Restaurant Work

Because my avocation is to address the cause of the underclasses as I swoop through the universe, reigning terror on the ruling class and fighting the good fight for justice, I'll occasionally write about real work.

You see, I have had many a job, and with few exceptions I have loathed them and the people I worked for (call me a malcontent; friends have and I respect their honesty). The worst of the worst jobs have been in the restaurant trade.

It is there that I have met some of the most ignoble swine that I have been unfortunate enough to run across.

The jealousy and outright pettiness inherent in the restaurant business is at times ludicrous. The skulduggery is morally corrupt.

Ownership can be a good thing. I'm all for small businesses, the artisans struggling to stay afloat in a marginal business that reflects their love for their venture. But even they are susceptible to the vagaries of power.

You have two choices when confronted with the fiendish capitalist. Swallow your pride and take it in the ass like a commoner, or fight back.

I tend to fight back, usually throwing in a few choice words to please my attention-starved ego and make myself clear simultaneously.

I once worked for a well-known jazz club owner in Portland. One time he charged me twenty-dollars out of my under-the-table wages because I accidentally poked a finger in a chocolate cake as I scrounged around the club's walk-in, trying to find an item. He withheld my money and used the cake anyway. No one noticed the small puncture I'd made, the cake was devoured, everybody seemed happy.

I didn't go in the next day. He had the audacity to call me and leave a message, in a cheerful voice, "Hey, where are you. You're late!"

I know for a fact he did not pay twenty bucks for that cake, the fucking swine.

I got into it once with a stupid general manager, recently hired at a place where I'd run the kitchen for seven years. He was too dumb to see things were fine, business was fine. He thought he might tinker with things. He asked me to write a new menu. I did and gave it to him. What happened next is an example of the petty bullshit which often accompanies the trade. The GM gave the menu draft to a friend at a local community college. That guy typed it up, printed it, and gave the GM a very low-end invoice. That was the point. My GM set out to save the company money. He thought he was really on the ball about it.

Problem. The new menu had twenty typos and misspellings in it. It was awful, barely decipherable, way below commonly-known restaurant standards. I mean come on, you want the damn menu to read like the kitchen manager (me) can spell soup (not soop), as well as make one.

(If you find typos in this blog, poor syntax, misspellings, remember you're not eating here and paying money.)

I asked the GM to send the menu back. He refused on the grounds that he'd already paid for the printing and he couldn't possibly reprint it. Too costly.

Too stupid.

Our relationship went down hill from there and he fired me. In turn, he was fired by the clueless owner three months later. To his credit, the owner finally figured out he had a dumb shit on his hands.

I later saw my ex-GM at a mutual friend's wake, and told him he'd screwed up. Without admitting it, he said, "I thought about that."

That was startling. He thought about it too late. The fucking swine.

I have more of these disgruntled musings. I'll share some of them with you along the road, unless you tell me you don't want to hear it.

No wait, I take that back. I'll write what I damn well please.

P.S. There is but one side to any story I tell you. Mine. I do not deal in half-truths as I soar in the stratosphere, seeking vengeance against the guilty and malignant boobs I have met in my life.



TS