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"Well, you can tell by the way he uses his walk he is fuming mad," explained Johnny Rockets manager Ian Morenco (Argentina). He then rushed back to the grill to salvage an overcooked Smokehouse Single, adding, "No time to talk."
The enraged employee in question is waiter, local motorcycle pack leader and self proclaimed "wild thing" Ryan Stee (Kingston, Rhode Island) who recently threatened via Twitter to aggressively open-palm smack an unnamed bitch if he were to hear the popular jukebox hit "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees just one more time. Stee, however, feels justified in his objection to the classic hit.
"Stayin' Alive is an okay song, but it's just so contrived, you know?" mused Stee, flicking a glob of special sauce off of his vintage Fats Domino tee shirt. "It's just that there are so many superior songs in the Johnny Rockets jukebox library that you've probably seldom heard because they wallowed at the inadequately known bottom of the 1950's Billboard Top 20.
Faced with accusations by fellow coworkers of being a condescending 50's music hipster, Stee remained steadfast in his beliefs.
"I may be a hipster," conceded Stee, "but at least I'm an obscure type of hipster."
Stee went on to urge Johnny Rockets jukebox users and nickelholders worldwide to consider giving some of the more slightly-but-not-noticably-above-averagely known artists of the 50's and 60's a little respect.
"Just a little bit," belted Stee, brimming with frustration. "Not every musician of the time could be as universally famous as the Bee Gees. In fact, most great artists of the era were only reasonably famous, like Frankie Valli."
Stee's breadth of knowledge of moderately-but-not-too popular 1950's music extends far beyond his jukebox preferences, however.
"[Stee] was nice enough to lift the top of the straw dispensing jar," recalled customer and student Amy Batton '13. "But then when it came time for him to draw a ketchup smiley, he instead brought us a mural sized ketchup portrait of every Four Tops album cover ever released. He's a skilled artist, but he must have used like six bottles of ketchup. Plus it took him two hours and forty five minutes to make. We tipped accordingly."
Batton thought for a moment, then added, "Also, I think I would have preferred something a little more mainstream, like a Chuck Berry album or a Buddy Holly record, for what it's worth."
As of last week, Stee has unplugged the traditional jukebox system and replaced it with his own personal jukebox, which he claims is full of "a lot of great deep tracks, but not too deep. Medium depth, I would say."
Whereas Johnny Rockets patrons were once delighted by frequent singalong musical performances of songs to which everyone knows all the words, patrons are now only slightly amused by lukewarm musical numbers of fairly recognizable songs to which people only know most of the words.
"Nobody knew the fourth verse of Oh What A Night," sobbed shamed waitress Carol Finnigan (Anchorage, Alaska). "We were all swaying and bopping and mumbling 'late December back in sixty three' even though we knew it was the wrong line until we got to say 'Oh What A Night' again. It was awful."
Other employees see Stee's essential commandeering of the jukebox system as a mere distraction from the matter at hand. Employees urge the public to remember that as long as Stee's violent "Stayin' Alive" ultimatum stands, anyone is at risk of becoming the @tobesmackedbitch that Stee tweeted about.
"Whether you're a mother or whether you're a brother, you're at risk," said waitress Loretta Howard (Albany, New York). "I feel the city breaking 'cause everybody's shaking with fear." She added, "Ah, ah, ah, ah… Never mind, I thought I was going to sneeze there for a second."
