Are you from corporate? You’re from corporate to spy on us aren’t you?

I take a seat at the counter that faces the kitchen and order a glass of sweet tea. The three employees working the graveyard shift have agreed to let me sit here all night long but I don’t think they really believe that I’m going to stay here until 6 am.

TEA, CHEESE, AND TYLER PERRY BY SHELBEY WANNER 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 33

It’s a little after 10pm. “Come back at about 2.30,” the waiter on the other end of the small diner tells me.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him, “I’ll still be here by then.” I take a seat at the counter that faces the kitchen and order a glass of sweet tea. The three employees working the graveyard shift have agreed to let me sit here all night long but I don’t think they really believe that I’m going to stay here until 6 am.

“Are you from corporate? You’re from corporate to spy on us aren’t you?” Maybe they think the only way I would be able to put up with them and the Waffle House for so long in one sitting is because I’m a spy, not because I’m actually curious about what goes on here at night. I smile and laugh a little at their jokes, trying to assure them that I’m only here to hang out.

The diner is dead, and I feel like an awkward presence at their counter. They don’t know what to think of me yet. I sit quietly taking note of my surroundings. The menu in front of me is sticky with syrup, as I’m sure all the menus are. There’s a bulletin board behind me with staff pictures and a poster that reads “Waffle House® Where Happiness Lives” next to a jukebox that isn’t playing anything. I look at a laminated tabletop ad for Waffle House: baseball caps, Jukebox Favorites Vol 2, T-shirts with various cliché logos, and travel mugs. This is only my second time at a Waffle House—I’m a Denny’s person myself—so I’m naturally intrigued they have their own supply of touristy goods. Maybe if I were to go south to Avondale Estates, Georgia, where Waffle House first opened its doors, I’d see someone walking down the street in a shirt that reads, “Peace, Love, and Waffles” in a 70s flower-power font, or drive by someone who is blasting “Appetite for Life” or “Make Mine With Cheese” from Jukebox Favorites in their car with the windows rolled down.

At this point I know we’re all waiting for the bar rush. But this means nothing to me yet, so I study their appearances, their mannerisms. I want to know them. I learn from their yellow name tags their names are Carol, Don, and Brian, but in the hours following, I learn that Brian goes by Bobo. They all wear black aprons and hats. Carol and Don wear a baseball cap, but Bobo wears a chef’s hat with BOBO embroidered in yellow on the front. Carol’s brownish blonde hair is pulled back and through the hole of the hat where it adjusts to size. I assume Carol is the highest employee of the three because she wears a blue and white striped shirt with a green tie. Don and Bobo just wear dark green polos. Bobo is tall with a heavier build. He has a belly that moves when he giggles and he holds the front of his apron when he talks, when he laughs, and when he’s just standing around. He smiles and lightly chuckles at everything Don says. His light blue eyes and long eyelashes remind me of someone I knew while growing up, and Bobo becomes instantly familiar to me.

Don is shorter and older than Bobo. He has shoulder-length brown hair that is cut into a mohawk. It isn’t styled to stand up the way mohawks do, so it ends up looking like a mullet underneath his baseball cap. Don frequently takes off his hat, runs his fingers through his hair and gives it a little whip before situating his hat back in its proper place. I really want to believe that somewhere on YouTube there is a Pantene Pro-V parody commercial with Don whipping his hair around in slow motion.