Casper, the Friendly Food Runner

Do you remember Casper the Friendly Ghost? If not, I'll fill you in. Casper was a ghost. Casper was a very friendly ghost. He could sneak into a room unseen, and you'd never know he was there. That's about all you need to know, and I all that I can remember about Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Very different from the guy I witnessed at Jock's & Jill's this weekend. There was one similarity, though. His name was Casper, too. He was the food runner at the restaurant. His job was to carry the food to the tables. When I first saw him, he was carrying three plates of food to a nearby table. He didn't go unnoticed by anyone. We all witnessed his struggle getting from Point A (the kitchen window) to Point B (the table). The condiment cups were rattling, the plates were shifting in his arms, and he was struggling. After delivering the plates to Point B, Casper had to take a rest. He sat at a nearby vacant table and complained to the partons at Point B that he would be sore tomorrow after carrying all of that food in one trip. After his rest, Casper left Point B and returned to Point A to retrieve the food for my table (now known as Point B). We were a party of three and we joked that Casper would never make it to our table with all three plates intact. Our boy didn't let us down. He made it to the table (Point B), but after setting down the first two plates, he lost it. My Classic Club on whole wheat toast flew into the air. Some of it landed on the table, some on the floor and most of it on my friend's jacket that was folded neatly on the empty chair of our table. Casper apologized and cleaned up some of the food before returning to Point A. We had a good laugh, especially when we looked down at the floor and saw the carnage of Classic Club on concrete. Our server came by and noticed the mess and said that Casper wasn't having a good day. Several other servers and a manager also surveyed the carnage, and commented that this just wasn't Casper's day. Of course, none of the restaurant reps that saw the spillage bothered to clean it up. They just looked at the mess and shook their heads.

I remembered the story of one of my servers that accidentally spilled hot coffee on a guest. That spillage cost our company close to $100,000. I thought that maybe if I played my cards right, I could get Casper to spill something hot on me. I wouldn't mind a scar. With that kind of money, I could get some plastic surgery and end up better than before, with a little money left over to live on for the next couple of years.

I noticed Casper about halfway between Point A and Point B (Point A.5, maybe?). He was carrying my plate of Classic Club in one hand and a bowl of sour cream in the other. A few paces away from Point B, the bowl of sour cream flew from his hand and did a slow motion flip in the air before landing on the concrete floor of the patio. The ceramic bowl split in half as the sour cream shot a splatter trail over 8 feet long. Casper recovered quickly and made his way to Point B. As he placed the plate in front of me, I whispered "It'll get better". He replied "No, it won't."

On his way back to Point A, the manager confronted Casper about the sour cream spillage. Casper denied the whole thing. "It wasn't me" and returned to Point A, while everyone on the patio sat in disbelief, after just witnessing the "crime" that he denied.

We didn't see Casper deliver any more food while we finished our meals, so I didn't get a chance to have anything hot spilled on me. Maybe next time.

On the way to the exit we passed Casper at Point A, trying to get a grasp of four plates of hot food. He had the look of impending doom on his face and I wish we could've stuck around to see his delivery. I'm sure it might have been his last.