Help! (I need somebody!)

Down where they have Waffle House restaurants, those joints are swinging 24-7, because who can control their desire for a pecan waffle at o-dark-thirty?

Certainly not Ethan Crispo. Not long ago, he found himself still hungry after being at his buddy's birthday party, and so it was off to his local Waffle House in  Birmingham, Ala. for a good late-night tuck-in.

In he walked, 12:30 in the yawning, and thirty fellow Wafflers were around. But hardly any help was around, so Ethan did the math and reasoned, “I sat down at my table and I was like, ‘I’m not getting my waffle.’”

Ethan is 24 and figured that the one employee on duty was trying to cook food, serve food, and clean up all by his lonesome.

“The look on his face was maybe fear, maybe shock, maybe bewilderment,” Crispo said of “Ben,” the fry cook flying solo. “There was literally no one else working but him,” Ethan told The Washington Post.

Then came something you don't see every day. "Ben" started talking a customer sitting at the counter, and then handed the man an apron, and before you knew it, the guy was back behind the counter washing dishes.

“I initially assumed it was a staff member returning to their shift,” Crispo told the Post, but, "It wasn’t. It was a kind stranger. A man who answered the call. Bussed tables, did dishes, stacked plates.”

AND THEN a female customer wearing a sequined dress and high heels figured out how to work the coffee maker and a guy in a red shirt pitched in, and before you know it, Waffle House Birmingham was up to just about full strength on almost all volunteer labor.




Pat Warner, Waffle House PR guy, said that there had been a miscommunication in scheduling workers that night.

(Yes, like the 4-12 shift took off at midnight when the 12-8 people failed to appear. The miscommunication was in thinking they would stay.)


“We really appreciate their efforts … though we do prefer our associates to be behind the counter,” Warner told AL.com. “The key to our concept is, we’re there to serve you, not the other way around.”

Upon hearing the news, the CEOs and HMFICs of General Motors, Amazon, and Exxon all announced that they will now expect people to pitch in and build their own Chevy Eclipse, fetch their packages from the warehouse, and refine their own gasoline.