3Encounters with the Evil Salad Monster
To this day I do not know what hole this particular woman crawled out of. But I do know this: it must have been very deep and very dark—and probably with a very terrible stench emanating from its depths—to have created the sort of person that stood before me. She wasn't hideous but she wasn't pretty, not even handsome; on the short side, and quite thick around the middle. But even had she been the most beautiful woman to grace the earth, it would not have diminished the fact that she was pure evil. Now I don't just mean she was just unkind or rude—she was the type of person who went above and beyond the call of duty and had managed to become the most repulsively-mannered individual she could possibly have been. I've become convinced that the demeanor she had developed was something you had to be born with, almost like a superpower, or took the type of dedication that of a monk to cultivate. The woman never even gave you any hope of seeing her smile, much less the chance of hearing a kind word. Dark clouds followed her and lightning threatened all who came within an arm's reach of her small, round body. I never learned her name but for the sake of the story we shall call her Gladys.
Now Gladys was a regular customer at our store. She always came in and ordered the same thing: a club salad with ranch dressing. The first time I met her I was taken aback. Working in the fast food industry you are forced into contact with vast numbers of people you would rather not associate with. When I greeted her with my half-hearted smile at the register she countered my effort with an icy, bitter stare— straight into my soul it seemed. Now I had met many unhappy and downright rude customers in my time, and I believed her to be just one more. So I continued to follow the routine I had just about mastered over my two years as a fast food employee. "What can I get you today?" I asked flashing a toothy smile, believing I could break down the stony exterior of the woman across the counter. But she was not your average discontented customer. Without the slightest acknowledgement if my feigned kindness toward her she continued to glare and told me that she wanted a salad. Courageously, yet quite naively, I kept my pretense going. "Certainly, can I get you anything else today?" I graciously queried. She responded with a vicious stare and shook her head. Any other customer would've broken down by this point and given me at least an attempt at decency. But not Gladys. When I politely asked her what type of dressing she would prefer for her salad, she spat the word "ranch" at me as if I had asked her weight. I broke. My smile disintegrated. Gladys had won. I promptly rang her up and sent her out the door with her salad as quickly as possible, thinking I would never see her again.
If only I had known how many more times I would face Gladys during my career in food service. She never had a change of heart and accepted me as a human being who had to share the earth with her. Like I said, I still don't know the woman's name. But she taught me how to take cover or appear excruciatingly busy while doing nothing in order to avoid being the poor soul who had to take her order. And I learned just how quickly I could get her to get back out the door after she had walked in. Gladys was actually something of a legend at our little store. Everyone knew who she was—and everyone detested her very existence. Many names and titles were given to Gladys, some of which I won't blacken this page with. My personal favorite was given to her by my manager: "The mean, nasty salad lady." I liked the ring it had to it; lacking all eloquence in the same way she lacked any kindness or love in her black, little heart.
As I said, after our first meeting I thought she would vanish from my life as so many customers before her had. But Gladys could be likened to herpes—just when you thought she was gone she would show up, just as ugly and mean as before. The second time she showed up, I mentally braced myself for what was to come. But despite my bravest effort, fear gripped me to the point that I could no longer flash my cheesy food service smile. I stuttered a little when I asked what she wanted. Once again, she demanded a salad with ranch dressing, poison filling every syllable that came from her mouth. Afraid of getting too close in case she decided to have me as a quick snack, an appetizer if you will, I nearly dropped the salad. In return I got a glare of death the likes of which I have only seen a handful of times in my life. My very bones went cold at the evil this woman was capable of emitting. As the door closed behind her I audibly let out a sigh, saying a prayer of thanks that I had survived the encounter.
Our next several meetings went much the same way. She would stalk through the door as if she was looking for someone to kill and upon reaching the counter always required that I bring her the same exact salad. I began to recognize her face as easily as a member of my own family—that is, if my family was a pack of rabid pit bulls. I always said a prayer in the moments before I had to speak to her—just in case I didn't live to tell the story. I would often wonder how she had learned to constantly contort the muscles of her face into such an angry expression. I thought that maybe she really wasn't unhappy—that her face had somehow gotten stuck that way, some freak accident from years past. Like when my parents threatened me when made faces at them as a child, "You just watch, one day your face will stay that way." I held that theory for all of 12 seconds, until I heard the tone of voice that welled out of her throat. It was something close to what I imagine Satan's voice would be if he was a woman, and my only explanation for that sound was that she was evil incarnate. Gladys' despicable nature did give her the advantage of being the customer we took the best care of—due to our general loathing of her presence. Five minutes or less was how long it was to take a customer to receive their order. Gladys was in and out of the door in 16 ½ seconds.
Every so often I would luck out and someone else would have the pleasure of helping her. I would stand back and avoid eye contact with her as the exchange was occurring. I would watch as the poor cashier would try her best with smiles and courtesy against the monstrosity that was Gladys. No one ever got a decent word out of her. If anything beside the words "salad" or "ranch" came from her mouth she was complaining. If this happened everyone in the store would stop in order to support the girl at the register to solve the problem—it was too much for one of us to face alone.
Once I became convinced that she must have been the offspring of some terrible monster you hear about as a kid. The most likely seemed to be a vampire; I could easily see her sucking the life out of some poor, innocent person. I figured she also must have been some awful hybrid, because she was always out in the sunlight. I decided to test my theory. She came in, just as angry as always but by this time in our relationship it didn't faze me anymore. I had brought a small mirror, knowing that if she were a vampire, even a well-evolved hybrid, she would not have a reflection. I had worked out the plan ahead of time. As she reached into her wallet to grab her money I would quickly pull out the mirror while I turned around to ask a coworker a question. As I did so, I would raise the mirror to see back behind over my shoulder—that way it would be less obvious. I succeeded in carrying out my plan, and to my surprise I saw her reflection. I nearly forgot to pull the mirror out of sight as she looked up, shocked as I was to see that she wasn't a monster. Luckily, I came to my senses just in time and resumed my food service duties and Gladys was none the wiser. As she walked out that day clutching her salad in her claw-like hands I marveled that a vampire-blood free human being could be so utterly evil. That night I thought to myself that she might be a werewolf. But the only way to test that was to shoot her with a silver bullet. And Gladys wasn't worth going to jail over.
With the knowledge that she wasn't truly a monster established in my mind I began to pity Gladys. How was it possible for someone to be so incredibly unhappy? So for a few visits I was as pleasant as I could be, even asked her about the weather once or twice just to make small talk. I thought that maybe she had some tragic story behind her cruel outer shell. This lasted only a short time as she continued to look at me like I was gum on the bottom of her shoe. After that I simple treated her with cool indifference. After all, I enjoyed my life and no mean, little person could take that away from me.
In retaliation to her awful nature I decided to be exceptionally nice to Gladys, believing that it would either wear her down into some sort of decency toward me or just make her visit as miserable as she made it for me. Either way, it would make me feel better about the whole ordeal. When she walked in I would greet her like a long-lost friend, walk over to the register and take her order so courteously I nearly made myself sick. Then when she was walking out the door I would enthusiastically say, "Have a wonderful day!" I kept this up until I moved on and found a new job. I don't know if it really bothered her, but it made me happy to think that it did. I never saw Gladys again after leaving that job. For all I know she still comes in to order a salad and make some other poor girl's life a little bit worse. I'll never know what made her the way she was, but wherever she is I sincerely hope she has learned to at least smile.