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?”