Life Imitating Cartoons, hmmm shouldn't that be the other way around!?!

Thursday at work I had been doing the prep work for the kitchen. You see some days I do prep and some I do the cooking, well Thursday just happened to be a prep day for me. My whole prep area is roughly 14' x 30' with a stainless steel table taking up most of the space in the center, it's 4' x 10', a closet that runs the length of the table on one side and the doors to the walk-in fridge and freezers on the other side of the table. Oh yeah, both sides also have shelving along the walls where there isn't closet or cooler doors! At the end of the table are two prep sinks that were being worked on with a 3 foot space and then another counter running perpendicular to where I work for all the dirty pots and pans and such and this has another 3 large sinks plus a garbarator which is where I do all the large dishes that the dishwasher doesn't do over at his end of the kitchen. (The dishwasher only washes the busbins and the restaurant dishes, none of the stuff that the cooks dirty, that's the prep's job). At the end of this set of sinks is the delivery door where everyone keeps throwing their empty boxes and bags of garbage! Anyway one of the taps for my prep sinks was leaking so our maintanance guy was back there working on it while I was busy cutting veggies and stuff.

Now this tap has been leaking as long as I've worked there. Oh the maintanance guy (MG) has "fixed" it before, but the leak has never truly been stopped. So here's MG busily working away on the sink constantly in my way, oh well, that's life in a busy kitchen, everyone is always in everyone elses way. While MG was busy working on the sink, the dishwasher (DW) was busy cleaning up empty boxes from in front of the delivery door. There was a huge stack that he had to break down and take to the dumpters, along with garbage that the waitresses have thrown there and that DW has collected from all the different areas of the kitchen. MG and DW were chatting up a storm about absolutely nothing (well ok, it was DW doing all the talking) and across the table from me one of the waitresses was busy portioning out salad dressings so that it would be quick and easy for them to just grab a dressing and a dinner salad and serve it without having to wait forever! So, in my small working space I have MG, DW and a waitress along with myself, pretty crowded, but workable. Especially considering that all but MG are 5'4 or smaller and none of us 3 weigh in at more than 125 lbs with DW being the smallest of the 3. Yep, he's 4 years older than I am and built like a jockey with the brain of a 6 or 7 year old. He is one strange duck I must tell you! 

Now to fully appreciate where I'm going with all this info about work you also need to know approximately what MG looks like. He's close to 6 feet tall and has to be around 180 to190 lbs and fairly fit, he's not exactly jockey material like DW is!

Back to the story. Here's DW busily talking up a storm and breaking up boxes when he gets to one that is ever so slightly stubborn and doesn't want to come apart. He's pulling and tearing at the box and getting rather frustrated as he has a tendancy of doing. Finally DW just gets right mad and punches into the center of the box ripping a whole in the cardboard. Looking over at MG, he says "MG, it sure pays to have a lot of muscle like us, huh!?!"

I look at MG, look back at DW, back to MG, back again to DW and the waitress walks away saying, "Skye, don't say it, just don't go there!" and she closes herself up in the pantry and you can hear her laughing up a storm! I wasn't trying to be funny nor a smartass, I was just looking at MG and DW and seeing the old Bugs Bunny cartoon of the bulldog Spike and his little yappy sidekick Chester, where they see a cat. Spike figures he'll take care of this cat, but it's a panther and it scares him, the yappy sidekick only sees Sylvester and well, you know the story. It's not the taking care of the cat part that I'm thinking of here, it's the beginning of the skit where Chester gets slapped to the side and told to shut-up because he's bothering Spike, only to keep coming back for more. 

You can see where I'm going here, right!?! The difference in size between MG and DW is much the same as the difference between Spike and his loyal yappy sidekick, attitudes/behaviour pretty much match up as well! When DW said "...it sure pays to have musles like us..." I kept a straight face with pretty much nothing for expression, all I did was bounce my eyes back and forth between the two. MG was looking at me with a smirk on his face when the waitress started to laugh so loudly, he got what I was thinking! But DW, not so much, when he was done with the boxes and had everything organized, he actually asked me what that was all about! He seriously did not understand why the waitress had to leave without finishing what she was doing, in order to break up laughing like that!

Trouble is, when you have to explain a joke, it's just not funny anymore. And really, I had no interest in explaining a joke to someone who throws temper tantrums at the drop of a hat, especially considering he himself was the joke!