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Many years ago, I was waiting tables at an Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. This was while I was in graduate school.I was already a classically trained Chef and had graduated at the top of my class from the Culinary Arts College at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI, and then again a year later from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, France, had then earned a Bachelor's Degree in Hospitality Management from Johnson & Wales and a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration from Southeastern Louisiana University --- but at this particular point in time, I was at Southeastern Louisiana University, studying for my MBA with an emphasis on Business Law and Corporate Governance.You tend to make more money for working fewer hours, at least in the short-term, by waiting tables and/or bartending, which is why I was waiting tables in a chain restaurant instead of cooking in a fine dining restaurant.Besides, in the 90's, there were exactly two restaurants even approaching “fine dining” on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. One was supposedly “upscale" American fare (in effect, a steakhouse - and a gross one at that), where the Head Chef/Half-Owner, who's initials were “K.K.”, was a total and complete HACK, and a bigot, and his business partner was literally a criminal who liked to hire illegal immigrants and then “loan them" the names and Social Security Numbers of former employees if they got hurt and needed to go to the hospital (identify theft is a crime) - and the other place was an Asian Fusion restaurant that didn't hire white people. I know, racist, right?Plus, the latter restaurant (the Asian Fusion one) was shut down like three different times by the Board of Health, because health inspectors kept finding dog and cat meat in their walk-in fridge. The owners insisted that the dog/cat meat was for “family only”. Ultimately, the state and restaurant settled on an agreement whereby the family could HAVE dog/cat meat in the restaurant, as long as it was kept in a completely separate refrigerator/freezer. Still though, after the admission of having dog/cat meat in the restaurant at all, I never went to that restaurant ever again. Call me ethnocentric if you like. Call me xenophobic if you like. Call me whatever the hell you want to call me. I call me an animal lover!And, yes, I have worker in slaughter houses, and have killed animals, as humanely as possible. And I did work for a couple of years as a butcher to hone my skills, and I do cook and eat beef, chicken, pheasant, quail, pork, goat, bison, beefalo, elk, caribou, moose, venison, ostrich, emu, alligator, frog's legs and just about every kind of seafood (that isn't a mammal), and even lamb and veal. I admit that. But that was/is part of my craft!I've certainly never slit a dog's throat and then skinned the poor thing alive while it bled out while hanging upside down by its feet, and I've certainly never thrown a bag full of defenseless cats into a big ass pot of boiling water to kill them and make them easier to skin.I draw the line at pets (although I do eat rabbit, but only frozen rabbit from Whole Foods)!So you won't catch me eating at the Dakota Restaurant or Trey Yuen when I'm in the Covington/Mandeville area - so, sue me if you need to!But I digress……I couldn't exactly work in New Orleans and commute to school in Hammond, so I waited tables at Applebee's.Anyway, a family came in on a Saturday evening. They were all visibly filthy and reeked of body odor, alcohol and pot. The older woman, who was in her mid to late 30's, smelled like she had just freshly crapped herself, literally.Naturally, they sat these nasty ass people in MY section (the smoking section on that particular night, by sheer luck of the draw), even though there were four very young people in their dining party. If that wasn't illegal, then it certainly should have been! I'm pretty sure it is now.I couldn't tell exactly how young the children were, through all the dirt and grime and sweat and shame, but at least the two boys were under 10. There were also two teenaged girls, both of whom were very, very pregnant. Like ready to pop pregnant!These people literally ate and drank like pigs at a trough! There was food and sauces and sodas and sweet tea and Oreo Cookie milkshake remnants absolutely freakin EVERYWHERE! It looked like a bomb had gone off at a trailer park block party celebrating someone's 10th appearance on “The Jerry Springer Show”!After that disgusting, stomach-churning, display, I brought the check to the table, hoping that they'd just pay the bill exactly, stiff me on the tip and leave.Rednecks don't tip - not a judgment, just a fact. In fact, evangelical, pentecostal, seventh day adventist and missionary baptist ministers actuality tell their congregations that tipping is a SIN and that they should hold onto to the money they were going to use to tip and add it to the collection plate at church instead. Of course, they probably don't even do the second part. They just don't tip! Country black people also generally don't tip, for the same reason - preachers say not to! I have two words for those preachers and ministers too, black or white (or any other race for that matter - it's more a matter of fundamentalist religions of all kinds, not race).Celebrities also don't tip. I guess they just think we should be honored to serve them or something. It's ridiculous. Shaquille O'Neal is the worst! Not even an exctra nickel! In fact, he appeared to be offended to get a bill at all.Bikers and truckers, though, are EXCELLENT tippers! Generally speaking that is. Also, they know where all the best food is! If you ever decide to take a meal break from a road trip in some random town, ALWAYS go to where the trucker go! Same thing with bikers. They tend to go on very long distance rides, so they also know where the best food is (I would stay out of the bars that bikers go to in large numbers though - lol).Anyway, one of the teenaged girls didn't look so good after the meal. She was a bit “green around the gills”, so to speak.About 10 minutes later, she threw up, all over the table. The older woman and older man began to scream and yell about food poisoning IMMEDIATELY! It seemed to be an obvious ploy to get out of paying the check. But it wasn't food poisoning at all in this case. Not even fake fake food poisoning….It turned out that the younger of the two pregnant teenage girls, who was 13 (I later found out), had gone into labor! Her water broke at about the same time as she threw up. She later admitted that she had started having contractions about an hour before they walked into the restaurant, but had said nothing.What in the actual f@ck, right?We called 911, of course, but it was pretty much too late. The baby was coming out, and it was a breach! She was wearing one of those full-length “oppressed female" dresses that you normally see on dead-eyed teenage girls selling raw milk and fresh eggs at farmers' markets, only the dress was hiked up and she wasn't wearing any underwear.I literally saw a leg coming from this child's vagina! A human baby leg, hanging out of a girl's hoo-ha!I honestly hadn't seen anything even remotely like that outside of a cattle ranch before that day. But this was a human being coming backwards out of another human being, who was 13 years old and about the size of your average 9 or 10 year old! I presume from malnutrition, but what do I know?There was an off-duty emergency room doctor, who's wife was a nurse, in the restaurant - praise the lord! They sprang into action!With the nurse's help, the doctor basically had to reach up inside there and turn the baby around. When the ambulance arrived, the doctor announced that the baby was coming out right then. He took a scalpel from the EMT and did an episiotomy right then and there on the filthy carpet covering the restaurant's floor! SO GROSS! I didn't even like walking on that carpet!The baby came out, pretty quickly, about 3 months premature, but in relatively good health, considering…The older of the pregnant girls actually hollered about how it was unfair that her sister's baby had “come out natural” (I have no idea what's “natural" about an episiotomy - that shit scarred me for life) while her own “first baby" had to be delivered via c-section.The older of the women, who it turned out was the mother, then reminded the older girl that her first baby had to be delivered that way because she was “barely 12" at the time and was “too small to deliver natural”. The girl said “Oh, yeah", as if she had just been reminded what day of the week it was, or what time it is, or that it was hot outside, or something equally trivial. I was like “Whaaaaaatttt??”.I'm pretty sure I was in shock by this point in the goings on I was witnessing before my very eyes. I think I would have gladly taken out my eyeballs and boiled them after everything that had just happened!And it wasn't over. Oh no, it wasn't over yet. Not by a long shot!Where was I???Oh, yeah - the doctor had just announced that the baby was premature, but otherwise appeared to be a healthy (albeit small) baby boy! Everyone in the dining room, although justifiably horrified, applauded this. I mean, what else were they going to do, right? I think even I clapped half-heartedly.But, the older man at the table cussed loudly at that point. In fact, he SLAMMED his fist down onto the table and yelled “F#CK, I wanted a GIRL!"The older of the pregnant girls then said “Don't worry DADDY, I'm pretty sure MINE is a girl”. Just imagine hearing that come out of her mouth at that time….. SHUDDER!!!So, anyhow, it seemed obvious, at least to me, that neither of at these poor, pregnant teenaged girls had received any form of pre-natal medical care whatsoever!By this time, the new mother and baby were on the gurney and headed toward the ambulance and then the hospital - thank god!The police had arrived by this time too, and they started taking statements from everyone.They made me sit in a booth only two tables away from the crime scene.The puddles of blood, and poop (she had crapped while pushing out the baby) and “water" (amniotic fluid) all over the seat and the floor were a sight to behold, as were the various odors that kept on wafting over, I can tell you that much! I would have rather been taken downtown! Hell, I would have happily given my statement on the moon, or Mars, or Venus, without the benefit of a damned spacesuit!!!Other cops were interviewing the remaining family members while my statement was being taken. I could hear ALL of their answers!The older man was the father of the two younger boys AND the father of the two pregnant teenage girls.He was ALSO the father of the baby that had just been born by his 13 year old daughter, and the baby in his other teenage daughter's belly was ALSO his!!The woman - his “wife" - was also pregnant (just not yet showing). Although she was a biggun, so I don't know if she would have been showing even if she too was ready to pop!The still pregnant teenage girl told the cops that she also had a two year old daughter at home, also belonging to her father, who was being babysat by her older sister, who was 19 and had FOUR children of her own - THREE of which were her father's babies, and the other one belonged to the mother's father (so, her maternal grandfather). Yuck!!!The mother and the father admitted that they were half-siblings! They had the same mother. But their mother had gotten pregnant with them (the parents of the four kids at the restaurant) by her father and her uncle (as in her father's full-blooded brother). So, if you're doing the math (I did), not only were they half-siblings on their mother's side, but they were also first cousins on their respective fathers' sides! These people may ask well have been full-blooded siblings. Or even twins! THAT is how much DNA these two people shared!The adult man and woman answered ALL of these questions, loudly, with no shame in their game AT ALL!! They were loudly and proudly letting their freak flag fly high! This shit was like something out of the movie “Deliverance"!Speaking of “Deliverance”, I swear, at one point I could have sworn I heard Ned Beatty squeeling like a pig!(I also seem to recall that “Cotton-Eyed Joe" was stuck in my head on an endless loop - but my mind may have dubbed that in after the fact! Lol)Then, out of absolutely nowhere, with no provocation whatsoever, the older man/father/grandfather/husband/half-brother/first cousin/all-purpose filthy scumbag reached across the table and took a wild, slow-motion, totally telegraphed, sloppy swing at one of the cops!!So, the two cops at that table dragged him across the table, onto the floor, which was covered in his daughter's vomit, amniotic fluid, blood, excrement, etc., and proceeded to beat him to a bloody pulp (I mean, way more than was necessary to subdue him and, in my opinion, definitely crossed the line into police brutality), cuffed him and dragged him out to the police cruiser.All the while they were trying to walk this man out of the restaurant, he went limp on them, forcing them to drag him out. He was cussing up a storm and crying about how this assault charge was going to make him lose his job as a corrections officer at the juvenile detention center!Do they have little girls at the Florida Parishes Detention Center? Why, yes, they do! And clearly he liked little girls, including his own! So, losing that job, for that guy - GOOD!!!!But, the guy had no belt on, and very baggy jeans, and was going “commando” that day, so everyone in the restaurant got a good long look at what he was working with too (because we needed that!!). Talk about the cherry on top of the shit-show sundae!!!!It was at that point that I snapped out of the moment, remembered I was in a restaurant and that I had other tables. I looked to see if someone had taken them over.That's when I noticed that the restaurant was completely empty, other than the people at the gross table, one more cop (the one who had been taking my statement), me, my manager, and about 10 cooks, waitresses, bus boys and a bartender, all watching from the entrance and exit to the kitchen.Finally, after about another hour, the cop was done taking statements from everyone on the staff who had witnessed things (horrible, horrible, traumatic things!!), and the “family” left (presumably to go to the hospital and then to go bail out daddy/grandpa/brother/cousin/criminal).I stood up, took about three steps toward the kitchen, turned around, looked back at the atrocity that was that table and the floor around it, and then ran to the men's room to vomit!After that, I had the manager ring me out, took my tips and put them in my pocket (I didn't get a tip from that table, even though I wasn't expecting one, but in this case they hadn't even paid their bill) and then started walking toward the door.The manager yelled after me “Aren't you going to clean your station and do your side work?”. I didn't even turn around. I flipped him off over my shoulder and shouted “Glenn, I QUIT!!!”.Three weeks later, I got a call from the District Attorney’s Office. I had received dozens of calls from the St. Tammany Bureau of the Times-Picayune, the “alternative newspaper” for St. Tammany Parish (you know, the one with like four real stories, and then like 20 pages of ads for asian massage parlors and “escort services"), and various local television news reporters, and had gotten very used to saying “no comment"! The Assistant District Attorney informed me that I was going to have to testify about all of the crap that had happened that day. Yay!!!It took a few more months, but the whole thing went to trial. I testified, as did the hostess, a bus boy and the manager of the restaurant. So I had to relive the whole, nasty, sordid, disgusting, traumatizing, perverted, incestuous thing again, in excruciating, agonizing detail.I had to recall, for the official record, what all had happened that day. I testified “in the narrative", which is just a legal term which means that I said exactly what happened, from start to finish, rather than answering a series of questions from the prosecutor.But I also had to be cross-examined by the defense lawyer, which was, let's just say, “an experience”, and leave it at that. Okay?During a court recess, in the hallway of the old Covington court house, I was actually propositioned by BOTH of the teenaged girls who had been present (and pregnant) that day in the restaurant. Neither was still pregnant, but both were still very gross and very underage! They actually offered me a threesome if I would tell the judge that their dad was just defending himself because the cop had taken a swing at him first! I nearly threw up right there again! In fact, I think I did vomit just a little bit in my mouth. I told the girls to “please get help", after which one of THEM actually called ME “white trash"!!! Talk about surreal!!And then, after everything had been rehashed, down to the most minute detail, repeatedly, before a verdict could even be rendered by the judge in the case (it was a bench trial), the guy agreed to a plea deal. He plead guilty to attempted assault of a peace officer. He got three years probation. That's it! Three years of probation!!! I'm not even sure that was a felony! So it may very well be that he didn't lose his job at the juvenile detention center after all!He wasn't even ordered to pay the restaurant bill!But, more important than everything else, Uncle Jed and the rest of the Clampett clan all went home TOGETHER!!!They all went back to Punkin Patch, Louisiana (yes, that's the actual name of the town they lived in. Not “Pumpkin Patch", but “Punkin Patch". Officially the “Incest Capital of America” by the way. Seriously - that's the town's claim to fame! It's printed on the sings as you enter the town! Or at least it was then and for a good 15–20 years later. I wouldn't know about anything after 2005, because that's when I moved away.Children & Family Services (called the “Office of Community Services” or “OCS” in Louisiana) had investigated and found no reason to take any of the minor children away from this “family"! I heard the court social worker say to one of the lawyers that everyone had refused to say a word to OCS investigators, so they didn't have enough evidence to take any of the kids away!All I could think was “WTF??? What about paternity testing???? How hard is that to do???”. But, I guess that either didn't happen or wasn't good enough to warrant taking even the poor infants out of that family environment. So, after all these years, in sure there are lots more kids puttering around that double-wide looking an awful lot like their grandfather!To this day, I have never stepped foot inside an Applebee's Restaurant again. And I never will! I refuse!I realize it's not the restaurant's fault. But, still, every one of those places has the same decor - and the same carpets, and I don't need the flash-backs!Occasionally, my wife craves their Oriental Chicken Salad and/or their Chicken Wonton Tacos (and the Cheeseburger Spring Rolls before that) and I literally make her either get it via DoorDash, or go to dinner with one of her friends. Because I'm never going there again! Not ever!! Can you blame me???I defy ANYONE to top that when it comes to restaurant-related grossness!!