Waffle House

Aniah Hill

“Altercation over 50-cent plasticware charge leads to violent arrest at Waffle House. More at 10”. The announcement jumped out the mouth of a stoic news anchor, his emotionless face unable to match the anticipation stamped in his voice. I sat motionless for a moment, my granddaughter Sarah snuggled beside me on the couch. Our bedtime routine always included a cup of sleepytime tea and a little TV followed by antics and dramatics to avoid actually going to bed. A bright-eyed 10 year old with an inquisitive nature, Sarah was adept at mechanisms to extend the dreaded bedtime. As I prepared to herd her off to bed, she deployed her favorite tactic.

“Mema, tell me a story,” she pleaded in that tiny baby voice, like an infant begging for a bottle before bed.

I was still reflecting on the newscast, one in a series of recent news stories about violent confrontations involving African Americans at Waffle House. Something snapped as I was thrown back into the past to re-live my own violent interaction with Waffle House staff. Settling back down on the sofa, I began my story.

Once upon a time when Mema was nineteen years old she lived in Atlanta, Georgia. It was 1977 and opportunities in Atlanta were just starting to attract people from all over the country. Education was the reason for many and I, like many African Americans, was there to attend one of the historical black colleges located on the Atlanta University Center campus. Spelman College, where successful African Americans sent their young women to be cultivated, was my destination. But I was a cultivation challenge. I stood out. My Afro puffs and laid-back California cool attitude was not appreciated in the deeply conservative southern order of things. I didn’t conform to anything anyone expected. My willful behavior got me kicked out of the dorms. But I didn’t care. I joyfully embraced the independence of my own apartment. Being a poor cook, I would frequent The Waffle House, a breakfast restaurant that serves affordable southern dishes such as grits and biscuits. Pecan waffles, a menu specialty, were my favorite. The golden crust that crunched into a fluffy filling embellished with nuts was delectable. And they were only 99 cents. A special treat I relished on a daily basis. One day I went to the Waffle House with my roommate, both of us clad in clunky platform shoes with wooden soles and heels that were fashionable at that time. We were out to enjoy a large breakfast of grits with steak and gravy, eggs and biscuits. I ordered a large orange juice to top it off. And a pecan waffle on the side. Everything was going fine except I didn’t get my pecan waffle. I asked the waiter about it repeatedly only to be rebuffed by a curt, “Its coming.” After the meal was done, the waiter brought the bill, along with my pecan waffle.

“I don’t want it now.” I informed the waiter, indicating the waffle

“You can’t cancel the order after it’s already made.” replied the waiter, a short, dark-skinned man in his middle thirties sporting a not too white apron with a torn pocket. A scowl began to creep across his face as he sucked his teeth in annoyance.

“You brought it too late. I’m done with my meal now and I don’t want it.” I firmly stated, feeling justified in my refusal.
After all, I was a regular customer. Plus, the waffle was all of 99 cents. “I won’t pay for this.” I added for emphasis.

Annoyance transformed into anger as the waiter insisted I pay for the waffle. He followed close behind as I made my way to the cash register, hassling me all the way. By then we were starting to get loud and drawing attention from other customers. The manager was summoned and took an authoritative stance behind the counter. His tall frame was made smaller by the protruding potbelly poking beneath his undersized dirty black shirt. A white name tag pounded against the blackness, announcing he was in charge. His crimson neck rose out of the shirt and spilled into a dusky face resembling a smoldering campfire. Dirty blonde hair was cut short, except at the top where it was folded over to the front to hide a receding hairline. After hearing the waiter’s story, he demanded full payment. Picking up the bill, I dramatically scrutinized it while recalculating the total, minus the 99 cents. Then I defiantly slammed down the bill, along with all monies due, minus the 99 cent, and stormed belligerently out of the restaurant.

An inflamed restaurant manager followed us to my new white Toyota. As I was getting into my car he came up behind me and held the door firmly, preventing me from closing it. I took that as a sign of engagement. An attempt at intimidation, to force me into submission, physically if necessary. I wasn’t having it. More indignant than threatened, I reached for the can of maze in my glove compartment. With a flick of my finger his eyes were flooded with irritation. He released the door, stepping backward with both his hands now holding his eyes, screaming and cursing in pain. My roommate, a 5’1” petite but solid young woman from the south side of Chicago, took the opportunity to jump on his back and beat him repeatedly in the head with the heel of her shoe. Upon which he promptly reached up over his head, grabbed her, flipped her over and body slammed her onto the ground. In defense of my fallen roommate, I immediately went on the offensive, battering him about the body with the now weaponized heel of my platform wooden shoe. My roommate recovered enough to join in on the pounding. About that time a car full of young Black men paused as they were driving by.

“You need any help?” they asked as they peered in our direction trying to establish what was happening.

“No. We got this.” I replied and continued the pounding.

After a couple of minutes the restaurant manager retreated to the restaurant. Meanwhile, I decided to use the pay phone next door to call the police and report the assault. Seething in self-righteous indignation I waited, in the parking lot of the Waffle House, for over 20 minutes, before the police arrived. It was the principle I was concerned with. As a customer, a good customer, I felt I had a right to refuse to pay for services that were not rendered or were not acceptable. So I waited, with indisputable conviction that I would be vindicated. When the police finally got there, they walked straight past me to the manager and wrote down everything he said. They returned to cuff me and place me in the back of the police car, along with my roommate, both of us charged with battery.

Eighteen hours in jail and twenty-three hundred dollars in attorney fees later, the case was dismissed after I agreed to never enter another Waffle House. I was banned from the Waffle House for all eternity. The manager was subsequently fired. I stood up for my rights and…..

“But Mema”, Sarah interrupted, soft innocent tone ringing with questions,
“Why didn’t you just ask for a doggie bag?”

I froze. Because now I was being asked to think beyond my self- righteous indignation. I re-evaluated the experience in my mind, this time without me as the victim. My case was based on my rights as a good customer. But was I a good customer? Certainly, at age nineteen, I wasn’t tipping sufficiently. It took me well into my thirties to accept that employers don’t pay their employees enough and they depend on tips to make a decent wage. My rebellion against the system of reimbursement for services was only penalizing the employee, not making a statement. So I was an ass who came in everyday and didn’t leave a tip. Let’s call that assism. The staff probably didn’t like me for that. Probably no one wanted to wait on me. Probably they spit in my food. On several occasions. The expectation of star service at a cheap breakfast joint under these circumstances suddenly became unrealistic.

Then to consider that the initial confrontation was with the waiter, who was Black. Maybe he especially didn’t like me because I attended Spelman, whose students were viewed as more affluent by the Black community. That could have incited resentment in my working class waiter. So classism could have played a role. Add in that I was from another region, a foreigner just as much as if I was from another country. With a different, more progressive, less submissive west coast attitude. And people don’t like different, especially a different they don’t understand. The truth began to unfold. An event that had been filed away in my mind as racism did in fact have contributing factors. The experience resulted from a convergence of fear-based prejudices – classism, racism and xenophobia- and personality (assism). All mixed together in a volatile blend of social disorders. But it was the racism that incited the violence, making it the most important factor. Because the whole incident would not have occurred if I were a white woman. But I was a Black woman, unexpectedly, unexplainably and unabashedly defiant. And society’s only response is to suppress, often times violently, women like me. Still, there was that moment when I had a chance to avoid conflict. A doggie bag would have averted the situation and started another pathway of realities. It would have kept me out of the parking lot with the manager, which is important because once I was in a position of being physically assaulted, I had no choice but to physically fight back. A doggie bag would have eliminated the immediacy of the situation and allowed me to stand against racism and injustice on my own grounds, not under uncontrolled circumstances. Standing for principle is important but so is the timing and circumstances under which you stand. Obviously, the timing and mode of my actions were ineffective, given the outcome and the fact that African Americans are still having the exact same experience forty years later. I didn’t make a difference. Should I have just paid the 99 cents? That was another option that my self-serving consciousness refused to accept. It was less than a dollar. That cost $2300. I could have paid and just never blessed (or cursed) them with my patronage again.

But what of the manager, whose racist actions triggered violent events that could have had deadly consequences. The potential for a fatal police interaction was real. I could have easily been defined as a threat and eliminated. In my naivety that reality didn’t register. However the manager, a grown man who I later found out had also summoned the police, should have been aware of the risk of escalation. He too had opportunities to avoid conflict. There was no need to get physical with a female customer over a few cents. Could have charged me an extra dollar the next day. Or just wrote it off. Yet he was unable or unwilling to conjure up an appropriate solution for the situation. Is it my responsibility, then, as an evolved human being to anticipate the primitive racist response and manipulate the paths upon which it can express itself? Is it worth it to fight and die over a breakfast food when there are so many more valiant ways to fight and die? Given its history of violent racial harassment against African Americans, should the whole of civilized humanity just refuse to eat at Waffle House? The food isn’t that good, not good enough to satiate the hunger for justice…….

“Mema, why didn’t you ask for a doggie bag?” Sarah interrupted my thoughts, her voice stinging with insistent inquiry about my choice of action.

“Yeah, Mema” my grandson James piped in, peeking mischievously through the stair banister. “What about a doggie bag?” he giggled as he bounced down the steps on his butt to flaunt his stealth-like ability to eavesdrop in the face of the fact that his four year old bedtime was forty five minutes ago.

“Well sweetheart,” I began slowly, “Because I didn’t think of that. I didn’t think of it for forty years until you said it just now. But that would have been a much better idea. I should have done that,” I admitted, realizing for the first time the all of what had happened. The consequences were not worth it. Having to explain the entry on my background check each and every time I apply for a job for the rest of my life was not worth the principle of prompt service at a restaurant……..

“How come you didn’t just ask nicely?” came the four-year-old option.

“Go to bed!” I snapped, shooing them both up the stairs with pinches and tickles, suddenly annoyed at their child-like insight. Why had I never considered other options of actions that could have changed the direction of events in my life? For the better. A whole lifetime spent under the delusion I was a victim when I had the power to change the outcome all along. The consequence of choosing that narrow right at the crossroads, that obstructed the view of less strenuous paths. It’s like my dad always used to say, “Think before you act”. Now it’s a mantra. Repeated in its basic form: Think.

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