Circle Punch Sticker Honors Those Who Serve

• 8 inches of Vinyl Sticker

How did I get here? It all started when I was working at a Ruby Tuesday Restaurant when I first encountered the “Circle Punch Game.”  A new upstart waiter named Josh was trying to be the king of the restaurant. He used too much hair gel and wore his pants too tight, but that didn't slow him down.  He loved restaurant life. He loved the schedule, the fast cash, the free food, flirting with the staff, flirting with the customers. He couldn't get enough.

You'd think the sex was his favorite part of the job, cause he nailed all the waitresses, even the thrice-married 50 year-old Carlene with the scary green mascara, but no, Josh’s favorite thing about restaurant life was the Circle Punch game. 

If you’re not familiar with this game, I’ll explain: The purpose of the Circle Punch game is to hold your index finger and thumb in the shape of a circle (just like this sticker) and try to get other employees to look at the circle. You had to hold the circle below your waistline, and if you tricked them and they looked, you got to punch them.  Circle. Punch.   It's probably the most idiotic game in the universe, and this is coming from someone who has watched a lot of Japanese game shows on youtube.

I was working my way through college.  I needed the money to pay my rent and my tuition each semester and waiting tables was a great way to get fast money. I had a great schedule: I worked the Friday/Saturday doubles, catching the best money shifts all in a row. I could have cared less about Josh and his game.  Maybe that is why he went after me.

Pretty soon, I had bruises all over my shoulders. At first it was just annoying. After a couple of weeks, I started dropping trays of drinks on tables because I couldn’t lift my arms above my head.  Soon I was so nervous that I was dropping trays because I’d flinch seeing a busboy out of the corner of my eye, thinking Josh was coming at me with a circle on one hand and a fist in the other.

So I did what the son of a amateur boxer and Navy nurse does.  I fought back.  Soon my circle punch skills were polished, but I was spending so much time focusing on trying to find creative ways to be able to punch Josh that my job performance went to shit.  But I was kicking his ass!  Sure, I was getting stiffed on my tables and according to one psychologist I served, I had a form of battlefield PTSD.  

One afternoon, I got in my car to go to work, looked up to adjust the rearview mirror in my car and there was Josh and his hand in a circle. He was in the backseat!  I felt him punch me. That was it.

It was the beginning of a three-day bender of whiskey, cocaine, and circle punch. We were running down the street, laughing like madmen, punching random strangers while we yelled “Circle punch! Got you!” One of us would lay on the ground with our hands in the circle position and the other one would scream “Hey look at this!” and then when passers by would look, we would hit them. 

Somehow, we ended up in Starbucks, throwing lattes against the wall screaming “Circle Punch! Circle Punch!” We weren’t even bothering with the hand circle anymore. We were just punching baristas because they annoyed us.   We ran out of there, and bumped into an entire third grade field trip in front of the local Children’s Museum... and we circle punched each one of them.

Of course our legendary work brought a police officer.  I got him with a low hanging hand circle as he was getting out of his cruiser. I punched him on the arm and suddenly he had me on the ground while I was yelling “Got you! Got you!”  By the time I realized what was going on, Josh was gone and I was in the back of the cruiser, the last three months of my life flashing before my eyes.

After my plea deal, I was put in jail on 12 counts of assault, three of those on minors, one on a cop. It’s been two years, two more to go. I heard from a cook who ended up here last month for stealing beef patties from Ruby Tuesday's that Josh is still working at the same restaurant AND that he took my Friday and Saturday doubles. 

Some days I think, maybe this was Josh's plan all along. Those were the money shifts. 

Using the Amazon Prime Rib rating system, which I think is a more fun version of Yelp, I give this sticker just one Bezos out of five, because Fucking Josh.  I hate him and this stupid game.