the university daily kansan 9B
jobs
Restaurant employees cope with late night drunkards
By Laura Pate
ipate@kansan.com
kansan staff writer
Seeing someone snort Tabasco sauce and finding vomit on her car tire is all part of an average night's work for Kim Cady. As a waitress at Perkin's Restaurant, 1711 W. 23rd St., Cady has seen her fair share of drunks.
"I treat them like a bunch of two-year olds," Cady said.
She gives her intoxicated customers half glasses of water and avoids giving them ketchup, mustard or syrup. Like a baby sitter, she always makes sure to give them lots of napkins. If the customers start acting rowdy, she will take their food away. She gives them specific suggestions on food to order, because soused customers are indecisive, she said.
"It's best to eat at Perkin's and burn some of that off first," Cady said.
Police come into the restaurant looking for trouble, she said. Perkin's also hires security guards through Milspec to work from 1:30 a.m to 4 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. Drunks do not act worse in college towns compared to other towns, Cady said. When she worked at a Perkin's Restaurant in Jedwood, S.D., she saw similar behavior.
"I will tell them to order toast and say, 'consider yourself toasted,'" Cady said. Cady said she saw her job as a community service. If the drunks were not in Perkin's Restaurant, they would be out driving.
Photo Illustration by Kit Leffler/Kanan
Drunk customers at the International House of Pancakes, 3102 Iowa St., have urinated on the bathroom floors, left toilet paper on the floor and fought, said Forrest Savage, waiter at the restaurant. One customer even got injured.
Savage was surprised customers weren't turned off by some of the intoxicated behavior of others.
Savage and his manager called for an ambulance, but the man's girlfriend drove off with him before the ambulance arrived, he said.
Businesses around Lawrence have to deal with drunk customers. The disturbances caused by these customers range from mild annoyances to bar fights.
"Everyone in town is a drunk these days." Savage said. "I don't know why some people want to eat here."
IHOP has a security guard through Delta Force to work from midnight until 4 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, but he isn't sure how effective the guard is.
About 75 percent of IHOPs drunk customers are college students, he said. Savage described the other 25 percent as "rednecks who go to Coyotes."
how close she's almost eighty years old." Savage said. "I don't think she's all that intimidating."
Inebriated customers don't leave the recommended 15 percent tip. Most groups leave about two dollars $2 in tips, Savage said.
And intoxicated patrons can cause more than mere disturbances, sometimes they can be dangerous.
While most customers at Aimee's Coffeehouse, 1025 Massachusetts St., usually act in a respectful manner, one particular customer has caused problems.
Last semester, a man came into Aimee's Coffeehouse, visibly drunk and slept on one of the couches. When Natalie Patrick, barista, was ready to close at 11 pm., the man was still sleeping there. She woke him up to and said he needed to go.
The coffeeshop is located between Louise's Bar Downtown, 1009 Massachusetts St. and Harbour Lights, 1031 Massachusetts St., and across from the Granada, 1020 Massachusetts St. But Patrick said she did not blame the number of bars for bringing the occasional drunk customer into her coffeeshop. She said this would happen sometimes in a college town.
Matt Micksch works at Jimmy John's Gourmet Sandwich Shop, 922 Massachusetts Street. Jimmy John's stays open until 3 a.m., and on Friday and Saturday nights, Micksch deals with drunk people ordering sandwiches.
"It's annoying to get sand-wiches to them because never remember what they ordered," Micksch said.
In December, Amy Smith, carhop at Sonic Drive In Restaurant, 3201 W. Sixth St., called the police on some befuddled customers. The customers tried to hand her the wrong change and acted really slow and lethargic, said the Overland Park junior.
"The passenger said, 'Don't mind her, she's really drunk.' Smith said. "I'm like, Okay,
you're driving the car"
you're driving the car.
Smith wrote down the license plate number before the car drove off. Because Sonic closes at 11 p.m., most customers are not yet tanked for the night. They sometimes order drinks and ask for extra cups. Smith thinks the customers use the extra cups for mixing drinks.
Katherine McCleery, Overland Park sophomore, enjoys going to
Steak n Shake, 3111 Nieder Rd., after a night out on the town. She said the wait staff there did not disriminate against intoxicated customers.
"They're really happy-go-lucky," McCleery said. McCleery still keeps in touch with a friend she made at Steak n Shake after a night of partying.
—Edited by Guillaume Doane
Every day an adventure for paleontology graduate student
Kenny Bader, Shewnee graduate student, worked with a thigh bone of what could be a new dinosaur species at the Natural History Museum at the University.
By Gretchen Gier
Kansan correspondent
correspondent@kansan.com
Behind the closed doors and "employees only" signs of Dyche Hall, Kenny Bader prepares fossils for the paleontology department at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center. The Shawnee graduate student also trains weekend volunteers to clean fossils.
Bader volunteered for the
museum for four years before the department had enough money to hire him. While many students might have become discouraged by lack of pay, Bader would have done anything to get his foot in the door.
Better jobs open up by volunteering,he said.
teering. he said.
Bader's enthusiasm for his work was clear. The favorite part of his job was getting others interested in paleontology. He exuded a happiness that food service and dishwashing would
As Bader cleaned bones from a species of long-necked dinosaur, he commented that he wouldn't deal with food. Surrounded by piles of dirt-covered bones, it was obvious why Bader shunned burger-flipping.
To him, the work he does is engaging and interesting.
"Every day is an adventure, especially in the field," he said. "One minute I could be working on a dinosaur, the next catching a
Bader is in the process of reconstructing a bone cast for the National Science Museum in Japan.
Kenny's work in the Natural History Museum has provided a solid basis for his future. He sees himself continuing research in the field for his Ph.D., and, of course, dusting dinosaur bones in the basement of a museum somewhere.
Edited by Donovan Atkinson
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