It's So Hard To Find Help Running a Good Scam These Days

Last Friday we took Hick out to eat for his birthday. We enjoy the local all-you-can-eat catfish establishment a couple of times a year. On this evening we were seated in the left side of the restaurant. It's the smaller of the two rooms, but not by much.

We were led to a table directly across from the ice machine. This is no ice dispenser like the top of a soda fountain at a convenience store that you fill with a bucket. No sirree, Bob! This ice machine made its own ice. Which we found out shortly, what with the avalanche of square cubes onto the pile we could see through the flap-down silver door. This ice maker was a marvel. I swear it dumped a load every five minutes.

I'm shocked that this type of ice machine management is allowed by the health department. Leaving that large rectangular door flapped down, I mean. Because just as it is easy for the aging waitresses in their fuzzy Santa hats to walk over and scoop out ice for the mason jars of beverages...so too would it be easy for a wayward preschool child to walk by and dip his hand inside.

Val is a convenience store insider. And a former unemployment office investigator. She knows that waitresses are not allowed to drag a cup or glass through the ice. A regular scooper must be used, and left inside the ice field, and not used to distribute ice into anything but a fresh glass or container. And the waitresses must wear a fresh glove to reach in there. Not so at the catfish house.

Sure, sometimes rules go overboard in trying to protect the public from dysentery or E. coli. It's not like those aging fuzzy-Santa-hat-wearing waitresses are Elaine Benes, that disease-carrying wh0re out to sicken Peggy down at the J. Peterman offices by touching her water bottle. But it seems that the flap-down metal door of the ice maker should not be left open, subject to errant animal hairs and more unpleasant particles wafting in from the clothing and skin of customers led by on the way to a table.

Still. That's not what bothered Val about the ice maker that evening.

After each avalanche, a couple of cubes cascaded out of the pile and onto the ceramic tile floor. A couple of them bounced all the way over to our table. The Pony looked at me with raised eyebrows.

"I know! An accident waiting to happen. One of those waitresses is going to break a hip."

"Or a customer."

"Pony! Maybe you should get up and walk to the bathroom. And slip on that ice! It won't hurt for long. I can squirt some ketchup on the floor around your head. The hospital stay should be brief. And I'm sure you'll completely regain your mental faculties. Come on! Play along. It's not like you'd be getting run over by your dad in a city truck."

"Nah. I don't think so."

"Well...think it over. We need money to cover the down payment on a new car."

"With our luck, we'd probably just get hospital bills covered."

There's always a catch.