Tendonitis

My left shoulder throbs, from a night of carrying trays full of glasses, arm-lengths of plates, bus pans, crates, garbage cans.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw the film 127 Hours.  In the movie, the main character has to cut off his own arm in order to free himself after being pinned by a boulder for five days.  He makes a choice to live.  He has to break his own arm, and then saw it off with a dull knife, and finally snap the tendons free.

My arm cries out to me.  Every shift I work.  It tells me, “You can free yourself.  You are trapped.  This arm is pinned, but you can cut it off.  You can escape.”

Eighty-Six the Waitress

Eighty-Six the Waitress.  Time to exit.  Time to say goodbye to making Manhattans for Tom and carrying five plates of food and getting people another order of grilled pita and telling them the “specials” which have been the same for ten years and being nice to Low-blood-sugar Lady and Entitled Mom and knowing that that person likes extra cheese with his pasta and that person likes lemon slices and a straw and Sweet n’ Low with his water and she always gets shiraz and he gets a Dewars with a splash of water and yes, we know it’s really cold in here, the vents of the open kitchen suck up all the heat and yes, we know it’s really cold right here, the main air conditioning vent comes out over this table, and yes we know it’s really warm in here, the air conditioning isn’t working properly and no, we don’t do any substitutions for the rice and greens except either more rice or more greens and no we aren’t a byob and no we don’t do a corkage fee, and yes, we take credit cards at this location and sorry, we don’t take Discover and thank you so much have a great night!  Good night!  Thank you!  Good night!  Take care!  Thanks so much!  Have a good one!  Stay warm!  Stay cool!  Be safe getting home!  See you soon!  Have a great holiday!  Great to see you folks!  Great to see you guys!  Be well!  Thanks - you too!  Take care!  Buh-bye! G’night! G’night folks thank you so much!  I’m going to lock the front door – can someone shut that fucking music off?!  What are we drinking tonight?  I thought those assholes would never leave!  What’d they leave you?  Seventeen percent.  Ugh.  So not worth it.  What’d they leave you?  Twenty percent.  They were here forever, should have been more.  What’d they leave you?  Thirty bucks on sixty – super generous – they can stay as long as they want.  What'd they leave you?  Ugh, eight on sixty.  Oh, that’s good for you!  Shut up.

Forty Whacks

I was bartending a couple of Tuesdays ago.  At one point I walked to the end of the bar where the servers' station is, and said to my coworker:

"You know, I'm related to Lizzie Borden.  And right now I'd like to take an axe and cut the heads off of everyone at my bar."

It's possible this rage I felt had something to do with the fact that my ex-boyfriend was going to get married three days later.  But it may really have been the clientele that night.

Yelp

"My husband and I are regulars at this no frills neighborhood restaurant w/reliable food. Lately, the service has been horrible. On a recent Saturday night our server was completely clueless, screwed up our order and kept us waiting for food that she did not put into the kitchen. The manager, a nice guy, recognized we were regulars and apologized. Recently, our server told us that he could not cancel our order. My husband was full and could not eat the entree. The server argued w/us and would not take the entree off the menu. After we told him we were not going to pay, he conceded. This place has decent food, but really needs to work on training it's servers."

Dear N,
Remember when you used to come in by yourself and eat at the bar? You'd be so wired you couldn't actually sit down on a bar stool. Instead, you'd stand there drinking pinot grigio, eating your octopus followed by your grilled squid, staring out of the window at the park, your eyes full of sorrow and loneliness. You'd head into the bathroom with a clockwork all too familiar to people in the industry. I'd watch you go and come back, and feel your crazy manic energy punching invisible daggers through the air. And serve you another glass of wine. And hate you, and pity you at the same time.

When you were in the other night, and were told that we couldn't cancel the food because it was already being made, you became belligerent and asked for my fellow manager - the "nice guy" mentioned in your wife's review - by saying "Where's the fat guy with the hat?"

I am prepared to forgive you for your insulting, entitled behavior, if you forgive me for referring to you as the "Cokehead Lawyer" for the past many years that I've been waiting on you.

Bar Rot

Bar rot on my hands.  It gets worse the more bartending shifts I have.  Worse when I forget to wear gloves.  Mainly I’ve developed a horrible allergy to 409, which we use throughout the restaurant.  My rag hand – my right hand – is the more troubled hand.  Dermatitis between the fingers.  Itchy, scaly.  At night instead of lotion, I smother my hands in hydrocortisone.  But that thins the skin, and so if I do it too much, they get a crepey, old-person look, and I resolve to be better about wearing gloves at work.

The tops of my fingertips blister, too - little blistery rashes periodically bloom around my nail beds.  Right now, my right middle finger suffers the most damage.  This entire Winter I’ve had blisters chronically under the nail – little bubbles forming, also right at the under-edge of the nail bed.  The finger is always swollen, and if I press it, pus comes out from the cuticle.  The nail itself is ridged, crumpled-looking.  I stopped wearing nail polish years ago.

Bar rot.  Not to be confused with bar regulars.  I don’t think of the single women who sit at my bar this way.  Only the men.  Like Tony, the recently divorced alcoholic whose last stop on his way home is my bar.  His cheeks are round and his face is always bright red when he gets to us – for the one, maybe the two Beefeaters up with a twist.  Always tells me how nice I look, in a gentlemanly tone, but his eyes have that look behind them – just a touch of the rabid dog.  He’s too old for me and he knows it from the way I don’t meet his gaze, from my kind but general smile, and my charm school responses to his overtures.  I’m a good deflector.  He’s walked out without paying enough times that now we make him hand over his credit card when he orders, before we put the drink in front of him.

Dan, who said to me, “you shouldn’t frown so much” the first time I waited on him.  He deals antiques and writes children’s books, and he hates his ex-wife with a passion.  He acts like he’s broke: “Would you like another martini?” “Well, of course, I’d LIKE another martini, but it’s not in my budget tonight.”  He tips like going out isn’t in his budget.  We don’t ever buy him a round.   Stinginess begets stinginess.

Then there are the coked up guys.  Larry, so aggressively friendly: “How are you?  You good?  How’s the house?  Still there?  How’s business been?  Good?  Good. Good.  That’s great.  Just give me another HALF a martini.”  In and out of the bathroom, making friends with whomever else is sitting near him.  Or the lawyer, so quiet, so edgy.  Always gets the same two dishes and the same wine but acts like he’s never been here before.  Or Jim, who owns and runs a successful chain of restaurants in town, who comes in with his wife and their three-year-old daughter, who can’t sit still with them, sucking back Grey Goose and soda after Grey Goose and soda – out the door on the phone, back to their table, into the bathroom, back to the bar.  When his wife and daughter head home he orders doubles.

The last time I ever did coke was in the bathroom of the restaurant I work in now, before it was this restaurant.  Funny how things happen that way.  Sometimes I go in there and remember those blurry days, fifteen years ago now.  I had a daily habit for about a year, until my body said no more.  I can’t imagine what it’s like for these men, all in their mid-forties, early fifties, still spinning like tops, pretending everything is great and grand, pretending that their lives are going somewhere, somewhere besides getting high in the run-down bathroom of an untrendy neighborhood restaurant.

I look at my rough, misshapen fingers and sigh.

Pool House

The restaurant where I work is a pool house, which means we share tips.  All the money and all the hours are collected and the money is divided by the hours so we get an hourly wage and then we each get paid for the hours we work.  If you are late you are docked.  Only fair.  It’s a fair system.  But everyone has to PULL THEIR WEIGHT.  But it’s hard sometimes because people are good and bad at their jobs in different ways.  So the regulars love James (all names are, of course, changed) because he chats them up, which is great for building the clientele, but then the food sits on the line for everyone else to run.  Abby is fast but she is chronically late.  Jess is great when she’s on, but she’s often hung over.  Dave is efficient but really moody.  Laura is relaxed and friendly if she likes the table, but at the first sign of a problem will roll her eyes and call them assholes within earshot. Dan’s got great energy but has to take a cigarette break at least once an hour.  I’d like to believe that I’m the best all around, but I get weeded and bitchy pretty easily.

We take a keen interest in each other’s tips.  Sharon used to say, when you showed her a particularly inadequate tip (like $5.75 on a $40 check), “Oh, that’s good for you!”  Reminding me of when my sister would say, when I’d be having a particularly insecure teenage moment, “You’re pretty – you’re pretty on the inside!”

Pool house.  Makes it feel like a Hockney painting - crystal aqua shimmering, secrets under the water, hidden by the glare of the shining sun.  Calm menace.  Are we a species of sharks, the server shark - a smooth and friendly façade masking a vicious death jaw ready to rip your throat out at the first whiff of a 10% tip?  Maybe so.  We will hunt you down on the sidewalk and right in front of your date ask you curtly if everything was okay with the service, when we both know perfectly well that it was.  We will embarrass you and make you angry and risk you calling the owner to complain because you, little fish, need to be schooled, and you need to know that your tip doesn’t live in a vacuum and you will be remembered and given shitty service, and when you’re not looking we will lunge at your throat, straight for the jugular, at least in our minds and hearts even as we clear your plates and fill up your water glass and smile and ask “How is everything? Is everything okay?”

The Dybbuk

 I look up and see our new regular, who I’ll call John, standing near the front door.  He’s been coming in three to four times a week for the past couple of months now, although he hovers like he’s never been in before, waiting for someone to notice him.  We all do, but none of us greet him right away.  Instead we mutter under our breath “John’s here,” “Your boyfriend’s here,” “Our friend is here,” “Who’s going to take him?” “It’s okay, I’ll do it,” “I’m not fucking waiting on him,” “He fell last time he was here…”

He stands looking sheepish in his pea coat and hipster glasses.  Not a bad looking young man.  Probably not even thirty years old.  Finally one of us goes to him and takes him to a table.  He likes to be in the back.  His favorite table is table six, in the corner, but if that’s occupied, another table against the wall will do.

We give him a menu and a wine list.

He considers the wine list every time.  He orders a bottle of pinot grigio every time.  He offers his server a glass every time.  We’ve all started taking one, mainly because he is a wildly inconsistent tipper (we’ll get to that later) and we thought perhaps that, as in some Myst-like video game, the secret to getting the $30 tip from him as opposed to the $3 tip from him was to take the glass of wine.  This proved to be a false assumption on our part.  Now we take the glass of wine because if we’re not going to get a decent tip out of him, we might as well get a buzz.

I have waited on him three times.  I’ve never been one of the lucky ones, tip-wise.  The first time, he left me $4.  The second time he paid with a card and did not total or sign the slip, so I added a 20% tip.  The third time he left me $3.  His bill is always $72.30.  He gets a bottle of pinot grigio and the same three courses every time, although, as with the wine list, he considers the menu as if it were new to him every time. 

After he paid me with his credit card, I looked him up on the internet.  He has a Facebook account.  He has 105 friends.  His profile picture is of him with what look like two strippers.  They might be burlesque girls.  Maybe he has the kinds of friends you have to pay.

He brings a deli container of roasted red peppers with him every time.  Sometimes caponata too.  He eats these with his food.  He furtively places the container between his legs, and fishes down into it with his greasy fingers, shoving peppers into his mouth along with bites of our food.  Olive oil drips down his chin.  His eyes begin to glaze.  If other people are sitting nearby, they notice.  And comment to us afterward.  He tears up pieces of bread like some kind of bird of prey.

One night Laura made eye contact with him as he was shoving a handful of peppers into his mouth and he froze and dropped them into his lap.  On his nice pants.  We don’t care if he brings roasted peppers in to eat with our food.  He doesn’t need to hide it.  But we don’t say anything to him about it.

When he leaves the floor is littered with napkins, bread crusts, and olive oil.  He often leaves the container of peppers on the floor as well, as if he doesn’t want to be reminded of his shame.  We used to follow him out and give them back to him.  Until the night we were all leaving and found a container hidden behind one of the little bushes that flank the front door of the restaurant.  Now we don’t chase after him with his peppers.

We do chase after him when he starts to leave halfway through his meal, or without paying his check, or paying only part of it, all of which he does pretty regularly.

He becomes the wrong kind of drunk every time.  Incoherent, confused.  His speech slurs, his eyes lose their focus.  We think he must be on some kind of medication that he’s not supposed to mix with alcohol.  He never finishes his bottle, never has probably more than two glasses out of it.  Leaves the rest behind for us.  If he were finishing that bottle we’d feel more justified in cutting him off.  Cutting him loose.  But to us, restaurant people, professional drinkers, it’s such a paltry amount of booze, it feels absurd to have to flag him.

I think about John more than I’d like.  He takes up space in my brain.  I think about him when I’m doing yoga.  I think about adding the gratuity to his check.  I tell people that this is what we should do.  The people who have gotten the $30 tip from him (when he pays with a hundred dollar bill and leaves all the change) balk at this.  The rest of us, who have only seen the 3 or 4 dollars from him, think it’s the right thing to do, if we’re going to let him keep coming.

The other night John got so loopy he fell on the sidewalk on the street.  Laura and I came out and picked him up.  Tried to get him to take a cab.  He refused.  After, I told Laura she was like Mary Magdalene washing Christ’s feet – on her knees in front of him picking up his caponata and roasted peppers strewn across the ground, putting them back in the paper bag he carries them in (he happened to have taken them with him when he left this time), placing them carefully back into his unsteady hands.

We found out that he was kicked out of our other location because of inappropriate, erratic behavior.  We can’t bring ourselves to do it, at least not yet.  We should have done it already.  But as Dave says, “He’s human.  He deserves some kindness.”  But sometimes I wonder if he’s not human, if he’s haunting us, if we’ve been cursed, and if so, will we ever be free?