Don't Get The Ice

Tonight at work I watched one of the dishboys climb up on a stepladder to peer into the ice container at the top of the pop machine. I watched him and thought, Huh. That's weird. Why is he doing that? It's our job. He must really be bored.

That's when the dishboy looked at me. He smiled his best smile from underneath his low-slung hat. "Hey, Jess?" he said. "Would you run and get me some ice, please?"

He said it so sweetly that I couldn't say no. Sure I could go get him some ice. But I still wasn't convinced that what he was doing was virtuous, and I told him so. "I swear to God," I said, "if someone is hiding in that ice cooler, I am going to come back here and beat the crap out of you."

Last week when I started, one of the waitresses took me aside and warned me that if ever one of the cooks, dishboys, or ice cream boys asked me to go get them ice when it looked like they were perfectly capable of doing it themselves, then I should go with caution. The ice cooler, which is in one of the back rooms, is pretty big. When lowish on ice, you can fit a human body in there no problem. A few minutes of waiting in ice-cold is worth it to these boys just the second they see the look on the person's face, just as soon as they hear the person scream. "They do it all the time," the waitress told me. "Just watch out."

So I walked back to the ice cooler. I checked the other back rooms to make sure everyone was accounted for. I couldn't find one boy--the ice cream boy--so I headed over to the ice chest with tremendous care. I steeled myself for whatever was going to happen just as soon as I grabbed the handle and opened.

I put my hand on the handle. I thought, Don't be afraid if a teenage boy pops out and screams Boo! I thought, Also, try not to pee your pants if a teenage boy pops out and screams Boo! After all, I come from a long line of women who have trouble controlling their bladder in certain dramatic moments, and while I've never had a problem, I'm figuring it's only a matter of time until someone scares the hell out of me so bad that I have to start wearing Depends.

I eased the handle back and slowly opened the door. That's when a teenage boy pushed off a stack of bagged ice and said Boo!

"Bastards!" I hissed. I ran back to the kitchen. "Oh that's it," I said. "That's it! You're all dead!"

The dishboy shook his head. "No, no, no," he said. "Sssh. Don't say anything. Let's get some more people. Okay? Okay?"

I crossed my arms and glared at him, but I kept my mouth shut. In fact, I kept my mouth shut the entire time as the dishboy took his station again--climbing to the top of that step ladder--and called out to someone else. "Hey," he said. "Do you think you could run and get me some ice, please?"

And then he and I were both quiet, waiting for the eventual yelling and slamming to occur--this time the person being scared had the presence of mind to get back at the ice cream boy by locking him into the freezer for several minutes--and during that silence I tucked silverware into precise napkin triangles and thought, This isn't the worst way to spend an afternoon.