Top 10 Ways To Celebrate “Walter Jones Day”

Walter “The Wall” Jones, the Seahawks left tackle for the past 13 seasons and easily The Best to ever protect a quarterback’s blind-side, is retiring from professional football. From his first day on the practice field for the ‘Hawks, back when they wore royal blue jerseys and were dominating their way to 6-10 seasons in the AFC West, everybody who watched Walt in practice and on gameday knew this guy was usually “the best athlete on the field.”

He took 245-lb men running full-speed, and leashed ‘em down.
He drove 300-lb behemoths 30 feet backwards, their arms flailing on the TV’s they bought their mother, embarrassed.
He spoke softly and jokingly about his accomplishments. He erased whomever was the best pass-rusher on the other team.
The toll it takes on your body, however, is probably like being run into by refrigerator coming down the stairs 65 times on a Sunday for 12 years. I hope that he’ll live a long life, happy and healthy. Great to watch a legend in our city.

And so, in his honor, here are 10 Ways To Celebrate “Walter Jones Day”
1. Leave every room with a hand-clap and shouting “Break”
2. Push your Cadillac Escalade around the high school track for an hour. (This was Walt’s off-season conditioning program of choice)
3. Throw in some up-downs in the hallway at work.
4. If somebody crosses your face without saying “pardon me,” drive-block ‘em until you hear a whistle.
5. Repeat “Backer Backer Backer SLIDE SLIDE BLACK SLIDE BACKER” until the person next to you responds “CHECK”
6. Wear your mouthguard to all meetings.
7. Stairs, baby. Run ‘til ya puke.
8. High-knee run through the strip-mall.
9. Throw flags on offending parties, be it holding a meeting at 3pm on a Friday or offsides in coming for your dinner.

10. Post-up outside the restroom in a squat-stance with your hands in front of you, fending off potential entrants for a 3-count. The ball should be downfield by then.

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Customer Disservice - Coffee Maker

Inez isn’t really into her job anymore. She’s in her 60s, wears a contracted company’s pre-approved, mandatory outfit on a daily basis, and like anybody with a badge around her neck that doesn’t legally back her use of a pepper spray/taser/attack dog/firearm/mustache… well, she’s just killing time until time kills her.

And it shows. For somebody who’s main responsibility is “stand at this register, push the buttons on this screen, and take money from people trying to pay for their spinach & oat-bran omelet,” it’s rare to see her there for an entire quarter hour. There’s a table to wipe in an unbusy café-seating area. Did anybody count Splenda today? What’s the respiration rate of the imported strawberries on the parfait bar, do we have a baseline on decomp? Inez’ll be on that stuff like mud on flaps, slaps on chaps, mustaches on your kicked asses.

God is good. God forbid that I HAVE TO WORK at Inez’s age. I hope to work at that age only out of desire to be out of the house and supplement my royalties from my forthcoming cookbook, “Eating Indoors; Eating Healthy When You’re Shit-Freaked About A Crumbling Society.” Pretty much every time I want to get through a line, I avoid Inez’s line. Sometimes there’s no other way, she’s the only one running reg at that point and there’s no “honor system” for dropping a dollar in a bucket for a cuppa.

Case in pants: This morning I was one of three people in the café selection area, among imported pastries (Safeway, I think), yogurt buffet, and coffee bar. Ah, that’s where I wanted to get to. I went half-caf, half-Bold. One of the carafes was making like a VP and empty inside, so I went to the backup carafe for the Bold, a freshly-brewed silo of hot, dark, capillary-tightening coffee. Gimme. Well, Inez saw me go to the backup carafe as I walked away from topping off my cup. Another person headed for Inez’s register as Inez FOCUSED INTENTLY ON THE EMPTY CARAFE CRISIS OF BUILDING 4, and, passing myself and yet another person (3 now)… walked at a very relaxed pace to the coffee area 20 feet from her register.

Inez strolled into action and took the empty carafe off its foundation, replacing it with the fresh one. Then she grabbed the two full, used coffee filters and the empty carafe and headed off to the back-stage area of the café. She turned her head in time to see three of us waiting at her register for her. Realizing that people were waiting, she did the right thing immediately, by saying “I’ll be right back.” Maybe she thought we were all salaried. HA HAAA! I’m not good enough to draw a salary. Just a gross payment by an external contracting company from which I must pay taxes. So I waited, on the clock, for Inez to be right back.

I watched as she returned with a fresh carafe and two fresh filters for the coffee-making, which was welcomed by the loud exhale of the woman waiting to pay for her three bacon, two egg, one toast breakfast, and another fellow with a hard-boiled egg, cottage cheese, and a donut. And me. With my one dollar of coffee. Now in line for 3 minutes. Another person awaited a breakfast burrito.

Inez’s triumphant refresh of the coffee brewing and serving station and shuffling return to her register earned her a purse-lipped smile, a sigh, and this, from me; “What happened with the coffee?”

Inez: “Oh, it was out.”

Me: “All of it?”

Inez: “No, the one in the middle.”

Me: (playing dumb) “But the other one had coffee in it and there was a back-up carafe ready to go?”

Inez: (sighing) “Uh, yes. I had to get stuff for the other coffee to make it.”

Me: (pause) “That’s lucky. Oh, okay. I didn’t know you had to make more coffee right away. I thought you were just ignoring us. Here ya go.”

Gave her my dollar and left Café Ambivalence and their English-as-first-mumbling employees (Latinos to the kitchen!) to sigh their way into a layoff.

I thought I’d just go to the automated coffee vendor, but it’s so inattentive and cold. And more importantly, there’s nothing to complain about there. I expect crap, and it never falls short. By my calculations, Inez’s coffee move cost the company about $25 in pay to waiting employees. Each carafe holds $30 worth of coffee if they bottom it out. So I waited on Inez to make her facility another $5 until she waited on me.

Jeez, what a waste of resources, huh?

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Take Me Home

My Blog About My Dad

MC, HOST, CORPORATE, COMEDY, SEATTLE, GEOFF, LOTT, NPO