CHAPTER ONE (5)

In all of the schemes he’d conceived to make enough money to live – for certainly no one at Corrotto’s with the exception of a manager could make anywhere near enough to live – growing weed was the only one that had accomplished anything. If he didn’t smoke too much of it, a profit could be obtained. That was rare. But when Squirley got wind of Matt’s first successful attempt, Mitzi knew immediately that he would be making proceeds.
It was hard to tell which one of the self-proclaimed dealers actually consumed more, Squirley or Mitzi. Squirley, on a rough estimate, being at on the heavier side and at least 40 more pounds that Mitzi, probably could consume more based on sheer weight. One, however, absolutely had to take into account Mitzi’s resistance; Matt had been smoking for more than half of his entire life (about 12 years) at a rate of at least a gram a day. This, in the restaurant world, as well as popular urban America, was known as a “stoner.” Mitzi’s excuse always was, “well, you see… uh… I was gonna do it… and then I got high.” Of course he would never say this to a manager for that would be a death sentence. But perhaps that is what Mitzi wanted.
Mitzi had been smoking weed for so long, that he became a permanently stoned server; he could not function “properly” with out taking a hit, nor could he focus. Ironically, he would make more careless mistakes when he was sober – which wasn’t much. At lunch during a double shift, Mitzi would go out to his ‘91 white and perpetually broken Camry and produce a large glass bong, proceed to fill it with mineral water (only the best for Mitzi) and smoke his way back to the sanity that he protested “Corrotto’s continuously stole” from him. Squirley would join him occasionally. Mitzi would demonstrate the phenomenon of his generation: how do we get away. Matt embraced the answer: we get high. And so he did, and so did most of the servers, busers, hostesses, back of the house Mexicans…
“I learned how to take a rip from a bong in 1996, and ever since then I have managed to get high every day all day. Let’s see, that’s about… say… let’s just say more than a decade. Why would I want to quit?” Mitzi harangued the rest of the servers, which seemed like it would eventually turn into its normal rant. He would always leave out the fact that he grew it himself, sold it to Squirley wholesale, who would then distribute it in increments to the rest of the Rittos at one and a half times the cost, and then let Squirley take the blame if anything should go wrong. He continued: