by Joe Azar

I have an issue when people blame all their bad luck on something else. Using a scapegoat is lazy, and more often than not the claim is completely false. When people are on the losing end of bad luck, it normally has a large part to do with themselves and the situations they’re put it. Nine times out of 10, people have no one to blame for their unfortunate mishaps but themselves.

   That is no exception for me either. I know when these situations happen to me I have to point the finger at myself. This story, however, is one that belongs in the 10 percent category.

   Out of all the bad luck in my life, I can say this one is not my fault one bit. This is the story about how one girl’s stupidity created a joke that seemed to last an eternity.

   You people know my disdain for working at Chick-Fil-A. The customer’s stink and slinging chicken for Jesus nine hours a day will drive you nuts. What I did enjoy though, was my fellow employees.

   My co-workers understood what it was like to say “my pleasure” 1,000 times a day and how one customer complaining about his lemonade being too sweet made you want to take a cup of chicken grease and pour it over his head.

   The best part of working with my team was the inside jokes we shared. We gave nicknames to regular customers and created a system to communicate if a cutie was about to pull up through the drive through. It actually worked too, I got a girl’s number using that system (hey, I get lucky occasionally). Our favorite inside jokes though were ones we made about each other.

   One wrong move and you’d be given a nickname that would stick with you for the rest of your tenure. After working there for over a year I thought I was safe from doing something incredibly stupid, so I figured there was no way I was getting a nickname. Boy, was I wrong.

   Working the closing shift meant somebody had to clean the bathrooms. I didn’t mind, they were never that dirty and I was isolated from the chaos going on behind the counter; I could just mop some floors while listening to a baseball game before I went home.

   One night, I was cleaning the women’s restroom when Kate (not her real name) walked in. Kate was an interesting person. Never really messed up and was usually quiet, probably because every time she talked we wondered whether or not she ate paint chips as a child.

   I made my way out of the restroom so she could have her privacy and as I was walking out she had the most confused look on her face.

   While she was in the bathroom, I went to talk to some co-workers and we began talking about the show “Pretty Little Liars.” I’m not a fan of the show, but at the time I had a girlfriend who was obsessed with it, so I knew the characters and plot to the show.

   As Kate made her way out of the restroom she overheard the conversation and joined in. We all asked who our favorite character was, so I chimed in (Spencer, in case you were dying to know). After I voiced my opinion, Kate looked at me with a puzzled look.

   “Wait, are you a lesbian?” She asked.

   I gave a half-hearted laugh, thinking it was one of her stupid and tasteless jokes, but her face remained confused.

   “Wait,” I said. “You’re asking me if I am a woman who likes other women?”

   She nodded, actually believing I was a lesbian. I answered no, but at that point it was too late. Everyone else was laughing uncontrollably.

   The story caught fire around the workplace and until everyone who was there quit, there was always a joke going around that I was “Joe, the Lesbian.” For one of only a handful of times in my life, my bad luck was created thanks completely to somebody else’s mistake.