The Waiter Chronicles: Last Day (redux)

By 1:00 the dining room was dead, so I took off my tie and apron and printed my batch report. Fifteen dollars on three tables: bad. Really bad. So bad that I take a moment to feel some sympathy for Grandpa, Pepe, and Junior. This is what I'm leaving them.

A couple parties of two wandered in a little after 1:00. Grandpa could handle them with his eyes closed, but something sentimental inside made me re-don my apron and take "one last table." Easy stuff. A pizza, a ravioli, coke, iced tea. The women linger over their lunch, and as they do I'm thinking ahead to the rest of the afternoon. I texted Pepe earlier to come up and see me, but he never responded. Oh well.

The rear doorbell rings, and around the back corner comes Junior and What (as we've come to call one of the bussers). Pepe follows soon after, and it becomes clear that they're here for a reason. Finally, the other Owner arrives, windblown from a motorcycle ride from the city, and places are set around table 43. Wine glasses are set and appetizers are ordered.

It's a lunch. The Owners, the waiters, the bussers, and me. I'm choking on the realization.

Pepe asks me what I want to eat, and I tell him, "Whatever you think I should have."

"You ever had the lamb shank?" he asks.

"No." He turns resolutely to the computer and taps in the order, grinning and eagerly pulling at the few hairs that protrude from his chin.

I clock out and ceremoniously return my card to The Owner, who receives it with a broad smile. We all sit and enjoy a fabulous lunch. The Owners have a gift for "la bambina": a pair of baby booties and a Target gift card. I'm touched.

The Owner mandates that I will say a blessing over the capasante, gamberi con fagioli, and calamari that Nando (the other busser) is placing on the table. This is a dear thing about him that I have loved from the beginning. A man of deep skepticism and loud objections to institutional religions, he has a fixed insistence upon the celestial order of things and our part in petitioning the heavens. His pleas for me to pray for him stopped seeming like jokes months ago.

I return thanks for good friends and good gifts, and I ask God's blessings on all of us in the days ahead. At the "Amen," Pepe feigns emotion, placing a clenched fist to his chest and moaning through pursed lips. I pat his shoulder and laugh. All that's left to do is to enjoy the table. Tell funny stories, laugh over-zealously, and pour more wine. It's beautiful, and I don't deserve it.

It's a living tableau of grace, given to the clumsy by the Hell-bent, and shared among people who, months ago, had no reason to care about the existence of one another. When the wife unexpectedly arrives to join in, it can't get any better.

And so it doesn't.

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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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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: 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: 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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