I’ve been reading a lot of medical blogs lately, as always, and I’ve come to wonder something.  In most of my favorites, there have been mentions about the infamous “Fibromyalgia” illness that seems to be catching like the dumbass has here in Nashville.  I have family that have the “illness”, I have a supervisor with the “illness”, and I’ve met people with the “illness”.

My question about Fibromyalgia (or however the hell you spell it) is this:  Have any of you met a male patient with Fibromyalgia?  Are there any male Fibromyalgia sufferers out there?

Each link above is to a different website of Fibromyalgia resources.  Coming below are some of my favorite medibloggers Fibromyalgia posts!

“Happy Fibromyalgia Awareness Day” with Musings of a Highly Trained Monkey!

“Fibromyalgia Gone Wild” at Crass-Pollination with Nurse K.

“When the Body Attacks Itself” at madness: tales of an emergency room nurse!

“Just Questions” at The Angriest Pharmacist!

“The Bizarro ER” at Ten out of Ten!

This whole post goes out to you guys and gals above, you who blog and make me happy when I come home from work….

Be well, and don’t be overwhelmed by the fibromyalgiapods….and don’t forget to answer my question!!!!!  Do you have male fibromyalgia patients???

Ribeye

I’m sick and tired of it!  Every few weekends a horde of people come in who are afraid of using our silverware, I guess out of fear of leftover spit on the fork.  All night long last night I was either run for the plastic to-go silverware or cups of hot water to soak and polish their own.  I know I’ve talked about this before, but it just got to me again tonight.

It was happening with such frequency tonight that these people weren’t even waiting until they put their orders in with me to order me to “brang us some hawt waddah” or “Where yall plassik fowks is?  Why yall ain’ gottem on da counta like otha places?”   If you are one of these obsessive compulsive people who are afraid to eat with restaurant silverware that you yourself have to polish it, then you have a problem and I think you should listen up.

Our silverware is soaked before we wash it, in high powered soap, designed for the purpose of pre-soaking silverware in restaurants.  After it soaks for however long it takes to fill up the tub it’s soaking in, the silverware is then dumped into a large, dishwasher friendly rack, and is run through a very high temperature and high powered soap filled economy sized dishwashing machine!  We run the silverware through the machine twice, to ensure optimal cleanliness.  It’s then dumped into a lexan tub (large plastic tub for those of you who don’t know what I”m talking about), where it remains until servers get to it.  The servers sort the silverware into wire racks, and run it back through the dishwasher another 2 times.  They then soak the silverware in a pan of soda water, and polish each piece before it is rolled.

Knowing all of this, are you all that fucking worried about picking up a germ from the fork that you’ll infest with your gonasyphaherpiaids?  If so, then just stop coming out to eat.  I think I’m going to start charging for plastic silverware that isn’t given with to-go orders or to-go boxes.  That shits expensive, and giving it out just because you’re afraid of the damn metal flatware is just fucking stupid.  Bring your own, assholes.

It was also a shitty night for tips.  I had a guy who after I ran his credit card, proceeded to stiff me and signed the credit card slip in the gratuity blank.  Not in the part that says signature, in the part that very clearly says gratuity.  If you have a credit card, you’ve probably used it at a restaurant, what would give you the idea that you put a name in the grat line instead of a fucking grat?  Especially on a damn 38 dollar check.  Leave something, the gods know I let you sit at my table for an hour without ordering anything but a fucking cup of coffee, you cost me money you fucking worthless bastard and I hope you die a horrible death of ebola and the black plague!

Had a black man refuse to eat anything that had “white cheese” on it, and when I told him the philly sandwich had “white american” cheese, he demanded cheddar saying, “I refuse to have anything in my mouth that’s named after a white guy.  I’m African American.”  I still haven’t figured out what he meant, except that he doesn’t like the color white, I guess because of his ancestry?   I ended up pawning that table off on someone new.

Ran over a kid today, and dropped a tray of food on his foot.  I was blamed for it, even though he was the one running around the place in circles.  Why are these overactive fucking brats not hopped up on Ritalin or something?  Why you ask?  Because their parents have to save their money for more cocaine and heroin, and alcohol!  That’s why they don’t even tip!

It was a long night…

Ribeye

At least according to this article from redding.com.

“WASHINGTON (AP) — People who tend to the elderly, change diapers, and serve food and drinks have the highest rates of depression among U.S. workers.”

I admit, most servers have suffered some kind of depression throughout their careers, but I don’t know that it actually hits the service industry the hardest. Yes, we do have horribly skewed sleeping schedules, our circadian rhythms are all out of whack. We are up late and sleep all day. Some people say that contributes to depression. I have to say, I’m more depressed about the article than about my job.

I asked a few people that I work with their opinions on the article, and they all said that it must be leaning more toward the diaper changers. Most server’s depression is caused by constant substance abuse. (This will also be my next poll, service industry oriented). Many servers have problems with alcohol abuse, crystal methanphetamine, cocaine, heroin, opiate pain killers, MDMA, and the most common, Marijuana. Everyone knows that substance abusers have a higher rate of depression than those who are sober, so in that aspect the service industry is probably more depressed. It’s not caused by their jobs though. Many servers I know are happy with their jobs, and when they’re not, they quit.

I think the associated press needs to let us see the study or polling data they came up with, and then poll/study further to find the underlying cause of the depression. The statement they made was careless, and is going to scare people away from a lucrative and rewarding industry. Even with all we put up with, we are one of the most culturally diverse, we deal with all walks of life working in restaurants, as you can tell if you’ve read this blog for any amount of time.

Friday night’s poll is inspired by the aforementioned article, and will be about substance abuse in the service industry, including all aspects of service, not just restaurants.

Until then, keep reading,

Ribeye