The Waiter Chronicles: Bon Natale

Christmas Eve at the Ristorante was carried along by an air of other-worldliness. There was an eerie quiet coming from the kitchen, and Angry Chef's absence created an atmosphere of sadness mixed with relief. For me, the place doesn't feel the same without him. But the first hours without him revealed the burden that his temper had placed on everyone.

The dining room was busy all night. Junior jumped back into the kitchen to help cook, and people were pleased with the food. Near the end of the evening, the wife arrived to have her Christmas Eve dinner, and the owner insisted that I order dinner and sit with her, both of us as his guests. Grateful, I complied.

As everyone exchanged Christmas wishes and headed home, the Owner passed out Panettone and Prosecco. We left happy.

It was a Bon Natale indeed.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Angry Chef's Ouster

I'm not sure how it went down, but Angry Chef was fired sometime between 10 pm last night and 12 pm today. Junior just called to tell me the news and to inform me that our eight Christmas Eve reservations (and anyone else who wanders in) will be treated to the culinary stylings of Augusto and Felipe, the two sous chefs. If needed, Junior himself will lend a hand in the kitchen.

Last night's dinner service was not good at all. Around 5:30 several large parties with children arrived at the same time. They were all seated, given drinks and bread, and had their orders taken. As will happen, two parties of eight (one of them mine) had their entrees fired at the same time. That's 16 entrees that need to come out at once. The kitchen doesn't even have 16 pans.

Angry Chef lost it. He had been animated up to that point, but this put him over the edge; he came out of the kitchen yelling, looked at me and pointed, screaming "[expletive deleted] you!" Then he demanded to know where the owner was. I produced the owner, who ambled back into the kitchen with his disgruntled employee, and a loud Italian shouting match ensued.

I'd never seen this before. I'd seen Angry Chef yell; I'd seen the owner yell. I'd never seen them yell at each other. The waiters and bussers did our best to keep moving and ignore the catastrophe in the kitchen. In the end, my party of eight had to wait 45 minutes for their dinner, and I had to offer them free desert. Likewise, Pepe's party of eight waited nearly an hour.

Things settled down after that, but at the Ristorante's expense. The owner had to turn people away, since the kitchen was in such a state. So here he is with a dining room only half full, telling customers he can't seat them. Needless to say, he was not happy. In fact, he would say later that he would have done better to not even open last night.

What happened between then and the phone call I just got I don't know. I suppose the details will be filled in, but I won't be asking for them. The long-and-short of it is that the Ristorante is out its chef.

I feel bad for Angry Chef. He's a far more complicated person than I know, surely, and his flamboyance and temper bespeak some self-destructive habits with [obviously] detrimental results as far as his career is concerned. But he's a genuine guy. He loves good food and wine, and he lives and dies by the integrity of his craft. I had grown quite fond of him, actually. In fact, as we readied the dining room last night, enjoying a little pre-dinner chat, he wistfully told me that he loved me and that he would miss me when I left.

How could he have known that, in less than 24 hours, he would be preceding me in departure?

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The Waiter Chronicles: My Tortured Conscience--The Waiter Responds

The Waiter has responded to my agonized plea for guidance regarding Saturday night's episode, wherein I was offered food by the chef, but no other waiter was.

Here is his response, in full. Well, almost:

"[expletive deleted] those waiters. Eat the salmon when you can. They'd probably do the same thing to you. We're a rather mercenary bunch. Waiters come and go - stay tight with the kitchen guys.

Happy Holidays

Waiter"

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The Waiter Chronicles: My Tortured Conscience

I've been a reader of waiterrant for about six months now. After a dicey situation tonight, I sent The Waiter an email seeking advice or absolution. Here, in full, is the text of the email. Please feel free to respond.

"Waiter,

I'm a waiter of only six month's experience. One of the things I learned early on is the stratification of the restaurant social system, with the bussers, waiters, and kitchen staff all occupying their respective roles. As a waiter, my place is secure. But tonight I got myself into a situation that I wasn't prepared for and that may have called my loyalty into question.

After a steady and busy night when nothing went wrong and everybody loved their food, I walked into the kitchen to retrieve some silverware for polishing. While there, I decided to applaud the kitchen staff. I simply stopped, looked at the chef, the sous chef, and the food prep. cook, and I applauded. Literally, I clapped my hands in acknowledgement. It turns out they were in the process of cooking some food for themselves and the dishwashers, and after my gesture of appreciation the chef ordered, in Espanol, that a plate be made for me. I made like I didn't understand and left. Normally, the kitchen will make plates for the waiters as well.

A few minutes later I went back into the kitchen, and the waiter told me to come and enjoy a plate with him and the rest of the kitchen. He also offered me a glass of wine and some mussels he had cooked up. I quickly realized that there was going to be no food for the waiters; the stoves were off. Yet, to refuse this unusual offer would be to offend the chef in a very serious way. So, while my waiter colleagues polished glasses and set tables on empty stomachs, I wolfed down a salmon filet and caeser salad, standing at the chef's side. I also slurped a few mussels. I made quick work of it, then earnestly thanked him in Italian and returned to the bussing station. I felt so bad about what I had done that I actually confided in a couple of the waiters about what had happened and sort of half apologized. They didn't get any food at all.

I fell like I have violated some fraternal loyalty among waiters. But would it have been any better to offend the chef?

Please help ease my conscience.

Not Prince Hamlet

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Back to Bagging for Biden

Over the summer I used this blog to endorse Sen. Joseph Biden as the Democratic nominee for President. I haven't said much about it since then, since NPH is not meant to be a blog about politics. But I did make a contribution to the campaign, so in the name of personal narrative, here's Biden's first TV ad in Iowa, a piece I like to think I helped pay for.

I think it's well worth the investment.

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The Waiter Chronicles: A Little Child Shall Lead Them

Last night at the Ristorante, that oft-quoted Advent nugget showed its shadow side.

At table 21, five adults brought a finicky 9 year-old to dinner. Like most kids, she knew what she liked and what she didn't like, and she had no intention of eating the latter. Her mother and I began dinner negotiations with pizza:

"She likes pizza. Do you have pizza?"

"[smiling through the obvious absence of pizza from the menu held wide open in the woman's lap] No, I'm sorry, we don't. We've started to do pizzas at lunch, but we don't have them for dinner. But we do---" I stop mid-sentence, because she has stopped listening to me and has urgently leaned over to her daughter to report what I've just said, as if the girl were deaf.

The woman's attention regained, I continue, "Something kind of like a pizza is a chicken parmigiana. It's a thinly-pounded chicken breast covered with tomato and mozarella."

"But she won't eat the tomato sauce." There's no trace of the apology or embarrassment that usually accompany parents' recitation of their children's food hang-ups. In fact, the woman's tone suggests I ought to know that her daughter won't eat tomato sauce.

"Well," I suggest, still positive, "The chicken milanese is breaded, but it doesn't have any sauce on it. Maybe that would be better." There is a moment of silence, unbroken only by the repeated opening and closing of the Ristorante door, as groups of diners continue to enter, get seated, and wait for their waiter. At long last, the woman looks up at me from her menu and intones, "You don't have kids, do you?"

"No ma'am, I don't." I resist the urge to share that my first is on the way.

"Well, it's got to be like McDonald's or they won't eat it." Restraint grips me again, and I refrain from correcting her that "they", from my limited experience, will eat what their parents tell them to. Also, the obvious suggestion that the family ought to have gone to McDonald's goes unvoiced. She suggests that she might order the Funghi Chicken for her daughter, if only the mushrooms can come on the side.

The dignity of my borrowed craft makes an inconvenient appearance. If only to avoid being bullied around, I recommend against the mushroom-chicken-with-no-mushrooms, since that's not mushroom chicken at all. She resists, and I cave. Just get it over with.

Only, the young girl also wants an appetizer. Drawing on my expanding knowledge of her culinary do's and dont's, I suggest some bruschetta pomodoro, "wedges of toasted bread covered with chopped tomato and mozarella cheese." All the tables' adults nervously consult the girl, again, as if my description had been in some unknown alien tongue that they must now translate. They concur: she will have the bruschetta.

When the bruschetta makes its' graceful arrival on the table, a ripple of anxiety invades table 21's adults. The girl stares plainly at the simple appetizer like she might stare at a charred squirrel. "No," announces her mother, rushing to her distressed damsel's defense. "That has tomatoes on it. She doesn't like tomatoes. She needs one without tomatoes, only with cheese." She's looking from the rest of the grownups to me frantically, and at any point I expect her to call for a paramedic.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I'll bring that right away."

Again with the bruschetta, only this time I'm not waiting around for the verdict. I've already wasted too much time on this cult of childhood preference; I've got three other tables now, one of which has already sent back a bottle of wine. It's only a few moments later, when I retrieve the bruschetta plate, that the drama achieves its muted conclusion.

Three of the four wedges have been eaten. One remains, and the girl shows no sign of interest. So I reach down to pick it up, with the obligatory inquiry, "Are you all done with that?" She nods silently, but as I lean down to lift it from the table she whispers in my ear:

"To be honest with you, I didn't really like it."

These are her only words of the entire dinner saga. Their significance requires a response of gravity. I suspend my reach for the plate, turn my head to look her straight in her finicky-innocent face, and answer, "To be honest with you, your parents don't really like you."

I wish.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Go Toward The Light

I sat down with one of the Ristorante owners last week to have what was, to her, an obvious conversation. Before I could even begin, she preempted me, "You're quitting."

That is was so obvious made it easier. Not that it was going to be terribly difficult, announcing that I'd been offered a call at a church and that my time at the Ristorante would soon be over; but I felt a strong need to relate to The Owners as colleagues, and not just as bosses. So, even though I won't start at the church until early February, I felt I should let them know now.

It's somewhat surprising how much more enjoyable an end-date has made my work. Now that it's only something I'm doing in the interim, I can admit to myself and my fellow waiters that I'm not very good at this. At the same time, given a two-month timetable, I can set a couple of modest goals. I can challenge myself to master a couple key waiter skills before my tenure is up, like making a solid recommendation for a bottle of white wine to go with the Sea Bass or telling a diner, "No, you can't add to chicken to a Spaghetti Pescatora."

There will be time to reflect on these six months, what the Ristorante has taught me and what, if any, contribution I have made to it. But for now I'm relaxing in the good news that, while there is a time and a season for everything, this season will soon come to an end.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Just Deserts

Last Saturday night a group of four young, energetic people came in for dinner at around 8:30. They ordered bottles of wine, laughed a lot, and were generally a pleasure to serve. As I went to clear their empty entree plates, one of the young men very respectfully held up a short piece of silver wire for me to see and said, "I just thought you should know I found this in my ravioli."

I stared at it aghast.

He suggested that it was a piece from a kitchen scrub brush, and he insisted that he didn't want his meal comped. I couldn't just let it go, so I offered the table free desert. They declined, saying, "Next time."

Right. Like there would be a next time. Would you return to a restaurant that served you Brillo Pad with your pasta?

Well, tonight, half the party returned. I recognized them right away, and, even though neither of them were the offended party from last weekend, when the time came I offered the whole table free desert. I didn't go into details.

The result: one creme brulee, one pumpkin ice cream, and one 22% tip.

The only question is, what do I do if the other half of the scrub-brush party comes back?

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The Waiter Chronicles: Sree Thparkling Waters

They just kept coming. Couples, families, dates, reunions: you name the group it was at the Ristorante tonight, the second night of dear city's "Festival of Lights."

With four waiters and one busser, things got out of hand pretty quickly, and they stayed that way for nearly two hours. With a private party of 30 people tying up Grandpa and the busser, it fell to Junior, Pepe, and I to manage the rest of the dining room. Needless to say, Pepe and Junior did a much better job than I did.

I had things under control, for the most part, with my party of eight working on their desserts and my various other parties of two and four settling in. But then walked in another party of eight, this one with a child, and where do you think they were going to sit? "No problem," I though. "Just get it done."

So off I went to make Shirley Temples and prepare bread and rehearse the whole list of holiday specials. Then the other party of eight urgently needed their bill. Then they urgently needed to split their bill over five separate credit cards. Then the wheels fell off. Flummoxed by the separation of checks, I started forgetting things: bruschetta, wine, bread--my gosh the bread! My speech skills deteriorated rapidly, since what was coming out of my mouth couldn't hardly keep up with what was motoring around my head.

It hurt me. One table waited too long for their bill and penalized me by tipping at about 7% (of their $140 ticket). That I can handle. The really bad part is that the sort-of truce that had endured between Angry Chef and the wait staff completely fell apart, and he started yelling and swearing at people. One family came in and ordered an appetizer, two entrees, and a dessert all at the same time. When I explained that the order was okay because it was a family, he responded with, "That's nice. F*** you. F*** your family."

This is what weekends will be like for the next month. I can only hope that I'll get better at it. Or that we hire some more waiters.

It had better be the former; I'm not holding my breath on the latter.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Thanksgiving

It was a couple of weeks ago that Pepe started unfolding brief little descriptions of Thanksgiving at the Guillen house. Lots of food, a big bonfire, and plenty of drink. Then, last week, as if by plan, Grandpa formally invited Meredith and I to their family Thanksgiving. We humbly accepted.

Yes, the food was extravagant and sumptuous. Yes the bonfire was blazing. And yes the wine warmed the belly. But how much greater was the sum than its parts? To sit at table with a family of 10--granparents, cousins, even a baby--and to be welcomed so richly, to be asked to give a blessing over the meal, and to be sent home with plates of leftovers: what a gift.

When you move to someplace new you think about what the holidays will be like in that place. Yesterday was very, very far removed from the vision of Thanksgiving I started having back in April. And as reality often is, it was far superior.

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Where's George

As I was putting up my tip money last night, I spotted some writing on one of the bills. It was a $10 bill with "www.wheresgeorge.com" written along the bottom. Curious, I logged on to the website.

The United States Currency Tracking Project is trying to--ahem--track currency. Basically, when you receive a marked bill, you go to the website and enter its denomination and serial number and where you got it. You're then given a report that shows where it's been before it got to you. If you're interested in tracking it after you spend it, you can create an account and regularly check its progress. I won't be doing that.

My bill has only been tracked at one other place: Crystal Lake, Illinois. Read all about my bill's travels here.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Nightclub

About a month ago, Pepe and Junior began talking to the Owners about promoting a club-night at the Ristorante. Junior has some friends who promote after hours club-nights at some other places around town, with reputable success. Those conversations turned into plans, and the first one of those club-nights is tonight, from 10 pm to 1 am.

Now, from the outset of these conversations I made it clear to Junior and Pepe that I'm probably not available to work these events. They protested that we'd be making all kinds of money, but still I demurred. So imagine my surprise when this week's schedule appeared and I was slotted to work at 9 pm tonight.

First, that the event found its way onto the schedule means that it's got a lot more Owner backing than I thought. But secondly (and more obviously), I repeatedly made it known that I am unavailable, especially for this first one, since I have a friend in from out of town.

Two conversations with the Owner followed.

Saturday, November 3
Me: "[Owner], I'm not available to work these Wednesday night events."
Owner: [hastily eating pasta and not looking at me] "Why not?"
Me: "They're way too late. I have a pregnant wife at home."
Owner: "So. She doesn't need you to be pregnant."
Me: "Well, this Wednesday, especially, I'm not available. I have an out-of-town guest staying with me over night. I can't be gone."
Owner: "That's okay. Just don't let it happen again."

Monday, November 5
Owner: "How late are you available on Wednesday night?"
Me: "Uh, [Owner], I'm not available at all. I have someone staying with me from out of town."
Owner: "So, if I need you to come in at 10 for a couple of hours, that would be okay?"
Me: "No it's not. I don't want to be a bad host."
Owner: [silence. No response]

I resent simply being expected to work an event like this. It's Junior's and Pepe's baby, they can staff it themselves. I'm not staying out until 1:30 in the morning to work a nightclub.

But I resent even more the complete disregard for my wishes. I know in the service sector you work when the schedule says you work. I know that any time "off" you may get is an accident of the scheduler, if not an all-out gift. But this seems flagrant. This makes me mad.

Am I being unreasonable?

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The Waiter Chronicles: Nickname

I have inhabited more than one nickname since I started waiting tables at the Ristorante: "the professor," "piedra," and "caro" to name a few.

But this one is new.

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The Good Old Days (Part 3)

While it didn't generate a lot of discussion, this post will always be one of the highlights of Not Prince Hamlet, because its subject (author, documentarian, and media critic Douglas Rushkoff) actually posted a comment.

The post was simply a heads-up about a re-broadcasting of Rushkoff's second Frontline documentary, "The Persuaders." I've watched it three times.

Before there was "The Persuaders," though, Rushkoff was a Consulting Producer and Correspondent for "The Merchants of Cool" for Frontline. This one-hour documentary about corporate marketing to teenagers was actually my introduction to Rushkoff's work. One of the professors at the seminary I attended made it required viewing for her students.

"Merchants . . ." range is really dizzying. Since it's a documentary, it's tempting to say that the film "exposes" the sketchy practices of teen marketers and that it "reveals" the effects that the ubiquity of advertising messages has on teenagers. But the merchants of cool themselves, the marketing executives and the ethnographers who are mapping teen culture for advertisers' benefit, aren't doing anything they're ashamed of. There's no "exposing"anything when the subject boasts about their business.

The teenagers featured in "Merchants . . ." aren't blind to what's going on, though. There's no revelation here, either, because these young people are fully aware of the give-and-take involved in marketing and consumption. They know full well that the Nike's and MTV's of the world covet their attention, and they're more than willing to give it--as long as they get something in return: cool.

Cool is a currency that drives teen culture. Which is why the film takes the approach it does in following corporate advertisers in their quest to discover cool (called--with a straight face--"cool hunting") and then sell it to a mass market. But, as Rushkoff notes very early on, the problem with cool hunting is that it kills what it finds. Once advertisers find something cool and successfully hock it to the masses, it's no longer cool. So cool hunting is always on the prowl for the next trend to package and sell.

The effect of all of this on teenagers is the real thrust of "Merchants . . ." to my mind, and, as far as that effect goes, the film suggests rather than explains. There are loads of stats: today's teenager (today being 2001) is exposed to 3,000 discreet advertising messages in a single day; in 2000 teens spent more than a $100,000,000,000 themselves; 75% of teenagers have a tv in their room; they spend an average of two hours a day online.

But what kind of teenager is this producing? That's the important question. What does it do to teenagers, this constant stream of marketing messages? When marketers spend billions and billions of dollars each year studying teen culture and strategizing how to subvert the average teen's ability to make good consumer decisions, what is the effect on those teens?

I have some suggested answers myself, and I have some definite thoughts about counteracting forces in the lives of teenagers: families, churches, communities. But for now, let me simply recommend "The Merchants of Cool" to your attention. You can watch it free online here.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Three Tables of Three

Table 11:
"Well, first of all, I was an English major, which was a mistake."
The waiter stops his pour of the second bottle of Trinchero Family Estate Pinot Noir. The woman--the English major--notices, checks her recognition with her two friends, and then states the obvious: "You were an English major too, weren't you?"

The waiter answers easily. "Yes, and I'm living proof that an English major is not a bad career move."

The ladies laugh, a little uncomfortably, as if the waiter's sarcasm holds something authentic.

***
Table 14:
In a thick, north English accent, they ask for more time to look at the wine menu. "Give's a few wee minutes, yeah?"

A bottle of Ripasso and some capasante provide enough time for them to settle in and loosen up. The waiter has asked what brings them to town, allowing them to expound on the UK-based grocery store they're working to build in the U.S. Then they turn their attention to the waiter. "What part of the states are you from?"

"Colorado. Denver."

"Rough night for you then." He nods to the television over the bar, the one broadcasting the bloodbath that has become game one of the World Series. The Red Sox are pummeling the Rockies 13-1.

"Yeah, thanks for pointing that out."

A conversation follows about the mechanics of baseball and the World Series: how many games a team has to win; how home and away games are scheduled; why the Rockies are losing so badly.

The waiter has to pull himself away from the table. It would have been great to pull up a chair, pour a glass of wine, and chit chat about American and British sports.

***
Table 15:
Separate check. The waiter hates separate checks. "These three guys all ordered the exact same entree," the waiter fumes to himself. "Why can't they pay with the same check?"

It's not exactly a surprise. After all, they have been very concerned about the dollars and cents of this dinner from the very beginning. After yielding to the waiter's suggestion of mineral water and ordering glasses of Cabernet, Chiante, and Chardonnay, they suddenly hit the brakes. No appetizers. No salads. Questions about the cost of every special. The waiter had one of them hooked on the wild troll king salmon special (pun intended) until he asked how much it cost.

"$34.95."

The laughter and exaggerated looks of shock that follow aren't shocking, just a little tacky. Predictably, they all settle on an inexpensive gnocci and send the waiter on his way. He heads to the kitchen shaking his head, thinking, "That table could have been great. What happened?"

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The Practitioner

I got a great haircut today.

I mean, a great haircut. I look in the mirror and I think, "Wow. Why didn't I do this before?"

It's short, but not defiantly so. The part is right where it should be, and the top blends seamlessly into the sides of my rectangular head. It's the haircut of a lifetime.

And what's most remarkable is that the barber never once asked me how to cut it.

When he first started attacking the overgrowth in the back with his clippers without a word, I but looking for. It was only after he grabbed his scissors, oiled their hinges, and took the first crunching rip off the top of the mop that I was certain: he wasn't waiting for my input.

It was too late to protest by the time I awakened to reality. Anyways, there was something liberating about it, about not having to force a vague description of how I want my hair to look (it's a no-win scenario: too much demanding detail makes you a prima donna; not enough and you're likely to hear, "Then what are you here for?").

The barber snipped and pulled and clipped for about twenty minutes. His movements were sharp and decisive, brisk. When he was done we both knew that some serious work had just been done.

The whole experience set me to thinking about the practitioners among us, those men and women who practice a craft, a craft they have honed over years of experience. Like Angry Chef.
Angry Chef knows how your food should be prepared, and so he doesn't need to hear about the intricacies of your tastes. Because nobody should have the meat sauce on their pasta, even if they ask for it. The practitioner knows enough to be revolted at the very thought of it.

The barber didn't need my input to cut my hair because he could see what needed done. He was able to size up the boxy shape of my skull. assess the length of the locks, and cut until it looked right. Any direction I would have given would have only made his job more difficult.

So much of where our technological society is going is toward the tastes and interests of individual consumers. Take just about any product or service, and you can customize it however you want. The consumer is becoming the producer. That's the idea behind a blog, isn't it? And YouTube? And Wikipedia? Fast Food (ala Burger King's "Have it your way")? Indeed, the very idea of the "professional," the "expert," is being challenged on all fronts, from religion to politics to art to commerce.

But there remain those professional, expert practitioners among us. And they know that the collective intelligence of Wikipedia is a sorry substitute for the well-developed eye and the trained palate. To the practitioner, you can have it your way if you like. But you'd better not. You're better off letting the practitioner do it her way.

Because that's the right way.

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The Good Old Days (Part 2)

Back in January of 2006, NPH started a conversation about an initiative called One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).

Today we continue our review of blog highlights by revisiting that post. Find it here.

What made this post a highlight was the level of serious discussion it created among a number of different voices, including Ryno, Michael, and Stephanie.

*Update: read the Wikipedia entry about OLPC to learn more about the initiative's history, goals, and future.

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The Good Old Days (Part 1)

Yesterday's very civic-minded post scratched an itch that I haven't felt for awhile. It brought back the time when the subhead of this blog was "Media, Civitas, Ecclesia," three clearly delineated areas of focus that occupied my attention. Also, I used to write in the third person. That was fun.

Stroll down memory lane with me, and indulge me in re-living the high points of this blog's short brushes with greatness.

Here's a link to a post I wrote in June of 2006, lamenting the PC (USA)'s new television, print, and radio advertising campaign. The post itself is straightforward enough, and not that great. The real money comes in the discussion it generated between NPH and Landon.

Enjoy.

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Of Canines and Civics

Theolog has a post by Amy Frykholm about dog parks in which the author suggests that dog parks foster community in American neighborhoods in a way that nothing else at the present time does. She quotes Robert Putnam and the whole "Bowling Alone" argument that civic engagement in America is rapidly deteriorating. And while she anticipates that people of Putnam's persuasion will hardly be moved by what's on offer at the dog park, she's compelled to see in it something quite significant.

Here's a money quote:

Over the three years that [my friend] has been visiting the dog park, my friend has become close with a lesbian couple and their Scotch Terrier. They arrange meetings at the dog park and invite each other over for dinner. The dogs like each other, and gradually, the humans have gained each other’s trust. They ask each other for help when they need it; they invite each other to significant events. They’ve built a small, fragile community.

Trust. Reciprocity: these are two of the things that make up Putnam's ideal of "Social Capital." They're precisely the things that Frykholm sees emerging among the gaggle of mutt-lovers congregating daily in their fenced-in playpen.

Maybe I should get a dog.

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They'll Kick You And They'll Punch You And They'll Tell You It's Fair, So . . .

When he first told me to "beat it," I wasn't all that bothered. I had been trying to extricate myself from the table for what seemed like hours anyway, but his date just kept yammering on in a half-drunken Italian impersonation that was as embarrassing as it was insulting. So I was relieved at the sudden escape hatch, the wave of the hand granting express permission to leave the table and be done with it.

It was only after I related the dismissal to Pepe that it started to irk me. "That guy just told me to 'beat it'," I said, much in the same way that I might report someone asking for more bread. But Pepe's eyes widened at the news. His jaw slackened a little bit and his pupils took on an immediately sympathetic cast, and it was then that I started to feel the first gurglings of outrage.

That guy just told me to "beat it."

Besides top-hatted characters in 1920's musicals and Michael Jackson, besides mullet-headed toughs in 80's cop dramas, who talks like that? Who looks at another human being they hardly know and tells them to "beat it?"

What, "scram" was taken? "Shoo" not coming to the tip of the tongue? "Beat it?" Seriously?

The rest of the night is a blur of anger and self-loathing as I try to reconcile the depths of human indecency with the circumstances that have brought me to this place, where I, at 31, can be told to "beat it" by a complete stranger and not be bothered until someone tells me to.

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Windell Middlebrooks Update

If you've not seen the Dr. Pepper commercial with the dancing football player, you probably live under a rock (or you don't spend 6 + hours watching college football on Saturdays).

NPH favorite (and college classmate) Windell Middlebrooks stars in the spot, which I have failed to locate anywhere online. However, Dr. Pepper has created a MySpace page with a mini documentary about the commercial, complete with clips from Windell's casting audition, production shots, and the stunt double.

Enjoy it here.

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MLB Hot Corner

The baseball playoffs started today with both National League divisional series game one's and one of the American League divisional series game one. Others will blog about the games themselves; I'm interested in how to watch them.

TBS, the network that has broadcast the Atlanta Braves to a national cable audience for years, purchased the broadcast rights to these divisional series games. But if you don't have cable (or a TV for that matter), and you don't want to spend $20 at a drinking establishment to watch the games, how do you partake of this most hallowed rite of fall?

TBS launched an online component to their broadcast called The Hot Corner. It's a live broadcast, but not the game broadcast. There's no game audio, and the broadcast options include either the pitcher/catcher cam or the dugout cameras. Those are still shots that don't change. So of course, to watch the game, you use the pitcher/catcher angle. Only, whenever the ball is put in play, the camera doesn't move; it stays on the pitcher and catcher, so you're left to infer from their reactions what's going on. It's a bit like being that kid peeking through the slit in the fence to watch the game.

It's a step in the right direction, and I'm going to be watching it when I can. Hopefully we're not far from the time when an internet connection will allow you to watch a live broadcast of a game that's always being broadcast nationally. Currently, TBS, Fox, and ESPN don't allow online broadcasts of the games they're broadcasting, but how long can that last?

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The Waiter Chroncles: Mix Tapes

In the service sector, your co-workers are everything. They can make your work miserable, or they can make it tolerable. Some may even make this otherwise demeaning work enjoyable.

Meet Pepe, the 21 year-old uber-waiter who has quickly become my favorite person in this strange place. Sarcastic, generous, and full of energy, Pepe makes even the most stressful lunch shift fun. He does this with little gestures: waving his arm in the air and proclaiming, "that's whassup!" as you precariously balance a tray full of entrees; executing short bursts of crump-dance maneuvers; answering the most distressed questions with quips like, "I don't know. All I know is that I'm handsome."

Seriously, being a waiter at the Ristorante would be much, much worse if not for Pepe.

Among other things, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of popular music, which he uses to decorate the most basic of conversations. Which is why my restaurant vocabulary includes "Ay Bay Bay" and "Hyphy," linguistic nuggets I'm hard pressed to defend in any other setting. It's a quality I admire, even if Pepe's musical catalogue is predominately rap and hip-hop.

Out of this admiration, I suggested a mix tape project. That's right, mix tapes (cd's, really). I'm a 31 year old ordained minister, and I just traded mix tapes with another guy. And it was totally my idea.

I offered up The Decemberists, Feist, The Bobby Hughes Experience, Maximo Park, Metric . . .

Pepe produced E-40, Bow Wow, Hurricane Chris, Mike Jones, Nas, Lil' Boosie, The Federation . . .

It's fun, if nothing else.

And a little childish.

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"Nice Makeup Dude"

From Jerilyn's comment on the previous post.

Thanks. I still haven't washed it off.

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Windell Middlebrooks Update

I recently had a chance to catch our favorite fictional beer vendor's spin on Entourage, the uber-popular HBO yarn about an A-list actor and his crew.

It's a good little role. Here's a link to the episode (Windell's scene begins at 19:35).

A warning to SC alum: your favorite son uses some adult language in this scene.

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The Waiter Chronicles Survey Winner

The winning answer to the survey question about the food handler's test came from Michael:

"Cockroaches and rodents like to feed . . .

a. while you are taking tests, so get back to work!

Nice job Michael. The next time you're in the IE, feel free to handle some food; you're honorarily certified so to do.

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Phone Interview

Yesterday I had a phone interview with the Associate Pastor Nominating Committee from a nearby church. For those who don't know, Presbyterian churches look for pastors and associate pastors by forming Pastor/Associate Pastor Nominating Committees (PNC's/APNC's). That committee's job is to compose the position description, circulate it, interview candidates, and, ultimately, recommend one for the congregation to vote on.

This process almost always utilizes a phone interview.

I can't think of a less effective way for a group of people to assess the merit of a candidate than a phone interview (maybe email would be worse). There is no room for complexity in a phone interview, either in your interaction with the interviewers or the composition of your responses to their questions.

For example, one person asked me what I thought about the current "struggle" in the PC (USA) over inclusion. Now, that's a very intentional way of framing that issue, and it immediately gives something away about the church's theological leaning (another church might have asked about the struggle over "homosexuality" or "Biblical authority"). So, it's a complex question about an even more complex issue. But what you're required to do in a phone interview is make your best guess as to what they're really asking, and then speak into the ether for about five minutes. You won't have the benefit of gauging their reaction. You won't be able to clarify something that comes off as confusing. You just have to fire away and hope you don't wildly miss the mark.

By the end of the interview, the moderator of the committee said they would be getting back to me "right away." That means it either went really well or very badly. I guess I'll know soon enough.

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The Waiter Chronicles Survey: The Test

If you live in Riverside County and work in a job where you handle food, you have to get a Food Handler's Card. Getting this card means trekking down to the local environmental health office and paying $18 to take a 50 question multiple choice test. You're only allowed to miss 15 questions if you are to pass.

And if you are troubled, dear citizen, by the thought that some of the men and women handling the food you're eating are only about 70% clear on what will make you sick and what won't, let the sheer difficulty of that test put your fears to rest.

Eh-hem.

Test takers are given a short booklet to study before they start penciling in the bubbles. Feeling confident, I flipped through the first few pages of it, then declared myself ready to be examined. I was more ready than I knew.

If this test is a measurement of the need-to-know involved in food service, then it appears that little more is needed than a basic grasp of English and a healthy appreciation for sarcasm. Because, while a few of the questions pertain to details--the temperature at which food grows bacteria, for example--most of them are mind-numbingly ridiculous.

Here's an example (and I paraphrase):

Cockroaches and rodents like to feed
a. when the manager is not around
b. when they're stressed
c. when it is dark and quiet
d. on Mondays and Thursdays

(Duh. Everybody knows the answer is "a," with a postscript, "depending on the manager.")

It got so bad at one point that I actually looked around the room to see if other test takers were as amused as I was. I also suspected I might be the unwitting subject of a hidden camera prank. Nope. My colleagues were all furrowing their brows and engaging the exam with full seriousness.

You will be relieved to know that I am now the proud possessor of a Riverside County Food Handler's Card. That's right, when it comes ot roaches, mice, flies, and rotting food, I'm bonafide.

So here's the survey: submit your best multiple choice answer option "e" for the question about mice and rodents. The actual answers will be hard to beat, I know, but give it a shot. Because the best answer wins its author an Honorary Riverside County Food Handler's Certification.

May the Food Handler's Force be with you.

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The Waiter Chronicles: After Work

I'm riding shotgun in westbound bass-thumping Mustang, heading to an unknown midnight destination. I only know it's a Mexican bar and that Junior is friendly with one of the bartenders. We're 15 miles out of town now, still speeding into the valley darkness, and as we enter and exit Ontario like a knife through butter I start to wonder: "are we going into LA?"

Not LA, ultimately, but Chino. A few years ago this would have freaked me out, going out for drinks with people I don't know all that well at one of their personal hangouts. But now I don't care. It hardly even bothers me that Junior and Pepe have thoroughly out-dressed me. They're both in collared shirts, black pants, and shiny shoes; Pepe is even sporting a sleevless pullover sweater. The best I could do for this midweek after-work outing is a brown T-shirt with Pac Man on the front. My companions don't seem to care, so I don't either.

We pull up to the bar, which is actually in a strip mall. There's a Ralph's Supermarket only 100 feet from the entrance. We stride through the doors past a bouncer reclining against a walkway rail. He nods at Junior and Pepe, and I put my head down and follow them in, wondering, "Should I have nodded at that guy?" Inside, the bar is a cross between a nightclub and a bingo parlor. There's a jukebox in the corner and a well in the middle, but the rest of the place is random smattering of tables and barstools separated by uncomfortable distances. The crowd is mixed, about half Latino and half white, with the white clientèle checking in somewhere between 40 and 50 years old. Somehow, this makes me relax, which I uneasily take as a measure of my age.

Pepe and Junior scan the bar for their friend, the bartender. She's not there. I'm just standing there like a dummy while the two of them deliberate about what to do. For a minute I think we might leave, but then we choose a hightop table near the door, and Junior sets out for our drinks. I tell him to get me a Coors, and he wrinkles his nose and lets out a "bah!" But I'm sticking to my guns. Not out of some loyalty to Coors, but rather wanting to keep my dignity. They're out of Coors, though, so I go with a Corona, which registers on Junior's face as a slight improvement.

Junior brings back our drinks and lifts his Pacifico bottle with a cocked head. I look from Junior to Pepe, then elevate my Corona. The irony does not escape me that this is the first and best welcome Southern California has offered me, and that it comes from two brothers, one 21 and the other 37, who are teaching me to be a waiter.

We clink our bottles to Junior's toast: "To . . . for the Hell of it."

For the Hell of it.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Three-Week's New Job

I'm working tomorrow night. I'm not supposed to work on Wednesdays at all, but Three-Week asked me to cover his shift. He can't work tomorrow night because he's in training for his new job.

That was fast.

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The Waiter Chronicles: One Man's Trash . . .

There's a waiter who started about three weeks before me, who, for the sake of anonymity, I'll call Three-Week. When I started, he was busing tables and training to be a waiter, just like me. He had the core busing skills down: he could clear and reset a table in half the time it took me, and he polished glasses like a pro. His three week head start looked like more than enough to leave me in the table-busing dust while he sped ahead to the greener grass of table-waiting.

But Three-Week had a run of bad luck. While Grandpa's vacation presented an opportunity for both of us, it also offered lots of chances to fail. I had my share of failures, but they were easily corrected and handled with grit-your-teeth humor. Three-week's mishaps, though, involved mis-charging people's credit cards and getting people's orders wrong, things that heavily tax the owner's limited patience. I call it "bad luck" for three-week because his mistakes happened when the dining room was full and when the owner was right there.

The dilemma is this: I have benefited from Three-Week's stumbling. Last week the owner gave specific instructions (in his absence) that I was to wait tables and Three-Week was to bus.

On the face of it, the upside and the downside are easy to spot: I've moved into a position where I can put the pedal to the floor and accelerate right past Three-Week to become an established waiter. It is, in short, exactly what I needed to happen. But the downside is obviously that Three-Week has quickly found himself in a position where his hours are disappearing and he's being squeezed out of table-waiting by executive order. He's already told me he's looking for another job.

There are two ways to look at it.

Life ain't fair: The survival of the fittest: kill or be killed.

Or . . .

Empathy: The un-level playing field: The big picture.

I could easily be in Three-Week's position. That I'm not has less to do with superior aptitude than it has to do with timing and the accident of birth. Three-Week speaks English as a second language, having been born in Mexico. He doesn't have a college degree. He has two kids.

That he should have to compete with a white college-educated English major for a job at a restaurant owned by a European doesn't offer him much of a chance.

I could be making too much of this. My "empathy" could be a form of arrogance. But the reality is that the ristorante is a stop-over for me en route to a salaried job not in the service sector, while for Three-Week it's where he makes his living. And I like him. He taught me this song, which I post below in his honor, hoping things get better for him. Only, not at my expense.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Grandpa's Return

After four weeks in his native Mexico, Grandpa returned to the ristorante last Wednesday. But even before he had re-donned his apron and checked his pen supply, Grandpa's presence was felt. My schedule for the week was light on dinners, and the ones I had were established duds: Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday (you wouldn't think it, but Saturday is the slowest night of the week). Monday and Tuesday nights produced a total of two tables between them, but Saturday saved the week with six tables.

Not that the schedule mattered all that much. Being that it was the last week of August, business was slow every night. It was so bad that the few guests we did have couldn't help but comment on the cavernous emptiness of the dining room. "Are you guys always this slow?" they would ask, with a look of suspicion. "No," you answer. "August is always slow in the restaurant business." You say this hoping that didn't notice the half-full dining room at the other ristorante around the corner.

This week's schedule is a little bit kinder, including dinner on Thursday and Friday, as well as a special event fundraiser breakfast on Saturday. Seriously, if this week would have looked like last week, Grandpa's return would quickly become a cause for irritation. As it is, I can pat him on the back and say, "Hola!" without wanting to push him right out the door.

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The Waiter Chronicles Survey 2: Winner

E-Dub, with the fabulous Seinfeld knock-off, "They're real, and they're spectacular."

Of course, they're not real, but it made me laugh the hardest.

Well done, E-Dub.

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The Waiter Chronicles Survey: Are Those Real?

Every guest at the ristorante gets to see the dessert tray. It's a granite slab weighing about 15 pounds and dotted with silicon models of apple strudel, creme bruleee, and tiramisu, among other delectable delights.

The models were done by the owner's brother, and they're really good. So good, in fact, that often, instead of paying attention to me as I explain extol the culinary virtues of our Limoncello Parfait, guests fixate on the models themselves. Their heads cock to the side, their ears perk up, and their eyes turn into swirling spirals. Often, someone will just reach over and touch one of the models.

Inevitably, someone breaks the silicon spell and asks, "Are those real?"

I want your best reaction to that scenario, either the touching of the models or the question, "are those real?" (just to let you know a couple I've already seen tried: taking a model off the tray and throwing it onto the table; screaming, "No! Don't touch that!")

The answer that makes me laugh the loudest wins.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Separate Checks

Tonight I waited on a party of 10 people, all men, and all seeming to be from out of town, visiting for some kind of convention. They informed me from the start that they'd be ordering on separate checks, a fact that made me a little nervous because I haven't yet had to handle that. But you gotta do it, right?

So they each ordered a beer. Then they each ordered a pasta--that's 10 different pastas. Then five ordered a dessert, while six ordered coffee. In the meantime several had second and even third beers. When it came time to split up their checks I was a mess. I had taken copious notes during their orders, but I wasn't the one who got the second and third beers. I was randomly assigning beers to guys who may or may not have drank them.

In the end there was only one mistake, and it was easily corrected. But here's the fun part: Only two of these 10 guys paid with a debit card. The rest paid with exact change. And I mean change. Eight separate collections of bills and coins. I couldn't bring myself to count each person's money and check it against their bill, so I just collected it all up and handed the stack of tickets to the owner, preemptively apologizing for any short tickets.

"What are these guys?" she asked. "Engineers?"

It could have been a lot worse. The Angry Chef assures me it will be.

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MTV ala NPH: Josh Ritter--"Girl in The War"

With the Waiter Chronicles taking off and an endorsement of a Presidential candidate, things have gotten a little heavy here at NPH. So allow me to introduce a fun new feature: MTV ala NPH.

Each week I'll scour YouTube for the videos of my favorite songs, both present and past. I'll try to add a little background, as I can find it, but mostly I'll just let you watch the video and enjoy the music.

We start this week with Josh Ritter's "Girl in The War," a song--literally--unlike anything you've ever heard. When I first discovered it last winter I listened to it several times a day for about a week, right around Christmas time. On the way to Christmas Eve worship, and on the way back.

This is what Ritter himself said about the song to an audience last year: “It's about a bunch of people talking about problems and not getting past just the talking. So I hope you do.”

Without further adieu:

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Rushkoff Copies NPH (or Vice Versa)

A couple years ago I did a series of posts exploring the genre of werewolf movies.

Now, Douglas Rushkoff has written a wonderful little essay for Discover magazine called, "What You Can Learn from Zombie Movies." I recommend it highly.

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Blogging Biden: Talk Talk Talk

Joe Biden's greatest liability is what I find most appealing about him: his mouth. From threatening to "shove [a veto] down [the President's] throat" to calling Barak Obama the first "articulate" and "clean" African American Presidential candidate, Biden has repeatedly been caught out saying things that a candidate for the country's highest office just can't say.

He's taken his lumps for this. But he's not running away from or apologizing for this tendency. The other night he joked with John Stewart about "long-talkin' Biden," and later said that his mouth was the only thing in Delaware that the Biden's don't control. And he keeps talking. And talking.

Exhibit A: yesterday's interview with Tom Ashbrook of WBUR Boston's "On Point" radio program. If you've listened to Biden in the debates thus far, and if you've caught him on any of the talk shows, then this interview is nothing new; he's not saying things he hasn't said in those other places. But it's magic. It's not your standard stumping. It's a conversation. And most of his public speaking has that feel to it, which I find completely compelling.

I come away from listening to Biden knowing more about Iraq and health care and tax cuts than I did before. You don't just get Biden's stance on these things. You get their context and their nuances--things, unfortunately, that don't carry great weight in campaigns.

But I'm in.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Drup Rep Dinner

The Ristorante and Bar has a private dining room that can accommodate up to 30 people. Often, pharmaceutical companies will host dinners there for local doctors, doctors they are hoping to coerce into prescribing their companies drugs. There's nothing like free food and wine to sway a doctor.

I've worked a few of these now, and the benefits are obvious. First, since it's bound to be a large party, the gratuity is built in at about 18%. Second, since the representative from the drug company is paying, doctors have no squabble about ordering the most expensive wines and entrees on the menu, driving up the bill and, therefore, the tip. The other night a party of 12 doctors and four drug reps rang up $1500 (I knew we were in good shape when one of the doctors asked for a bottle of "the best Cabernet you have"--$99).

But a waiter earns this impressive tip. Aside from the routine stress that attends large parties, these parties bring with them their own unique challenges. For one, there is the challenge of maintaining a charitable view of human nature as you watch people--doctors, no less!--grab for as much free stuff as they can get. It's not uncommon to have one of the doctors, after finishing her $15 appetizer, $30 entree, $10 dessert, and $20 worth of wine, order a Filet Mignon from the kitchen--to go.

Here my background as a Presbyterian minister comes to the rescue. One of the "essential tenets" of Presbyterian theology and polity is a recognition of the human tendency toward "tyranny and idolatry"; uber-wealthy doctors are no different.

Also, these will be among the most demanding diners you will service. Not only with they order obscure cocktails by the tray-load, but they will also ask for more bread. And more bread. And more bread. When it comes time to order, they will rarely order something exactly as it's described in the menu. Instead, some customizing is always in order: "can I get that with mushrooms instead of shrimp? Tell the chef to leave off the pepper. Oh, and add some anchovies to that."

Or leave them off. The other night a gentleman ordered a Caesar Salad with the acknowledgment that he's a vegetarian. But when I brought the salad, topped with two anchovies, he looked at them like they were earthworms. "What is that?" he asked me, pointing to the two small fish like he was terrified to touch them.

"Oh, those are anchovies," I answered.

"I'm a vegetarian"

I knew that. I offered to bring him something else. He didn't want that. I offered to take the anchovies off. There he waffled and looked conflicted, and as he looked around the room for some sympathy, I quickly took his fork and scraped the two anchovies onto his side plate and scooped that plate up. Then I moved on.

He didn't touch the salad.

Finally, there is the specter, for me, of carrying plates and refilling waters while overhearing a big-idea conversation carried on by people who have advanced educations. I'm no doctor (though my wife is), but I used to have those big-idea conversations, buttressed by own advanced degree, although never in a setting like that. Indeed, the greatest difficulty in waiting on a group like this is the desire to be a part of it, to sit around a common table with colleagues and share ideas and challenges. My colleagues would not, I assure you, demand constant baskets of bread.

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Bagging for Biden

A back-to-the-beginning look at NPH's favorite presidential candidate.

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NPH Declares

I've been revealing to friends of late that I like Joe Biden for President.

I'm now declaring it publicly. Look for occasional expositions of the virtues of Biden's candidacy here. For now, enjoy this video:

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The Waiter Chronicles: Jesus for Lunch Winner

The first response was the best:

"I live in awe of the Father and fear of our Lord and Savior and . . . friend Jesus Christ."

"I live in Loma Linda."

Nice job Point of Order.

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The Waiter Chronicles Survey: Having Jesus for Lunch

The owners of the ristorante like to tell their guests that their new waiter is a minister. Or that he's a professor of theology, depending on the guests.

Recently a guest took this news as an invitation. As I was clearing the dishes from his table (he was dining alone), he said, "So you're a minister?"

"Yeah," I answered, slightly embarrassed and concentrating intently on not dropping tapenade all over the floor.

"What denomination?"

"Presbyterian."

He looked reflectively out the window to his right and into the distance. "Well, I live in awe of the Father and fear of our Lord and Savior, and--" he turned to face me now--"friend, Jesus Christ."

Ummm . . . . "Amen?"

Seriously, what do you say when a total stranger makes such a profession of faith? What do they expect you to say?

Here's the challenge for NPH readers: come up with the best response to this guy's faith profession and post it as a comment. One winner will be chosen to receive what I live with every day: the accolades and adoration of the masses.

Get to answering. God is watching.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Bravo

"Bravo, Rocky. I'm very proud of you. You did good."

Those words from the owner capped off a $124 tip night.

I could get used to this.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Protected or Played Revisited

A week after airing my suspicions about Grandpa's and Son-of-Grandpa's directing tables and tips away from and toward themselves, I have concluded that those suspicions were unfounded. Grandpa shared tips with me (roughly half) every day last week, and Son-of-Grandpa is continuing to do that, even as he sends me to more-and-more tables.

Yesterday I took six tables from beginning-to-end during the lunch rush. I took only one table during dinner, but I waited on four others at one point or another while Son-of-Grandpa attended to a six-person drug rep. dinner.

It was at the end of the night as we were leaving that last week's suspicions were given the lie. Son-of-Grandpa handed me what amounted to a 50/50 split of tips. When I, ahem, protested, "You don't have to do that."

"Yeah," he said, "I do. You're getting it."

That felt good.

But today's another day.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Coach Seth Godin

Marketing Guru and blogger extraordinaire Seth Godin wrote a post awhile back about what waiters can teach marketers. I'm interested in what that post can teach me.

The essential point is that when a customer asks for something specific, they have a reason for it and should be listened to. Right now, for me, that's difficult because rather than listening for what they're asking I'm thinking ahead to the angry chef, how he's going to receive their request, and what kind of strain that's going to put on me.

But sometimes it's really simple. Like this guy, last night, who ordered a diet soda. I brought it to him, then, some time later, brought him another. He said to me, "I'm kind of an ice freak. Can you bring me just a glass of ice?"

Things were picking up. A party of 11 people was arriving all at once, and tasks were piling up in my mind. And this guy wants me to get him a glass of ice?

"Sure."

It was no problem, and he demonstrably appreciated it.

Listening is an important skill for a waiter, maybe even as important as for a pastor?

Naaaaahhh.

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Windell Middlebrooks Update

Let's take a quick break from the drama of learning to be a waiter to check in with our famous acquaintence, Windell Middlebrooks. The TV was on at the ristorante bar last night, and his commercial came on, so I looked for him on Facebook.

Friends, I give you the "Windell Middlebrooks Fan Club" on Facebook. Enjoy.

Windell will make an appearance on Entourage this Sunday, August 5th, if you're a fan.

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The Waiter Chronicles: The Week of Reckoning

With Grandpa on vacation, I'm going to get most of his tables, starting today.

Here's how the week looks: double shifts on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and dinner on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

I think it's safe to say that by the end of the week I'll either be a bona fide waiter or I'll be fired.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Grandpa's Vacation

Grandpa leaves for a four-week vacation to Mexico tomorrow. After last night, I won't work with him again for a month.

The restaurant closed a couple of hours early last night, owing to an empty dining room and no reservations. As Son-of-Grandpa and I closed up shop, re-setting places and bringing tables and chairs back inside, I noticed that Grandpa was sitting at the bar. He had changed clothes already. He had been on his way out the door when the owner caught him and made him sit down, where the owner promptly fashioned a place setting for him and pulled up a chair.

A moment later I noticed the chef bringing a plate to serve Grandpa. He set it before him, then asked if he could get him anything else--"some bread? Anything?" Grandpa politely declined and enjoyed his dinner.

I paused in the midst of my busywork to take in the scene. But I quickly turned my glance away and got back to work, thinking only how much Grandpa, in 20 years as a waiter, had earned a moment like that.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Protected or Played

I feel like I took a step backward in my quest to become an excellent waiter today.

During lunch, Grandpa explained to me that I would be the busser while he and the another waiter (his son) would wait the tables. After taking tables on my own for two nights in a row, this announcement burned me. And the more I thought about it, the worse it got. The more I listened to Grandpa and his son commiserate in Spanish, the worse it got.

Those two weasels are conspiring against me to get all the tips.

Now, Grandpa's explanation is that he doesn't want the owner to get upset at me. My recent table-waiting experience has come in his absence, and, now that he's back in the restaurant, Grandpa fears for what might happen if I try to take a table and screw it up. Grandpa says the owner would yell at him. Son-of-Grandpa says Grandpa just doesn't want the owner to yell at me.

So I'm either being protected or played.

If I'm being protected, then how unhealthy of a situation is this? I said to Son-of-Grandpa that there seems to be a pattern at this restaurant of waiters getting hired and fired; he corrects me that the patters is, instead, waiters getting hired and then quitting because they don't want to take the owner's abuse.

"He's Italian," Son-of-Grandpa explains. "He has those words, you know?" He rattles off a few, just in case I've never been sworn at.

I want to believe this scenario. I want to believe that Grandpa is looking out for me. I want to be the kind of person that assumes the best motive in people.

But there's a nagging lack of trust. That wasn't helped by Grandpa's announcement at the end of the night that he wold "pay" me tomorrow for tonight's tips (I helped with all his tables). Of course, I never got to see the checks from those tables, so I have no way of knowing what the tips actually were.

I won't be surprised if he "forgets" about it completely.

Then what?

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The Waiter Chronicles: Angry Chef

"Six months ago I would have kicked your [expletive deleted] ass. Then I would have kicked him out of the restaurant. I didn't train twenty years for this!"

The chef is gesticulating wildly, glaring at me and raising his voice, even as he excuses my taking of a bad order.

The gentleman wanted the antelope, which is served either with a nice porcini mushroom sauce or a lovely fig port wine sauce and comes with some roasted potatoes. The gentleman opted for the fig port wine sauce, only, he didn't want the potatoes, he wanted penne pasta. When asked what kind of sauce he would like on the pasta, he looked confused.

"I thought we decided on that. I said I wanted the fig port wine sauce."

"Oh," I explained, "that sauce comes on the antelope. You can pick a pasta sauce for the penne, like a pomodoro sauce or a carbonara--" he cut me off.

"Let's just do the same sauce on the pasta as is on the antelope."

Now, that seemed weird to me. But I figured I should give the guy what he wanted. Wrong move. As soon as I showed it to the chef, he clenched his fists and exclaimed, "F-ing disguisting!"

Chalk it up to learning: don't let people put a sweet sauce meant for meat on their pasta.

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The Waiter Chronicles: News of Note

Here's a story that applies to me.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Slave To The Schedule

I worked 34 hours last week over six days.

That's not that much. It's not even full-time. But the thing with a job in the service sector is that 36 hours feels like 70, because every one of those hours is an on-your-feet hour.

But this is not pity party. This is an observation about the schedule and the service sector. Not only do service sector hours seem more strenuous, physically, but they're also less constant. It had totally escaped me until last Monday that a waiter's hours are written on a schedule, a schedule that he/she does not create and into which he/she has only minimal input. So last week I worked six days. This week I work four. There are only so many hours to go around, and when you need to get paid . . . you know what I'm getting at.

Then there's this aspect of it: the owner called me this afternoon to tell me that the schedule had been changed. Now I'm working Thursday night, as well as Thursday lunch. I'm also "on call" for Friday night after working Friday lunch. I sounds inconsistent to point up the scarcity of hours in one paragraph and then complain about too many the next, but I've grown accustomed to a body of work that allows me to choose how and when it gets done. This is not that work. As a waiter, your work week gets set for you, and changes to it are to be expected.

What can you do? If you have no other job, how can you say no? I don't feel like I'm in that position, personally, but I'm acutely aware that most of my colleagues are.

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The Waiter Chronicles: Tips for An Off-Day

I don't work at the restaurant again until Wednesday night. This gives me some valuable time to reflect on my first week as a waiter and to offer some insight. I made the remark to Grandpa the other night that learning to be a waiter is like learning a language; there are rules and sequences that have to be observed, yet some of the most important nuggets fall outside those rules. Call them the "irregular verbs" of waiting.

All that being said, learning to be a waiter or learning a language has to be an immersion experience. You have to learn it by being in it and by doing it, not by reading about it. That's stressful. Here are some tips for how to handle learning something completely new, ala immersion.

1. Don't think so much.
it sounds counter-intuitive, but a lot of learning is hampered by your brain. If you can stop trying to analyze the how-to and the grammar of the thing, you'll find the learning happening on its own, without you even knowing it.

2. Go, Go, Go.
The less frequently you stop, the more you learn. This isn't just about diligence, though. It's about keeping your mind and body occupied with the task at hand and disengaging your cerebral cortex a little bit (see #1).

3. There are no stupid questions.
If you're afraid to ask questions, you're DOA. "I" before "E" except when? What's in the tomato sauce? Where do I put my hands? Seriously, if you don't know something, ask somebody. This does two things: first, it builds your knowledge base (slowly but surely); second, it builds relationships. People like to be helpful. Your questions give them an opportunity to do that.

4. Don't ask so many questions or Sin Boldly.
Here's the counterbalance to #3: asking questions can become a substitute for action. Don't let a lack of certainty keep you from diving in. Especially early on, your mistakes will be generously tolerated, especially if they come from a place of boldness and not timidity. The other day the owner lambasted me for the crappy coffee I made him, saying, "If you worked for me in Italy you'd be fired." But then he laughed it off and complemented the fact that I was gutsy enough to try.

5. Sell it, baby.
People don't know you're a novice until you tell them. And as long as you're not over-hyping your knowledge and ability, they won't care when they find out. So act like a pro, not a novice. Look like you know what you're doing. That starts with the most fundamental suspension of disbelief, your own. Convince yourself that you do speak Botswanian. You won't inspire the confidence of others if you don't have confidence in yourself, even if that confidence has no basis in reality. And, especially in the service industry, it's about the confidence of others. People might sympathize with a waiter who excuses himself--"Oh, I'm new at this"--but they won't like it.

If I can do it, so can you.

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The Waiter Chronicles Survey

This weekend, I'd like to know the mind of NPH readers on a simple matter pertaining to the art of waiting tables:

What are the qualities that separate the good waiters/waitresses from the great ones?

Speed? Courtesy? Cool hair?

Let me know what you think!

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The Waiter Chronicles (part 6)

Everybody is speaking Spanish and Italian. It cuts off a choice avenue of learning, the conversations of those who know what they're doing. But since they're not talking to each other in a language I can understand, it doesn't do me any good. Plus, it makes me feel like they're talking about me.

Broken glass count: holding steady at 2.

Most of my time was taken today in helping Grandpa attend to a table of 16. That's crazy enough, but these folks were from the local art museum. Let's say they were avant-garde in their ordering, like it would be pedestrian to order something exactly as it appears on the menu. One person doing that is to be expected, maybe even two or three in a group like that. But over half of them had some special request for their order. Needless to say, some of them got screwed up.

Towards the end of lunch, two guys came in for a business lunch. I waited on them the entire time, from beginning to end, collecting a nice $5 tip. I've lost my tip-innocence.

I work dinner tomorrow night, then I'm off for three straight days.

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The Waiter Chronicles (part 5) redux: Time on Waiters

Waiterrant.net links to this Time Magazine article written last month. Here's the money quote:

A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, Unregulated Work in the Global City, documents a disturbing pattern of health and safety violations, wage inequities, and other indignities that plague a surprisingly broad swath of low-wage urban laborers.

The wage inequities interests me, because I don't have any idea what my co-workers make. The men and women who assist the chef in the kitchen and who wash the dishes--I don't even know their names, and I wouldn't be able to converse with them even if I did.

Apart from one of the owners, I am the only non-Mexican, non-Italian white person on the staff. That fact has already caused the other owner to have me checking phone messages and calling to confirm reservations (he also has taken to calling me "The Professor," seemingly because I went to grad. school).

The seedy side of restaurant staffing will not be far to find here, I'm afraid.

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The Waiter Chronicles (part 5): Google Search--Waiter

A simple Google search for the term waiter turns up a number of interesting and helpful entries:

The Wikipedia Waiter Entry: "Waiting on tables is one of the most common occupations in the U.S. (along with nursing, and teaching). The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that, as of May 2005, there are over 2.2 million persons employed as waiters and waitresses in the U.S."

The WikiHow Waiter Entry: "When starting out, you're lucky to be training with someone who takes the time to show you the ropes." Thank God for "Grandpa." Also this: "Don't let one mistake trip you up the whole night. If you let one bad thing get to you, you'll slip up more and more. Just shake it off, take a breather, and move on."

The SoYouWanna Waiter Entry: "It doesn't matter if you have to make six trips from the kitchen to the table. Your customers may get annoyed, but they'll be a lot more annoyed if you spill scalding New England clam chowder into their groins."

The California Employee Development Department Waiter Entry: "Over the next ten years, there will be more job opportunities for Waiters and Waitresses than for any other kind of job in California." That explains a lot.

The Workjoke.com Waiter Entry: " A waiter brings the customer the steak he ordered with his thumb over the meat.
"Are you crazy?" yelled the customer, "with your hand on my steak?"
"What" answers the waiter, "You want it to fall on the floor again?"

Waiterrant.net: A great Q&A blog about all things waiter-related.

"My Week As A Waiter" by Frank Bruni of the New York Times: "In addition to dexterity, poise and a good memory, a server apparently needs to be able to read minds."

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The Waiter Chronicles (Part 4)

There's a waiter at the restaurant that everybody calls "Grandpa." He's been a waiter for over 20 years in Italian restaurants and has even run his own. He lets me follow him around, taking drink orders at his tables. I did that for awhile today, but when it started to get busy near the end of lunch, with people coming and going at the same time, I drifted away from him and focused on getting the tables cleared and re-set. There's another relatively new guy who's been showing me how that all works, so I jumped in to help him.

After lunch was over, Grandpa approached me and said, "Let me ask you this: do you want to be a waiter in training or a bus boy?" I put my hand on his shoulder and looked straight into his face to answer.

"A waiter. Definitely a waiter."

"Then you need to stay with me and let [the other new guy] bus the tables."

A little confused, I asked, "Isn't he a waiter in training too?"

"Yes, but . . ." his voiced trailed off. I picked it up again as he was stressing, "You have to tell [the owner], 'I'm ready. Give me some tables.'"

It seems like Grandpa is trying to take me under his wing and then push me out of the nest. Tomorrow I stick to his side and mimic his every move.

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It's A Good Sign, But . . .

Alana Semuels has a story in today's LA Times about junk food companies, including Coca-Cola and Hershey, who have publicly taken a voluntary pledge to stop advertising their products to kids. Sort of.

The pledge restricts television ads on shows aimed at kids 12 and younger. The problem is that kids watch a lot more on TV than those shows.

Critics of the move have no faith in food companies to look out for the wellbeing of kids at all. here's the money quote:

"We shouldn't be counting on the food industry to safeguard public health," said Susan Linn, a Harvard professor and co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. "Corporations are bound by law to increase shareholder profits, not to promote the well-being of children."

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The Waiter Chronicles (part 3)

Broken glass count: 2.

Ahhhh . . .

Today is a double shift, so I worked lunch and I have to go back in an hour and a half. Nothing broken, no humiliating mistakes today--so far.

The owner of this restaurant has me torn. One minute his Italian accent and machismo is hilarious and endearing, the next minute he's demeaning. I'm not worried about staying on his good side as an employee at all; he's an adult, and I'm adult, so we're peers. I'm just trying to figure out if spending this time in his employ is making me a better person or a bitter one (hat tip: Alan Wang).

I stopped at the Maxi Foods on my walk home just now for some tortilla chips. When I came out of the store there were cop cars speeding down the street toward my apartment. I got within a block from home, and the whole street was full of police cars, fire trucks, and an ambulance. There was a helicopter circling overheard and police officers with handguns drawn surrounding a house not 100 yards from my front door. Some kind of shooting had taken place, and the shooter was still in the house and armed.

I stared for a moment, but then was shaken out of it by the officer on the porch of the house next door. He was squatting with an M4 rifle and he said to me and the other lookers on, "You guys better get back a bit. We're not hiding here with big guns for nothing."

That was all I needed. I crossed the street and walked the rest of the way home. Don't they know I have another shift in less than two hours? I got to get off my feet, eat some chips and guacamole, check my email to see if that editor is going to publish my article, and watch an episode of 30 Rock.

Can somebody tell that helicopter to keep it down?

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The Waiter Chronicles (part 2)

Let's start with the broken glass count, which is now at a smashing 2. Luckily, this one went cascading off a tray right square in the middle of the dining room. In an effort to grab it, I knocked the whole tray over, sending glass bottles and silverware onto the floor. How they didn't break I'll never know.

I avoided eye contact for the rest of the day.

Here's what's good about a community: when you're a part of a community, you can do things like drop glasses and smear red tapenade on clean napkins, things that reveal you to be a hopeless clutz, and people simply accept it as part of who you are. Okay, maybe it's not that simple, but it's exponentially better than making a fool of yourself in front of complete strangers. Because with those people, what you just did is just about all they know about you. They have no reason not to think you're a jackass.

It occurred to me as I walked home this afternoon that I don't need this. Ten years ago I would have seen it as a test of character. I would have regarded the breaking glasses and the raging inferiority complex as a sort of challenge to be overcome. To ingratiate myself to those people by proving myself minimally competent, even good, at what I was hired to do would have become a measure of my abilities. I would endure it to prove to myself that I could. But I don't need to do that anymore. I don't need to prove anything to myself, at least not as it pertains to balancing dishes on a tray. I so don't need this.

Only I do. Because otherwise I'm unemployed, and somehow that seems worse than this. But not by much.

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