Tuesdays with Karen

Under the dusty pendant light at the Applebee’s, Ren held her breath, dreading what she knew came next.

Across the table, Karen sneered. “Can I speak to your manager?”

Just a few minutes before, their weekly lunch date was going smoothly. With a squelchy slurp, Karen sucked the last bit of ranch dressing off a chicken wing as her friend prodded at limp iceberg lettuce. Karen’s friend was also named Karen, but since she sat lower on the social standing totem pole than ranch-dressing-with-mild-chicken-wings Karen, everyone called her Ren. She hated it. No one cared.

Seeing the coup de grâce that Karen had just performed on the bones, the waitress came by to clear the plates. She moved gracefully on delicate ankles with the thoughtless ease of one who spent her childhood dancing ballet.

“How was everything today?” She asked, balancing the plates firmly on one toned arm.

Karen barely glanced up from her phone as she furiously typed a Facebook status about cell phone etiquette in public. Two teens at the next table over had spent their entire meal snapping photos of their food, and the world needed to know how she felt about it.

Now, the waitress needed to know how she felt about her meal. With sticky fingers, Karen tucked her asymmetrical bob with chunky blonde highlights behind her ears. Any other woman’s husband would say to her at the end of the day, “Babe, why does your hair smell like Hidden Valley Ranch?” But Karen’s husband didn’t call her Babe anymore, and he hadn’t gotten close enough to smell her in a long time.

Looking up at the trim waitress, Karen grinned mirthlessly. “Actually. It was sub par.”

The waitress glanced at the pile of bones now balanced on the plate in her arm. She had almost a decade of experience in every aspect of the service industry, and from what she knew, leaving an empty plate was typically a sign of good food. After a beat, she asked, “I’m so sorry to hear that. May I ask, what could we have done better?”

Karen took on the tone of a scolding schoolteacher talking to a slow learner. “I just didn’t like it,” she said, which was true. Mostly. She had wanted more Ranch but had forgotten to ask for it because she was too busy fervently retweeting a blog post about mercury in vaccines. Still, the server should have anticipated her needs. Karen and Ren came to this Applebee’s every Tuesday, (but not because of Taco Tuesday. They didn’t like “ethnic” food) and Karen always got two extra sides of the creamy dressing. This waitress hadn’t served them before, but she should have known anyway. Affronted by this inexcusable service, Karen demanded, “I want it taken off the check.”

The waitress smiled a honey-sweet smile in response. She didn’t break all her toes by the tenth grade to back down so easily under pressure. “I’m sorry, but since you finished the whole thing, it’s the restaurant’s policy to ask you to pay for it. I’m sure you understand.” She smiled wider, trying to look sweet and non-confrontational. This wasn’t her first time dealing with this particular type of customer.

This is when Ren braced herself for what she knew came next.

Karen scowled, squinting up at the younger woman who her husband would most assuredly smell had he the opportunity. In the face of someone so lowly questioning her authority, she had no choice but to utter the phrase. “Can I speak to your manager?”

There it was. A seemingly simple request on the surface, a battle cry at its core.

It was a battle cry for power, the thing Karen valued above all else.

From her first beauty pageant at the age of seven to her final competition at the age of twenty-two, Karen was happiest when people were describing the ways in which she was better than everyone else. She had over a decade’s worth of scorecards showing empirically that being born with light hair and light eyes to parents who could pay for a walk-in closet full of evening wear made her mathematically better. Yes, those scorecards were now decades old, but still. Karen didn’t believe in expiration dates for past accomplishments. Or coupons.

Her pageants paved the way to scholarships. After all, what school would want an ugly nerd in its class when it could have the most beautiful girl in the greater Harrisburg area? At house parties, she found herself impatient with her sorority sisters who didn’t follow her lead. They would ruin her fun when they made her bark orders at them instead of just doing things the way she demanded the first time--and no, she never just did things herself; that would be ridiculous.

By the age of twenty-two, she was too old for pageants and ready for her next great performance: marriage. Brad, handsome in his own right, and more importantly, from a rich family, was the perfect supporting actor to her prima donna.

Nineteen years and two children later, she still craved the limelight. At school functions, she made sure to announce that she only brought the best baked goods money could buy. Made sure to provide her children with the highest quality clothes. Carried the latest, trendiest purses.

As the children got older, though, Karen had fewer opportunities to rise to her former station. She relished those moments of power, those opportunities to put other people in their place below her--people like Ren, whose doormat personality made her an easy target. When they met for lunch once a week, Karen relished in saying things like, “Wow, Ren, you’re so brave for wearing that blouse.” The way Ren blushed red with shame and embarrassment made Karen smile as widely as her Botox would let her.

This day at Applebee’s was no different--until the waitress approached to clear the plates, that is. When the waitress came by before, Karen was busy leaving a one-star review of a nail salon on Yelp (“THey really should SPEAK ENGLISH…. This is AMERICA!”), so she hadn’t looked at her. Now, though, Karen noticed for the first time the waitress’s trim waist and delicate wrists, which sent a flash of hot envy through her stomach. (Although that may have been the wings. Mild was often still too spicy.)

In that moment, deriding Ren no longer sufficed. She aimed bigger.

She aimed for the manager.

Ren, still glued to her seat, waited for the answer to the question, “Can I speak to your manager?”

The waitress stood strong, a lighthouse in a stormy port.

“Ma’am, I am the manager. And you have to pay for the food you ate.”