[u]Zachary Pinton[/u]

Zachary missed his hat. He really wished he was allowed to wear it at work, but apparently there were sanitary concerns. That may have been true (the thing hadn't been washed in a month, and he wasn't about to clean it [i]now[/i]) but at least if he had that hat he could throw it to the ground in frustration. The plates were too fragile, and not his property.

"Yeah, alright!" A slew of descriptive expletives came to his throat, but Zach forced them down. No need to piss off the bosslady. He walked over to a nearby waiter that hadn't been left a coughing mess. "Okay, what the hell am I doing?"

[hr]

He didn't spill the drinks, at least.

The woman had been sitting on her chair, waiting with waning patience for a waiter to arrive with her food. Opposite her was a young boy - her son, presumably. They both had the same brown hair, at least, though he had seemed very preoccupied with his iPad and not at all impatient.

Then Zachary arrived, placed the drinks - two orange juices - on the table, and then somehow tripped on something. Food - fries, ketchup, Caesar salad and some weird pasta he didn't recognize - coated the woman, whose obvious impatience had turned into shock. 

"Oh my God!" she'd said, standing up wide-eyed. "Oh my God!" Her son, who'd noticed his mother's predicament, seemed to be taking a video. He was trying - and failing - to contain his mirth. "Oh my God!" the woman repeated.

The rest of the restaurant seemed to have gone silent, watching the debacle in what was probably anticipation.

Zachary filled the air, in this almost-silence, with one word.

"Fuck."

The kid gave up any pretense of calm, bursting into full-blown laughter.