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Phantom phone syndrome

There’s nothing more depressing than phantom phone syndrome. Everyone experiences it to some degree, you’re walking around, maybe you’re at work, and you feel your phone vibrate in your pocket. This happens to me all the time, I’m waiting tables, I’m going over the specials or grabbing a refill on a Diet Coke and I’ll feel it, the buzz-buzz in my pocket. And this sucks because at my restaurant, like at most restaurants I’m sure, you’re not really allowed to be on your cell phone while you’re on the floor.

But what am I going to do, go seven hours without checking my phone? That’s cute. Come on, I’ve got to check my phone. Who knows what kind of emails I’m going to get, or text messages. Maybe something big, something I’ll need to respond to right away. Probably not, but maybe. With the no cell phone thing, I’m limited to a couple of options.

One, I can try to duck away into one of the store rooms, like where they keep all of the liquor in the back, or maybe by the lockers. I’ll whip out my phone and … nothing. But I was sure I felt a tingle. It wasn’t imaginary, I definitely felt something, maybe I’m going crazy, maybe the phone company sends out phantom texts every once in a while to keeps its customers’ attention focused firmly on their cell phones.

And then maybe my boss will walk in, there’s a very real likelihood that the longer I’m hanging out back here, someone’s going to pass by, they’ll see me on my phone, it’s probably someone in charge. Are they going to write me up? Is this going to be like a formal, “Rob, we’ve caught you on your phone and now you’re officially in trouble,” type of deal? Or maybe they’ll give me one of those, “Ugh, Rob, come on, haven’t we been over this? This is really annoying, you guys always on your cell phones,” more unofficial admonishments, while I’m not technically getting in trouble, I’m still getting a once-for, I have to make eye contact and say, “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have, I just, I’m sorry,” types of apology/thank-you-for-not-writing-me-up.

Back to work, back on the floor, try to pass by all of my tables, make sure that everything’s OK, “How is everything, OK?” and three of the people at the table smile or give me a thumbs-up or something, but that fourth person is chewing, and she gives me a weird look, I can just tell she’s already planning out what she’s going to write down on Yelp, something like, “Why do these stupid waiters always wait until I’m mid-bite to come over and ask if everything’s OK? I’m eating! I’m chewing! Ugh! These people are so stupid! Leave me alone!” and then I feel my phone buzz in my pocket again. This can’t be a phantom alert, I’m pretty sure I felt two specific, distinct vibrations, the “buzz-buzz” of a text message.

But I can’t risk the supply closet again, not tonight, definitely not tonight, in fact, I probably can’t risk getting caught in the supply closet again for at least another week, I can’t become a serial offender, an established slacking-off pattern emblazoned into the consciousness of my superiors. Imagining I got off with a warning that first time, this second time, “Two times in one night?” that’s definitely going to be a write-up, “Sign here please,” making me place my signature on a piece of paper, a confession really, an admission of guilt, yes, I was on my cell phone, not once, but twice tonight. Twice.

So I’ll go to the bathroom, definitely not an ideal environment to take an informal break, but whatever, at least the door locks behind me, there’s no chance of anybody catching me in the act. But remember earlier when I wrote that there’s nothing more depressing than phantom phone syndrome? There’s actually something much more depressing. It’s taking out your phone, realizing that despite the very tactile sensation of an electronic device vibrating in your pocket, there’s nothing on the screen, no alerts, no notifications. And then you get that sudden awareness that you’re standing in the stall of a public men’s room desperately searching for messages, for some sort of communication that simply isn’t there. It doesn’t exist. Nobody’s trying to get in touch with you. And you’re hanging out in the bathroom. That’s the most depressing thing I can think of.

The night drags along. I’ll feel more phantom buzzing here and there, but I’m not going to allow myself to fall for it again. Fool me three times, shame on me, right? But my cell phone is patient. Go ahead and don’t check me, it’s whispering, I’ve got tons of phantom buzz reserves. I’ll go off regularly. How does every ten minutes sound? You think you can get through the whole night without checking to see even once if somebody might have emailed or texted you something? Anything?

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

All right, there are still two hours left to go, and if I go to the bathroom one more time, I’m liable to set off some alarms, “Hey Rob, you might want to go to a doctor, you’ve been going to the bathroom an awful lot tonight.” Nobody would ever say that to me, because it would be painfully obvious what I was really up to, checking my phone. And there are only so many men’s room visits I can stomach during a single shift.

Plan C is for when I’ve exhausted all other options. It’s about hiding in plain site. I try to get to a computer terminal ideally situated ten to fifteen feet away from the manager on duty. I want to be looking right at the boss, huddled over the screen, making it appear as if I’m hard at work. And that’s when I casually reach my left hand around my back to grab the phone out of my right pocket. I slip it in front of the restaurant computer and go about my business as if there is no phone at all.

But, and I can’t believe this, nothing? No messages? No texts? I definitely felt something. I open up the Twitter app. Zero notifications. Facebook. Nope. I’m looking on my scheduling app, my calendar, all the useless apps that I never open up or use. Which one of you is making my phone buzz? What’s going on?

I jerk my head up. Where’d the manager go? Shit. He’s to my left. He’s making a beeline. Did I get lost? Was I at the terminal for too long? I must have been. I must have been swiping between menu pages too aggressively. Is it too late to get my phone back in my pocket? It’s too late. He’s two steps away so I put my phone on the counter and cover it with a tip tray.

“Rob is everything OK?”

“Yeah boss, I was just checking to see if I’d entered in table twelve’s desserts.”

“That’s it? You looked pretty concerned.”

“Yeah boss, that’s it.”

And that’s when the phone buzzes underneath the tray, audibly. It’s actually louder, like the buzzing phone made the tip tray buzz a little too, and it’s vibrating, it’s actually moving slightly across the counter.

“Rob. Come on man. Again?”

And what can I say? “Boss, it’s not what it looks like. It’s a phantom buzz. It’s not really buzzing at all. Trust me, you’re brain’s playing tricks on you. Sir, we’ve got to be careful, spending too much time online, on the phone. You get that, right? Phantom phone syndrome? That’s a real thing, right? I’ll send you an article I read about it online. I’m totally serious here, it’s all in your head, for real.”

We’ll take the cheapest bottle of white wine, please

I’m not really into writing about my day job, or my night job really, about waiting tables. I do it sometimes, but it’s just something that I want to keep separate from the rest of my life. Because when I do venture into stories about something that happened in the restaurant, it tends to be negative, something that bothered me so badly that I couldn’t help but come home and write it out. And then I start out with a big disclaimer, an “I don’t like writing about the restaurant,” opening paragraph, like this is somehow a justification for some complaint I’m going to air about a customer that asked for too many ketchups or a couple that sat in my section for too long.

But here it is: the other night I had a table of three women. And yeah, I’m a few days removed from the situation, and so it’s not bothering me as much as it did that night. I came home fuming, trying to keep a lid on the rage inside. Why did I let myself get so angry? I fantasized about how I’d tell this whole horror story, a “Can you believe it?” play-by-play.

But now that I’m sitting down in front of my computer, now that I’m trying to piece back the sequence of events, everything feels so petty, the women, me. Mostly me. Mostly the fact that I got so upset, that I gave these three strangers so much power over me, to let them direct my emotions, my thoughts. And over what?

They ordered a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. They ordered the cheapest bottle. Whatever, I mean, that’s what it’s there for, right? I did the whole waiter-opens-up-a-bottle-of-wine routine, the presenting of the bottle, the pouring of the little taste. Where most people are like, “fine,” especially with the cheap stuff, this woman made a face, a scrunched up mouth face.

And she held it for a minute, all the while twirling the glass in her fingers. Finally she was like, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just … I just … I don’t … I just,” before making her friends try. In my head, I’m thinking, come on ladies, it’s the cheapest bottle of white wine on the menu. What are you really expecting?

But the other friends got stuck in the same feedback loop, “Well,” they said while sniffing the inside of their empty glasses, “I can’t … it’s just … we don’t,” and I cut them off, I was going crazy, I reached for the bottle and very graciously offered them something else. “We’re really sorry,” they said, to which I replied, “Don’t be sorry, I’m happy to bring you something you’ll enjoy.”

And I did. They ordered the second cheapest bottle of wine. “Much better,” the first woman told me after tasting it. The relief on her face, in her voice, it was like she had just received the antidote to a poison that had been causing her visible distress. “We’re so sorry,” she continued, “it’s just … we’re just … this is much better.”

Fine. Terrific. They ordered three veggie burgers, they ordered three sides of avocado, and they sat in my section for the rest of the night, picking at their food, and then engaging in what I can only assume was a spirited game of “let’s see who can drink our wine the slowest.” But this was the end of the night, I had been working there since eleven in the morning, I had absolutely no fight in me, I couldn’t have gotten annoyed simply because I was too tired. So what if I was losing out on another turn of that table? That would have been even more energy that I would have had to expend, gas that I didn’t have left in the tank.

I dropped the check and left them to figure out the bill. A few minutes later, all three of them had their hands in the air, trying to get my attention. “Yes?” I was trying to figure out what could have been the problem. Did I forget to take the first bottle of wine off the bill? Had I handed them someone else’s check?

“Can you go ahead and take these avocado charges off? We never pay for avocado.” And I didn’t know what to say. Everyone pays for avocado. There’s an avocado button on the computer. In fact, there’s no way for anybody to get avocado in this restaurant without paying, so I told them all of this, that there wasn’t really anything that I could do. They started to turn on me, fast, “Listen,” they told me, “Two dollars isn’t going to make a dent in our wallets. But we never pay for avocado.”

They made a loaded statement like that, basically saying, listen asshole, we have tons of money. You think we give a shit about two dollars? No, we don’t. But we don’t want to pay for this. And framed in that light, I took another look at my guests, I noticed their expensive bags, the Merrill Lynch corporate credit cards they had on the tray to pay for their meals.

This wasn’t about two dollars at all. Neither was the wine service. The whole night for them was an exercise in power, in going out and flexing a little muscle. Take this bottle away. Make this two-dollar charge disappear. You, come over here and do as we say.

And when I refused, I knew they’d probably tip less. They started laughing a little. I walked away and when I came back, they handed me the bill. They totally tipped less, thirteen percent each. And that’s when that rage started. I would have never let them see it, that would have been giving them exactly what they wanted. But I took that anger home with me. I brought it into my house when I started “venting” to my wife about how I can’t stand this and that.

Only a few days later, after I’ve had a minute to cool off, can I see how ridiculous the whole situation was. Stuff like that is going to happen and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I did what I had to do and that’s that. Why am I getting so pissed off? It’s all about what I said earlier, that by allowing myself to be angry at these three strangers, I’m giving them the power that they’re seeking, over me, over my emotions, over my mental well-being.

Fuck that shit. I don’t need their two dollars each either. Is that going to make a dent in my overall financial security? Hardly. I just have to remind myself of all of this, the next time I’m dealing with unpleasant customers, the next table that I’m serving that I can’t seem to satisfy. I’m just doing my job, doing the best I can, and if someone else isn’t happy, then that’s on them. I’ve got to be better about not letting random people dictate the terms of how I feel.

About that new guy at work

I’m always running my mouth, at home, on the Internet, at work. Especially at work. At the restaurant, it’s not like I’m even trying to get in anybody’s way, I just can’t help myself. I’ll see two or three people standing around doing what they’re doing and I have this compulsion to go over and start talking. And I don’t even have anything to say, not really, I’m just bored, I just want to hear the sound of my own voice, I just want some distraction from the mundane of the workday.

For example, maybe two people will be polishing silverware and I’ll walk up behind them and insert myself into whatever it is they’re doing. I’ll pretend like I’m in charge, like I’ll start giving critiques on what they’re doing, something like, “Ooh, hey guys, let’s make sure that when we’re polishing, we’re like really polishing, like let’s make an effort to really make sure that we’re getting each piece of silverware just really sparkling clean. Is that cool? I’m not saying you guys are doing a bad job. No, not a bad job. A great job? Well, definitely not a bad job. Let’s just constantly strive to focus on how we can improve, like how can we be doing this better more efficiently, stuff like that.”

Like one or two sentences in, one of them is sure to walk away, but I can’t stop myself. I just have to keep going. I have this natural ability to go on and on and on like that, without pause, for hours. I could have stood there talking about silverware for the rest of the shift. But like I said, I’ve gotten to the point at this job where people will see me start to open my mouth, and they’ll roll their eyes and look for some other direction in which they might escape.

And so it was getting rough there for a while, me, constantly in need of attention, everybody else, not wanting to give me any attention at all. I’d try to go a whole night without running my mouth, like maybe I might gain back the esteem of my colleagues, and then after a couple of weeks of acting like a regular employee, I could slowly start making long-winded jokes again. But I tried, and I couldn’t even get through one night.

It got to the point where I figured I’d exhausted the patience of pretty much everyone on the staff, and so I was just about ready to hand in my two-week’s notice, to move on to another job with a new group of coworkers. But then we got this new hire, a guy about my age. He made it through training no problem, and as he started his first few nights on the floor, I thought, well, maybe he’ll listen to me for a while, maybe I can joke around with the new guy without having to worry about him walking away mid-sentence.

So I went up to him one day while he was at the computer and I was like, “Hey man, I bet you can’t guess what number I’m thinking of.” I would do something like this pretty often. Even if whoever I asked wound up guessing correctly, I’d never admit it. I’d just keep saying, “Nope. Nope. Nope,” until it was painfully obvious that I was just wasting everybody’s time.

But this guy, as soon as I said, “Hey man, I bet you can’t guess what number …” he just blurts out, “Seven,” and he’s looking me right in the eye and I’m taken a little by surprise, I mean, it’s not like I was really trying to pick a number, I never do, but I guess yeah, seven kind of was in my head, like maybe just formulating that question, my mind picked out a number at random. I think. Or did he say seven so quickly that it caught me off guard? Like maybe he said seven and I started thinking about seven right away?

“Nope,” I told him, he was like, “Really,” the whole time looking at me right in the eye. Man, this guy was such a weirdo, always straight-faced. I mean, yeah, I spend probably a little too much time goofing around at work, but this guy, it’s like he’s a machine, an emotionless, soulless robot. And he just kept staring at me, this creepy gaze.

One time a couple of days later, he’s standing around with a group of three or four other coworkers, they’re not doing anything, everybody’s checking their cell phones. I decide to walk over and start talking a bunch of nonsense, I say, “I’ll give anybody two hundred bucks if they can guess what song I’ve got stuck in my head.” It’s classic, because they can never prove it, I’ve got their attention, and even if they got it right, there’s no way I’m paying two hundred bucks.

But again, this new guy, he looks me right in the eye and he starts singing along with the exact song as it’s playing in my head. And I can’t make excuses for it this time, there’s no trying to justify whether or not who put what in who’s head. This is like, line for line, he’s in my head, I’m hearing this song, and he’s mouthing it out in real time. And that gaze is locked, I can’t pull myself away, I can’t turn the song off in my head, everything’s out of control. I’d like to freak out and run away, to say something, anything, but I’m frozen.

Finally the song ends, I can feel him let go of the mental lock, he stops singing, he just opens out his hand and says, “Pay up.”

Gum check

I’m a waiter. I get people Diet Cokes and make sure that everybody’s happy. Great. The dinner rush comes and goes, closing time is at eleven, and barring any customers trying to spend the rest of the night camped out at my tables, it’s time for me to start making my way toward the exit. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as counting up my tips and calling it a day. “Hey Rob,” the head waiter calls out to me just as I’m packing up my stuff, “Make sure you check for gum.”

Fucking gum check. Do you know what that is? It’s me having to get on my hands and knees with a flashlight and checking to see if anybody stuck their chewing gum underneath the table. And you know what sucks? You know what’s really crazy? It’s that there’s always gum. Every single night, there’s at least one wad of chewed up gum stuck under one of my tables.

Unless you work as a waiter or waitress, maybe you think that I’m full of shit, that nobody goes into a restaurant and knowingly deposits their chewed up gum for someone else to clean up. I mean, that’s what I used to think before my bosses started making me do gum checks. The first time I thought it was a joke. I was like, that’s a funny thing to go and check for. Why would anybody spit out a piece of chewed up gum, inside a restaurant, at a table, and just leave it there?

But sure enough, I did that first gum check and there were like three pieces of gum. I couldn’t believe it. A hot towel wasn’t really doing the trick, because this stuff had since dried out and cemented itself in place. I found this flat chisel shaped tool, and that was kind of doing it, but finally I went to the maintenance guy who gave me this can of compressed gas stuff that froze the gum at the end of a long tube.

Still, it was a pain in the ass. Each piece of gum took like two minutes to clean up. Multiply each piece of gum by two, add that to the end of a busy night waiting tables, it’s not fun. It’s not a nice way to wrap things up. That first night I thought to myself, man, they must not have checked these tables in a while. Well that should take care of the gum problem for a few months at least.

And then on my second night, just as I was about to head out the door, the head waiter stopped me again, “Hey Rob, did you make sure to do a gum check?” and I barely even halted my stride. I just paused long enough to say, “No man, we did those last night.” But he persisted, “No, Rob, we have to do those every night. Gum checks every night.”

Every night? That seemed a little much. Sure, I could accept the fact that maybe once in a while someone would be careless enough to leave a piece of gum under the table. Maybe they were on a date, maybe they forgot to bring a wrapper or they were too embarrassed to ask for an extra napkin. I don’t know, things happen, people get funny in restaurants.

Like I said, once in a while. So I grabbed the flashlight just to kind of go through the motions, like yup, check, no gum, check. But on that first table, I couldn’t believe it. It was another three pieces of gum. I had just cleaned three pieces of gum from this table the night before. And now three more pieces? Was it three different guests, each leaving their own mark on our furniture, or was it a repeat offender, someone just constantly chewing gum in between bites of food?

At this point I wish I could say that I’ve made peace with the insanity of my situation. But every night, right as I should be on my way home, I find myself on the dirty floor scraping someone else’s chewed up gum off of the underside of our tables. It’s every night. It’s every table. What in the actual hell is going on? Who does stuff like that?

Since there’s so much gum at this restaurant, I’m statistically bound to assume that the majority of diners are guilty of this offense. But since I’ve never actually heard anybody talking about leaving gum, no friends or family members, I’m inclined to believe that everybody’s doing it in secret. Everybody chews, everybody sticks it to the table, and nobody says a word.

And all that’s left is me touching other people’s chewed up gum. It’s disgusting. It’s the absolute worst way to end any night. There’s nothing I’d rather do less than squeeze myself under a table and, with one hand hold a flashlight, using my free hand to clean up gross nasty it’s-been-in-someone-else’s-mouth-for-a-while chewing gum.

So here’s out with it. If you’re reading this, if you go out to eat, don’t put your fucking gum under the table. Ask me for a napkin. I’ll stick out my hand at the table and you can spit it out right there, I’ll catch it, I’ll actually do that, because even though that sounds horrible, trust me, I’d rather do that right there while it’s still fresh and pliable than at the end of the night when I’m tired, and I want to go home, but I can’t go home, because your stupid gum is all dried up and stuck, and maybe I’ve got half of it off, but the base layer won’t budge, and it’s coming off all stringy, and the gum string is really thin and wispy, and did one of those strings just float up and hit me in the face? In the mouth? Get me the fuck out of under this table, please, just go to the bathroom and spit out your gum, come on, let’s do it like they do in Singapore, where if you get caught chewing gum some police officer has to give you like ten lashes to the back with a cane, you know, that’s not a bad system, we look at them and think, how cruel! How barbaric! But we’re the barbarians here, we’re walking around chewing this gum like it’s cud, and we’re just sticking it anywhere, it’s sticky and so I don’t have to find a trashcan, I can just leave it wherever the hell I want. Why? I have no idea, but I’m just going to do it, and I don’t care, because some other jerk will clean it up eventually, and it won’t be me.

Don’t be an inconsiderate asshole. Spit out your gum in a napkin.

I miss summer vacation

What am I supposed to do for the rest of the summer? The Fourth of July is long gone. There aren’t really any holidays to look forward to until Labor Day, which in my line of employment, it’s more of a joke than an actual holiday, because I always work Mondays at the restaurant, and especially on holidays, especially on holidays that don’t really have anything to do with anything real, it’s like people go out to eat in droves. Personally, I’d never wait on line for more than ten minutes to sit down and eat, but I’m clearly in the minority here, because on any sort of a day off, it’s like, let’s go out to a restaurant everybody.

Labor Day, it’s an actual day of labor for me. So I’m not counting that as a holiday. And then Columbus Day? Again, it’s the same. Most jobs still make you come in anyway. I think it’s just banks that take the day off. But that’s not until fall. I’m losing track of where I was going with this. It’s still technically summer, and I can’t think of anything special to do.

And I don’t know what the problem is, really, because when you think about it, there’s nothing really at all different about July or August than there is February or March. They’re all just regular months, go to your regular job, wait for the next holiday, which is always way too far away. It’s just the weather that changes. I’m freezing, and then the next thing I know I’m way too hot.

It just sucks because we spend the first twenty-two years of our lives having summer as a vacation. Even if you had a job growing up, which I always did, you still got two months where you didn’t have to go to school. When I was in high school, and then during those summers in between college, I’d love to work some crappy job. One, regardless of how pointless the work might have been, it was all very temporary. And two, it was a break from the normal routine. No school, no classes, something different.

And then you’re an adult and the weather starts getting warmer and there’s still that expectation that something different is going to happen, that for two months anyway, even if I’m not going to be able to sit around and do nothing, I’ll at least get a well needed change of scenery.

Now I’m twenty-nine, so I’m still at this point where the majority of my life experience is telling me something different than what I’m actually experiencing: a life of going to work over and over again, maybe I don’t hate it, maybe sometimes I do hate it, but it’s something that I have to deal with, because it’s never going away, there’s no rest at all. Once in a while maybe I’ll take a day off or a couple of days, a week or two once a year, but that’s it.

It’s just so soul crushing. And I hate sounding like such a whiney little brat, I totally realize how entitled this all sounds. But I just hate the fact that we have this warm weather, that all I really want to do is just go outside and run around and relax and play with my dog and cook a nice meal. I’d get my writing done when I felt like it, I’d have plenty of time to read the newspaper or some books, all of the stuff that I never get to do.

Because my real life is just waking up, struggling to get a run in, making myself sit down to write all of this stuff out, why? Because I want to be a writer. Why? So that way I could do all of this fun stuff that I’m talking about without having to sacrifice seven hours a day at a restaurant. And again, I don’t hate it. I definitely don’t love it, but in terms of a job that I have to do to pay my bills, whatever, I could have it a lot worse.

But all of that stuff, the reading, the cooking, more exercise, more time to just take a walk with my dog, maybe do a little gardening, there’s never enough time. I always go to bed at the end of the day thinking that there was so much more that I wanted to do that I wasn’t able to because I had to go to the restaurant and run around like a crazy person getting this, doing that, and by the time I get home, I always tell myself, you can do it Rob, you can stay up a little bit longer and get some more work done. But then I’m asleep. And then I’m waking up again. And it’s the same old, same old, every day, winter or summer. I just want to go outside. Just give me two months to go outside and hang out. That’s not so bad. We’re a pretty rich country. This is a pretty advanced society. Can’t we make it so we take turns working? Right? Wouldn’t that be nice?