Noods.

At my bartending job, I occasionally have some tables to take care of as well.  I always thought I'd hate being a server, but it's not actually so bad.  It probably has a lot to do with where I work, which is a casino.  There are no under-age people allowed, so I don't have to deal with children, or families, the prospect of which is a big part of why I never wanted to do it.

Food and beverage service is incredibly fast-paced.  And I mean, if I can save myself 2 seconds on a task, I will do it, because those 2 seconds can be the difference between floating the rush and managing to keep up easily, and drowning in the flood of people who need food and tables that need wiping.

One day a lady at one of my tables ordered a stir-fry and wanted to have noodles instead of rice.  She also requested dry noodles, because last time her noodles came with too much water, I guess, and the stir-fry got all soggy and watery and grody.  Fair enough.  When I put in that order, I'm going to put it in as 'Stir-Fry>Noodles>[modifier] DRY NOODS PLZ'.  It's faster, and my on-screen keyboard has a diabolical, up-jumped sense of self-worth and likes to think it's in charge.  The fewer letters I have to type, the better.

We have wonton soup on the menu, too, and it's quite popular.  A common option is to order it with noodles.  When writing down someone's order, a server will develop their own indecipherable short-hand, so I usually get to write 'noods' a few times a day.  As anyone who is kitchen staff anywhere will tell you, conversations like to get a little naughty, and sometimes downright raunchy, so we talk about noods a lot.  'Can I get a side of noods, please!' or 'Are you getting my noods ready now?' when we have time to josh around.

One busy Saturday, and I mean busy, a lady came up and wanted a take-out order of wonton soup.  This was about 2pm, after having started at 9am, and it was busy enough that none of the servers had gotten even a 5 minute break.  We'd all been going non-stop the entire day, barely enough time to drink some water to keep hydrated.  It was finally slowing down enough that I was looking forward to having a quick bite to eat in a couple minutes.

Then, this lady comes up.  In about 30 seconds I wanted to stab her face with a splintered chopstick.

Her: Can I get some wonton soup, to go?

Me: Yep, do you want noodles in it?  [A quick extra $3 upsell that I always offer.]

Her: I don't know, I want what that other lady had.

Me: What lady?

Her: I saw this lady a while ago over there [points to the bar, currently about 50 feet away], ordered a soup and it looked good, so I want exactly what she had.

Me: I'm sorry, I don't know what that lady ordered.

Her: Well, what do the noodles look like?

Me: They're long, stringy thin ones.

Her: What do they taste like?

Me: THEY TASTE LIKE FUCKING NOODLES, WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK THEY TASTE LIKE, WOMAN?!  Um, I don't know, they just taste like normal noodles. I'm allergic to noodles, so I've not had them, but they're pretty popular, just normal noodles.

I've never been given the Spanish Inquisition over some fucking noodles before!  Jesus, fuck.  Five god-damned hours of hard, running around off my feet working with no breaks and no lunch, but constantly surrounded by lunch that looks and smells tasty (even if I am allergic to 99% of it) and I get interrogated over some fucking noodles.  Eventually she ordered and I left to scarf down some food.

I get back and I get called into the office.  That lady, and I use the term loosely, because she was probably a fiendish, alien species from the planet Entitled Bitchicus IV or something, had complained about me and how I didn't know my job, and I couldn't tell her about the thrice-be-damned fucking noodles.

Thursday seems to be the Day When Things Go Wrong.  Last Thursday my brain decided to stop working when I was trying to tell someone what our daily soup was.  It's like the word for the variety of soup ceased to exist for about 20 seconds.  I groped blindly for the word, I stalled, I stared at the ceiling.  Glitch in the Matrix.  I forgot the word for noodle. I knew it was chicken something, but the something was just not there.  I knew there was a second word in the name for the soup, something important.

I like telling funny stories about myself, clearly, because it makes it interesting for others.  It's always good to laugh at yourself, too, or you're taking life way too seriously. I told another server about forgetting what noodles were and she looks at me and laughs.  'I always thought I was weird until I met you, now I just think I'm normal and you're the weird one!'  And then she called me 'Noodles' for the day.

An hour or so later, I was trying to take the lunch order of this elderly couple that comes in all the time.  They usually stick to one of the same one or two things, one of which - for the gentleman - happens to be a small wonton soup with noodles.  Given that I have the attention span of a goldfish sometimes, and that Murphy's Law says that the one thing you don't want to happen is the one thing that most definitely will, I'm sure you can see where this is headed.

I approach the couple's table, drinks already in hand because I know what they'll order.  The gentleman orders his small wonton soup, and normally he just says he wants noodles, but he didn't today, so I double checked.  'With noods in that today? [slight pause, raising of tone of voice slightly] Noodles.  In your soup.  Wonton with noodles?'  Thankfully he's old and didn't notice, or thought he just didn't hear correctly.

God-damned noodles.