Anyone who has spent a day working at a busy restaurant knows that it’s not ideal work. It resembles the mafia in the sense that, while it can be glamorized in movies like No Reservations and the French film Ratatouille, it’s actually operated by substance-abusing deviants in real life. You’re working in 110 degree kitchens, surrounded by sharp objects and boiling liquids, spending much more time with your co-workers than your actual family. The pay, if you’re lucky, is barely above minimum wage. OSHA violations are common but, like the mafia, you better not be a rat or you will face getting fired when showing up to work in a scene eerily similar to Joe Pesci getting whacked.

So how do we make these conditions even worse? Pair a pandemic with deep political unrest and you have your perfect recipe for a shit sandwich. Add a climate crisis that somehow makes your kitchen even hotter to work in and that dish is soigne. 

Restaurant and retail workers have been put in the uncomfortable position of being the enforcers of public health guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic. The outcomes of these encounters demonstrate the consequences of decades of American individualism and “the customer is always right” philosophy. If you have internet access, you have most likely seen more than one video somewhere along the lines of “ANTI-MASK KAREN LOSES IT AT PUBLIX.” Almost always, it boils down to one thinking that mask-wearing is a personal choice—as if others are not affected by this choice. 

But this is a pandemic that relies on a massive collective effort. Finally, there was an upper limit on customer selfishness. 

At first, it was awesome telling customers to put on a mask. You’re telling me that I get to tell customers what to do after spending my entire restaurant career taking their shit for my order wait times being five minutes off? Count me in.

There was a sadistic pleasure in finally being granted this power of authority: Commanding a dude with a Tapout t-shirt to put on a mask. Stopping a crowd of Chardonnay moms from shoving tables together during the brief time that we were allowed to do “social distanced” indoor dining. Telling people that we’re putting their pizzas in a box, regardless of if they’re eating it on the patio. I found my own personal heart of darkness from enjoying this. I felt like I was barrelling down the interstate in a stolen Ferrari. It didn’t feel right, but I loved the pulse-pounding adrenaline of it. 

But this satisfaction began to wane as customers began to threaten legal action or physical violence. 

The first “Holy shit, that actually just happened” encounter occurred during our first days of discontinuing indoor dining. We had a maskless party of fifteen come in, all claiming to have medical exemptions, all wanting the tables to be pushed together for their group. (Disregard the fact that I don’t really know what medical condition prevents someone from wearing a piece of cloth over their face, or the fact that half of the crowd were healthy-looking teenagers. I’m beginning to think that medical exemption in this context always means “I don’t wanna!”) After the cashier politely but firmly gave them a capital n No, I knew we were fucked after seeing the open-mouthed looks that they were giving us. They all proceeded to whip their phones out and record us denying them service: a symbol of modern society’s way to broadcast socially unacceptable behavior to the amusement of the YouTube masses. As they finally left the restaurant, there were some mutterings about suing us. It was the first time I’ve seen these animals make a co-worker run downstairs and cry. No longer did encounters this extreme only appear on YouTube. They’ve breached the gates of my restaurant, and there were only more to come. 

But, at that time, no one threatened to kick my ass over a mask and a pizza. I was living in bliss, thinking that something like that would never happen. As I lived in comfort believing all of this to be true, I came in to get my employee-discounted salad on my day off. Before I could figure out what was happening, another medical exemption (who knew that there were this many!) with a pencil mustache came in to yell at my co-workers about how the mask order isn’t a real law or whatever. After spending several minutes wearing his store-provided mask, boasting about how he doesn’t “believe in hoaxes or bullshit,” and throwing his debit card at the manager all while Facetiming his friend, I finally lost it shortly after he started laughing with his buddy about the cashier crying. As he turned his attention to me, I realized he was like every other boring guy from high school. He had the complete uniform: basketball shorts and the lanyard hanging out of his pocket. He was ready to fucking tango. Name-calling ensued, along with him giving the timeless classic “Bro, do you wanna take this outside?” At the risk of being called a pussy, I just told him to fuck off. And while he did indeed fuck off, little did I know that he had a friend on the way with a giant “DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR” decal on the back of his Ford F150 to give me a red-faced scream about how I’m a pussy. As much as I wanted to physically do something to this guy, the rational part of my brain prevailed and I thought about how he almost definitely had a gun in the center console. (“No officer, he was the aggressor! I only drove down in my lifted truck and tried to provoke him so I can get the satisfaction of finally shooting someone!” I could already hear him saying to his cop friend.) So, being a pussy, I waited until he left and picked up a can of mace from Sportsman’s Warehouse the next day--just in case we ever had a situation even worse than that. Who knows what the president will tweet out that might fuel these ideologues’ bloodthirst. At the time of writing, however, this remains the most severe encounter that we’ve had. 

Six months into the California corona virus lockdown and I, like many other service workers, have hit a wall. Call it battle fatigue or call it being irresponsible, but it’s beyond exhausting to tell man-children to adhere to basic public health guidelines. Sometimes we just give them their pizza and hope for the best when a maskless customer comes in during the tail end of a busy shift. I don’t even personally have to deal with the customers most of the time as I’m usually too preoccupied with pizza-making to do anything about it. I can’t even imagine being a server right now—doing this multiple times every day.

And as the pandemic and its ensuring containment measures drag on, I can’t help but think about the 180 degree turn that our restaurant has taken. The dining area that once resembled a sardine can on live music nights is now nothing but tables with chairs flipped on top of them. The unique eye contact that only comes from your co-workers when a customer asks if we’re doing indoor dine-in. The morbid anxiety of contributing nothing to society during a once-in-a-century event other than providing comfort food. 

“But Joe,” you might say, “you’re so lucky to be working right now!” And to that I say: absolutely. There’s something to be said about job security during a massive economic recession. Our numbers, while down, are more than enough for the restaurant to stay open.  However, this pandemic has sparked a new sense of class-consciousness in me. 

I have been constantly tempted to be angry at my roommate for making more money than me during the $600 a week unemployment bonus. “How was work?” He says this every time I get home from making thousands of dollars of pizza for like three hours—while he sits at home drinking mango White Claws and playing Xbox. Hell, I bet that fucker got food delivered from my favorite ramen restaurant in town. “Busy!” is how I always answer his question before pounding down three pale ales and a negroni and passing out to TLC... only to do it all over again the next day. 

As much as the temptation gnaws on my brain like a rabid animal to get angry at my roommate for getting paid to do nothing, I have to remind myself that a $600 check means jack shit when compared to the 637 billion dollars that billionaires have made during the pandemic. Caving in to that temptation would mean pitting two working class friends against each other. God, wouldn’t Jeff Bezos and Elon “Oh my God he is totally a real life Tony Stark” Musk love that? Class solidarity is imperative towards making sure that the After Covid years don’t just end up having the same problems that society had in the Before Covid years.

So what is to be done about this? Why do bad things happen to the hard-working waitress working a 12 hour shift in a mask on a patio during a massive smoke-filled California heat wave?

Well, Dear Reader. I hate to go Book of Job on you, but there is no perfect solution and none of us really know what we’re doing as we navigate through this pandemic. Short term actions may include tipping more, but that’ll be offset by the unempathetic guy not tipping because he was politely asked to put on a mask at an Applebee’s. As workers whose incomes partially rely on the good grace of customers hitting the 20% on Square, we have to accept the fact that asking customers to do the actual bare minimum results in a loss of money for us. And while it definitely sucks, it beats hacking up a lung for a month.

Here’s another thought: order takeout and support both your favorite restaurants and the workers who make that restaurant amazing. I’m not really sure why so many Covid truthers chose indoor dine-in service to be their hill to die on during a year marked by so many worthy causes to fight and advocate for. Do I kind of miss eating eggs benedict inside of my favorite diner? Sure. But I’m not willing to walk through fire and brimstone to get it, especially when I can have the same meal in a paper box. You can even practice your presentation by plating takeout at home!

I’m not exactly sure if the pandemic will finally be the coup de grâce to the previously mentioned “customer is always right” philosophy that has blighted service workers for years, but I really hope it is. You’d be pretty hard pressed to find someone with a medical doctorate working at a pizzeria, but basic common sense and the experience of being a human for 26 years has taught me that all of these “medical exemptions” aren’t real if my 80-year-old grandma can slap one on every time she needs to go to Rite Aid or if the barista at the coffee shop that I visit every morning can work a full shift in a mask despite having asthma. 

I suppose this is the part when I have to empathize with the people who harass my co-workers every other day. This is when I try to see it from the perspective of the guy who, as his pregnant wife was waiting in the car, looked at me and went “Nanananah! Can’t hear you from behind that mask!” This is when I take into account that they’re victims of the misinformation that is so easily spread through impact font memes on Facebook. This is when I try to share the perspectives of people who think the Americans with Disabilities Act is an actual organization and not a bill signed into law thirty years ago to make the lives of actual disabled Americans easier. After all, we all know at least one person who “doesn’t believe in hoaxes or bullshit” and I shouldn’t try to alienate everyday people over a piece of cloth—especially during a year marked by isolation.

But that shit's boring and the world has seen the disastrous results of pacifism and appeasement. I’m a short order cook whose temper is even shorter when 40 year olds scream at the cashier half their age over a piece of cloth. I have a particular hostility towards these people that have made my life, and my pizza crime family’s lives, a living hellscape for the past half year. They can go fuck themselves. 

Are we tired of telling grown adults to not get people killed over a pizza? Absolutely. But, even when I don’t want to, it’s my civil duty to confront these people—both at the restaurant and in the local news comment sections. 

You’re dumb enough to fuck with wiseguys? You’re going to war, and I will have nothing less than the Carthaginian peace of bullying and shaming covid truther customers into unconditional surrender. If that guy in the F150 screaming about how I’m a pussy was my Dunkirk, then the final months of 2020 will be our Operation Overlord. 

We shall fight them in the ovens. We shall fight them in the walk-in and in the dishpit. We shall never surrender!