Hello, My Name is Key Lime Pie...

I am a liar. At least that is what a large percentage of my old tables use to think. Over the course of my career as a Hooters Girl, I lost track of the times every day when my customers would ask me if the name on my name tag was my real name. Now I do not have an unheard of name - unusual maybe - but not unheard of. Plus this was not an establishment that (1) allowed the employees to use fake names and (2) it was not a gentleman's club where the use of said fake names was done to protect the identities of the girls from sleezbag stalker guys.

That said, I did end up using a fake name. I got so fed up of people asking me if my name was my real name, plus I lost my name tag, so I became the infamous Key Lime Pie Hooters Girl. We had a pretty high turnover at Hooters, what with the difficulties arising from knowing the 6 wing sauces and 7 beers we carried, so there was a basket full of old name tags in our office. I came in to start shift and realized that I had "lost" my name tag (or I sold it for $100.00 the night before - don't ask... I didn't). So I grabbed the basket of lost souls and started looking through it and realized that I did not want to be a Bevin or Sammy or Buffy, plus people would still ask me if the name I was sporting over my heart was in fact the one I was dubbed at birth. So I decided to have a little fun with it. In our dry goods area and our walk in, we used the same plastic pieces of identification for the food as we did for the girls' name tags. I am not sure what this says about how management felt about us, but I am not that deep, so it is for a brain more analytical than mine to figure out. Now I could have selected Chili or Pasta Salad, but I decided that from this point in time, I would be known as Key Lime Pie.

Now some of you might ask (most of you probably already know) if this was allowed. Indeed fake names did not conform to the HOA (Hooters of America) rules that were written in stone but I was a veteran employee and could pretty much get away with whatever I wanted as long as it wasn't too over board, so I became Key Lime Pie and loved every minute of it. I will never forget my first customer of the day:

"Hey, is that your real name?"

"Yes sir it is, my folks are from Key West and I grew up in a commune."

"That is pretty unusual."

"Well I have been tempted to change it, but I'm kind of use to it now."

"I like it. Get me a Corona and a slice of you."

Seriously.... At least he knows the proper beer to pair with a tart little slice of Key Lime Pie.

ADW