Hello, welcome to Alicia's Restaurant. Enjoy your meal.
Hello, welcome to Alicia's Restaurant. Enjoy your meal.
Please, chatter amoungst yourselves as you scan the menu board and then walk right past me. I'm nothing important here, just a prop for your dining experience. A minor one, sure, because if I threw down this fibreglass fork and walked off, you probably wouldnt even notice, would you?
Hello, welcome to Alicia's Restaurant. Enjoy your meal.
No, I have no sad story. I'm not a single mom or a struggling college student or an outsourced software engineer. I'm just a hostess, invisible and unashamed of it. I've always been invisible, you see. Even in school... they would choose up kids for teams, and I was invariably last. Sometimes, they'd just head out and play, leaving me there because, well, after all, I'm invisible and no one noticed I hadnt been picked. But that was okay with me, I like being invisible.
So every day at four, I arrive, put on this ridiculous outfit and stand here for seven hours, telling people...
Hello, welcome to Alicia's Restaurant. Enjoy your meal.
... for which I get paid seven dollars and fifty cents an hour. That's about two hundred a week after taxes, so you can imagine what my life is like away from here. I couldnt afford to eat here, that's for sure. These people drop the equivalent of my monthly salary in a single hour. Then they leave, walking right past me as they get into their cars and return home to their kids and their pets and their answering machines full of messages inviting them to dinner next Saturday night. And chances are they'll come back here, where they'll find me telling them yet again...
Hello, welcome to Alicia's Restaurant. Enjoy your meal.
I could be bitter about it, sure, but I'm not. Bitter is too easy. Sure, I fantasize about dropping arsenic into the evening's soup special... but what would that accomplish? Even if I didnt get caught, the place would be shut down, and I'd be out of a job. And that's not a good idea right now. Alicia once asked me if I was interested in moving up, maybe to a watress or an inside greeter. I told her no. I like being outside. It makes me feel like I'm not quite so trapped.
Hello, welcome to Alicia's Restaurant. Enjoy your meal.
