The Worst Kind of A$$hole...

So, you know how, as a writer, you sometimes conceptualize an idea as being better or more interesting in your head, than it is on paper...?
(I mean, maybe you don't; after all, I'm the one with the blog that you're hopefully reading...) Well, that happened with what was to be my next post, "There Are No Darlings Here..." Suffice it to say, I went to my new favourite wine bar and as accosted by this agro, gay, server guy. It's not really important that he was gay or agro; the funny part was my buddy the bartender who informed him, "there are no darlings here," upon being called that.
So, anyway, this little rant comes to you courtesy of the Late-Night Menu at the restaurant I'm currently working at. I've never really seen the need for a late-night menu at most restaurants, because the man-hours usually outweigh the covers. But, whatever. You gotta do what you gotta do, right?
This past Friday, I ended up having to work the late-night shift. It's not important that I wasn't scheduled to work that night; or that a good buddy of mine who lives in Japan was going to be in town for the night and wanted to catch up...or the fact that I found out I was going to have to work the late-night about 10 minutes before I was about to pull up stakes; or the fact that after we got absolutely crushed for dinner service, we were dead from about 11:30, on; or that I was told by "Management," that if we remained dead, we would have last call for food at 1:15. What I feel is important: is the couple that walked in the door at 12:05, sat down, ordered a couple rounds of drinks and made every indication that they were there to drink, and not to eat.
The joke, it would seem, was on me. Because around 12:45, they began to look at the menu, which they followed up by closing the menu, and then followed up by asking the waitress if they could substitute certain things on the menu. Well, as my bartender buddy LPD said when I told him this story, "it's one o'clock in the fucking morning, just order something and be done with it!"
After they had perused the menu for the third time and still hadn't ordered anything, I asked our waitress, perhaps a little too loudly, "are these fucking people going to order some food, or what?!?!" Was there a better way of asking the question? Should I have been cognizant of the fact that if I could make out their hushed conversation, then odds were good they could hear my angry comment? Should I have been happy to have a job? Yes, on all accounts. But honestly, if you walk into a restaurant that you're lucky enough has a late night menu, then order some fucking food. Don't sit down at a table and drink for an hour, and then decide you're hungry, because if you do that, you're the worst kind of asshole. Look, I get it. It’s a restaurant, it’s open late, it’s my job. I understand all of those things. But there’s nothing more maddening than standing on the hot line, in a virtually empty restaurant, after you’ve already been there for 12 hours, watching two people actively not interested in ordering food, only to change their minds five minutes before last call.
I guess what I’m saying here, is don’t be a douche. If you walk into a dead bar at 3 in the morning, odds are pretty good the bartender probably isn’t going to stay open until 4 while you drink fucking ginger ale. So if you walk into a dead restaurant, what makes you think you’ve got unlimited time to order some food off the menu? Bars and restaurants are in the business of making money. There’s no money to be made by people not walking in the door. And there’s very little money to be made by two people walking in the door, not ordering food, and then no one else walking in after them.
Basically, I was pissed, and I think I had a right to be pissed. But I’ll concede the fact that I could’ve been a little less vocal in my pissedoffness.
But seriously, when you walk into a restaurant, especially late at night; don’t be an asshole…

Next Up:

My descent into bacon fat, and the dangers of popcorn obsession…

* Note: That's not the ticket from what they ordered, it's from an old restaurant when four high kids came in and ordered dessert and apps and a snack all at the same time...

G-E-T S-O-M-E, or Comeuppance is a Bitch

So, I've got a buddy who's a pretty good cook in his own right. We both finished culinary school around the same time and have taken similar paths, thus far, in our careers. That is to say, both of us have tried to work for well respected chefs, in solid kitchens; while shying away from the dying world of "Haute Cuisine," with the likes of Per Se, Daniel, Le Cirque, &c. This isn't so much "his story," as it is, a story about him...
A few months ago, he reaches out to me and asks if we can get a drink after service. I didn't think much of it at the time, just figured he'd had a shitty service, and wanted a sympathetic ear to bounce his frustration off of. By the time I got to the bar, he was already there, a thousand yard look in his eyes and a glass of Eagle Rare in front of him. After we exchanged pleasantries, he wasted little time in getting to the point.
"So, you guys need a fuckin' line cook, or what?"
As it happens, he had; that very same night; been fired from the restaurant he had recently given notice too.
To hear him tell it, they got a new chef at the restaurant and the guy was, for lack of a better word, a prick. He apparently came in, badmouthed the way things used to be done and told the staff on his second first official night there, “if you guys don’t want to be here, let’s find that out now.” Now, that’s all well and good, but I’d say it’s kinda tough for someone to tell whether or not their boss is going to turn into an alcoholic psycho after working with them for about eight hours…but I’m jumping ahead.
Apparently, their new chef had no idea what he was actually getting himself into, had a big chip on his shoulder and didn’t know how to expedite tickets. This means that servers would regularly stop by the pass to alert him that teams were ready for their second courses; but that the information was never passed on to the people who actually needed to be cooking the food. So my buddy tells me that the entire kitchen staff sized this guy up and started talking about putting in their two week’s notice; but that no one actually pulled the trigger. Then one night, my buddy got kicked off the line. I don’t know why, he didn’t say why; but called it, “a whole bunch of bullshit.” He said he put in his notice the very next day and three days later, there he was, sitting next to me getting drunk on bourbon.
So I asked him to back up and say that there must have been some signs leading up to the point that brought us to those bar stools. He said no, but “get this. When that asshole canned my ass, he followed me outside and got in my face!”
This in-and-of-itself isn’t all that surprising. Kitchens are high stress environments, and sometimes people say things in a “heat of battle,” I get that. I can even understand a chef yelling at a former employee; even though at that point just let it go...
This guy didn’t let it go. My buddy told me this prick got in his face and apparently called him: “a whiny little bitch,” a “punk,” a “little fucker who should rethink the profession,” “to be careful” and apparently even went so far as to stick a finger in his chest and ask, “do you want a fucking piece of me?” I was especially pissed by all of this, although I can only imagine how my buddy felt. The thing that I didn’t say that night, but have told mutual friends when we’ve discussed the story is that it was especially uncool of this guy to threaten my buddy’s future employment by telling him to rethink the profession and to watch out. Those things, to me: sound like the kind of things you say to someone before you start badmouthing them all over town…
Long story short, I talked to my buddy about a week ago, to see how his job search was going and he said it was going slowly, but that he had been given a bit of good news. “Remember that asshole who fired me? They fired him about a week and a half ago!”
While I’m never happy to hear about someone losing their job, I told my buddy it couldn’t have happened to a better person than that guy….


Special thanks to my buddy (Name Redacted) for letting me tell this story.


Next up: There Are No Darlings Here...

And maybe an Banana Pudding recipe.