money, fame or looks. Paris isn’t that attractive to begin with, but whatever. Kimmy does, however, share her intelligence with Paris as well as her “active social life.” But, we won’t go into that today. Instead, we will discuss what she has said and done recently.
She ran up to one of the other servers after a table had asked her what was in the fish and chips meal that we had. The server, with a straight face, said “parana.” She ran back to her table and let them know what fish was in the fish and chips. For the next two months, she let every customer who asked know that parana was the catch of the day. That is, until someone over heard her and clued her in on what was really in the fish and chips. She didn’t believe them. Another week of convincing was necessary to get her to start telling people that we serve cod.
We were having a conversation where “Harvard” came up. Kimmy looked confused and asked “What is ‘Harvard?’” We had trouble imagining someone who had never heard of Harvard. We told her that it is a school were smart people go. “Oh, like ________ Jr. College? That’s where all of my smart friends go.” We let her know that there were a vast amount of similarities.
It is required by law to have a liquor license to serve liquor in our establishment. Kimmy happened upon it and said “That’s not how you spell ‘liquor.’” I looked at it and asked her what was wrong with the license. “There’s no ‘u’ after the ‘q.’” I looked at it and then at her and said, “There is ALWAYS a ‘u’ after ‘q.’ Always!” She responded with the intelligent “Nuh-Uh!” I asked her, what ALWAYS follows ‘q?’” She looked up at me and without missing a beat said, “‘R’ always follows ‘q!’”
One of my co-workers was talking to her in June and she mentioned that she thought that she had an issue with her tires. He let her know that she was probably still driving with “winter air” and needed to get it replaced.” “Nuh-Uh!” He then talked about the dangers of not switching out to “summer air” and how blow-outs could occur at any time. She then came running up to me and asked me if this was true. It was so outrageous that I knew what was going on and exactly who had given her this information. I acted concerned and said “You haven’t switched out the air in your tires yet? Drive carefully to the closest mechanic and have that switched out!!!” This she did. They told her that it would be $78 to switch it out. Luckily for her, she didn’t have the cash and was going to go back before we warned her that we were kidding. It took nearly the whole day, but she eventually realized that there wasn’t much difference between “summer air” and “winter air.”
She once came up to me and said “I just got $15 on a $30 bill. That’s like 100%!” I stopped what I was doing and said “Say that again.” “Well, it’s like… it’s almost 50%.” I assured her “Almost. Almost 50%.”
We soon started a game on Tuesdays called “Kimmy Questions.” Tuesdays are usually slow at the restaurant and this passed the time.
She was asked “In the past 30 years, what Chicago sports team has won the Super Bowl?”
“The Green Bay Packers.”
“What is the name of the governor of Illinois?”
“…”
“What is the name of the mayor of Chicago?”
“Daley!”
“Wow, good. What is his first name?”
“Mayor.”
“If you put the mandatory 18% gratuity on a $100 bill, how much money do you make off of that table?”
“$11.”
“Really think about it. 18% of $100.”
“$15?”
We then asked her sister (who also works with us) how much money is 1% of $100. She guessed $9.
I could keep on going, but I have to get ready to put my name tag on again. Everyone else enjoy their Friday night. I doubt I will, but we will see.