Displaying restraint and self-control previously considered beyond human capacity, Late Night Dining worker Ben Johnson successfully made it through this past weekend without murdering a single student, maintaining what is now the longest active streak among dining hall workers for not assaulting a student in retaliation for obscenely assholian behavior.
Johnson, a veteran fry cook hailing from Brighton, said his mettle was first tested after midnight on Friday.
“It got pretty rough after the frats started letting out, I won’t lie,” Johnson said. “This one girl, she couldn’t have even been five-foot, she looked sweet as can be. I asked for her order, and then she just started screaming something about Tapingo and her food being ordered an hour ago. So I checked the machine, and her order had been placed less than a minute earlier. When I went to explain that she would have to wait just a little while longer for her food, she threw up into the cash register.”
The University has been proactive in ensuring students do not endanger themselves with their own narcissistic revelry. Initial plans for a mandatory social etiquette course, SOC 101: Introduction to Common Sense, which would have educated students on how to be respectful of UR Dining and Facilities workers at all times, were eventually scrapped in favor of erecting a pane of bulletproof glass between Late Night workers and the students they service.
“Putting up the glass barrier between the kitchen and the dining room has been huge for keeping the kill count down,” Public Safety Officer Trig R. Happy said. “Originally the idea was that the glass would keep the hordes of kids from climbing over the counter and trying to eat the workers, but now its main use is keeping the workers from immediately throttling drunk undergrads when they try to make a joke about Mel Sauce. Late Night Doug would definitely be safer if you just gave me a gun right now, even just to hold. I’m very responsible, my mom says so.”
For all the protection it offers, the pane of glass remains unpopular with Dining Service workers because it inhibits communication.
“Imagine just a sea of drunk children, all screaming about how they ordered mozzarella sticks twenty minutes ago,” Johnson said. “You’ve tried explaining to them calmly that if they all yell at once, they won’t be able to hear their orders being called when they’re done. But they just keep screaming about their damn sticks, and, on top of that, they can’t hear you because of the damn pane of bulletproof glass they put between you. Yeah, it’s bulletproof. I checked.” Johnson then became quiet for a moment before saying, “God has abandoned Late Night, that’s for sure. He’s off the clock for those hours.”
Johnson, whose job requires him to interact with students whose parents have paid for literally every experience and passing phenomenon filling their empty lives, credited his own parents as the source of his admirable emotional and moral strength.
“They raised me to show basic human decency to everyone,” he said, “but especially workers in the service industry.”
When asked for comment on Johnson’s accomplishment, UR Dining told the Campus Times that the University’s food has been ranked sixth in the nation, and that questioning the validity and value of such a statistic could bring about the apocalyptic return of that fish dinner thing with all the brown spices you need to scrape off.
