Based on a True Email

To: Melsanie

From: thedith

Subject: Trapped in the Trash Closet

Today, at the restaurant, I got trapped in the trash room. Somebody had put the garbage can all the way in the back of the room, so I didn’t think it was a big deal when the heavy metal door slammed behind me while I traipsed over to empty out my trash. I tossed my trash bag in the bin, then groped my way through the pitch black darkness towards the door. Except, the handle wouldn’t budge. I was locked in the garbage room. In the pitch black.  The rancid smelling, pitch black.  

No one was around to hear me. I pounded on the door with my fist, nothing. I tried kicking the door loudly. Nothing. Iwas oddly calm about it. Like the time I got trapped in my apartment building elevator for 4 hours at 3 am in Paris. Like, sometimes you just can’t fight things. What are you gonna do? It’s an oddly Zen-like (okay, I don’t know what Zen means) but it’s an odd feeling to know that something kind of dreadful is happening, and yet you’re not at all panicked. What’s the point in fighting and panicking? What can you do?  Some people might call this giving up.  To those people, I shrug my shoulders. 

And then I thought about how great it would be if the restaurant didn’t have a host for like 30 minutes. The restaurant would descend into chaos  as managers, servers, bussers would be forced to scramble for the door each time a customer came to the host stand.  I was enjoying this fantasy as it played in my head. But then, before I could get too interested in this idea, the door swung open. It was my manager.
           “Oh, if I had known it was you, I would have kept you in there longer.”  He swung the door open, holding it open as I walked into the bright flourescent glare of the back office.   I shrugged my shoulders. Maybe he should have.  I wouldn’t have minded.  That’s Zen, right?