Happy Birthday, Polly Holiday!

Today is Polly Holiday's birthday, so I am reposting this. Kiss my grits, y'all!


I am dedicating this post to my favorite television waitress of all time. She is the brilliant and perfectly bitchy, but in a nice way, Florence Jean Castlebury. Better known as Flo, she worked at Mel's Diner on the hit television sitcom Alice. It ran from 1976 to 1985 and I watched that shit every week. Yes, I was alive to watch it. I am an old bitchy waiter. Flo was trashy, funny, slutty, easy, bitchy, and tacky. In other words, my hero. She wasn't afraid to tell her boss to fuck off, but because she was on television she had to settle for "kiss my grits." If someone told her that the food sucked she agreed with them and I never once saw her do an ounce of sidework.

I loved her so much I went as her for Halloween a few years ago. When it comes to a Halloween costume, I don't fuck around. I went to town on it. At the time, I was working for a mammoth hotel industry with very strict rules about what to wear and how to behave. I won't say which one in order to protect their vision of how an employee of theirs should behave while working for them and afterwards. It was Marriott. I asked them one October if we would be allowed to dress up for Halloween. They foolishly said yes. They probably thought I would wear a silly hat or put some stupid ass ears on my head. No no, uh uh. I dragged my ass up to work an hour early and went full drag. Bra, panties, slip, wig, earrings, make up, the works. I sashayed into the dining room and their jaws dropped. I was Flo. I spent the whole day in character. My tables didn't know what to do with me. We served a lot of attorneys and judges and businessmen and they could not handle me. I called them "sugar" and "sweetie" and told them what they wanted before they told me. They were filled with discomfort that there was a man dressed up like a lady and he was flirting with them. The next year, we were not allowed to wear a costume. But that year I had a blast. And I won the costume contest too. Best tip of the day.

Behold, The Bitchy Waiter as Flo