There was one hash slinger behind the counter and five customers scattered along on the stools.

"Those two cops and the hash slinger are back, sweetie," came the sultry, mocking voice.

She is Carmen Ramos (Ms. Cruz), a tough babe who works as a hash slinger in an infernal greasy spoon.

En route to academe, he was a Baptist preacher, stockboy for Kress variety stores, magazine salesman, reporter, hash slinger and cotton picker.

For example: Anti-feminist hash slinger: "I don't see why you want bosses hauled in by the F.B.I. for flirting with the help."

On the floor waiting tables, in the kitchen cooking burgers, was Earl Walker, a jack-of-all-doings, who came with a pedigree as a hash slinger in a hamburger joint called "Rikers."

Putting herself through school, she'd been an onion topper, cherry picker, Mexican-cafe hash slinger, McDonald's girl, Baskin-Robbins ice cream girl, plus a door-to-door encyclopedia salesperson for one day in Oakland, actually for four and a half hours.

Paris - or Hollywood - is far from the world of "Stanley and Iris," in which Jane Fonda portrays Iris, a widowed New England mother who ices cakes in a factory, and Robert De Niro is Stanley, a reclusive hash slinger.