Everybody Is Awful_Except You!

by Jim Florentine

  To top it off, the lead officers were the same cops that had busted me for the Snuff Calls prank! Later, they tell me that they were sure it was another joke but couldn’t take the chance of being wrong, so they came prepared to knock the front door down—and they did!

  I felt bad I had wasted the cops’ time. I decided, like an idiot, to go down to the police station and explain myself. I wanted to let them know it was a joke.

  So, I drive down to the station and walk in. Guess what? The same two cops from a week before were sitting there talking about me.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” One cop asks.

  “What did I do wrong?” I say, defensively.

  “You were pretending to give your girlfriend a home abortion and you don’t think there’s a problem with that?”

  “I guess, but that telemarketer called me.”

  “That woman was so upset she left work early!” He says.

  I can’t stop myself from making a joke.

  “Well, look on the bright side, I got her a half day!”

  “Look,” says the big cop as he hands me a form. “Fill out this statement and explain what you did. Say you’re sorry because our sergeant wants to lock you up right now. He’s pissed!”

  “I don’t know,” I say, reluctantly.

  “Do you realize that you could’ve been charged with homicide if one of our vehicles had accidentally killed someone while we were speeding to your house?”

  “It’s not my fault that woman believed a home abortion was being performed with a vacuum cleaner. There was no reason for her to call the cops. She did that on her own!”

  At this point, I was arguing because they were scaring the shit out of me. I had never been in this kind of trouble before and didn’t want to go to jail.

  “Look, I promise you guys, I won’t do any more prank calls! I swear!”

  “Just fill out the form, say you’re sorry, and you can go!” The cop says.

  I was so shaken up I agreed and did what they asked. Little did I know the cops had just pulled a prank on me. Everything was about to get worse!

  Law & Disorder

  One of my cop friends later told me I should have never gone to the police station to admit my guilt. Pressuring me to confess on the statement was a common trick that worked in the cop’s favor. Two weeks later, I received a ticket in the mail with a date for a court appearance. I was charged with disorderly contact and was facing up to six months in jail with a possible $10,000 fine. All of this over a stupid prank call. Now, I had to get a lawyer!

  Luckily, my friend Tom practiced law and he agreed to represent me. He knew the prosecutor assigned to my case, and they met before the court hearing and hammered out a deal. Tom said it was worked out but I still had to go in front of the judge. The courtroom was packed but I was the second case on the docket.

  “Mr. Florentine!” The judge called.

  “Here, Your Honor,” I responded.

  “According to this complaint, you did a prank phone call and pretended your friend was giving your girlfriend a home abortion with a vacuum cleaner. The woman on the phone could hear the vacuum running and your girlfriend screaming in pain.”

  The whole courthouse groaned as he explained the call in detail.

  “Yes, judge, I did do that.”

  “And, you thought that was funny?” He snapped. “You’re on a show on Comedy Central and this is what you pass off as humor?”

  I was biting my bottom lip so damn hard. I wanted to laugh in the judge’s face. Thank God, I controlled myself!

  The judge went on, “I’m giving you a fine of $750 plus another $150 for court fees. I better never see you in my court again, Mr. Florentine!”

  The worst part of the whole experience was walking out past all the other people attending court. It was humiliating because everyone in the room was staring at me with a judgmental look. Now I know what a woman feels like when she has to take the walk of shame.

  When I got outside, I busted out laughing. To this day, I still have the ticket they sent me in the mail. It’s in a nice frame on the wall of my office. It hangs there like a badge of honor reminding me of the time I recorded the most awful and horrendous prank call I’ve ever imagined.

  PUMPKIN-FLAVORED SHIT

  I just got back from a Starbucks and the girl behind the counter asked me if I wanted a Pumpkin Spice Latte.

  Nope.

  I doubt there is any pumpkin in that spice latte, anyway. The “pumpkin” tastes like it must be made of really horrible chemicals made in a lab. Why would I want to drink that shit?

  Most pumpkin-flavored products don’t have real pumpkin! Do you know why? Because pumpkin tastes like CRAP!

  Nowadays, they even have Pumpkin Spice Pringles. Why in the fuck do we need that? I haven’t seen Pringles in the store since 1996. Surely, we don’t need umpkin Pringles! In fact, I don’t want PUMPKIN anything! STOP WITH THIS SHIT!

  My good friend, Richard, loves pumpkin beer and drinks it all the time. But then again, he lives right outside of New York City and thinks the best pizza in the world is from Papa John’s. Let’s not trust his taste buds.

  If I was a bartender and someone asked, “Can I have two pumpkin beers?”

  I’d ask, “Who’s the other one for?”

  “One of my guy friends over there.”

  “NO! DRINK A BUDWEISER OR GET THE FUCK OUT!”

  If pumpkin-flavored products were so good why would they just be sold seasonally and not year round? There’s a reason Heineken is sold all year. It’s fucking good!

  Fuck pumpkin-flavored products. I don’t want pumpkin spice lattes! I don’t want pumpkin potato chips! I don’t even want to try pumpkin beer. I’d rather see Hillary Clinton naked!

  Part Three: Awful Relationships

  You can’t escape awful relationships. They’re everywhere. While you’re growing up you have to deal with awful family members. You get a bit older and go out into the world and make awful friends, attend awful schools, and work at awful jobs.

  In your daily life, no matter how brief the relationship, you deal with awful people. Terrible drivers. Shitty servers at restaurants. Cunty cashiers and even awful corporations that scam you with bad deals and an incompetent staff. You can’t go out and have a good time without getting tangled up in awful situations. This last part of the book is my take on some of my worst experiences in these awful relationships.

  Awful Customer Service: Waitstaff Dummies

  I’m not a narcissistic egomaniac by any means and I don’t need my ass kissed when I eat out, but most of the time the service in a restaurant is atrocious. A lot of people that work in the service industry are disasters in their personal life. Alcoholics, drug addicts, bad credit, can’t pay their bills, kids out of wedlock, shitty car, no insurance, and a DWI under their belt. Their personal lives are like strippers. Make cash and spend it on dumb shit the next day because more cash is coming the next night. So you’re dealing with people that are hung-over, high, and don’t give a shit about their job and that will in turn mean bad customer service.

  Worthless Waiters

  Restaurants are one of the most common places you find awful customer service. Most waiters are so fucking brainless I want to stab them with my salad fork!

  I went out the other night for a friend’s birthday. We picked one of her favorite spots. A place she has been several times. What do you think the waitress’s first question was?

  “Have you guys been here before?”

  “Yeah once, I came in to use the bathroom,” I said.

  “That’s it? You just stopped in to use our toilet?” She asked.

  “Why, did I clog it up?”

  The waitress just stared at me dumbfounded.

  Believe me, I’m just as dumbfounded that I get asked that stupid fucking question every time I go out. What is the difference? Does it matter if I’ve been to that restaurant before?

  THEY ARE ALL THE FUCKING SAME!

  Yo
u sit at a table, look at a menu, eat the food, pay your check, and leave. You do this at every restaurant in the fucking world! There is absolutely no reason to ask that stupid question unless it’s a place like The Melting Pot and you need special instructions because you are cooking the food at your table.

  Yeah, the food is different at different restaurants, but the process is not.

  So if they ask if you’ve been there before, say “No, but since you’re asking, it must be different from other restaurants. Do I have to go back in the kitchen and cook the food myself? If that’s the case let me go get my chef hat out of my car.”

  Dull Waiters, Dull Knives

  I eat grilled chicken every fucking day. It drives me nuts when I go to a restaurant and they don’t have a sharp knife to cut the chicken.

  Waiters give you those shitty butter knives that are duller than a Big Bang Theory episode. My toenails are sharper than those fucking knives.

  When you get a steak, they bring you a sharp knife to cut your meat. Why not chicken? But, fuck no, they hand you a butter knife that can barely cut through melted butter.

  I’ve heard waiters say the reason they don’t give you a sharp knife is because chicken is supposed to be so moist that you should be able to cut through it easily. Yeah, well I’ve been eating chicken for thirty years, and I’ve never had a piece of chicken that fucking moist! Every piece of chicken I get is dryer than Betty White’s snatch.

  Now, whenever I ask specifically for a SHARP KNIFE they look at me like I’m an asshole and point to the butter knife that’s on the table.

  “That won’t cut through the fucking bread roll!” I say.

  I guess they think I’m crazy because when the chicken comes out the knife is always missing! So, I have to ask again.

  “Can I get a sharp knife?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot it. I’ll be right back!”

  Now I have to wait and my chicken is getting colder and tougher to cut every second that goes by. Why didn’t the waiter bring the knife when I was waiting for my fucking food? They had a whole thirty minutes to get the table organized. I want to stab the waiter with the butter knife but I know it won’t break his skin.

  Prep the Fucking Table

  Do a little prep work if you’re a server, okay?

  If you have hamburgers and French fries on the menu, people who order it will want ketchup. Put it on the table before the order comes out. It’s pretty simple.

  Some asshole will want more salt on their already salty fries. Make sure salt and pepper are on the fucking table. Do it while your customers are waiting for their food. Otherwise, they’ll ask for it when the food comes out.

  If I were the waiter, I would ask if the table needs anything. Extra napkins? Steak sauce? An extra plate? I wouldn’t ask if the meal is okay ten seconds after it arrives at the table. I don’t know how it is yet I’m not finished chewing my first piece yet! Come back halfway through the meal and check in? Either way, who cares if it’s the meal of the century or not. I’ll have another one in six hours. I eat three meals a day. Sometimes one is bad but there’s another one on the way soon. I’m eating at a chain restaurant so it’s most likely going to be a shitty meal so who gives a fuck?

  Plain Stupidity

  Here’s another annoyance, when you go out for breakfast it’s impossible to order a plain egg-white omelet. I have a problem with this every fucking time!

  “What would you like to order, sir?” The waitress asks.

  “Can I get a plain egg-white omelet, please?”

  “Okay, what do you want in the omelet?” She asks.

  “Eggs!”

  There is always complete silence after that answer.

  “Sir, you don’t have to be rude.”

  “I’m not being rude. I want eggs in my PLAIN omelet.”

  “What else?” She asks.

  “I said plain. Plain means plain, right? When you order a plain bagel, does it come out with fucking jelly on it? No, it’s just fucking plain.”

  I guess the idea of a plain egg-white omelet is incomprehensible. It’s especially confusing to waiters in a small town.

  “The cook said he can’t separate the eggs,” they say.

  “Really? It takes exactly two seconds.”

  “Sir, we don’t do that here!”

  Sometimes when I ask for a plain omelet they ask me, “Do you want cheese in that?”

  I refuse to answer that question and sit there in silence.

  “Sir, excuse me, do you want cheese in your omelet?”

  “Did I ask for cheese?”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Okay, so why are we talking about cheese?”

  “You just want the omelet plain with nothing in it?”

  “I want the eggs in it.”

  “Obviously, you want the eggs. I asked if you wanted cheese because most people like cheese.”

  “Most people like to go on vacations but there are people that don’t.”

  “Sir, that makes no sense.”

  “Neither does your theory about cheese, you fucking retard!”

  Room for Disaster

  Another thing that annoys the fuck out of me is the question the waiter asks after dinner, “Did you save any room for dessert?”

  I don’t know how to save room for dessert. I don’t have little men in my stomach moving the food around to make extra room. I’m not nine years old. I don’t eat desserts anymore. I just had three glasses of wine, I’m not going to ruin my buzz with a piece of chocolate fucking cake. You don’t mix icing with alcohol. That’s a recipe for disaster!

  I went out to dinner with my guy friend the other night and he ordered two pieces of cake.

  “Two?” I asked.

  “I can’t help it! I have a sweet tooth,” he said.

  “No, you don’t. You’re forty years old, you don’t have a fucking sweet tooth. You’re overeating because you are depressed that you’re in a bad marriage.”

  “Why would you say that?” He asked.

  “You just texted your wife and called her a cunt!” I pointed to his phone.

  “Yeah but I put a smiley face at the end!”

  “Perfect, let me know how that works out for you motherfucker!”

  Awful Stores: Big-Box Scams

  Restaurants are bad but big-box stores like Sam’s Club and Costco are FUCKING AWFUL! People who swear by them act like they’re in a cult. They won’t shop anywhere else and don’t understand people who might have a different opinion.

  “You don’t go to Costco? Fucking Costco is AMAZING! It’s an event when I go!”

  If you think going to Costco on a Saturday afternoon is an event, you have a sad life. These stores are nothing but scams!

  Try a Sample of Shit

  First, the con men running these awful warehouses lure you in with shitty food!

  My friend said, “I like it because they put out samples. I can eat lunch there because around every corner there’s free food! You might as well try it all. Who doesn’t like free stuff?”

  I don’t like free stuff when they’re doing a promotion somewhere and they’re giving out free T-shirts, I don’t take it just because it’s free. Sorry, I’m not going to wear a Bud Light Lime T-shirt that’s so big it hangs down to my fucking ankles.

  Just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s edible. It’s fucking garbage—a greasy piece of a hot dog or an awful-looking sausage.

  I wish I could set up a sample table in Costco. I would collect a bunch of dog shit, pack it in bulk, and put it on display.

  “Here’s a dried piece of dog shit! Take it, it’s free! It doesn’t cost you anything! Mmmmm!”

  People in these stores are buying junk food in bulk. They put horrible crap in their mouths all the time. I have no doubt, they’ll love dog shit on a toothpick!

  Fucked by a Fuel Pump

  When you shop at big-box stores, you waste money on gas because you aren’t driving to the free and convenient supermark
et a mile from your house. The nearest Costco is nine miles away so that’s an eighteen-mile round-trip. Now, you’re spending more on gas to save money. It doesn’t make any fucking sense!

  Guess what, they’ve thought of this, too. Big-box stores now sell their own gas. Another way they swindle people into thinking they’re getting a deal.

  There’s a Costco a few miles from my house and I go by it every day. They charge $2.31 a gallon. There’s a 7-11 a mile away that sells gas for the same price. The gas line at Costco is always twenty cars long. 7-11 never has a wait. You can pull right up to the pump and be in and out in three minutes. Meanwhile, the Costco cult members are wasting fuel by idling fifteen minutes to fill up their tanks with the precious Costco gas.

  It is true that Costco gas is cheaper than Exxon. But, Exxon inflates their price because people think its better quality gas. That’s another scam. Gas is the same wherever you get it.

  Also, you don’t need premium for twenty-five cents more. That’s all bullshit! They’ve done studies that prove it doesn’t matter what you put in your tank since newer cars are built different from the shitty cars our parents drove. It’s not 1973! I’ve never been in someone’s car and said, “Wow, this car rides smooth, you must have put Exxon Premium in your tank!” If Costco cultists did some research instead of dreaming about the dog shit samples they’ll eat this weekend—they might actually save some fucking money!

  Shitty Costco Clothes

  They sell clothes at Costco, too. They’re supposed to be designer clothes but it might be a good idea to look a little closer. I’m sure those Calvin Klein jeans are the fuck-ups from the sweatshop where the pocket or the zipper is a little off and the guy who bought them can’t zip up his pants.

  Don’t brag you got your clothes at a fucking bulk store. There’s nothing more white trash. I’d have more respect for you if you stole clothes from that charity bin in the fucking parking lot.