Waiter Rant (17 page)

“You’re drinking?” Beth asks, astonished.

“Sssshhhhhhh,” I say, putting a finger to my lips.

“You know one of the Uncle Toms is going to tell Fluvio.”

“I don’t care,” I say. “That’s what he gets for being AWOL on the busiest day of the year.”

“Way to be, brother,” Beth says, clinking her glass against mine. “Way to be.”

I guzzle my Bloody Mary and head back onto the floor. As I’m running around I notice many brand-new mothers are celebrating the holiday with us today. I grin inwardly. I served some of these women before they started dating their husbands. I even hit on a few of them. When I started at The Bistro seven years ago, they were fresh-faced college graduates determined to take the world by storm. Now they’re married and having babies. How time flies.

“Excuse me, waiter,” one of the new mommies asks me. “Would you mind taking a group picture?”

“Certainly, madam,” I reply. “It would be my pleasure.”

The woman hands me one of those impossibly complicated digital cameras. After giving me a brief tutorial she instructs everyone to gather around.

“Lean in, everybody,” I say, peering through the viewfinder. “Say cheese.”

After I snap the picture the young mother hands her baby, a pink-swaddled little girl, to the octogenarian woman sitting next to her.

“Could you also take a picture of us around the great-grandmother?” the mother asks.

“Sure.”

Everyone clusters around the wizened matriarch. As she looks at the baby squirming in her arms, a voice in the back of my head tells me this might be this old woman’s last Mother’s Day. Suddenly I think about my own mother. I better not forget to call her.

Despite the numbing effects of the ethyl alcohol, the hours tick by with agonizing slowness. As soon as one table gets up a demanding set of new customers takes its place. The noise level in the restaurant’s gotten so bad I feel like I’m working inside the turbofan of a 747. If I couldn’t read the customers’ lips, I’d never be able to understand anyone’s order. Suddenly I realize that I’m sweating. I walk over to the thermostat and look at the display. The temperature’s inched up to almost 85 degrees. I remember learning from a television show that sound can create heat. On the sun, a hot place to begin with, explosive processes within the interior interact with the star’s magnetic field lines and create acoustic waves of tremendous power. These sound waves are so intense that they superheat the atmosphere just above the sun to a temperature of 1 million degrees Celsius. I smile inwardly at the thought of my customers suddenly glowing incandescent and vaporizing from the sound waves emanating from their jabbering mouths. Maybe if I told them to shut up, it’d get cooler in here. I decide to turn the air-conditioning on instead.

“Holy shit,” Louis says, walking past me, his shirt soaked through with sweat. “It’s hot in here.”

“I know,” I reply. “I just turned on the AC.”

“Thank God.”

“Louis,” I say, “I can’t even believe you’re here. I thought you’d find some way to scam out of Mother’s Day.”

“Believe me, honey, I tried.”

“Run out of dead grandmas?”

“Kiss my ass,” Louis snaps prissily.

Louis is a bit of a drama queen. Whenever he doesn’t feel like working, he calls in with some fictitious medical or family emergency. Once, on a slow night, he told me he was having a heart attack and asked if he could go home. He made a miraculous
recovery when I picked up the phone and started to dial 911 instead. I guess spending the night in an ER was too high a price to pay to save face and make good on a fib.

“Don’t feel bad, Louis,” I say. “I tried to get out of working, too.”

“Fluvio didn’t buy your excuse?”

“He just laughed when I told him I wanted today off.”

“That bastard.”

“And he’s not even here.”

“Figures.”

“I’m telling ya, Louis,” I say, shaking my head. “This is the last Mother’s Day I’m going to work.”

“You said that last year,” Louis says. “And the year before that.”

I think about my own mother, enjoying retirement with my father in the hinterlands of Pennsylvania. I miss her. I think about the great-grandmother I took a picture of earlier. People aren’t always around forever.

“I know,” I reply. “But this time I mean it.”

“Sure you do.”

A few minutes later I’m telling a new table the specials. As I’m explaining to a blue-haired old lady what a frittata is, the sound of breaking dishes fills the air.

“Mazel tov!” a drunken patron shouts.

The restaurant erupts in laughter.

My head swivels toward the source of the noise. Kelly, a new server, is standing near the entrance to the kitchen, staring at the floor in shock. She’s dropped an entire table’s worth of food.

“Will you excuse me a minute?” I ask my customers, failing to keep the homicidal gleam out of my eye.

“Uh-oh,” the blue-haired woman says. “Someone’s in trouble.”

By the time I reach the crash site the bus people are already efficiently cleaning up the mess. After performing a quick check to make sure no patrons or staff were injured, I ask the server what happened.

“The plates were too hot,” she whines.

Kelly’s been on the job only a couple of weeks. Something tells me she won’t be here much longer.

“What table was the food for?” I ask.

“Fifteen,” she replies.

Annoyed, I push past Kelly and head into the kitchen.

“Yo, Armando!” I shout.

“What?”

“You gotta recook table fifteen.”

“What the fuck?” Armando says. “It just went out!”

“Kelly dropped the whole order.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I wish I was.”

Armando closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and exhales. When his eyes open, he smiles. “Give me ten minutes,” he says.

As I walk out of the kitchen I say a prayer of thanks that Armando’s so graceful under pressure. For most chefs, verbally bludgeoning Kelly into emotional catatonia would be the normal course of action.

“Your table will get their food in ten minutes,” I tell the hapless server. “Don’t drop it this time.”

“I won’t,” she says sheepishly.

“Now I’ve got to go over to fifteen and smooth things over,” I say. “Thanks a lot.”

“Sorry.”

I walk over to four adults seated at table 15. One of the women already knows what I’m going to say before I say it.

“That was our food that hit the floor,” she says. “Wasn’t it?”

“You must be psychic, madam,” I reply.

The table’s aggravated that their food’s going to be delayed. Before their aggravation can turn into anger I employ the most powerful customer-service tool at a restaurant manager’s disposal—free booze. After a round of free drinks all is forgiven. If Fluvio knew how much booze got wasted washing away waiter fuckups, he’d have a conniption.

Eventually Mother’s Day ends. Because I’ve been running
around all day, my underwear’s soaked through with sweat. All the moisture and chafing has invited a nasty rash to take up residence on my ass.

“Why are you walking so weird?” Beth asks me.

“I’ve got a case of Waiter Butt,” I reply.

“Ouch.”

“You wouldn’t have any Gold Bond powder on you, by any chance?”

“Sorry,” Beth replies. “I’m fresh out.”

After an extensive cleanup Beth and I start walking over to Café American for a well-deserved drink. As I hobble up the street I call my mother to wish her a happy day. I decide not to mention my current dermatological crisis.

“My God!” squawks Arthur, the bartender, when we walk in the door. “You’re still alive!”

“Barely,” Beth mutters.

Arthur’s a part-time actor with two ex-wives and three kids. Thin, with a shock of unruly black hair, he’s a handsome fellow who usually has a bemused expression on his face. Like all good bartenders, he’s quick with a story or a piece of gossip. Today, however, he looks like a beaten man.

“How’d it go here?” I ask, gingerly lowering myself onto a bar stool.

“Hell on earth, brother,” Arthur says, dramatically shaking his head slowly from side to side. “Hell on earth.”

“Sounds like you had a bad day.”

“The worst,” Arthur replies. “We had a party of ten stiff us on the tip for a five-hundred-dollar check.”

“How’d that happen?”

“The guy who paid for the party thought the tip was included in the bill. When we told him it wasn’t, he claimed the person he made the reservation with misled him, and he refused to pay it.”

“Sounds like a scam.”

“Probably,” Arthur says. “But he was making such a scene we let him go.”

“You should’ve made him pay.”

“Whatever,” Arthur replies, waving his hand dismissively. “Life’s too short to worry about pricks like that. Now, what do you two want to drink?”

“Two dirty Ketel One martinis,” Beth asks.

“Coming right up, darling,” Arthur says. “And these are on the house. Waiters drink free today.”

“Thanks, Arthur,” Beth says.

Arthur mixes our drinks and rests them on top of the bar. Beth and I drink them quickly. We like them so much we order two more. The alcohol mercifully numbs my gluteus maximus.

“So I heard a funny story about Mother’s Day,” Arthur says, as he’s mixing our second batch of martinis.

“Tell me,” I say. Arthur always has great stories.

“Did you ever see the movie
Heat
?” he asks.

“The one with De Niro and Pacino?” I reply. “Great movie.”

“Remember the gun battle?” Arthur asks.

In the movie’s most cinematically intense scene, cops and robbers battle it out with fully automatic weapons in the middle of a crowded downtown Los Angeles street. Violent, loud, and very scary, it’s one of the greatest gun battles ever captured on film.

“Yeah,” I say. “What does that have to do with Mother’s Day?”

“I was watching it on DVD the other day and listening to the director’s commentary.”

“And?”

“The section of L.A. where they were filming the gunfight only allowed them to shoot on Sunday mornings.”

“So?”

“Guess which Sunday they did some of the filming?”

“Mother’s Day?” I say, a big grin spreading over my face.

“Yeah,” Arthur says, grinning. “They filmed that gun battle outside of a restaurant serving Mother’s Day brunch.”

“Awesome,” I say. “Just awesome.”

“Can you imagine M-16s blasting outside while you’re trying to hustle French toast?”

“I’d be tempted to swipe a gun from one of the actors.”

“Waiters and machine guns,” Arthur chortles, “on Mother’s Day. That’s not a good combination.”

“You ain’t kidding.”

A couple of hours later I arrive home. The martinis I drank earlier have worn off, and my rear end is throbbing with pain. I peel off my clothes and examine my posterior region in the mirror. My ass is as red as a boiled lobster.

I shake my head in disgust and head into the bathroom. Grabbing a package of oatmeal bath powder I keep around for these situations, I start filling the tub with warm water. While the water’s running I go into the kitchen, throw ice into a rocks glass, and fill it to the brim with chilled vodka. Returning to the bathroom, I lower myself into the soothing water, close my eyes, and start sipping my drink.

The minutes pass. The house is quiet. The only sound is water dripping from the faucet. I plug it with my big toe. The melting ice shifting inside my glass reminds me I have a drink in my hand. I take a long swallow and think about how much I drank today. Staring into my glass I imagine a tiny Satan trying to free himself from one of the ice cubes. Hmmm…maybe I did drink a bit too much.

I put the glass down on the edge of the tub and close my eyes. My rash still burns and the bathwater’s growing cold. I hate Mother’s Day.

W
aiter,” my customer says, “my coffee is not hot.”

“I’m terribly sorry, madam,” I reply.

“Make it hotter.”

“But of course, madam.”

“Remember,” the woman says, “I’m drinking decaf.”

I take the coffee to the back and dump it out. I steep a new cup with boiling water to warm it up. It’s an old waiter trick. I toss out the water, fill the cup with piping-hot decaf coffee, and return it to the table. A minute later the customer calls me back to the table.

“Waiter,” she says, “my coffee is still not hot.”

“Terribly sorry, madam.”

“Are you stupid?” the woman says. “How hard is it for you to give me a hot cup of coffee?”

“A thousand pardons, madam,” I say. “I’m new here.” (I’ve been new here for six years.)

“Get me another cup,” the lady says. “And remember…”

“It’s decaf,” I say. “Understood, madam.”

I return to the back and refill the lady’s cup with regular. I brew a strong espresso and dump it into the lady’s coffee. I take the cup and place it in the oven. After two minutes at 400 de
grees I take the cup out with a pair of tongs and place it on a cold saucer. I bring the bubbling cauldron of java back to the ill-mannered woman’s table.

“Madam,” I warn, trying not to be a total dick, “please be careful. This beverage and the cup are extremely hot.”

“Good,” the woman says. “Just the way I like it.”

As I walk away from the table I hear the woman cry out when she grasps the cup handle.

“Ouch,” she yelps. “It burns!”

I walk away from the table, struggling to keep the self-satisfied smirk off my face.
Vengeance is mine, saith the waiter.

Yes, dear reader, we’ve come to the scary part of the book. This is the chapter where I talk about waiters spitting in your food.

Adulterating food or drink is a convenient way for servers to exact covert vengeance. Waiters can and do spit in people’s food. Personally, I think spitting in someone’s food is unimaginative and rude. Dropping sputum into someone’s fettuccine Alfredo may give the goober in question a momentary burst of satisfaction but not much else. I’m proud to say we’re above such petty bullshit at The Bistro. No server has ever adulterated a customer’s food with foreign matter or bodily fluid. (Or at least they haven’t told me about it. I’d rather live in ignorance on this one.) I prefer more elegant methods of revenge.

Of course, not all restaurant personnel are as classy as me. One day, when my friend Sal was working at a chain restaurant, he had a very abusive customer. The customer kept sending back his hamburger saying it tasted bland. On the burger’s
third
return trip Sal and the cook decided to play floor hockey with the man’s meat. Using greasy brooms as hockey sticks, they passed the char-broiled puck around the filthy kitchen floor for several minutes. I think the goal post was a dustbin. They hosed off the burger in the sink, threw some heat on it, and brought it to the table. The abusive customer dug into it and pronounced, “Now it’s good.” Dust and floor cleaner were just what it needed.

Some of you reading this are probably horrified that anyone
would seriously consider messing with your food. Usually such antisocial behavior is a reaction to abusive customer behavior. It’s an unfortunate fact of life, but customers can really piss us off. Complaints about food or service I can deal with—that’s the job. But when customers cross the line, when their dissatisfaction devolves into personal attacks, waiters are sorely tempted by thoughts of revenge. Many of my patrons are a few pills shy of psychiatric commitment. They have so many personal problems it’s hard for them to keep their shit together in public. They consume most of their psychic energy trying not to freak out at work or in front of the kids. When they get to my restaurant, they have little restraint left. Often customers are angry at someone in a position of power over them, usually their boss or a client. Unable to express anger at the people responsible for their incomes, many customers redirect that anger toward us. Since waiters are perceived to be in a subservient position, customers think yelling at us is safe. We’re only servants, after all. We become a cheap substitute for therapy or a punching bag. I’ve had people call me a loser, faggot, asshole, cocksucker, and shithead
to my face
. How would you react if someone at work talked that way to you? When you lose respect for my dignity and call me names, my inner serial killer comes bubbling to the surface. When that happens, watch out. Revenge is inevitable.

I’m a big fan of the psychiatrist/gourmand/serial killer Hannibal Lecter, the fictional maniac who ate his victims with fava beans and a nice bottle of Chianti. I always liked Dr. Lecter because he dispatched his prey with
panache
. (And, if you didn’t notice, all his victims kind of deserved it.) My favorite scene in the movie
Hannibal
was when a tuxedoed Lecter, looking like a deranged James Beard, removes the top of a man’s skull, digs out some gray matter, and flambés the guy’s brains tableside—
while the guy’s still alive.
After I saw that film I’d found myself measuring the circumference of obstreperous yuppies’ heads and wondering where I mislaid my cranial saw. “What’s the special tonight? Why, my dear sir—
you are.
”

You probably think I’m crazy, but I’ve never actually indulged in my little cathartic fantasies. I have an aversion to long periods of incarceration. Actually, I’m quite mentally healthy. Some people in this world would like you to think a negative thought has never furrowed their brow. Those are the people who snap. Have you ever wondered why, when the police are digging up the graves in the back of a serial killer’s house, the neighbors always say, “But he was such a nice man! He was so quiet!” Uh-uh. Too quiet. Everyone, no matter what kind of job he or she has, fantasizes about freaking out at work. How many corporate drones, stuck in a boring staff meeting, have had the sudden urge to jump on top of the conference table and start screaming obscenities? Strip off their clothes? Kiss the woman or man next to them? We all have. How many employees joke about shooting the boss or blowing the place up? I’m not suggesting we do any of these things, mind you, but let’s not kid ourselves; we all have a little murder in our heart. Why should waiters be any different?

In 2003 a woman dining at a Sizzler Steakhouse asked her waiter if she could have vegetables instead of potatoes with her meal. There appears to have been a disagreement between the waiter and the Atkins dieter over this legitimate request. The waiter, hoping to get that coveted employee-of-the-month plaque, defended the restaurant’s no-substitution policy. I can understand where the waiter was coming from. Corporate restaurants are notoriously inflexible when it comes to making substitutions, and I have no doubt the waiter in question was sweating what his manager would say if he acceded to the woman’s request. In the end the woman prevailed and got her veggies. The waiter, however, lost his mind.

According to the police report, the waiter, with two accomplices, went to the woman’s house and daubed it with eggs, syrup, sugar, toilet paper, and instant mashed potato flakes. The authorities were summoned. Recognizing her attacker, the woman told the 911 operator, “Oh my God! It’s the waiter from Sizzler!”

Luckily no one was hurt. The waiter went away for a nice long rest. Let me go on record saying I don’t condone his behavior.

But I understand.

It’s a miracle more waiters don’t go postal. They’re surrounded every day by whiny, spoiled customers and supervised by power-mad control freaks. Toss in the workforce’s penchant for substance abuse and poor impulse control, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. When you look at workplace homicides, however, the number of waiters turning into deranged killers is low. There aren’t too many news reports about waiters shooting up the joint. Waiters must have an unknown safety mechanism that keeps them from going completely apeshit. I think it’s cursing like sailors.

People who abuse waiters are taking a big chance. We don’t need to drop phlegm into your entrée to exact vengeance. (But if you do, get the two-pack-a-day smoker to do it for you.) We can just subtly exercise our power and wreck your life.

When I was at Amici’s, we had a regular customer who was serially cheating on his wife. We nicknamed him Lothario. Silver-haired, imperious, and rude, Lothario would start screaming at the restaurant staff if he had to wait a single minute for a drink. Everyone, even Caesar, experienced the lash of his razor-sharp tongue. One day Lothario brought his much younger mistress to the restaurant. Blond, twenty-five, with high heels and long legs that disappeared up into a plaid miniskirt, she was a real piece of eye candy.

“I hope that’s his daughter,” groaned Rizzo, the headwaiter.

“Probably not,” sighed Scott, the resident drunk. “Oh shit, he’s sitting in my section.”

The moment Lothario’s ass hit the chair he started yelling for the waiter. Passive-aggressive Scott took his sweet time getting to the table. Lothario took it upon himself to conduct a customer-care in-service. After dictating his order, Lothario’s hand resumed its roaming underneath his date’s skirt.

“Man, he took his wedding ring off,” Scott whined. “I mean, what is he thinking? He comes here all the time.”

“The rich live in an alternate reality, my boy,” Rizzo observed.

“It’s amazing how competent people can be in some areas of their lives,” I remark, “and so incompetent in others. If you’re going to cheat, at least be discreet.”

We watch as the girl plays the coquette, laughing and tossing her hair, gazing at Lothario with unabashed admiration. She’s at that age when a girl transitions from ingenue to womanhood. I had a sinking feeling that Lothario was going to accelerate that process.

The meal went as expected. Lothario shouted for more water and wine, sent his entrées back twice, and doled out dirty looks and unkind words for everybody.

Scott, after a long life of suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous yuppie scorn, finally snapped. Dropping off the dessert menus, he inquired in his most obsequious voice, “Would your daughter like some ice cream?”

The girl tittered. Lothario’s face flushed bright red with anger, or maybe it was the Viagra.

“No ice cream?” Scott asked innocently.

“That’s not my daughter,” the man stuttered.

“Terribly sorry, sir.”

The man got upset but, in the end, he realized that making a scene was not in his best interest. He never should have taken his chippie to his wife’s favorite restaurant. One slip of the tongue by a disgruntled waiter, and he’d wind up in divorce court while his wife banged the cabana boy at some fancy resort on an exotic island.

On another occasion I had a corporate blowhard hosting a big business dinner. Before the guests arrived he pulled me aside and gave me a pep talk.

“This meeting’s very important to me,” the man says.

“Yes, sir.”

“If you screw this up, I’ll make sure you’re fired.”

“Yes, sir,” I reply. “Thank you, sir.”

“Are you being funny?”

“No, sir.”

The dinner went smoothly. All the diners were happy with their food and the service. I am a professional, after all.

When dessert plates have been cleared and the coffee finished, the man hands me his credit card.

“Ring it up,” the man says. (Please note the absence of the words “please” and “thank you.”)

I pretend to run the card. After a minute I return to the table and whisper in the man’s ear, “I’m sorry, sir, but this card seems to be experiencing some difficulty.”

The man turns as white as a sheet. “That’s impossible,” he hisses. “Try it again!”

“Problem, Bob?” asks one of the clients he was desperately trying to impress.

“There’s no problem,” Bob says smoothly.

“Do you have another card, sir?” I ask.

“No,” Bob says. “Try it again.”

“I’ll have to call the credit card company, sir,” I say. “It’ll be a few minutes.”

I go to the phone and pretend to call American Express. Actually, I check the messages on my answering machine and call up a few waiters to set up a cocktail run later that night. I enjoy watching Asshole Bob rub his stomach while his ulcer grows exponentially. I go back to the terminal, ring up the sale, add a twenty percent tip, and hand the receipt to the Bobster.

“Sorry for the delay, Bob,” I say.

Bob examines the receipt. “A twenty percent tip?” he exclaims, looking up quickly.

I say nothing and skewer the man with my thousand-yard waiter stare.

“Here’s a pen, sir.”

Bob signs the bill. As the party leaves I notice the client Bob was trying to impress regarding him a bit more cautiously. Did I screw up the business deal? Probably not, but maybe I gave that
prospective client a moment of pause. Did Bob lose sleep that night? Who cares? At least I didn’t give the cops his license plate number and tell them he was driving drunk.
I’ve done that
.

Don’t ever think waiters and restaurant staffs are helpless victims. We’re not. There are Web sites popping up on the Internet where waiters can list bad tippers by name. Sure, some unimaginative servers will adulterate the food. Not me. I prefer something more elegant, something with
panache
. I prefer the emotional version of flambéing your brains. I engage in psychological warfare. I’ll subtly embarrass you in front of your girlfriend or client. Instead of putting hair in your pasta, I’ll slip into my arrogant waiter persona and make you uneasy. I’ll lose your reservation, make your steak medium instead of medium rare, put too much vermouth in your martini, and seat you next to the men’s room.

But sometimes I’ll employ a nifty chemical weapon that’s at every waiter’s disposal—flatulence.

Sure it’s lowbrow and crude, but it works. A waiter can zip in, drop a silent and deadly fart next to a problematic table, and then zip away. By the time the victims know they’re under attack, the waiter is long gone. Suspicion turns to the next table or each other. Most of the time people are too embarrassed to say anything, so they just eat through the stink. And if a waiter is pissed off at every customer in the restaurant, he can just fumigate the entire place with his love. I call this little maneuver “crop-dusting.” It’s one of the little things that help me get through life.