Those wild nights in Fireside Cafe
It's midnight at Fireside Café and it's as if a rave just let out full of hungry obliterated people who want nothing more than to stuff their face with some greasy fried food.
Inside the café, workers stand anxious, but prepared, as they do each weekend getting ready to be bombarded with people who are – let's just say – not in a normal state of mind.
But hey, it's college!
This is a place where people talk with a varied vocabulary unlike your average cafe, saying things like "what's good homie?" up?" "how's it goin bro?" or "hey girl hey!"
As each person steps up to the deli counter it takes what it seems like 10 minutes to order, like they've never been there before.
Oh, and by the way, if you didn't get the memo, we don't use the words "buffalo" or "chicken" here either.
Demonstrating this on a recent Saturday night was a girl who was dressed in a vintage red, orange, teal and cream colored long sweater, with black leggings and black combat boots. She ordered a "buff quesadilla, with a side of fries and the girl behind the deli said, "okay, and your name?" without any sort of reaction to what was just ordered.
As more people flood the café, you could hear a variety of stories from people who were at a party that just got busted, or were just about to "hit up" another party.
Then the clock slowly crept closer to 12:30, which is the time Fireside closes Friday and Saturday nights, but that didn't stop another crowd of people who walk in nonchalantly.
From an outsider prospective, this set may seem a bit "out there," but not at Castleton State College.
"Saturdays are crazy! And Fridays especially too, because we are open a little bit later," said CSC senior and former Fireside employee Megan Harris.
She knows all about the rush of people that come in all at once.
"It's really funny because all the sudden everybody looks at their clocks after they've been drinking since six o-clock and they realize that we're about to close," Harris said. "It's like a swarm of kids starting to come in, eyes all blood shot and a little bit dizzy."
She finds it amusing when people are in line and they think the workers aren't paying attention and they snag a piece of pizza and eat it right there, or when she's sees people picking at the french fries, which she said is really gross.
Still, that is not the most bizarre thing they have seen.
"I saw one kid peel off a pepperoni from one of the pepperoni pizzas before," Harris said.
Emily Taylor, the new supervisor in Fireside, shared an equally wild story about the crazy nights she's seen.
She said one girl comes in drunk every weekend and she tries to flirt with a guy that works there, which she finds hilarious. She said the girl is convinced they're in love – when she's drunk.
Taylor said one night, the girl went over to the pizza and looked at it and then took a piece of chicken off every piece of pizza.
All of the workers were in awe, Taylor said, but the girl said, "'it's okay I know people here!'"
She said this girl comes in like this Thursday through Saturday each week.
Another student witnessed a pretty gruesome puking incident in the dining area of Fireside.
"I've seen a kid vomit pretty aggressively into the recycling bin with the two circles as a lid, trying to aim into it. I don't know how successful he was, but it didn't look pleasant," junior David Ievoli said.
Although the crazier stuff happens at night, the days at Fireside are just as busy, according Jeff Kurto, the Sodexo official who oversees all food produced at Castleton.
"But certainly at 12:30 a.m., it's a different kind of customer than at 11 a.m.," he said.
Kurto believes the unique exchange program the college offers is one of the reasons Fireside gets so hectic and the only way to alleviate this is to manipulate the program somehow. As of now students think of Fireside more as a second cafeteria.
He said he loves the business they are getting and would like to assure everyone he is not at all disappointed in behavior of the students.
"It's stuff that we are used to on college campuses, and really, Fireside is the students café," Kurto said emphasizing the word students. "How they behave there is how it ends up being. We really just provide for the on campus community. It's really more for the students."