Waiter to the Rich and Shameless: Confessions of a Five-Star Beverly Hills Server (10 page)

In
the main dining room, the atmosphere was definitely much more formal.  All the
tables were grander and seated at least four, but some could fit up to twelve
guests.  You’d be correct to imagine these tables with a movie producer at the
head, and his cast of stars seated around him like apostles.

All
the tables had a nice floor-to-ceiling view out to the garden, and along the
massive sliding glass windows were a line of five two-tops. The outdoor garden
area was lush with flowers and plants as well as a large, beautifully lighted
pepper tree.  This area was especially popular at lunch or on warm nights, and offered
quaint booths for four tucked away amid the surrounding greenery and flora. 

The
Cricket Room also had a secluded private room for small banquets or very
private guests who made good use of it for a more intimate dining experience. 
This room was unknown to the general public.  It was never offered; you had to
be “in the know” to request it but still it stayed booked.

The
atmosphere in the restaurant sparkled, with candlelight reflecting off the fine
silverware and shimmering glassware.  I’ll never forget the first time I stood
looking over the dining room after the table lamps had been lit, in those brief
moments before the first guest is seated. It was magical.

The
view into the garden was like something out a 1940s-era romantic movie with
enchanting tiny lights accenting the entire patio.  You could imagine Lauren
Bacall dining there with Humphrey Bogart, him kissing her hand romantically,
her large sultry eyes looking deeply into his. She is some dame.

The
restaurant even sounded exclusive and civilized, with any acoustic noise
softened by the thick carpet, royally plush furniture, and long table
coverings.  The style and feel was as far away as you could get from
“contemporary modern” and just as traditionally warm and regal as you’d want
from a classic old-school, five-star eatery, without feeling like you were in
your Grandma’s mansion (if she had had one).  It was classy, cozy, and very
well-maintained to capture intimacy at its fullest.

During
my first week, it became very clear to me that not much was expected from the
busboys.  Their job was to bring bread and butter to the tables, and to clear
plates (sometimes).  It was very hard to get them to remove stemware, dessert
plates, and coffee cups, or to pour water.  I noticed quite early on that the
teamwork between the waiters and the busboys was not very good, and it was even
worse between the waiters and kitchen.   Only the food runners worked well with
us.  The main reason for this disconnect was, of course, jealousy over money. 
The waiters made a small fortune in tips while everyone else got to help them
do it.  The pressure on the waiter to perform was intense but the rewards were
far beyond my expectations.  Luckily, the company had a policy of promoting
in-house, so at least employees knew that there was opportunity available if
they could measure up.  

I
became very friendly with Ernesto, a Honduran waiter who had one of the
jolliest laughs I’d ever heard.  It started low and ended in a giggle.  Ernesto
loved to joke around but was also extremely helpful in teaching me much of what
I had to learn very quickly.  When we were busy Ernesto was very organized, his
service was quick and efficient, and he had a good grasp of the English
language.   He had done well for himself working two jobs as a waiter – he
owned a nice house in the suburb of Arcadia that he had done a lot of work on
himself.  He would often talk about his wife and kids and how he cherished his
time off with them.  Ernesto never worked on Saturday or Sunday.  “I can’t
stand the crowds,” he said, and even if he could make an extra fifty bucks, he
would have had to work twice as hard because weekends were all about quantity
not quality.  Ernesto always had a little secret stash hidden deep within one
of the cupboards in the back service area.  He was good friends with the
bartender – I think that was his little recipe for happiness. 

Since
I hadn’t really worked the night shift before, most of the wait staff was new
to me. There was Daniel our token queen with the fair skin, rosy cheeks, brown
eyes, wavy dark brown hair, and a slim athletic body that was almost girlish. 
You could tell because he didn’t fill out his uniform too well.  Daniel was a
very jovial chap and would often sing old songs from musicals like
My Fair
Lady
,
Fiddler on the Roof
, and
Westside Story
.  Even his
speaking voice was very singsong; you get the picture.  He fairly floated
around the dining room, unwittingly amusing staff and guests alike.

Then
there was Matt, the angry and tough gay man who appeared straight but had never
been with a girl in his life.  He said he knew at a very early age that he was
gay and never denied it.  Matt was smart and had many different interests. He confessed
that since he’d been at the Cricket Room, he had studied film, finance, and law. 
He just couldn’t seem to find the right avenue out of the restaurant business,
yet getting out was all he wanted.  I think that’s what made him so angry. 
That and the fact that his father had abandoned him as a kid, which I could
identify with.  Although my dad’s disappearance only lasted a couple of years
it left a deep scar on the family forever. 

Germaine,
a quick and witty man in his forties with a full head of short strawberry
blonde hair was a fat ass who filled out his uniform to the brim.  He was the
gayest straight man I had ever met; all he ever talked about was women, but
with a slight effeminate cadence.  “Pauli, go take a look on table three.  She’s
so hot!”  Germaine loved to talk to the guests; I would often pick up his slack
and make a little extra cash because he was too busy engaging the guests in
conversation.

There
was only one female on the PM server team and that was Amy.  She was skinny
with no ass at all, bright blue eyes, and super short, dark hair. Amy was in
her early forties and not bad looking at all.  She had a good attitude and
guests liked her a lot.  Amy loved to talk and tell extraordinarily long
stories.  It was really painful because she had terrible breath, and the
restaurant business is very fast-paced with no time for long stories, period. 
Her breath was beyond toxic; I’ve never known a live human being with worse
breath, actually.  I always avoided asking her questions because I didn’t want
to get trapped in one of her malodorous long stories.  She was a sweet woman
but we never actually talked very much.

Shakil
was an oddity: a fair-skinned Indian man with a stereotypical Indian “would-you-like-a-Slurpee”
accent.  He was in his late forties, of medium build, and had pitch-black
hair.  As a Muslim, he’d had to escape India as a young man when hostilities
grew between his religious group and the Hindu majority.  At first, he had
lived in Scandinavia but discovered that was not his cup of glögg and chose a
life in California’s warmer climate.  He married an Indian woman and they now
have two kids in junior high school.  I’m not sure how they managed but he owned
a condo an hour away from Beverly Hills.  He, like many other immigrants, was a
very hard-working guy and this certainly showed when he was on the floor at the
Cricket Room.  Shakil had a tendency to be a bit too nervous and almost every
night he screwed something up just from his nerves.  Improving his English
would have definitely helped him.

As
I’ve said, Jens was the best waiter on the floor and I was excited to be
working with him, though he only worked two night and three day shifts. Jens
had been blocked from earning complete night shift status because he had tried
to steal a fifty-dollar tip that a guest had very clearly designated for Mr. P on
his credit card slip. Mr. P interviewed Jens before he went home that night and
Jens made up some flimsy excuse and that was the end of Jens moving up any further. 
He really should have been a full-time PM waiter. Maybe it was my saving grace,
because Jens and I together spelled trouble. 

And
finally, there was Ariella, our hostess with the mostess. Ariella wore her
brown hair long, with bold frosted streaks; her eyes were blue as the sky and
her skin fair as Cover Girl Ivory #105.  Ariella was Barbarella – tall and seemed
larger than life in high-heeled pumps.  Austin Powers would have said, “Yeah,
baby, yeah! Shagalicious!” Male guests almost fell over when they saw her and
it wouldn’t be long before they made a move on her.   Little did they know…  Well,
more on her later.  She and Matt (Angry Boy) were best friends who later became
known as Will and Grace after the TV show of the same name.

That,
with the exception of high-turnover positions, was the cast of characters in
our little nightly charade. The guests pretended to be polite, we pretended to
give a shit, and everyone went home happy.

It
was my third day of waiter training.  On my scooter on the way to work, I saw a
three-car pile-up on one of those infamous five-way spaghetti intersections on
Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills.   A rich old man with a lead foot, who
probably got confused, crashed his brand new Lexus LS into a black Range
Rover.   A Mexican gardener in an old light blue pick-up truck had to swerve
out of the way and so crashed into a giant telephone pole.   Scattered all over
the street were broken bags of cement mix, rakes, a couple of lawnmowers, shattered
pieces of light bezels, as well as most of the front end of the Lexus.  There
was even a canteen of gasoline leaking fluid into the street. 

The
hunchbacked old man was out of his car, along with several of the other
drivers, pointing frantically to the traffic light, but we all knew what had really
happened.   It’s a mind-bending intersection and if you don’t steal your left
turn you could sit there all evening during rush hour.  The old man’s car was
totaled, and he was lucky to still be standing, while the Range Rover was
barely dented and the driver never even bothered to come out of his car.  

Although
I couldn’t see through his tinted windows, I assumed he was on the phone,
probably with his attorney.  The only person with an apparent injury was the poor
Mexican guy, who was sitting on the curb with his head in one hand and rubbing
his back with the other.  He seemed to be hurt, but hopefully he was faking it
– maybe he thought it could be the unfortunate opportunity of a lifetime.  His
truck was in sad shape, though maybe it had looked that way before the
accident.  No blood on anyone, thank God. 

Crap!
I’m running late
. 
I crossed the grassy median to ride on the sidewalks the rest of the way.

I
parked my scooter next to the railing near the employee entrance.   As I
entered the building, I rushed past the security gate, swiped my card, and
entered my employee number as I waved hello to Joey inside the security booth. 
I picked up my company-provided uniform and rushed upstairs through the fire
exit stairway.   Entering the men’s locker room, I passed a small gathering
area where a few employees were sitting on comfortable couches.  One of the
dishwashers was hunched over and sleeping, with the TV blasting a soccer game
in Spanish.   I saluted the busboys, “Hey, Jose. Hey, Juan.” 

“What
up, Puta, you late!” said Jose.   I let his comment roll off my shoulders and
hurried toward my locker.   No time to tell him to go fuck himself and the
donkey he rode in on.

I
rolled the combination to the locker with one hand and with the other hand, I
was already throwing off my clothes and putting on my clean, pressed uniform. 
My polished work shoes sat on the locker room floor waiting for me and my tie
hung, pre-tied with a double Windsor knot, on the top hook of my locker.  I
glanced down at my TAG. Seven minutes to go.  I put my work shoes on, threw on
my dinner jacket, and grabbed a brand new captain’s pad, as well as my
corkscrew, table crumber, and sleek, thin, silver flashlight.  I also filled my
shirt pocket up with Big Brother logo-emblazoned pens.  With a glob of hair gel
in my hand I ran to the bathroom, dampened my hair in the faucet and hurriedly
applied the gel and combed through.  Now, I looked like a Goodfella gumbah,
ready to serve the rich and famous.

With
only two minutes to go, I rushed upstairs and through the kitchen, still
buttoning my jacket.  I greeted the sous chef, “Hi, Lola,” sliding on the tile
floor like Tom Cruise. 

“Hi,”
she said with her usual blasé expression.  “You’re late.”

Nothing
anyone did was ever going to change her so why bother with repartee.  “Not yet!”
I said, gliding past her.

When
I rounded the corner, I saw most of the dining room staff already standing at
attention.   I typed in my employee number again and threw my hand down on the
electronic ID reader.  It’s three minutes past six. 
Crap!
  I turned
around just as our very serious Maître d’ entered from the dining room. 

“Hey,
Mr. P,” I said as if nothing were wrong.  In his strong accent, he told me,
“Fix jor tie, Polli.” Daniel, my rosy-cheeked, effeminate, show tune-singing,
new-to-me colleague helped me straighten my tie. 
Oops.

Now
we were all lined up in front of Mr. P under the stark supermarket-type
lighting for our nightly pre-shift meeting at the kitchen food service counter,
also known in kitchen lingo as the line.  Vincent the sommelier, whom I call
Vino (clever, huh?), and the whole staff, stood in a row like soldiers before
battle, all of us in clean, pressed uniforms adorned with four gold buttons on
our dinner jackets.  Underneath the jacket was a plain silk black tie against a
starched white shirt, black double pleated gabardine slacks and perfectly
polished black shoes to boot; classic black and white ensemble.
 
We were so military, if we’d had weapons we could
have done some damage.

Mr.
P inspected each one of us to see that our uniforms are acceptable.  Though our
look may be a bit old-school, we’re definitely the best-uniformed wait team in
the city.  Notwithstanding the Hooters girls. Those uniforms rock.

Mr.
P proceeded to read through the station assignments and gave the busboys their
designated patrol areas.  His accent’s so thick that I turn to Matt with a
questioning look on my face.  Matt shrugged his shoulders with a clueless
smile. I elbowed him in the ribs and he let out a gasp.  Jose and Juan caught
our horseplay and giggled. Mr. P glanced up over his glasses with an intense
look, not the least amused, and we all straighten up as he read on.  He’s so
serious he could have been General Patton laying out a battle plan.  I was genuinely
straining to understand him – was I supposed to kill the Germans, or the
Japanese? And which tank was mine?   What I could almost discern is, “Kate
Hudson will be coming in tonight around eight-thirty, and she’ll be on table
43.  Warren Beatty is already here.  Penelope Cruz will be coming in with some
family members on table six at nine o’clock.”  Then he mentioned a whole bunch
of other stuff that I quite frankly couldn’t make out.   I’m guessing that the
bulk of it was the same bull crap as usual: 
“Remember that we will be
shopped any day now, so make sure to use all the ‘Rules of Service.’  You must
mention the guest’s name at every table, you have blah, blah seconds to greet
your guests and blah, blah minutes to bring the drinks, and you must try to
upsell at every table.”
  It goes on and on and at this point it’s just the
corporation speaking through Mr. P the way the evil spirits in
The Exorcist
speak though their victims.   I just hoped I wouldn’t make Mr. P's head spin
around or cause projectile vomiting.  Not a very high goal, I'll admit, but at
that point in my training it was all about absorbing the rules and surviving
every day by becoming a little smarter and more Cricket Room worthy.

Once
he had made himself fully misunderstood, Lola, our illustrious and impassive
sous-chef, stepped up to introduce the soup of the day as well as our dinner
special.   Mr. P walked back out to the dining room, assured his troops were
prepared for battle. Er, I mean service. 

“Hi,
guys,” she mumbled with no enthusiasm.  “The soup of the day is cream of wild
mushroom, consisting of porcini, shiitake and black morel fungi garnished with roasted
truffled pine nuts. Prepared from a vegetable base.”

“Does
it have cream in it?” asked Paco. 

Jens
couldn’t resist. “No, dumbass, it’s consommé.  She just wanted to throw you off
by calling it ‘cream of.’  Of fucking course it has frickin’ cream in it!”

Everyone
snickered. “I was just askin’ because sometimes they just thicken it with
starch,” said Paco defensively.  I guess he used to work at Sizzler.

Lola
confirmed blandly, “Yes, there’s cream in the cream of wild mushroom soup.”  She
went on to present the dinner special in the same lifeless monotone she always
used.  “The special tonight is pan roasted Chilean sea bass with a mirin miso
crust, stir-fried Chinese broccoli and shiitake sticky rice …,” That sounded
fabulous but the way she described it, she might as well have been saying, “The
special tonight is shit on a shingle with peanut butter garnish, topped with a
raw egg.” She droned on, “…served with lobster froth.”

Yuck,
everything sounded fine up until the lobster froth
, I thought.  The chef Ferran
Adria probably got his cappuccino mixed up with his paella when he invented
that one.  It doesn’t look appetizing on food, kind of like the ick you see at
the edge of the ocean now and then.  During all of this, the phone had been
ringing non-stop in the kitchen.  It was Ariella calling to tell us we had
tables being seated.  One by one all the waiters were sent out onto the floor. 

For
those of us remaining in the kitchen, Patzo the Clown peeked out from his
hidden station to present the dessert special for the evening.  Patzo who has
to wear that stupid, tall paper chef’s hat, often misreads his tickets, causing
us all unnecessary stress and making us look like idiots to the customers. 

“Tonight
we have warm blueberry cobbler with a scoop of French vanilla bean frozen
yogurt.” 

We
all just nodded to acknowledge him and then the rest of us waiters stared at
the sample specials as if we’d never seen food before.  We wrestled and elbowed
each other to get a taste of it all, like hungry orphans in a soup kitchen.  It
was an ugly sight.

All
of a sudden, Ariella, our beautiful Betty Boop hostess, popped up.  As usual,
she was wearing natural nylons, a black gabardine skirt hiked up above her
knees and an off-white rayon blouse whose over-stressed buttons were
threatening to blow at any moment. 
Hey, those could put an eye out!

“What
are you guys eating? I want some!”  All the guys separated and let her eat what
was left, while some of us playfully groped her and took advantage of the
starving sex kitten.   Ariella’s attitude toward sex was as casual as any
guy’s, and since she was accustomed to this ritual, she paid us no attention. 
I could swear she was a guy trapped in a sexy girl’s body. 

“Mmmmmm,
what IS this?” she asked with an
ohmygod
California mall rat accent as
she enjoyed the leftovers.   We didn’t answer; we just kept fondling her and
pulling at her clothing like the perverts we were.  “You guys are sick.”  She
walked away in her five-inch black heels, licking her fingers and swatting us
perverts off her like flies. 
Hey, I’m a soldier about to go into battle,
I
beg her mentally. But she never even slowed down.

Mr.
P walks in and states, “Polli, jew ‘ave a full station tonight, be careful.” 

“What!
What happened to my training?” 
I’m still in boot camp, dammit.

“I
need jew, jew ready anyway, let me know if jew need something.” 

Well,
he’s right. I am ready and it’s time to raise the curtain on this evening’s
dinnertime dramas.
 It
was a busy night in July and as usual, Mr. P was running the room short-handed
because some idiot executive in the London office sets the labor budget too
low. 

Keep
in mind, this international conglomerate owns more than ten upscale properties
and not many of them are in the US.  They have a completely different idea of
organizational culture than did the previous owners of the Cricket Room; the
people who had designed it and built it from nothing.  A nameless, faceless
corporation was turning a unique and iconic eatery into a commodity.

I
was given a five-table station in the garden and as luck would have it, my
first table was our GM who was entertaining two women who seemed like his close
friends. 
No pressure, Kid
, I think to myself.  As I walked up to the
table I smiled and bowed, then held eye contact with him and said, “Good
evening, Mr. Cervantes.  My name is Pauli.  Welcome to the Cricket Room.” 

I
made eye contact with the women at the table and asked, “Ladies, may I offer you
a cocktail or a glass of champagne this evening, perhaps a cosmopolitan martini
or a glass of Veuve Cliquot?”  One of them ordered an apple martini, surprise,
surprise.  I immediately offered Grey Goose for her martini and she agreed, and
the other woman asked for a glass of rosé champagne. 

I
then offered Mr. Cervantes the option to order a bottle of Moet Chandon Rosé. 
He looked around the table and asked his guests if they would like that and they
all nodded sheepishly. 

“Thank
you; please bring us a bottle with glasses for everyone.”

“May
I bring you some flat or sparkling water this evening, sir?” 

“Flat,
please.” 

“Fiji
water or Evian, sir?” 

“Fiji
would be just fine, I don’t like that French stuff; it tastes muddy somehow,”
he complained. 

I
repeated the beverage order back to him, then smiled and bowed and assured them
that I’d be right back with their beverages
.  “French stuff,” huh? Douche
alert.
I detected an over-developed sense of entitlement and arrogance.
Better
be careful with this dude.

I
entered the order on our computer and picked up everything at the service bar,
except the champagne bottle.  On my polished silver tray, I carried out two
bottles of Fiji set inside special silver sleeves, the apple martini, and the
stemware for the table.  As I passed by Vino, our quirky sommelier, I told him
that the GM was at my table and his champagne was waiting at the bar.  He
understood the urgency and hurried to the bar.  By the time I’d served one lady
her martini, poured the water (label facing the guest) and put down their
stemware for the champagne, Vincent showed up with the bottle of Moet Rosé. He
presented the label to Mr. Cervantes, who gave him the nod to open the bottle.