A Hooters Uniform Emergency

It's Saturday morning and I'm opening.  Getting to the restaurant I have a clear mission, purchase nylons and a new top.  Yes, I said purchase.  Besides my first two uniforms - one in the traditional white and orange and one black - I, just like every Hooters Girl, am required to buy any additional uniform items.  A Hooters uniform must be immaculate, not a run or a stain or faded logo.  As you can imagine, in a restaurant specializing in saucy hot wings, stains happen.  Runs are even more common.  On this particular Saturday I had a run and a faded top.  That was a quick ten dollars.

Nylons are easy.  I'm tall.  I wear the biggest size.  I know this.  I insert my four bucks into the nylon vending machine (yup, nylon vending machine) and out pop my size D nylons in "ultra tan."  Nylons in hand, I grab the manager to unlock the merchandise closet and he grabs me my usual size tank top.  Then I run to change - nylons on, shorts on, top on.  Something, however, is horribly, awfully, uncomfortably wrong.  My usually awesome fitting top is not fitting so awesome.  Rather than showing just enough cleavage and easily tucking into my shorts, the tank shows no boobage and is unbearably short.  In fact, I can hardly tuck the shirt into my shorts at all.  Looking in the mirror I note in horror that I look as if I've shoved my size C breasts into a top designed for a tween.  I am every pedophile's dream.

"Something is really wrong with this top," I say to the manager as I desperately attempt to pull it into position.  He doesn't even have to say anything; I know he agrees with me by the look on his face.  Marching back once again to the merchandise closet, I start looking through the tank tops.  The thing about Hooters tops is that are never, ever, never the same.  You could grab fifty marked the same size and each one would be a different length, width, thickness and cut.  For some unknown reason there is nothing uniform about the uniform.  Knowing this fact I wasn't concerned as I reached into the bin.  We'd just received a new shipment of tops so there had to be at least one that fit properly.  But looking through the tops I start to notice a trend.  These tops are all high-necked and short as shit.  I'm talking short enough that they all look like Hooters uniforms for little girls.  Can you say inappropriate?

Reaching deeper and deeper into the plethora of tops I start to panic a bit.  What if I can't find one that fits?  What if I am too tall for all the new, not at all improved tops?  My height curses me again as I realize that while some tops are better in the cleavage area, they are all shorter than hell.  I am sure I am effing screwed.  Then, in the very, very bottom of the bin I find the oddest thing ever: a Hooters top in a size medium.  This is like finding a white elephant.  Medium and Hooters don't go together.  In face medium is not a word I have ever heard at Hooters.  I can already tell it's far too wide, but it's long and at this point length is what I'm after.

I run to change into my last ditch effort at a top.  Thankfully, it tucks right into my shorts and shows off my cleavage just right.  Unfortunately, other than the length, the top is quite obviously too big and as such it wrinkles and gathers around my body in a less than flattering way.  I realize that I have no other choice.  I have to wear the ill-fitting top or wear a belly shirt.  I am not Sporty Spice, I don't do belly shirts.  So I rock the shit out of my wrinkles.

Don't worry.  We're getting new tops this week.  We've been guaranteed they won't look like total crap.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.