By: Kent McCarty
One of the most legendary episodes of Seinfeld, one of my favorite sitcoms, is “The Soup Nazi,” in which Jerry, George, and Elaine stop by a local soup stand that is owned by a tyrant who runs a ludicrously tight ship and has no regard towards his customers’ feelings. I recently encountered a real life version of the soup nazi, only this one was a grouchy breakfast attendant at a Fairfield Inn outside of Baton Rouge.
Like all normal hotel goers, I find the free breakfast in the lobby to be a highlight of my stay. Just having that big spread of bagels, old muffins, fake eggs, and small cartoons of cereal all laid out for me to eat at my leisure, is reason enough to wake up early and beat the crowd. Unfortunately, on this morning I was greeted by the unpleasant sight of my soon-to-be mortal enemy: The Breakfast Nazi.
I took my seat in the corner as the breakfast nazi carefully patrolled the room. Rather than letting breakfast goers eat in peace, she talked on and on about about how she had taken the time to “prepare” all this food for us, so we better eat it. The real problem came when I made my way to the waffle iron. I only had to struggle with the waffle mix dispenser for 15 seconds before the breakfast nazi shoved me out of the way to try and tackle the problem herself. When she realized there was no way to squeeze out another drop of mix, she did the unthinkable: she rationed out the remaining mix among three or four patrons before giving me back only enough mix to make a fourth of a waffle. I protested this action because nobody is going to share the wealth with my waffle mix, but this just put me directly into the line of fire. She gave me a talk about how “other people are hungry too” and about how she’d “already made four batches of mix and didn’t have time for another.” Looking for a reason to send me out of her fortress, the breakfast nazi looked down and noticed I wasn’t wearing shoes, and then sent me packing. That was her way of saying “NO WAFFLE FOR YOU!”
For our next face off, I’m coming fully armed with shoes and all, and I WILL have a full-sized waffle and there will be nothing she can do
about it.
