The self-involvement of youth

With a volleyball tournament and a sorority convention in town we had a lot of large parties of young girls in the restaurant over the weekend, and while that was fun for the straight guys it reminded me of one reason why junior high and high school was not so much fun… teenage girls.

My first party on Friday night was part of a party of twenty-five or so and I ended up with the girls while the parents sat at a different table. I won’t go into the details of how complicated it is to do thirteen separate checks and then hand them to different adults who are paying with another server, what’s memorable about this table was something else entirely.

“Can I get my refill in a cocktail glass so I can play an April fools joke on my mother,” a little blond girl asked.

“I’m sorry, no,” I replied.

“Well why not?”

“Because its illegal,” I said, “And I would probably lose my job.”

To which she replied, “So?”

I responded the only way I could without getting in trouble at that point. I walked away and ignored her for the rest of her dinner.

Now I get she was probably joking. I get she would think she was trying to be sarcastic and funny, something teenagers aren't good at anyway. I get she’s never had to work a day in her life yet, pay bills or worry about meeting her mortgage and utility but it’s just not funny to joke about costing someone a job so that you can pull a selfish prank.

Restaurants use different glasses for alcoholic and virgin drinks for good reasons. One so we don’t get confused and serve the alcoholic drink to the wrong person, the other is to keep the alcohol out of the hands of minors. Serving a minor a drink in a cocktail glass might be funny, but it violates both my company’s policy and state liquor laws. Making a mistake with the alcohol laws is enough to get fired on the spot, and understandably so.

According to Gallup research unemployment is at 10 percent and the underemployed make up 20 percent of the workforce. I had always considered myself part of the under-employed but I’ve recently learned it’s a technical term for people working part time looking for full time work. Since I’m working full time I’m technically not underemployed although clearly I am. When you factor in people like me who are working in a menial job outside of their profession the real underemployment number is somewhere close to 30 percent in major cities. Seriously Obama still has his job why?

If I were to lose my current job because of an alcohol violation it would be extremely difficult to land an equal, or better job in the service industry, my backup profession of choice. So yeah, little blond girl, I’m sorry, but treating me in such a dismissive, afterthought manor just isn’t funny.

It’s like me saying “I hope the man you eventually marry doesn’t beat on you during the few nights he doesn’t spend with his younger, thiner, smarter mistress.” See… it’s not nice when people treat you like you don’t matter.