Salty Jack's
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Salty Jack's Fine Dining Emporium
An "on-base dining experience" provided early in the Confederacy that would offer personnel an option to eating in a mess hall every day. It was a "morale boosting" effort initially operated by CENTCOM, which later was taken over by Civil Service as CENTCOM had done a thoroughly awful job.
It appears first in Victoria Per Scientiam
Early Timeline Description
Ever been to one of the on-base establishments other than the NCO club or O club? They were positively awful. That's why they have McDonald's and Taco Bell now. They are a significant step up, probably because there's a profit motive involved with them.
Salty Jack's is an abomination in every way, but it's the only choice on-post other than a dining hall, and even though replicator food isn't awful, you get tired of it. Somebody, somehow, somewhere set up a government run establishment after the complaints and Salty Jack's was born. Management and operations are run by people that the Confederacy want to dump somewhere where they can't continue to inflict meaningful harm, but the servers are nice concubines who have their bodies adjusted to meet the "Salty Jack's Standard." They almost end up all looking the same, like a playboy model shoot gone wrong where they just photoshopped the same person in the photo twenty times. They are brunettes, they are busty, and they are one step away from being declared excess to the Confederacy's needs.
"The employee motivation program" they call it. The servers discreetly call it "Work Here Or Die."
Supposedly replicators crank out raw fish fillets that are actually put in a fryer, making it actual cuisine. Other things that are supposedly seafood end up in a fryer as well, so you get deep fried fish, deep fried shrimp, and deep fried something else which is renamed every day as "the daily special" but it's actually always the same thing no matter the name. And then there are fries, which can be thrown into a fryer, also.
It does have it's charms. The mascot, who is Popeye but has been re-branded as "Salty Jack" is kinda cute and friendly. The management type who had been in charge of branding simply stole the cartoon character lock, stock and barrel. Every once in a while they have someone dress up in the Salty Jack costume to amuse the children, sort of like sports team mascots did on Earth. Unfortunately those tend to scare the youngest ones, so when a little kid comes to the place the mascot often runs away and hides in the back until the kid leaves.
It has become such a great success from the initial location that it is spreading across the galaxy at the urging of the Navy Department's "Chief Morale Officer." The current occupant of that office had been a political appointee within the US Office of Personnel Management who had authored the book "Critical Race Theory and Employee Engagement: A Primer On Hate And Performance Reviews."
Rumor has it that no one senior than an O-3 has ever set foot in one.
Later Timeline Description
From Omachuck:
She made her usual request for a visit to the colony’s brothels and for time with their Civil Service Officer, and then she inquired if Atlantis-at had a Salty Jack’s, “My kids have never been to one, and I could go for some good seafood.”
“It’s strange," Ben told her, "All the fresh fish and shell fish we have here, and a dive like that is still popular. They even go so far as to have two menus posted: ‘Fresh Stuff’ and ‘Same-Old Same-Old’. So, they do use some local seafood sometimes. So you may or may not get ‘good’ seafood. On the other hand, your kids would love the snarky, uppity servers.”
“If you want,” he suggested, “you could kill two birds by eating there. Most of the staff are unassigned concubines, and it’s overseen by the CS Office. Not like that mess when they first started around the colonies… She’s told the concubines that they can get good exposure there – particularly the men if they focus on the kids and show how good they are with them. Still, when you’re doing snarky, its hard to tell who is acting and who is a true jackass."
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