Yearly Archives: 2012

I should start a blog where I only write stuff about waiting tables. But what would I call it?

I work in a restaurant, so naturally every time I sit down to write something, the first thing that pops in my mind is something about the business, something about waiting tables. But I don’t want to be that guy. There’s a really talented guy who writes about waiting tables, and he did it already, he wrote all about it. I’m pretty sure I don’t have anything novel to add to the conversation. But still, I spend a good chunk of my waking day serving food, and sometimes it just begs to leak out onto the page.

So I’m thinking about maybe, just this once, letting myself write some restaurant stuff. But everything that’s coming to mind immediately sounds so boring, so tired. I’d say trite, but that word is really trite. Everything is just going to come off as whiny. It’s one thing to write about stuff in a funny way, but I’m worried that once I get started on the little things I feel I need to get off my chest, it’s going to snowball into this giant Death Star of bitterness.

How do I do it without sounding too angry? How do I do it without giving everybody a huge lecture on how to behave at a restaurant? Because nobody wants that. I get it, you don’t go out to eat for the benefit of the staff; you go out to eat for your own enjoyment. And so even after I complain to myself in my head about certain things that bug me, another voice in my head starts saying stuff like, “Well, it’s your job. If you hate it that much quit. Or stop complaining.” And I hate it when that side of me butts into my inner monologue, and I get even angrier.

But a lot of my troubles all boil down to the fact that there really isn’t a cohesively American restaurant etiquette. Everything, little things, big things, they might all be done differently at different restaurants. Don’t pay your waiter, pay at the register. Don’t pay at the register, pay your waiter. You have to ask for extra here. Over here you don’t ask, it’s automatic. I recently switched restaurants, and I’m just shocked at some of these differences in the way service is carried out. At my old restaurant, I had my section, my tables, everybody had to go through me. And there were benefits to this, like I knew exactly what I had to do and I could figure out how to prioritize my actions in the short term. All while keeping my head above water and trying to make some money. I mean, that’s the idea.

But at this new restaurant everybody is supposed to be available to anybody. So a random customer asks me for a Coke and now I have to get it. At my old restaurant I would have just pretended not to see him waving. I’m only kidding. Sort of. I joke around about how I can be this huge dick, but really I had my own little tasks that I had to take care of, and so pretending not to see him was actually nicer than the alternative, me just kind of saying to this guy who wanted a Coke, “Your waiter’s coming right over.”

But customers don’t know how the staff operates from restaurant to restaurant. And the guy just wanted a Coke. Maybe he was really thirsty. I hate that whole, “I’m not your waiter,” business, even when I was working at that old restaurant and I had to do it every ten seconds. Who hasn’t ever found themselves sitting at a table for way too long without a drink? It happens. But customers get cranky and the staff gets upset for the customer getting pushy and, ultimately, if he or she is pissed off enough, they won’t get a good tip.

Tipping. It’s a pretty crazy way for people to make a living. It’s all so arbitrary. What do you do about that table that received great service but still only left fifteen percent, or less? And why? Why did they cheap out on the tip? Because they’re allowed to. Because restaurants don’t have to pay their staff a decent wage, they can leave it to the discretion of the customer. And a lot of the time customers are jerks. Why pay more when I can pay less? I’m giving myself a discount on the dinner, and in life, by being a bad tipper.

What’s the theory behind this, that without the expectation of a tip, the waiter or waitress wouldn’t work as hard, right? Let me tell you, it’s total bullshit. If I knew that I were to receive an automatic twenty percent from every check, everybody would be having a more pleasant dining experience. Because I wouldn’t be stressed out over a tip. I wouldn’t be trying way too hard to be fake nice or running around the floor like a crazy person, trying to show all of the customers how hard I’m working. I would just be chill, relaxed, and I’d perform my duties with a lot less nervous energy.

And another reason why tipping is detrimental. I don’t know about other servers, but I can only take so much disappointment in one shift. After three or four shitty tips, I basically just lower the level of work that I’m putting in for the rest of the night. Because I’ve worked hard already for money that just wasn’t coming in. Why bother? Just shift into autopilot and keep that mediocre money flowing in.

But nobody wants to hear this stuff. That’s why I’m not going to write about it. Except this one anecdote. Really quick. The other night I had these two women who refused to leave the restaurant. It was like an hour and a half past closing and I was the only waiter left, because I had to wait for them to leave so I could clean the table. Finally I begged the manager to kick them out and he eventually approached the table. They knew right away, they were like, “Yeah, yeah, we know …” and got their coats on and left. And I was just standing there, holding back the explosive rage inside, wanting them to turn around and see the look on my face as I wiped down their table, tell them thanks a lot for their shitty twelve percent tip. But I can’t do that. Waiters are strictly prohibited from being rude to a customer, even if they were rude to you by not paying you what you were owed. “Don’t you dare talk that way to a customer! Or look at them funny! Smile! Now! We’ll fire you! We pay you a special minimum wage, special in the fact that it’s comically lower than regular minimum wage, which is already comically low in and of itself, to be nice and friendly and subservient and obedient!”

And they didn’t look back anyway. They were just oblivious to my existence, not a care in the world regarding the fact that, not only did they waste my time, but they didn’t even pay me enough for the job I did for them. That’s how this works. You don’t get table service at McDonald’s so you don’t have to tip. In any other profession you complain if your employer doesn’t give you all of your money. But waiters have to stand there and smile. “See you next time! Get home safe! You forgot your doggy bag miss! Wouldn’t want to forget those two shrimp!” Come on. Who sits in a restaurant that long? Get a life. Go out to a bar. You’re just going to sit? Can’t you sit somewhere else? Like at home? Don’t they realize that other people want to get to their homes, get some sleep? Just completely inconsiderate of other human beings. It’s unimaginable.

See? That was way too bitter. I’m scowling right now. I think I’ve aged a whole month in like half an hour. I could never do this, the whole writing about being a waiter gig, because I can’t even make it funny. It just gets dark. And I don’t want to be dark. I don’t want to complain. Nobody wants to read it. Everybody’s got to work. I wouldn’t want to read somebody writing about how much it sucks to be an accountant, how these idiots come in at tax time and have no idea how to manage their own numbers, these jokes of human beings who didn’t save any receipts or bring any of the papers they were told to bring in order to have their returns processed properly. That would be super lame. And I would get pissed, thinking, hey, that accountant is talking about me. I’m not stupid. And so I’d stop reading. And I’d probably stop going to him for my taxes.

I’ll only accept the best

What can I say? I have expensive tastes. I have a palate that demands the finest things in life. Luxury automobiles, small-batch whiskies, vintage wines and exotic pets. I’m not just going to sit back and accept life by the Kraft Single. No I want the whole block. I want it to have been hanging in some rural house in Southern Italy for the better part of a decade, carefully tended to by some second generation Italian-American immigrant’s grandmother, making sure that when the cheese importer stops by later in the season to see how the batch is progressing, he’ll make faces of disgust, reaming her out in Italian, telling her that his customers, me, won’t accept anything less than the very best, most artfully crafted cheeses. He’ll spit on the floor and walk out in disgust before finding an even more rustic Southern Italian cheese maker, and he’ll buy the whole thing in bulk, whereupon he’ll chop it up into little wedges and sell them to the most world-renowned cheese shops in America. And that’s where I’ll get my cheese, really expensive, a really sophisticated cheese. I don’t eat grilled cheese sandwiches, I eat cheese in little blocks, little chunks, skewered by ivory toothpicks, and no, they’re not reusable, I still throw them out. I don’t give a shit if ivory is endangered, blah blah blah trafficking, blah blah blah poaching. Get me a fucking elephant, chop its fucking tusks off, and make me some fucking ivory toothpicks. Now. What do you think I’m joking? You’re fired. Get the hell out of my house. You want a recommendation? Sure, hand me a platinum plated pen. No not that one, the good one you moron. Throw that other one away. In the garbage. Here goes:

Dear potential employer: I see that my previous groundskeeper is looking for employment. Do me a favor. Not only should you not hire this no-good lousy incompetent piece of garbage, but see if you can’t rough him up a little while you’re throwing his sorry ass off your property. Don’t read this out loud, because he might get scared and take off running. If you’re already reading this out loud, just starting hitting him right now before he totally makes a break for it. If he calls the police, tell them he was trespassing. Tell them he stole my platinum pen. The shitty one. I know he stole it. That son of a bitch. Read that part out loud, so he doesn’t get any ideas about calling the cops.

Tomorrow I think I’ll wake up and have some caviar for breakfast. Some whale caviar. Well I don’t care if whales aren’t fish. Get me some unfertilized whale eggs before I really start to lose my patience. Yes, of course I just fired you, and do you think I’ll ever rehire you if you’re just standing around not doing what I’m telling you to do? Just get me some goddamn breakfast. I’m starving. I don’t care what time it is. I’ll have breakfast when I want breakfast.

One time somebody was reading me the newspaper. The article was about how a fisherman off the coast of Africa caught an unusual specimen that hadn’t been seen in centuries. Aristotle wrote of it, but scholars had assumed it had long gone extinct, until now. I wanted this fish. I needed it. I wanted to make the world’s most expensive fishamajig sandwich out of it. I wanted to harvest its eggs to spread on toast for a mid afternoon snack. None of my dimwitted employees could get me that fish. “What if it’s a male fish?” one of those idiots asked when I told them I wanted the eggs. Well then sample its DNA, clone it, keep breeding it and manipulating its genes until you have a fish that can get me some rare caviar. Why is it so difficult to do as I say? I fired half a dozen employees that day. One of them had a pregnant wife. Or so he claimed, as he was begging to me, pleading for his job, pleading for his family. It was pathetic. I’ve never seen a grown man cry so hard, like a little baby. I beat him up good on the way out. I taunted him, go ahead, call the police. Then when the police came I showed them all of the ivory toothpicks, I made it out like he brought them to my house from whatever country he immigrated from. I hired the most expensive lawyers to go after him, to throw the book at him. Just saying that gave me a great idea. I went to my library and fetched my first edition leather bound copies of Europe’s greatest writers and poets, Keats, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and I threw all of those books at him, pummeling him, until he was good and bloody, and then I hired even more expensive lawyers, prosecuting him, defamation of some of western civilization’s most expensive works of literature, crimes against humanity.

I can’t believe the police, those sniveling toads, they just stood there and watched me bludgeon this jerk with my heaviest books. Even they were scared of me. Note to self: by more Wordsworth. Note to self: Buy more policemen to work at my house. Note to self: I’m serious, write these notes down! Who do you think I’m talking to! Stop standing around like an idiot and write this down! Every single word! Get me some cheese and fish eggs! I want a snack! Right this second!

Seven hundred and eighty six

Sometimes you just have to sit down at the computer and type. That’s what I do when I can’t think of anything to write about. I think about sixty percent of my blog posts start the same exact way every time. Something about how I don’t know what to write about, and then it usually leads to something else, and then eventually I wind up with a big chunk of text that I can put up on the Internet. I should probably just wait until the whole blog post is finished, and then come back and erase the first paragraph. It really doesn’t add to anything, right? But then I feel like I’ll be losing something, something that’s unique about my writing. And I’m also superstitious, like if I start deleting the, “I don’t know what to write about,” words, then they’ll lose their magic, and as I continue to write in the future, they won’t work at all, and I really won’t have anything to write about.

Everybody’s heard of that John Cage song where it’s just silence for four and a half minutes, right? I wish that I could do something like that. Like I’ll write a book but it’ll just be blank pages. And everyone will applaud me and ridicule me at the same time, which is fine, I’ll take the ridicule, as long as I’m famous, as long as they talk about me in high schools in the future.

But most people will only look at the first twenty or so pages of my blank book and they’ll dismiss it, think it’s just a novelty, a fad. But my real fans will actually read the book, they’ll look at each blank page and they’ll lick their fingers and turn the pages and really try to understand what I was trying to say by putting out such an unorthodox piece. And then they’ll get to page fifty. There won’t be any page numbers either, so they’ll have to be keeping count. But that shouldn’t really be a problem because there won’t be any text to distract them.

And they’ll turn the page and it’ll say “Page Fifty. Congratulations.” Because there actually will be text, and there will be a whole book written inside. But I won’t want just anybody reading my masterpiece. I won’t want my work to be cheapened by mass consumption. And so that’s what I’ll be after by starting the book halfway through. I’ll pretend to write a book with no words but … yeah, you get it right?

But then what if word spreads about my book, that it really starts on page fifty? People would buy the book and then flip right to where the writing starts, bypassing my trick, skipping past all of those blank pages. And it would have the opposite effect, because people hate being tricked or told what to do. And so by me making it harder for people to read, they’ll naturally gravitate to it more, in defiance of my plan.

But that won’t happen either, because at the end of my book I’ll tell readers not to tell anybody else about what they’ve read, to keep it a secret, something between the reader and me. But what if they tell people before they get to that part? Well I’ll just have to make sure that whatever I wind up writing is so compelling that the reader is unable to put the book down, that the whole thing will get read in one sitting. But what if the book is lying out on a coffee table and some guy starts absentmindedly flipping through all of the pages, accidentally coming across my text? Well then I’ll just have to push the start of the book back even further, one hundred pages of blank text, five thousand pages. You’ll really have to get through it.

I’ve never listened to that John Cage song. I don’t even know the real title. I just know that the title is how long the blank track is. I don’t think anybody’s ever listened to it. It’s too boring. Why would you go through all of the motions of pressing play when there’s nothing that’ll ever come out of the other end? I bet you Cage tricked everybody just like I would have. I bet you after a minute or two of empty noise he starts up with a song or a speech. He has to. He’s like, “Hey everybody. This is D-D-D-D-D-DJ Johnny C. coming at ya with a secret track. But don’t go telling anybody, you hear?”

I just tried to listen to the whole thing on Youtube, but I only made it through fifteen seconds. It’s really boring.

I’m kind of a daredevil

That guy just jumped from orbit. Everybody’s calling him a professional daredevil. I guess I have to give some credit where it’s due; I would never even jump out of a plane, so imagining this guy riding a balloon up into outer space and then just jumping off. Well, it’s causing me to have a physical reaction. But daredevil. Without detracting from his accomplishment, I think the word daredevil is being completely manhandled here. I’ve always considered myself a daredevil of sorts, but now all I’m reading about is how this guy is a daredevil, and it’s making me feel like less of a daredevil knowing that I’d never put on a spacesuit and do what he did.

But there are a lot of things that I’ve done that I bet you Mr. Professional Daredevil would never consider. Like one time last summer, I went to a bar with my friends. After a few drinks we went out to their patio out back to enjoy the afternoon weather. The table we sat at was made of planks of wood nailed together. One of my friends said, “Ew gross,” and pointed to a gap in between two of the planks. A single french-fry was wedged right in the crack. It looked like it had been there forever. And it was a really hot summer, so this thing looked double-fried by the sun. So I picked up out of the crack and ate it. And I didn’t even get sick. I’d love to see the jumping Joe or whatever his name is try something like that. He’d probably make one of those fake gag-reflex sounds and then insist on finding a new table.

But try telling that to Red Bull, to CNN. There’s no way anybody over there is paying attention to any of my emails. The whole world thinks that this guy is a daredevil. And so I guess I lost. It just kind of sucks because I always thought that while professional basketball player, Mr. Senator, and Your Excellency were all titles that would be forever out of my reach, I could always take comfort in the fact that I had my own title, that I could always look in the mirror and say to my reflection, “Looking good daredevil.”

I’ve pulled off plenty of stunts that could have warranted their own Internet specials. Like one time I ran across a highway. Or another time I ate thirty dogs in an hour and a half. Or this other time I … I can’t remember everything right now. There’s too much stuff that I’ve done. And besides, I feel like if I’m forced to list everything off, like a list, it just sounds too cheap, like I’m trying too hard to prove how much of a daredevil I really am.

All I’m saying is, I used to call myself a daredevil. And now I can’t because this guy totally upstaged me. It’s just how I used to call myself an artist. One time I did this painting. It took me forever. I thought it was pretty good. But then a few weeks later this rich mega couple draped the entirety of Central Park in curtains. “Oh that?” they told the news media, “We’re artists.”

But really, I have no idea how that guy floated up there. One time I was at this college upstate and there was this really weird looking building. On one side there was a dent in one of the walls. It was a planned dent; it wasn’t a defect or anything. I’m just having trouble describing it. It was an indent in the wall, maybe three feet in and four feet across and it ran all the way straight up. Anyway, I pressed my body in there and pushed my arms and legs to both sides to the point where I was off the ground, just pressed in between this indent. And I started climbing up, really slowly. And I got up to like fifteen feet and I just got freaked out, just imagining the possibility of me climbing all the way up to the top, and then getting even more freaked out, to the point where I couldn’t even move, where I couldn’t come down, and everybody on the ground would eventually call campus security, and they’d have to call the fire department, and what if while I was waiting up there to be rescued, what if I ran out of strength and slipped? Because I don’t think I could maintain a position like that indefinitely. And this was all in my head. In reality I was only maybe twelve feet off the ground, and I started freaking out, and I couldn’t come down. I was stuck.

But I felt pretty dangerous there. Kind of like a daredevil.

Go ahead and try not to laugh

I love it when I make a bad joke but somebody laughs anyway. It’s like when you go to a restaurant and you don’t enjoy your meal at all, but you don’t say anything, because that’s not something that you normally do, but the waiter can totally tell, he can see just by the look on your face, he knows because he knows the menu, and he knew that you probably shouldn’t have ordered that dish in the first place, but he didn’t object, and why would he? It’s not in his job description to discourage people from ordering food. But still, he feels bad, and he wants a tip, so he knocks it off the bill. The food sucked, but you still ate, so you’re not hungry anymore, and it was free.

All the time I’m thinking of stupid jokes to say, especially when I’m around other people, but a lot of the time I get so excited by the idea of me telling a joke or trying to be funny that I’ll start laughing to myself even before I’ve opened my mouth. It’s terrible, because I’ve drawn attention to myself. And I’ll calm myself down to the point where I think I can give it another try, but usually, especially if it’s a really funny joke, maybe twenty-five percent of the way through I’ll start laughing again. At this point I have no choice but to try to finish, so I press on, and somebody else will eventually start laughing, and they’ll say, “Rob, I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” And that’s kind of like that free meal. I was looking for a laugh and I got one.

Or sometimes I’ll just fire off joke after joke, none of them funny at all, and finally after like the sixth or seventh try, somebody will laugh. And it won’t be a fake laugh, either. It’ll be like a, “I can’t believe he’s still talking, still making bad jokes,” kind of laugh. Which I’ll still take. It’s even better if I’m laughing to myself throughout all of these bad jokes, because then I’m not just getting laughs for telling bad jokes, but it’s more of a performance, a funny little show that I’m imagining I’m putting on for everybody else.

It’s kind of like this one time when I went golfing with my friends and after the third hole it started to rain. So we went back to the clubhouse and the guy gave us most of our money back. And then we sat at the clubhouse bar and drank beer for like three hours. It wasn’t exactly what we were going for, but we still had a great time.

Would you believe me if I told you that one time I golfed a hole-in-one? Of course you wouldn’t. And it didn’t happen. But imagine you were golfing with me and I was loudly insisting on shooting a hole-in-one all day. The first joke you’d probably try to ignore, maybe give me a polite smile. The second time you’d think to yourself that I can’t be serious, that I maybe I should just give it a rest. But halfway through the course I’d just find more and more blatant ways to throw them in there. You’d eventually cave. You’d have to laugh. We’d drive up to the green and I’d say, “Hey, did anybody see where my ball went?” and everyone would pretend not to pay attention. And then I’d move closer to the green and start saying stuff like, “No. It can’t be. I don’t believe it. Guys!” and then I’d rush over to the hole and I’d bend down and I’d slip my hand in my pocket to take out a ball and I’d put my hand in the hole, pretending to pull it out, and I’d look around to everyone else with a face of mock surprise. But I’d have a stupid smirk on my face the whole time, so clearly full of shit, and everyone else would be trying not to laugh, because I’d already done the same exact joke on every single hole, and nobody thought it was funny the third or fourth time, so why laugh now? But eventually someone would laugh. We’d be riding from one hole to the next and I’d make a big deal out of taking out the scorecard, asking everybody how they shot, and then finally saying, “And Rob … one.” And I’d mark down a big number one, every hole a number one. And I’d say something like, “Wow, I’m really golfing well today. I hope I can keep it up.” But I’d probably start laughing in between those sentences, and I’d have been drinking, so my laughter would be just out of control, just way too hard.

But like I said, someone would break and eventually start to laugh, if even just in admiration of how far I’ll see through a joke. It’s kind of like when you go to a bakery and order a cupcake and right before you take the last bite you find a big roach baked right in there, and it’s not even a whole roach, it’s just the end part, with little bite marks and everything, but you’ve been eating too fast, so there’s nothing to spit out, because you just thought that crunchy part was like coconut or something, so you complain to the clerk and he gives you your money back, and he throws in a free cupcake, and so you think it’s not all that bad, because you got two free cupcakes, but as you’re eating the second cupcake, you find the same thing, another roach, and you’ve already eaten the majority of this one also, and so you complain again, and the clerk gives you a free dozen, and then you take the dozen back home, and your mom or your wife or whoever you happen to live with goes, “Cupcakes? What’s the occasion?” And you say something like, “Oh, you know. Just wanted to do something nice for you.” And that person goes, “That’s so sweet!”

And it is sweet, because you didn’t have to spend a cent. But then when that other person takes a bite you start laughing really hard, because you’re thinking about how funny the whole situation is, and you’re trying not to laugh, but you’re practically choking because you’re laughing so hard, and so you have to say something, anything, so you try to explain that hole-in-one joke, but that makes you laugh even harder, and now this other person is just staring at you like you’re crazy, and so you just say something like, “You had to be there. Another cupcake? Eat up!”