It just so happens that in high school I worked a fast food pizza job with two sons of Okie congressman Ernest Istook. Chad & Butch, his two youngest, I believe. Butch trained me, and I in turn trained Chad. Ernest, in turn, proposes the Religious Freedom Amendment every session of Congress even though it doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of even making it past committee.

The night of said training Butch walked me around the dish prep room, pointing out this and that and introducing me to everyone. The real reason I’d signed on was to work with my girlfriend and a couple of my best friends. I was suspicious that Butch had an interest in my very Baptist girlfriend. No goddamn Mormon was going to hit on my Baptist girlfriend, by gum, even if it meant I had to shave my beard and work a shit job on evenings and weekends.

We walked out the dishroom to make our first cleaning round: past the salad bar, past the video games, into the theatre, upstairs to the TV room, into the back convention room, then back into the main room before going back to the dishroom. But just the other side of the salad bar I stopped full. Butch walked ahead a few steps before he turned around to see where I was, almost stepping in it in the process. Laying there on the tile floor between the salad bar and the video games was a veritable pile of shit.

I must have looked like I was going to bolt for the door. “It’s not normally like this,” he said. “How often does it happen?” I returned. Butch fumbled out, “Well, it’s never happened before.” We alternated between staring at each other in disbelief and staring at the pile of shit. “I guess someone should clean this up,” Butch volunteered before he swept it up into his busboy bin with one determined sweep. “Should we make the rest of our round?” I asked. Already flustered, Butch wasn’t sure if I was kidding but somehow started to make his way back to the dishroom. I followed.

I told his brother Chad the story a couple of months later when I trained him on his first night. He didn’t believe me and looked to his brother as if to say, “Who is the asshole trying to fool?” Butch just shuddered and averted his eyes. Chad made his first round past the salad bar with much fear and trepidation that night.