No one would help the little hen

A thing I like to say when I feel lost and alone

Years ago when I was in my 4th and senior year earning an international relations degree from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, I was also working way too many shifts at the Downtown Keg.

The Keg is a really good steakhouse and I still LOVE to eat there.

Anyhoo, one night a big gay older waiter named Bill lost the merchant copy of a credit card (essentially he lost a bill), and that meant something we all dreaded: at the end of the night he’d be on the hook for it. While eating at The Keg is delicious, it’s never been cheap.

After asking all of us to check our aprons to see if we might have it, he slowly realized the only option was the unthinkable: searching through the industrial-sized grey garbage can that sat beside the dishwashing pit. The one filled with cigarette butts, all the scrapings of uneaten food from plates and assorted other terrible yucky things. I’ll never, ever forget Bill in the corner of the server area late that evening, hunched over the garbage pail with…