STEAK, FRIES AND SHORT SKIRTS

Charlie Fidelman, reporter

I got fired from my first summer job after only six weeks. It was a steak chain in Vancouver. I didn’t even eat meat. And scraping plates clean of leftover food almost made me sick to my stomach.

I hated touching the greasy plates. Or feeling my fingers slip on leftover ketchup smears. But I was glad for the job because it made me feel grown-up at 16.

We had to wear a uniform, at least the waitresses did. A white blouse and a blue skirt. I had a beautiful skirt that was hip-hugging and elegant to mid-calf.

At the end of Week 3, after I got the hang of things, the manager called me into his office and told me that my uniform was not to his liking. It lacked the right ambience for his family diner. It had to be above the knee.

Well. That pissed me off before I even knew why. What do my knees have to do with selling cheap cuts of steak and fries, I asked him.

Those are the rules, miss, he said, glancing at my thighs. If you want to stay on the job you’re going to have to shorten the skirt to a mini.

I was young, stubborn and indignant. No way was I going to wear a postage stamp size fabric to work at a cheapo steak house. Because of an arbitrary rule, when that had nothing to do with the quality of my plate slinging?

So I continued to pick up plates and deliver steaks for another three weeks, gagging at basins of food-encrusted dirty dishes in the back. I can’t remember what kind of excuses I gave that sleaze-ball manager. The short skirt was in the wash, or the dog used it as a pillow.

When he fired me, he had no complaints about my actual work. He told me so. I learned that summer, luckily so early in my work career, that I have a distaste for stupid, for an eyeballing atmosphere and for mediocre restaurant chains. To this day, I’m glad I saved my knees for some higher purpose.