Geometry of Failure
I used to come to this Denny's every single weekend. It’s in a strip mall made around the 80s, now impaled by the twice-as-new and twice-as-big one across the street. It’s been maybe six months since I came here, and it doesn't feel the same. The people are the same; the COVID panels still between the couches are still here; and the loud coffee machine they turn on when I ask for decaf at 10 PM is still something you can hear from your left ear when you face the exit door.
The expectation of change is the only predictable failure in late-stage places like this. Did I expect the building to fly away? The question is absurd; it reflects the internal panic, the self demanding external proof of time passing. The building is simply obeying the simplest law of entropy: holding its shape until maintenance is no longer economically viable.
The braces are off. She's been my server since I first came around 1 AM in the fall of 2022. She doesn't have braces anymore. Do I mention she got them off? I don't know. It looks like all the regulars and older men who accost her by the barstools would say the same thing. And I don't want to add another weight on her back, the weight of someone noticing. I'm sure she gets tired of the other things they mention too, both the good and the bad.
There are never more than six souls in this Denny's this late. She's the only waitress. Every night the floor is empty, barring the few, and it's amazing how many people choose the wrong places to sit. You would assume they pick the corners or the booths because they are, one, of course, open, and two, the biggest tables. And Denny's loves to split your meal on different plates, a visual spectacle, I'm sure, for getting a bang out of your buck. I preface this with the thought that most people here are not first-timers, so why the hell would you pick smack dab in the middle of the restaurant with the metallic pull-out chairs, in the location with the freshly mopped floor? He’s ordering, so I’ll continue the observation once the food arrives.
Back to the waitress. The braces are gone. I mentioned that. The metal structure that framed her forty-five-year-old adolescence is gone. This is the unwitnessed action of acceleration. I was focused on the system's deliberate failure to change, the Cholula (which could have been here for a month on this table), the plastic covid panels, while she completed a crucial, complex internal project. I only registered the consequence of her movement, not the daily, private work of the process. My attention was fixed on the static corporate landscape, and in doing so, I failed to witness the swift, brutal velocity of personal time.
Maybe she removed the braces because she mentioned she wanted to start dating to the bar men months past. She wears a lovely gray button-up sweater over her polo, with her name tag clipped on the front chest pocket. She got it new around late 2023. The pocket now drags lower; the pin holes made a few clearly visible changes in the stitching, where the fabric has seen friction. She wore it today, as she has every other day.
He ended up ordering the value-under-$10 Grand Slam, which I was going to pick as well. But I did not. The 55+ salmon meal with mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli with Cholula sauce is much better, actually. And its $12.99. But still worth it over $10. I really hoped he would order something as ridiculous as his seating placement while he popped up his phone to watch YouTube with no earbuds, but what do I know? Maybe he should listen to what they're playing on the speakers. 1234 by Feist is a beautiful song.
The entire experience is a lesson in structural anxiety. This Denny's is not just failing; it is demonstrating the essential Geometry of Failure, a contradiction where one subject (the individual) requires dynamic movement to survive, while the other (the institution) requires rigid stasis to persist. And the result is a structural collapse of perception, the space is warped because I am.
But it's clearly not as warped as this man who walked out not touching the stack of pancakes, at all, with the butter square sagging to the side, from his grand slam. Why did you come in the first place?