Roslyn...

I walked in through the front door, the fifth restaurant I stopped by on Boston Road, where all the restaurants are located in town. "Hi welcome to Friendly's!" a white teenaged girl said perkily with a forced smile that betrayed her boredom.

"Hi, are you hiring?" I asked her.

"Hold on, let me get you a manager," she said.

"How old are you?" asked a 40-something black woman who was sitting down on a bench on the side. She looked tired, almost exausted. "Are you over eighteen?"

"Yeah." This excited her, and it seemed to give her some unseen energy into her limbs, because she straightened up her whole body and spoke faster.

"Oh, a male and over 18! You gotta apply, they'll definitely give you a job. Just put down you wanna be a closer, and you'll get a job for sure! Especially 'cause your male...AND you're over 18. We don't get too many of those," and at this she expressed a genuine but tired chuckle.

It turned out that she was right. Two weeks later I went in to Friendly's and began hosting. A different hostess who was showing me the ropes was going through the list of servers with me. "...and Roslyn, she's awesome, really friendly, really natural. She was supposed to be here half an hour ago, but she does this all the time, 'cause she's been working here forever!" That must have been her, I thought.

When she came in I greeted her, "hey Roslyn, do you remember me?"

She tilted her head as if a different angle would help her recognize me. "Have I met you before?"

"Yeah!" I said. "Remember, you told me to apply to be a closer, 'cause I'm over 18 and a male?"

"Oh, that's right," she said with a big pleasant smile coming over her face. "And you got the job!"

And soon enough I began training with her. She was really friendly with the customers, had tons of regulars. She got along so well with them that they let her pick up and play with their babies. We had a nice friendly chat one time too when I told her that I was actually a 24-year-old graduate student who had just been in Thailand to teach English. She showed me a picture of her high-school aged daughter that I would guess she's supporting on her own, since she works a day job and then Friendly's at night. That explained why she always looked so exhausted.

But just two nights ago I came in for my third or so night training with her. She was moody. Sometimes she gets that way. But as always, she was open-hearted with customers. "No, where are you taking them?" she asked the hostess who was bringing a dad and 2 girls to a table. "They're with me, they're always with me. You just bring them right over..." and one of the girls just ran right into Roslyn's arms, getting picked up into her big hug.

Later on, I got the feeling what it was that Roslyn was upset about. She didn't like the way the new manager was running things, since the new manager was letting basically anybody be a trainer, and when you're a trainer you get time-and-a-half. There were 2 others training that night, but it used to always be only Roslyn who got to train. I didn't fully catch or understand what happened, but Roslyn called one of the other trainers a bitch...in the dining room none the less.

The new manager, Lou-Ann who had already gotten a reputation for stubbornly running a tough and mean floor, came up to her angrily and said "Did you say 'bitch'?"

"No, I didn't say nothin'," Roslyn said. She had the straightest face on, that maybe she should consider acting as a career.

"Cause I heard the word 'bitch'. Now where did that come from?" She said, with stern voice, chin pointed down slightly. Roslyn said she didn't hear anyone say 'bitch'. "Felix, did you hear anything?" she said to me. I felt her eyes drilling into mine, perhaps trying to mine out the truth, or maybe a "who's side are you on?"

I shrugged my shoulders and said "I dunno, I didn't hear anything." Lou-Ann walked away visibly aggravated. About 5 minutes later, she caught me in the kitchen. "Now Felix, I don't mean to put you in the middle of all this, but she said 'bitch', didn't she?" I paused, thinking about how Roslyn told me to keep my mouth shut about this with Lou-Ann; I thought about lying to my manager; morals, ideologies of truth, right, and wrong, shades of gray? what should I say?!

"Uh...yeah," I said, feeling defeated. "Yeah, she did. But you know, she's my trainer you know? I -"

"I know," she said with a tone of conviction. "And she won't be anymore," she said as she walked away. My trainer was fired. She'd worked there for 10 years already and without even a warning, Lou-Ann fired her. I was given another trainer who had only worked there for 2 months, meaning that she too would get time-and-a-half, and was taking over some of Roslyn's hours. I couldn't help but think that she was moving up because Roslyn was moved out.

We got swamped with a party of 60 that night, all middle-school children who had just had their graduation. In the chaos of it all, I felt like I was learning things so fast because I was taking my own tables, and had to work fast, on my toes...so I was moving on up too, becoming more and more ready to be a server and no longer a trainer. But my achievements didn't give me any good feeling inside at all. Just ambivalence, served up with a side of dismay.