I just had the craziest dream

I had this crazy dream last night. I’m just kidding. I’m not going to write about my dreams. That’s super boring. Every once in a while somebody will start talking about, “Oh my God I had the craziest dream last night,” in which case I prepare to be really unimpressed with the oncoming barrage of mostly nonsense sentences strung together back to back in no apparent order, all the while trying my best to maintain a look, a facial expression that says, I care about this story. I’m interested. Please continue. You telling me this dream is almost as good as me having it myself, which is impossible, but this is the next best thing.

There’s obviously one exception to this rule: Inception. If you haven’t seen Inception, well, you know, I don’t have to tell you what to do. Just go and do it. I hope they make an Inception 2, and the whole movie will start with Christopher Nolan waking up in the middle of the night, having dreamt the whole thing up, the whole movie, the whole release, the critical acclaim, that episode of South Park where they make fun of it, it’ll all have been a dream.

So he’ll wake up his wife and he’ll be like, “Honey! Honey, I just had the craziest dream!” and his wife will be like, Oh my God, what time is it? Three in the morning? Jesus Christ. These fucking Hollywood guys, they think they’re so important, so bloated with their own lame inflated sense of self. Seriously? He’s waking me up at three in the fucking morning for a dream?

This is still part of the movie, Inception 2 (Nolan: call me.) And we know that Nolan’s wife is thinking all of this because it’s one of those directorial tricks, like we see Nolan, then he’s like, “Honey! Honey!” and then it cuts to Nolan’s wife, and maybe she has one of those sleep masks on, and while Nolan is busy talking about his dream, about Inception, which, in this movie, Inception 2, it’ll all have been a dream. That was clear when I said it the first time, right?

And as the camera is on Nolan’s wife, you know, she’s pulling up her sleep mask to check what time it is, then you’ll hear her voice, her thoughts, like Nolan won’t hear it, and she won’t be talking, it’ll be like the audience is hearing her thoughts, and she’s making all of the appropriate facial responses as each thought pops up.

Her thought monologue will be like, “What time is it?” and her face will be puzzled, like she’s thinking hard, and then when she sees it and goes, “Three in the morning?” her face will be shocked, angry.

It gets better. It turns out that, in this movie, in Inception 2, not only did Inception never happen, but none of Nolan’s other movies happened either. He says to his wife, “Honey! Get DiCaprio on the phone! I don’t care who you have to wake up!” and his wife will be like, “DiCaprio? Leonardo DiCaprio? What are you high?”

Because it this movie, Christopher Nolan isn’t an award-winning director, he’s a furniture salesman. And he lives in Pittsburgh. Well, not in Pittsburgh proper, but like an hour and a half outside of Pittsburgh. And when reality sets in, when the dream starts to fade, even though it was all so clear in his head, even though he actually felt it, like he remembered watching that South Park episode where they made fun of Inception, he vividly recalls getting super pissed off, “How could those two bozos not understand my genius?” he looks in the mirror, in real life, and he’s not even close to being as handsome or as in shape as his dream persona.

He gets depressed. He has to be at the furniture store in like four hours, plus getting up and getting ready, plus driving an hour and a half to Pittsburgh. And that’s it. That’s all I’ve got. So far. I’m thinking eventually he’s going to have to wake up from that dream also, and that will have been a dream, and he wakes up and he’s the real Nolan again, but that dream of being a regular furniture salesman, it will have stuck with him. And so instead of making cool mind-bending reality-is-a-dream movies, he’s going to start making furniture commercials, and documentaries about Pittsburgh, even though he doesn’t live in Pittsburgh. Also, I thought that it would be cool if Nolan had another dream about being that regular Pittsburgh guy again, and he takes a day off and goes to see Inception in theaters. And he’s watching this movie about dreams within dreams within his own dream.

Yeah, you know what, this isn’t going to work. And this is why you don’t start off any story with, “I just had a crazy dream,” because it’s not crazy. It’s boring. It’s a dream. It’s nonsense, just like this blog post. Everybody has dreams. Nobody remembers them well enough to tell an interesting story the next day. Except Christopher Nolan. Seriously Inception was bad ass.

Kyle Smith, you are a huge asshole: a response to an op-ed in the New York Post about waiters and waitresses in New York City

The other day this asshole Kyle Smith wrote a douchey little op-ed in the New York Post about how much he hates waiters and waitresses. It was one of those pieces that, with each sentence that I read, I’d grow increasingly enraged, to the point where if he were standing right here, I’d probably assault him. All I was thinking was that I wanted to write something back to this guy immediately, to let him have it. But my emotions were running too high, and I needed some time to calm down, distance myself from the hate this guy was spewing.

Now that I’ve cooled off a little bit, I feel like I don’t know where to start. So I’m going to go through his piece, line by line, spell everything out as to why this guy is such a tool.

The hostage drama of dining out in New York City

By Kyle Smith

March 2, 2013

“Hi!”

Well, hi there! I’m doing great this evening, thank you! It is quite rainy out there, you’re absolutely right! I guess we’re both really super-stoked to be here in this restaurant that’s more crowded than my junior-high-school cafeteria! Imagine the excitement, eating food in public! And your name is Jason?

Jason! I don’t care! Just bring me some food and go away!

So here’s where we start. Kyle Smith is an asshole. He doesn’t like talking to strangers. He doesn’t like talking about the weather. He doesn’t like the fact that the restaurant he’s at is too crowded. Kyle, I’ve only read about a paragraph of your writing and I can already tell that you’re not a nice person.

To you I say, why venture outside the house at all? Why eat in public? You clearly don’t like other people, why be subject to their presence in large numbers? In fact, why live in New York City? There are way too many millions of people that might actually force you into having some sort of a human interaction.

I’m sorry that technology has not yet brought us to the point where each restaurant table comes embedded with a touch screen. Maybe you could just order your own food, type in your own special requests to the kitchen, then the chef could come screaming at you that he’s too busy for all of your nonsense. To you I would say, Kyle! You’re an asshole! Stop making my job more difficult! Say hello, eat your food, pay the check, and you go away!

Waiters and waitresses at New York’s self-consciously hot restaurants need to cool it a bit. I don’t care how charming you are on your auditions. I’m not here to make friends. Frankly, garcon, I don’t even need to know your name. By the time you tell me about the specials, I’ve already forgotten it. You’re a servant. So serve.

Hey buddy, I’m not a servant. I’m a waiter. There’s a difference. And you don’t like my friendly disposition? Guess what? Neither do I. It’s fake. My bosses make me do it. They tell me to go out there and smile. If I’m not smiling, and some secret shoppers come in and sit at my table, and they tell my bosses that I wasn’t smiling, that I wasn’t friendly, then I get in trouble, maybe fired.

I’m not here to make friends either. And besides, even if I were, you don’t sound like the type of guy I’d imagine myself going out for a beer with. I’m here to make money. I’m here to do a job and have you give me money. Because the house isn’t paying me. You are. It’s at your discretion. Sorry you don’t like my smile or my attempt at being upbeat. You should go to one of those restaurants where the staff looks down on its customers, visibly annoyed by their presence.

And you don’t want to hear about the specials? Again, why are you at a restaurant? If it’s not for the food, I seriously suggest doing something else with your friends. Go bowling. Go out to a bar. Don’t go to a business where it’s everybody’s job to cook up something better than every other restaurant in this town. I apologize profusely for letting you know what’s for dinner tonight, asshole.

Strangely, New York waitrons (my generic term for both sexes of waitstaff) don’t even serve anything anymore. They seem to view themselves as party planners or masters of ceremonies. After taking my order, they disappear and give way to a series of surly busboys who do the food delivery, the clearing, the refilling of the water glasses.

I don’t know, that’s not how we do it at my current restaurant, but even at my old job, where we had busboys, I ask, so what? I’m trying to manage a whole section of tables. As in, you’re not the only people I’m trying to attend to. As in, you’re not the only person in this city, dick.

And these surly busboys that you’re putting down? The shitty tip that you feel insulted at having to pay? They’re getting part of that money. Yeah, why rely on teamwork? It speaks much more of a person that he runs around trying to do everything rather than delegating smaller tasks to coworkers.

After the order goes in, the next time I see Jason is when, after first ensuring that my mouth is full, he sneaks up behind me and hits me with a cheerful, “HOW IS EVERYTHING?”

Yeah, again, you’re not the center of the universe buddy. I have multiple tables to juggle, trying to make sure everybody is having a good time. Let’s say you’re out to eat – that is, after all, what you came here to do, right? Eat? – with three other people. After your food hits the table, I’m supposed to wait for you all to dig in, but then also lurk in the shadows, hoping to catch all four of you at a moment when you’re simultaneously in between bites of food? That’s a logistic impossibility.

Hey Kyle. Just give me a thumbs up. Is your food OK? Great. Is it not OK? Tell me. I’ll fix it. Again, sorry for being cheerful. Jerk.

In France, where I try to spend a week or two every year, waiters don’t even work for tips (the customer is expected to leave a mere euro or two) and yet they’re so much less annoying.

It’s the difference between a country where the children act like grown-ups and one where the grown-ups act like children.

Wow! You spend a week or two in France every year? That’s so cool! Please tell me more about it! France! Oh-la-la!

In Europe they pay waiters and waitresses a livable hourly wage. If I were paid decent money by employer, I wouldn’t be trying to make you personally happy with me. Because, and this is unfortunate, you pay my bills, at your discretion. My grandmother always used to say, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. And so yes, I’m smiling at you. I’m trying to be friendly. I’m not trying to be friends with you, I’m trying to get you to pay me for the job I’m currently doing.

Man, France! That is so awesome! You get to travel to France! The country where children act like grown ups. The country where everybody still smokes cigarettes. You make it sound so much better than America. You should go live over there! I mean, you’re already vacationing there one or two weeks every year. You’re practically a foreign national!

The French waiter sees himself as a party in a simple business transaction. When he’s ready for your order, he says, “I am listening.” Not talking. Not smiling like a politician. Not preening like the most adorable scamp in “Newsies.”

When a French waiter brings you the food (himself, instead of subcontracting the job), he, like P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves, simply trickles off, instead of vanishing. If you want him, you can simply wave him down. He’s standing right over there.

For a guy who makes no secret of his disdain for American servants, you have quite the knack for putting yourself in the shoes of our French counterparts. (I notice how French waiters don’t warrant your little “waitron” joke.) Here’s somebody you can relate to. Somebody who doesn’t smile, who doesn’t really feel anything at all. He’s barely concealing the same contempt that you make no effort to disguise toward anybody. And that’s the way it should be. A whole city full of pissed off snobs with scowls permanently etched onto their faces.

If you want him, he’s standing right over there. And he’s also not subcontracting his job out like us lazy Americans. He’s doing everything, while he’s standing right over there. Just wave him over. Or even better, just snap. He’s a servant also. But dignified. Because he’s pissed. Or not happy. Right?

The worst part of dealing with American waitrons is we’re forced to be nice to these creepy ex-darlings of their high-school theater departments because of the unspoken hostage drama that’s taking place behind the scenes with our food.

It’s as exhausting as pretending your friend’s baby is cute. Your mouth actually starts to hurt from smiling. 

“Of course you spit in the food if you don’t like the customer,” I once said to a girl I knew who had been a waitress for years.

“Nah,” she said. “If we didn’t like someone, we’d just throw his steak on the floor.”

Which is why I’m being so nice to you, Jason! In reality, I can’t stand you, you twerp! As you’ll find out when you see my tip!

Back to America, back to that waitron joke. And here’s where you show your true colors Kyle. “Of course you spit in the food if you don’t like the customer.” No. Of course you would spit in the food if you were a waiter and you didn’t like the customer. In your attempt to empathize with your servants, all you’re doing is seeing yourself from their point of view. Disgusted with your reflection as a human being, the first thing that comes to your mind in this scenario is spitting in your own food. Because seriously, how can somebody stand to take shit from a little prick such as yourself without holding back the urge to hock a huge loogie in your food?

I don’t know. But even though you’re a huge asshole, I’m still not going to spit in your food, or drop your steak on the floor. You’re an asshole, but I’m not. I’ll get through this most unpleasant of interactions.

And what’s with the squatting while you’re telling me about the specials? I know the waiter’s handbook says you get more tips that way because you remind us of cute, subservient creatures we actually like, such as golden retrievers. But it’s juvenile. Stand up and be a man. As much of a man as it’s possible to be while enthusing over whipped-feta crostini.

Now you’re just nitpicking. You don’t like it when I hover, you don’t like it if I crouch. Now you want me to be a man. Now I’m not a waitron. What about waitresses? Are they allowed to crouch? Or would you prefer them acting like men also.

You’re telling me to stand up, to not act subservient, but at the beginning of your piece you tell me that I am a servant. So serve. You said that. Do you have like an editor that goes through your writing and points shit like this out to you? Or do you verbally berate everybody like you talk down to waitrons? “Don’t tell me how to write a piece! I’m Kyle fucking Smith! You’re a bullshit editor! You’re a servant!”

Jason, if you were at all useful, you would at least keep anyone from clearing away my plates while I’m still eating off them.

I realize you want to hustle me out of here so you can replace with a new customer. I’m a capitalist. (And in France, I’ve been baffled to get turned away from an entirely empty establishment at 6 p.m. because all tables are already reserved — for diners who intend to show up at 7:30 or 8 or 8:15. Don’t they want my money in the meantime?)

Nor am I sentimental about lingering for hours in a restaurant. After a while, the way everyone seems as though they’re determined to act out the concept of “Having a wonderful time!” starts to creep me out.

Now it’s my turn to be petty. Maybe the Post’s web site has since corrected your grammar, but “so you can replace with a new customer,” I think you’re missing a word there. Maybe you should be a little nicer to that editor. You’re a professional writer, right? OK, I was just checking.

Which is to say, get over yourself. Sorry, I didn’t know you wanted to save that last bite of food. You put your fork down. You looked like you were done. Do you mind that I asked? You said you weren’t done. I didn’t take your plate away. Again, this is life, this is human beings interacting with other human beings. I’m not a telepath. I can’t divine when you’re done with your plate.

But try to big a big boy there Kyle, finish your dinner and put your silverware down. What do you need a break? Yes? Then host a dinner party at home. What bugs me is that you continually want it both ways. You don’t want to linger, but you don’t want to be rushed. I guess in France the waiters know precisely the moment to clear everything away. Ah … France.

But, Jason and Co., it’s been only eight minutes since you set my plate down. There’s still food on it. There’s still a fork in my hand. Do I need to actually hunch over my meal and make snarling sounds to keep your busboy buzzards at bay. 

In other words, Yes. I am. STILL WORKING ON THAT. THE WAY YOU’RE WORKING ON MY LAST NERVE.

New York restaurants’ tables should be set with a little two-sided sign that can be flipped around as appropriate. STILL HARD AT WORK on one side. MY WORK IS COMPLETE on the other.

I’m spending $150 tonight, Skippy, and yet you were in the Federal Witness Protection Program when I needed a second drink. Now you want to hustle me into dessert and coffee. Uh-uh. Negative. This $28 sliver of trout still has about $9 to go, and I’m not leaving any of it behind. Enjoy my 11% tip.

Dude, I’m sorry you’ve had such bad restaurant experiences. But really I’m just sorry for everything. You don’t seem like a cool guy. I’m feeling that you’re generally unhappy. As to the plate clearing thing, you know, see above. Sorry for trying to clear your plate. Sorry for making you scream IN ALL CAPS! (Is that a professional writing trick? I always thought that was limited to the comment sections on Internet forums.)

Trust me, I want you to order a second drink. I’m going to make sure that I offer you a second drink. You seem like the kind of guy that’ll go even more ballistic if he DOESN’T GET HIS SECOND DRINK! Besides, you’re telling me you’ll be underpaying me for my work. I want to make sure that your eleven percent is as inflated as possible.

He goes to France. He spends a hundred and fifty dollars at dinner. He writes in all caps on his New York Post blog. His name is Kyle Smith and he’s a pretty big fucking deal. He doesn’t like you. He wants everything to be just so but he’d rather you make it just so without being seen. Because you are beneath him. You are a servant. You are nothing.

Part of me hopes this response makes an impact, that people read it, that maybe the author will someday see it. He’ll read it and think, wow, I’m such a dick. But of course he won’t change his mind. Even though he probably has a Google alert set to notify him whenever somebody somewhere mentions his name on the Internet, he’s probably already received hundreds of hateful responses. It’s probably why he wrote his piece in the first place, to get a reaction. To rile up a bunch of servants and make everybody a little less happy.

But what I really don’t like is the idea that likeminded idiots will read his piece, will see their own negativity validated in print. They’ll think to themselves, “Yeah! I hate servers also! Fuck them!” and so I just want to put it out there that, no it’s not OK to be a jerk, and it’s not OK to leave an eleven percent tip. Just stay home. While I hate the idea of just adding my name to this chorus of discontent, whatever, Kyle Smith, you’re an asshole, you know it, everybody knows it, and I can’t say it enough. Fuck you.

Please, won’t you be my neighbor?

We moved into our place like a year and a half ago. The next door neighbors, I guess the woman is pretty nice. She’s always making small talk and stuff, so I appreciate that, trying to get along, peaceful coexistence. But the guy, he’s so standoffish. I don’t know how I should feel. I probably shouldn’t feel anything, but every time I see him I’m like, what do I do now? What do I say?

Because if I didn’t say anything, he wouldn’t say anything back. And so, while I don’t particularly mind having silence between us, that kind of a gap can get weird after a while, like after a month or two. And the weirdness is amplified, because it’s not like he’s never around. He’s always outside of his house, obsessively raking, like every time a leaf falls down, he’ll rake it up. There’s a lot of sweeping also.

And I feel bad, like maybe he doesn’t like me because I’m not into the whole raking or sweeping thing. Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t get offended by the presence of leaves in front of my stoop. It’s nature. What are you going stand at your window and wait for every single leaf to fall down? That’s crazy. If I had to make a list, ten things that I’m neglecting that I need to get done right now, and if I were to start tackling this list of stuff that should get done, the raking and the sweeping would still be ignored.

For a while nothing was said. But I couldn’t stand every day going outside, seeing this guy and not having even one pleasantry exchanged. So now I’ve fallen into the habit of just saying, “How’s it going?” very matter of factly. And even though I put a question mark at the end of that question, there’s no question about it. It’s just a no-nonsense way of acknowledging this guy’s presence.

And he’ll give me like a “Hey,” back. Whatever, I’m not super social, not with the neighbors. This is New York, everybody’s invisible, anonymous, but still, every single time. The other day I went outside and did the whole “How’s it going?” “Hey” routine when, right after we were done acknowledging each other’s presences, some other guy down the block called out my neighbor’s name, “Hey man! What’s going on?” “Hey buddy! How’ve ya been?” and I’m just standing right there, wondering how this guy went from so gruff to immediately amiable and friendly. And why not to me?

Because he is gruff. I’ve already mentioned this, but let me again emphasize, even though we always exchange that little hello, it’s always me who starts the hello. And I’ve gotten the feeling from having done this for a while now that it’s almost like a chore for him. Like he’d really rather not say hi, but since I’ve said something, he has to say something, so here you go buddy, here’s your forced hi.

Is it the leaves? The sweeping? Maybe if I swept as much as he swept, there’d be less stuff on my side of the sidewalk that could potentially blow over to his side. Is he bitter about that? Does he harbor expectations of me keeping my side as equally pristine as his side? Because that’s impossible.

The other night it snowed, like maybe eight inches. I’m guessing eight. I didn’t measure it and I’m not going to look it up. But it was enough that everybody had to shovel. I got home late that night from work, like one in the morning late, and the snow was dying down, so I figured I’d shovel before anything had a chance to freeze over.

And while I was at it, what the hell, I’d shovel the neighbor’s walk also. It only took like five minutes, a nice two-foot path across. But the next morning I got up and took a look outside. My neighbor had redone everything. What I mean is, he shoveled clean every square inch of his property, like the curb, the underside of the stoop, everywhere. And he did the same for our side.

Was this his way of saying thank you? Because it didn’t feel like that. It felt more like his way of telling me to fuck off, to not touch his side of the sidewalk, because obviously I don’t know how to do it right, and here’s how it’s supposed to be done, and here’s how you’re supposed to do it on your side.

And maybe that’s reading way too much into everything, but it’s all I’ve got, because the guy never talks to me, doesn’t look at me when I force him to say hi. Man, I don’t know. Maybe he’s crazy. Maybe I’m crazy. I hope they move away. I get along great with the guy who lives on the other side. He’s a Greek guy named Christos. (Seriously, when we moved in, he introduced himself, “I am Christos. I am Greek.”) He’s always telling me that my dog’s too fat, although I don’t see it. Still, a conversation’s a conversation, right?

Intermediate to Intermediate-Advanced Wines: An Introductory Course to Bottle Service

I’ve been working at the same restaurant for maybe six months or so. I’ve written about wine before, how I didn’t know anything about wine, and then about how I had to pretend like I knew a lot about wine to get my current gig. But I’m experienced now. Everything’s different. I’ve soaked up so much wine knowledge.

Well, that’s not really true. I’ve soaked up some knowledge. A little bit. And it hasn’t really been a soaking, like a sponge. It’s more like if you imagine me to be a piece of wood, and if you kept that piece of wood submerged in a barrel of wine for six months, you’d take it out, and it definitely wouldn’t be soaked with wine, but there’d be a stain, at least the wine made some impact on the wood.

And that’s what I’m like. I’m stained with wine knowledge. But only slightly. I’ve said this before, but most people who want a glass of wine don’t really care about what wine they’re drinking. “Give me a glass of red,” or “I’ll have some Pinot,” whatever that means. But every once in a while I’ll have some customers that sit down and really start mulling over our wine list. When this happens it’s my cue to stand up a little straighter and do my best to pretend like I know what I’m talking about.

At this point, you should know that if you’re sitting at one of my tables and looking past the wines that we sell by the glass, you already know more about wine than I do. In fact, asking me a question is only going to prompt me to make something up, to sound convincing, and so I’ll be doing you a disservice, doing the wine a disservice, because I’ll say whatever garbage I concoct with the utmost confidence.

Worst-case scenario, I’ll get called out on my mistake, which is easy enough to correct. I just start using my really contrite voice, contrite but equally confident, “I’m so sorry sir/ma’am. I don’t know why I said that. I apologize for my mistake.” Best-case scenario, look, I like wine and everything, but seriously, who is going to go to a restaurant, order a bottle of wine, and then call out the waiter for not knowing what he’s talking about?

One time I had this couple ordering by the bottle. I always get nervous because somebody might order the wine based on the location, like “We’ll take a bottle of the Russian River Valley,” and I’ll try to lean down and squint to where the customer is looking, without appearing too obvious, and I’ll say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you said. Can you repeat that?” and then after they repeat it I’ll say, “Excellent choice,” before running to the kitchen with my own menu, hoping that I can piece together what they were trying to get at.

Anyway, at this table ordering the bottles, the guy kept asking me way too many questions. “What vintage is this Cabernet?” and I seriously had no clue. But I didn’t want to be like, “Let me check that out for you sir,” because then he would have lost all confidence in my knowledge of wines. Which, to be fair, if he had any confidence in my wine knowledge, it was totally unwarranted, and as a paying customer, he should have access to whatever information he wants to know.

“2008,” I told him, totally pulling a random number out of my ass. Come on. The guy’s sitting there with a menu of our wines. Don’t you have an iPhone? Just do a quick two-minute Google search and you can probably find volumes written about whatever bottles we have. It’s like when a tourist asks me for directions to some landmark in the city, I just want to be like, “Don’t you have a phone? Just look it up. What do you think I’m out visiting the Statue of Liberty every weekend?”

I have a firm policy against writing the phrase, “But I digress,” but that’s exactly how I would have started this paragraph if that firm policy weren’t in place. The guy wound up ordering that 2008 bottle of wine. Shit. I hoped he didn’t order that bottle specifically because of the year. I went to the wine closet, found the bottle he was looking for. 2009. Huh. That’s pretty close actually, not bad for just making up a random number. I brought the bottle to the table, showed it off. Should I have said something? About that whole 2008/2009 thing? Maybe. But I didn’t. Not right away anyway. I opened it for him, he didn’t object. About halfway through the meal I went over to see how everything was going and I said, “Huh, I thought that was a 2008. We must have received a new vintage.” The guy nodded. He probably knew I was full of shit.

I’ll conclude with another random wine anecdote. If I’m doing bottle service, I always pour only the first glass, and then I leave my customers alone. A lot of the other waiters and waitresses will be constantly refilling their guests’ glasses, almost after every sip. If I’m ever called out on this I just say, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t want you to feel rushed.” But really I just hate pouring the wine, because there’s always that little drip down the side of the bottle, and a lot of the time I forget to carry around an extra linen, and so, what, I’m going to just let it get on the table? Maybe stain their clothes? No, just have at it, because I’m not coming back. Cheers.

What kinds of scotch do you have?

The other night I was at work waiting tables. This couple comes in and asks to see a whiskey menu. We don’t have a whisky menu. We have a pretty big liquor selection, but this isn’t the kind of place that puts all of their spirits on a separate list.

I tell the customers, “We don’t have a menu, but I can tell you what we carry. What are you thinking about, bourbon? Scotch?” The woman says, “Scotch.” The man pipes in, “Single malts.”

Damn. I wish they said bourbon. I can actually name all of the bourbons that we have. And I like bourbon. I’m not a huge scotch fan. I imagine that when talking about liquor, about hard alcohol and taste, it’s all pretty relative. The first time I tried beer I thought it tasted terrible. It was all I could do to finish a whole bottle. And booze? Please. Who doesn’t have a memory of trying to take a shot of something but not getting your throat to be able to physically swallow what’s inside your mouth? But you try something enough times, you get past the gag reflex that is your body’s way of telling you to avoid the poison you’re about to ingest, and then maybe you start to not mind the unusual flavors, maybe even appreciate some of their subtleties.

But I’m definitely not there with scotch. It smells like the inside of a machine. It’s like whoever distilled it took some regular whisky and mixed it with a can of WD-40. Whatever, not my cup of tea.

Here I am, called out on my scotch chops, by paying customers, customers who, if all goes well, will hopefully reward my service with a cash tip. First thing’s first: can I get through enough of this interaction to make it look as if I know what I’m talking about?

Kind of. I could rattle off a bunch of scotches that we carry. Maybe not all of them. Maybe like eighty percent of them. Because what am I supposed to do, tell this couple that I’m not sure? That I’ll be right back? Anybody that sits down and asks for a whisky menu is probably going to be a little dissatisfied if their server can’t even answer their first whisky related question.

And then say I go try to find somebody who might have an answer. This is a busy restaurant. It’s going to take forever. The couple is going to get impatient. My manager might get impatient, or fake impatience if he or she also doesn’t know the answers I’m looking for.

List of scotches. Single malts. I decide to ignore the single malt aspect of the question and just start naming brands. I’m guessing Johnnie Walker was probably a stupid thing to start out with, because as the words escape my mouth I can all of the sudden clearly see the label in my mind and it says “blended scotch whisky.”

Whatever, I’m already going, and I’m just warming up. Macallan. That’s a good one because we have two Macallans. So I can say Macallan twelve and then Macallan eighteen. The same with Glenlivet. And that’s great because saying Glenlivet reminded me that we also have Glenfiddich. One of those two Glens has a twelve and an eighteen year variety also, but I can’t remember which, so I just pretend that they both do. This is nice because that’s four more things that I just got to say.

I feel like I’m doing great. I’m saying all of this nonsense without hesitation, just rattling them off very confidently, smiling, pretending like I’m the king of Scotland. The Glenfiddich triggered in my mind the super Scottish sounding brands, and so I continue with Oban. How do you pronounce Oban? I remember one time overhearing two managers having an argument over the pronunciation, but realizing that I had a fifty-fifty shot of screwing it up wasn’t helping with my confidence.

Lephroaig. I forgot about Lephroaig. I hope these people pick something soon, I thought, because my mind wasn’t making any more mental connections and if they didn’t stop me I’d have to stop myself, maybe repeat something, maybe mention Dewar’s, or the ultra expensive Johnnie Walker Blue, or Jameson, which isn’t a scotch at all, but seriously, just pick something to drink.

The woman doesn’t even look up but finally says to me, “We’ll take two Lephroaigs, neat.” As if her dismissive tone wasn’t bad enough, she pronounced it, Lef-roig, where as I had said, Lef-roe-ag. I’m positive by her own confidence that I was probably in the wrong on that one, that I definitely butchered the name, betraying not only my lack of knowledge about the very things I’m supposed to be knowledgeable about, but also my fumbling of an entire drink order. What kind of drinks do you have? I don’t know, but let me stand here and arrogantly pretend like I know what I’m talking about.

I felt kind of stupid, but whatever, I told myself, how many people order scotch? How many times have I ever had to put in an order for Lephroaig? It seems to me that, if your palette is refined enough to appreciate Lephroaig, you shouldn’t be going around to restaurants that lack a dedicated whisky menu and asking for a list of single malts. Just throw out some names. “You guys have any cool scotches? Glenfiddich? Lephroaig?” That’s what I would do if I were some sort of a connoisseur.

I wouldn’t go around with my obscure knowledge of fine spirits and correct the pronunciation of my waiter. When people order the rosemary focaccia bread and pronounce it “f-f-foh-cack-ck-ia?” I don’t turn my nose up and offer them a linguistics lesson. I just go with it. But I guess the fault lies with me. Technically, that’s all within my job description, knowing what we have available for purchase, and I failed.

Still, when I brought over the glasses from the bar, it was gross, from a non-scotch guy’s point of view. The smell, everything that I hate about scotch, it was amplified, this single malt especially unbearable. And after the couple paid and left, another server came over, helped me bus the table. And she was like, “Oh my God. What’s that smell?” It was just the empty glasses. It was still overpowering. And I was just like, “Yeah, it’s that scotch. Nasty, right?”