Picture a custard lover's worst nightmare, and I don’t mean a place with no icy treats they can’t indulge in. Instead there is everything you might eat if making a sundae didn’t have a capacity limit - the salt encrusted pecans, the gooey fruit sauces, the smashed up cookie and candy toppings - only here every every extra topping must be paid for, one way or the other, in complete dread. The cramped scooping stations are a battlefield, a mess of girls running around frantically to fight off the customers that practically climb through the windows and yell their orders. Your hands are never safe from the topping spills that coat the counters, dripping hot fudge, pineapple chunks, pooled peanut butter sauce, and the mindfield of sprinkles embedded in every crevice you can find. They’re the spoils of the war you have yet to win that night. Now, when you’re the one at the cash register it's a whole different story. You have creepy old men that grip your hand as they hand you their card or cash, kids helping themselves to your tip jar, and people who have no clue what manners are. You get the occasional person who talks so hard they spit on you, and you also have to  answer their stupid questions. You have to explain to people how the pint sign lists pint flavors - every single day - and you also have to tell them things like, “No ma’am we cannot fill your waffle cone with strawberry topping”. If you thought teenagers “midnight” munchies were bad, then you have highly underestimated the cravings of 60 year olds at 5 p.m. They come in waves like zombies from the Walking Dead, and nothing will come between them and their precious custard. At the register you must map out the next step in war. How do you fight them off? How do you time the order? How do you survive? 

The 2 stools by the side windows are a taunting invitation when you’re working a night shift at Greg’s, especially when you know you won’t leave at closing. No matter how fast you get an order out there's always someone new keeping you from sitting. So, when you’ve handed out your 20th waffle cone, finished explaining to a customer about why their sundae with extra toppings is pricey, and only have 5 dollars in tips from loose change and spared singles - you decide it's time to liberate yourself from this endless warfare. I don’t mean quitting on the spot and walking out, but going to the stack of water cups on the front counter. These water cups are the only saviors you get within those 5 hours. With a water cup, you can make any sweet contraption you want. You can experiment with the sappy caramel, chocolate hard shell, maybe even some crushed Oreo's or cookie dough. It’s the only moment of salvation you have before someone new is knocking on the front windows again. We all indulge in a water cup sundae from time to time. Because scooping is what you do for the customers; eating your own sundae is what you do for yourself. No one waiting in the lines outside of Greg's truly understands why they see us eating out of those water cups. They assume it’s because we get free unlimited custard, and that’s true - but there's more to it. After fighting the constant war between you and the customers, you find freedom from eating a cup of the damned custard you’ve been hating all night. And it is delicious.