Waffle House is a staple in American culture, especially in the south. The familiar glow of the yellow block sign and the signature waffles are something most are familiar with. The orange vinyl cushioned seats and tile walls across the U.S. have more stories than I ever will.
Home to teenagers with nothing better to do, truck drivers heading home, old men with war stories, the 3 a.m. drunkards, women asking why, and so much more, Waffle House is a place for the people.
Waffle House takes all kinds, customers and workers alike.
As someone on the other side of the high bar, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that WH does not serve pancakes, no matter how many times you tell me they do. I just had to get that out there. Customers are not always right, and I hope whoever came up with that sentiment gets nothing but burnt waffles and runny grits.
Being a Waffle House server is a special job that requires a unique person.
That special person could be a 16-year-old trying to make enough money to go to Europe (me at the time) or a middle-aged man with questionable tattoos and a scooter he drives to work. There really are no requirements to be a Waffle House server other than a pulse and a reliable mode of transportation.
That being said, it does take a special sort of person to stay at Waffle House for years, which many do. You become a therapist. A verbal punching bag. An object of many lewd comments. An emotional crutch. An expert at removing stuck waffles. The list could go on. Waffle House is good with food, but it's great with people.
Waffle House teaches you about life. From how to use toast to clean off a dirty plate or the best way to calm down an angry customer, it's all about what you learn. One of the first things I learned during my WH career was to roll with the punches. My first table on my first day looked at me and with a haughty look, asked me if I was even old enough to be working. "Yes ma'am, I am. Do y'all need anything else right now?", was all I could respond with and was one of the first of many moments like that.
You roll with the punches when it's six in the morning and you're listening to a man with questionable arm sores tell you about how he got his preacher hooked on drugs and made him lie under the affidavit, all while his family sleeps in the car. This is also before he almost goes into diabetic shock in the men's bathroom.
All I could do for an hour was make polite answers and refill his coffee as he filled me in on the misadventures of his life and his corruption of his preacher all the while he scratched his arms.
You roll with the punches on the one and only day you forget to check the bathroom floor before you step in and you step in human feces. Somedays that rolling just involves a little more bleach and internal screaming.
For all the bad and crazy stories that come from working at Waffle House, there are just as many good ones. You learn that while people have this amazing way of doing horrible/weird things, such as hooking their preacher on drugs, there are also some really great people out there.
People bonds while sitting at the high bar. You make friends with customers your age. War veterans come in multiple times a day to drink coffee and tell you about their life. Because as crazy as it can be, Waffle House is also about the people, and how they change your life, for the good and the bad.
