steakhouse blues

2010-08-20T20:23:00.000-07:00

After one bottle there is clarity. After two there is jocularity. after the third once again comes clarity. And after the fourth...well, let's just say that there is a bit more to shortly be written.

2010-03-03T06:52:00.000-08:00

"Look at an infantryman's eyes and you can tell how much war he has seen..."--William Henry

I spend most of my time travelling right now, but old habits die hard. Traditionally early morning would find me, diet soda in hand, and my desktop computer. After reviewing company-wide sales emails and any other business-related items I would traditionally move on to some favorite personal websites--mostly restaurant blogs like eater and waiterrant and one of my personal favorites, restaurantgal.

Well now I'm mostly in hotel rooms and working off of a laptop, and the business review is much shorter than the personal review, but the process has stayed the same. Usually there is some little bit of knowledge to be gleaned, but every once in a while I come across something that completely transports me to another place, and often that place resides in my past.

This morning my regular stop at restaurantgal led me on one of those unique trips. My relationship with my father did not sour until my mid-twenties, and while our schedules as adults precluded us having a very close relationship, we were pretty similar to a normal father and son under the circumstances. My father's very unique life allowed him to effortlessly cross a number of what, even in this country, would be considered class boundaries. A few times a year my family would find itself the only white faces in a sea of poor black ones at a Baptist church whose pastor had been a chaplain to one of my father's wartime units--they became good friends and my father relished the relationship. After the service was a Sunday lunch picnic next to the sanctuary that we stayed for, and that all of us [but my father especially] loved attending. The roof of the church and the air conditioning were paid for with his money, but no one was allowed to know that.

I saw him hop out of a chauffeur-driven Bentley in custom-made suit and shoes to help push a broken-down car up a hill, and he loved Nascar way before it became a huge hit--loved going to the races and hanging with the other fans.

Mainly though, my father loved the American Legion. Other veteran's organizations as well, but the American Legion was where he felt completely comfortable, completely himself. He twice served as a post commander, and regularly served on the executive committee of his home post. A guy who controlled two different Fortune 500 companies during the course of his life would routinely and without fail come to meetings that focused on paying electric bills, throwing picnics, and collecting hall rentals.

During his time at the Legion, the WWII vets like himself ruled the roost. For reasons I never really divined, Korean vets never really made an impact on the membership-maybe they flocked to another organization like the VFW, maybe the relatively short term of the Korean War allowed them to more effectively separate themselves from their service, maybe they thought the older guys were dicks, or maybe it was just that in our particular area they weren't representative. What I remember was when the Vietnam guys started to show up.

The expectation would be that warriors would welcome warriors, and that soldiers, even from different generations, would know one another right away. And maybe in most posts it was just like that, again I really can't say. At my father's beloved post, the old guys did not like the new guys, and did not want them around. They didn't like the long hair some of them had, didn't like the bikes some of them rode [mostly Japanese bikes, as Harleys were expensive and much less reliable back then than they are now], didn't like what they drank and didn't like what they talked about. Didn't like them in "their" place.

Except my father. My dad, again unlike many of his contemporaries, had remained in the reserves until 1969 when he was retired as a full colonel. He had known a number of the Vietnam-era military men during their service, and knew that they were good men who were, in many cases, put in terrible situations. He knew they often had a raw deal at war, and that the deal only got worse when they came home. Most old vets knew that ground fighting the Japanese on the pacific islands wasn't much different than ground fighting Viet Cong, and that being a prisoner of the Japanese would have been just as traumatic and scarring as being a Vietnamese prisoner, but what the didn't acknowledge were all the other differences that truly made coming home so much harder for the Vietnam guys. The guys from Vietnam weren't allowed to win, didn't come home to parades and adoration, and when they were "shell-shocked" [old school post-traumatic stress disorder] in many cases they didn't have the family support system available to them that was available to past generations. They also didn't come back to a booming economy and millions of open, decently-paying jobs. My father knew that they had been screwed, and wanted them to have a welcoming place to go.

I wasn't there every day, obviously. I knew all of this because one of these Vietnam guys eventually went to work for my father, and over time would tell me the stories. This fellow was himself a bit of an iconoclast--a Vietnam-era career soldier who spent the war, three tours worth, as a special forces sniper. He never had the long hair, the beard, the leather jacket, or the motorcycle. He also stayed in the reserves after active duty, and was a different fellow entirely. My father didn't travel with security per se, but it was often prudent for him to have someone with him who could work toward "securing well-being", as he used to say. This guy was perfect for the job, did it for a very long time, and was incredibly loyal to my father as my father was to him. He only told me one personal story about his time in Vietnam, and while it would be unfair to try to relate it here [in order to get the true impact of the words, you would have to watch him utter them], lets just say that this was one truly dangerous fellow.

I remember two stories he told me about the Legion, two instances together that were the dam breaker between the two groups of men.

One afternoon my father stopped by the post to see some friends, one of whom was a pretty famous WWII pilot. He's been on the History Channel several times, and is very well-known and rightfully very well respected. When my father arrived this famous pilot was mildly berating a very successful pilot of the Vietnam War, because of the disparity in their "kill" numbers. The WWII pilot was talking about how he had a slower plane with no missiles that was technologically over matched by the Japanese Zeros he fought against, yet his numbers dwarfed those of the other aviator. He went on to marvel that a fellow could have missiles and a jet engine and be flying a plane universally considered superior to his MIG adversaries and yet succeed on such a limited scale, comparatively. The older pilot was clearly buzzed, and didn't seem to be mean-spirited in his delivery, and while the younger aviator remained basically silent I am told he had a smile on his face. Apparently my father walked up to the small group, bought the seated Vietnam aviator a drink, and told his pilot friend to shut up before he made "even a bigger fool of himself". When the older man began to protest in a good-natured way and restate his stats, my father said, "Idiot! He flew the F-4 before it had a gun! He went up as a bomber with 8 missiles. Every one of his kills came on a stick [missile] and most of them came with a payload in the gut [carrying bombs]. How many B-24 pilots do you know with a bunch of dogfighting kills?"

To his credit, the older man immediately sat down next to the other pilot and asked him, "you didn't have machine guns?"

He answered, "They didn't add a cannon to the F-4 til 1968, and I was already rotating home by then."

"I'm an asshole, no doubt about that, and I apologize sir. Why didn't you stop my stupid ass, why didn't you tell me?"

"You're one of my idols. I was just honored to be speaking with you."

The respect the younger pilot showed the older one, especially considering the circumstances, became very well known at the post very quickly. Many of the older guys started to wonder if they really knew enough about what their younger associates had gone through. And, of course, as the two pilots started to spend more time together their respective groups of friends started to spend more time together as well.

About a month later a notice went up for a "roof party". One of the older members needed to reshingle his roof. He lived outside the city, and before the days of smothering bureaucracy things like this happened often. You put up a flyer, buy the materials, and a bunch of guys show up one Saturday morning. The roof gets reshingled quickly and cheaply, and then you throw a party afterward to thank everyone. Well, this fellow didn't hang out at the post very much because he didn't have much extra money, and while he knew many of the members his own age he wasn't really close with any of them because he couldn't afford to spend the time [even though it is incredibly cheap to eat and drink at an American Legion]. The morning of the party came and only a couple of this fellow's friends showed up...but there were still twenty men there The Vietnam-era guys had seen the flyer and asked about the guy and found out that he was on a short budget and that he really needed the help.

Restaurant Gal is clearly working as a bartender at a military lodge, a VFW or an American Legion or a VVA. Whichever, it doesn't really matter. Depending on which one it is, she may see veterans of Iraq [1991 Operation or 2003 Operation] and Afghanistan. If she has particularly hale souls in her neighborhood, and they do certainly still exist, she may even see a few Korean War or WWII veterans. But mostly, she serves the veterans of the Vietnam War.

These Vietnam War veterans may look rough. They may use a variety of crutches, literally and chemically. And, as she relates, some of them almost assuredly do not sleep well. They probably didn't want to go, but they went. Their time there was chaotic, traumatic, violent, and terrifying. They came back without anything being resolved, and were not welcomed home while still in uniform. Once out of uniform they had trouble becoming part of civilian society. They generally keep to themselves, individually and as a group. They share an incredible weight of memory, and some simply carry it better than others.

At the same time, they are normal people. They have heroes, even though few of them were honored for their own heroism. They are often the first ones willing to lend a hand, even though many of them have needs of their own. Many of them have a lifetime of memory, knowledge, and experience that is there for the asking, but kept out of sight of the casual observer.

These men had to prove themselves even to other soldiers when they first came to these organizations looking for solace. I hope now that they are the elders, that they have finally found their peace.

2010-01-17T08:25:00.000-08:00

second new post in two days

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple..."--Oscar Wilde

Just a quick aside--this was something that made a shocking impression on me when I stumbled upon it during the course of the extremely drunken group conversation on the night of the restaurant's closing.

There is a party game that is just a clear plastic box full of cards onto which have been written provocative questions--everyone in turn pulls a question and answers it and then everyone else present answers the same question. Someone had the game at the restaurant and servers used to play it sometimes in the beginning of the evening after sidework was done but before guests had arrived--I had no problem with it, I just asked that the more risque questions be skipped.

Well, the game came out after the meal was finished but just as the serious drinking was really getting fired up. The answer that I gave to one of the questions has stuck with me ever since that night [or early morning, to be more accurate]--I had not thought of the incident I described in over a decade, and most odd, wasn't planning for it to be my answer. I just opened my mouth to talk about losing my temper with a cocktail waitress one time and out popped something entirely different.

The question, paraphrased, was, "What is the most regrettable thing you have ever said to someone?"

I had my cocktail waitress-based answer all ready to go when my turn came about, but instead what came out was a much shorter version of the below:

When I was in my mid-20's I was involved in a very torrid relationship--I have never been in better shape and have never looked better, and this girl was just the most beautiful and unbelievably desirable creature one could ever imagine--imagine taking Angelina Jolie's head and setting it atop the most incredible female body ever designed by God [as opposed to the anemic bag of sticks said head actually resides atop these days]. I remember seeing an interview with the model/actress Angie Everhart many years ago and she was describing her romance with Sylvester Stallone, and she talked about how she would wake up in the middle of the night and move the covers off him and just stare transfixed by his body as he slept because it was so perfect [again, many years ago and her opinion]. Well, when I heard her words I broke out laughing, because I had often done the same thing with this girl. I couldn't help it--thinking back I have no idea how either of us ever got out of the house.

We were wholly immersed in one another for over a year, and in addition to bottomless infatuation we actually had a great deal in common, a little bit of shared background, and she was tremendously intelligent. She was also extremely jealous. I probably should have taken her jealous streak more seriously and done more to make her comfortable, but anyone looking at me and looking at her would immediately realize that there was nowhere better for me to go, and as a result of that fact coupled with my youth my stock answer to her concerns was a throw away line, "Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?", or "No way! You've ruined me for other girls--if we ever break up I'm going gay just for the convenience factor." Witty, I know.

Anyway, just short of the eighteen month mark she became very suspicious of a female server on my staff and insisted I fire her or at least move her to lunches where I would see much less of her. This was an ongoing conflict, and eventually there was a misunderstood situation that led to a terrible break-up. I did nothing wrong, the server did nothing wrong, it was just one of those things. Or at least that is how old-guy me sees it. Young-guy me was pissed, because I didn't do anything wrong, and frankly because she nearly ruined me for average, everyday female nakedness--or at least for about six months or so.

After a little time passes, she picks up a rebound guy--and he is not a good guy. A little roided out before it was popular to be roided out, and a bully. Domineering, insulting, profane, etc. The guy made me look like Prince Valiant to be quite honest, and all of her friends and family were constantly on her to ditch the guy and get back with me, but neither option appealed to her.

Then one day she was late to meet the guy at a club and when she finally showed up, he slapped her. In public. And when she responded verbally in surprise and anger he slapped her again. Hard. It was at that point that the bouncers who knew me and still assumed she was my girlfriend [deeply depressed, I wasn't going out and letting people know we were finished, and as being my known associate in a bar or restaurant is always good for a bunch of free stuff, neither was she] partially dismantled this fellow and deposited him in the alley behind the place. One of the bouncers called me to let me know, and after filling the guy in on the situation and making sure she was OK, I called her dad to warn the family about the guy. Her parents had fled Czechoslovakia in the late 50's and while the two boys and the daughter were all-American, her mom and dad were old school. Dad grabbed the two brothers a few days later and they caught up with boyfriend still hurting from the bouncer beatdown and they put him in the hospital. End of rebound relationship.

About three months later this guy hits the papers--front page. Apparently after the bandages came off he went out and found himself another girl, and eventually smacked her around too. And when she screamed at him that she was going to tell her brothers [the neighbors reported the screaming] the guy freaked out and shot her to death. Then the piece of shit coward took the gun, managed to target his tiny little brain, and offed himself.

Six months later I was basically back in action, sitting at an outside bar where a friend was working. I remember it was a Sunday because I had been there most of the day watching football and I was extremely well-lubricated, and whattayaknow across the bar I see the old girlfriend with a couple of her friends. There were about forty people sitting and standing around this big, triangular patio bar and the ladies hadn't seen me. I asked my friend to offer them a round, and ten seconds after he walked away the fireworks commenced. From all the way across the bar came a barrage of invective, screamed accusations of infidelity, stalking, and lying. I had apparently improperly insinuated myself into her family AND her circle of friends, not to mention "monopolizing every waiter and bartender in town". I may have also killed President Kennedy.

Now, even in my intoxicated state I was extremely surprised by her reaction to the simple offer of a drink. In my head I already had us cuddled up and reminiscing, or at the very least discoursing in a civil fashion--having false accusations hurled at me from across a bar in front of forty people was not one of the pre-considered outcomes.

I was still angry at the original false accusations. I was still bothered by the damage the killer had done to her, not to mention the tragedy of the murder and the effect on the victim's friends and family. I was suddenly furious that I was catching all of this public recrimination for no good reason, and I was drunk, and I was young.

As I spoke my voice rose, and the more I spoke the louder my voice got, and the last six words were screamed at the top of my lungs, "I never cheated on you, I never followed you--you followed me. I never went to your friends and family, your friends and family came to me because your new boyfriend was such a scumbag. I never said a bad word about you, I never hit you, and AT LEAST I NEVER KILLED ANYBODY".

By now the entire crowd was struck dumb by the two exchanged outbursts and I'm sure my finale was lost on most of them [though my misanthropic bartender friend would tell people for years that it was the best beatdown he had ever heard], but it wasn't lost on her obviously. I immediately left the bar, walking out on a check for the only time in my life as far as I know [I came back the next day].

I feel completely justified in saying what I said. I was pushed to the point of utterance, and while I generally don't go out of my way to defend myself, I was in no way a villain at any point in this saga. Apparently however, our public exchange and my final exclamation started an avalanche within the young lady's life. I was told that her friends had to carry her from the bar that night, that she basically collapsed sobbing. She had a bad few years following with some drug problems and a failed marriage. She came out on the other side in good shape, and I heard that she made a new life with a good guy in another state and found happiness.

Up until the game, I don't think I had thought of that girl or that incident in years. I was always embarrassed at the public nature of the final "showdown", just as I was always bothered by the way that our relationship ended--after all it always sucks the worst to get punished for something you didn't do. I guess that over time I must have realized subconciously that I pulled the pin from this woman's grenade of despair, and that is just something I would rather not have on my personal resume.

2010-01-16T19:51:00.000-08:00

First new post in a long time

"And from the tents the armorers, accomplishing the knights, with busy hammers closing rivets up, give dreadful note of preparation..."--Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV

They polish, they straighten, and they gather for the pre-shift meeting--but they know. Excepting our mammoth catering property, we are the only restaurant in our company still open. The rumors are rampant, my employer is in seclusion, and I have lost twenty-five pounds.

This is it. Our last evening. It appears at the start to be a fairly slow Saturday. After the pre-shift meeting I would normally be found in my office or at the front desk chatting with my maitre d', but at this moment I am seated at a 4-top toward the back of our dining room. I'm staring out at a bleak autumn day. The waiter in whose station I am seated hovers nervously, afraid that I have spotted something wrong and am sitting while waiting for him to notice and correct it. I turn with an uncharacteristic smile [rare in the best of times, and a downright endangered species over the last six weeks or so] and tell him that everything is fine--I suggest that he return to his family meal. He looks at the same time both relieved at being dismissed and troubled at being so easily diagnosed. On the bread plate at my side is what looks like a full glass of ice water--it is in fact a large glass of vodka from which I sip absentmindedly. In truth, I'm relatively sure that in my current state I could drink an entire bottle of vodka and not feel drunk, but on this particular day the steady supply is at least thankfully keeping me from tears.

I have spent the last two weeks surreptitiously arranging work for my best employees. Calling on friends and associates in the business I have been pretending to advocate for employees from our other properties--every person I speak to is told about the best guy from this place or the A-team bartender from that one. I have arranged appointments for nearly all of my most cherished staffmembers, and on Monday I will call all of my contacts again and tell them who they are really going to be talking to--I'm confident that most of my people will not be out of work for long. I also tried hard to help as many employees from our other closed restaurants as I could, but in full disclosure I saved the best for my guys.

My fugue is briefly interrupted by the sound of breaking glass. A water glass has been knocked from the edge of a table by the worst server on my staff--an imbecile of the first order. The server forgets that I am sitting in the dining room and begins to chuckle like the idiot he is, and it suddenly occurs to me that I don't want to spend the last working night in my beloved steakhouse in this idiot's company.

Disguised drink in hand, I walk to the front desk and grab the schedule. In addition to the imbecile I see one other server on the page who is a constant pain in the ass as well as a bartender due in later that night for whom I can barely disguise my contempt under the best of circumstances. And of course, these are not the best of circumstances.

"What's wrong?', asks my maitre d' after I stand staring at the schedule for three or four minutes. Suddenly I know exactly how to proceed.

To my maitre d', "Do me a favor, please. Send Bob and Hannah home and call Allen and tell him not to come in. Tell them all that we look very slow tonight and that I need to save payroll--if they want to know why they are being picked out instead of someone else tell them they will need to talk to me. Block out the rest of the slots 8pm to 10pm, and we're going to close tonight at 10 instead of 11."

"What's goin-?"

"I'll explain in a sec--I've got to get something from the office and then I need you to do me one more favor."

In the office I go to my briefcase and pull out two things--from my wallet comes my company charge card and from another sleeve comes one of several envelopes--this particular envelope is my maitre d's severance. In a meeting shortly after the sales deal was inked I gave my employer a severance schedule for all of our managers throughout the company--I explained to him that, if he wanted me to play the grim reaper for the three months it was going to take to kill all of his restaurants, the schedule was non-negotiable. The amounts listed were large, but I knew he had no stomach for shutting down his own restaurants, and he agreed.

Walking my maitre d' outside I waste no time, "We are closing tonight. [Owner] sold to [restaurant company] three months ago--they want the real estate not the brand, they paid out the ass, and [owner] couldn't resist. He has promised me that you [and three others] will have job offers within a month, if that's something you would be interested in [I'm shaking my head as I say this]. Your severance is in this envelope, along with appointment info for a GM's interview [with good well-known restaurant company] on Tuesday. Take this [my company AMEX] and call "Stringfellows" [my favorite local restaurant], ask for Nick the manager and tell him Last One Home needs a really, really nice spread for twenty-five people at 11:30pm--I'll leave it to him. I don't care what it costs, but I need it delivered, and I want to add 25% to the check.

--My maitre d' is staring at me like I just grew horns, and I don't know if it is because I just told him that our busy restaurant would be closing forever in five hours or because I just asked him to tell an exclusive, four-star New American restaurant to deliver, so I figure I should cover all the bases--

The check in the envelope is two-months salary, and I am sure that you will get the GM job if you just show up for the interview. Nick owes me three or four HUGE favors, and "Stringfellows" will deliver no problem--trust me. Now cover me for a half hour, I have to go home and grab the wine for dinner tonight. Just keep everything to yourself for a few more hours."

The secret was well-kept until about 9pm when my first server tried to cash out and I told them they had to stay. It was sort of a last-straw moment, and within ten minutes I had a dozen people wanting to know what was going on. When I stated that "the bar was open" and that everyone should get a drink before I said anything further, three people burst loudly into tears. My tears flowed silently.

The meal was great, the wine was better, and the company was best of all. When the pale sun made its rise, many of us were still "at work". Everyone got an envelope--for the managers there was a check and a scheduled interview, while most of my staff had a scheduled interview and everyone got at least a letter of recommendation. I am pleased to say that the vast majority of my staff were quickly snatched up by other operators, just as I am to this day still devastated that they no longer "belong" to me.

My sad job did not lurch to a final halt until two weeks later. There were innumerable transfers, phone calls, and annoying administrative tasks. There was one final, ugly confrontation with my guilt-ridden employer. There was a final, introspective tour of the property that had been my professional home for almost a third of my life.

There is more to be told of this story, though it has obviously taken me a long time to face the telling of the end. There may even be things to tell beyond, though on that I haven't completely decided yet.

You see, this is what I do. What I have always done. I have great respect for the author Steve Dublanica and for the author known as "the doorman". I have their books, I enjoyed reading them, and I look forward to future volumes. But I'm not an author.

I enjoy reading the various server, bartender, and restaurant staff blogs, though I sometimes take personal issue with their attitudes and mindsets. But I am not an actor, an engineering student, a realtor, or an equipment salesman.

I am a restaurant manager. I am myself. I did not want to stop when I was forced to stop.

2009-09-25T19:41:00.000-07:00

"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well..."--Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am daydreaming. I am thinking about the climactic scene from one of my favorite movies, which--oddly--stars one of my least favorite actors. I am daydreaming about "The Last Samurai".

I am thinking about the movie, but in reality what I am doing is debating in my mind the concept of honor.

Honor is important to me. Integrity, honesty, reliability--all of these nearly-forgotten terms matter to me the way they used to matter to most people years ago. Nothing gives me more pride than the fact that I have never broken my word.

I remember hearing the quote once, that "the best friend is the one who dies being owed the most favors".

I like old school shit like this--it is the way I have lived my life up to this point.

Toward the end of "The Last Samurai" the Japanese regular army is coming to capture or kill the last Samurai lord--the motivation is purely political, driven by a craven, power-hungry douchebag whose character [or lack thereof] is eminently recognizable to anyone who pays any attention to modern American politics.

The Samurai and his American companion [played by the patently insane Tom Cruise] have crafted a noble defense--one that will salvage their honor, make their point, appeal to the greater honor of Japan, and--not incidentally--most likely result not only in their own deaths but also in the deaths of every single one of the Samurai Lord's followers.

And they joke about it. They even enjoy themselves to a certain extent amidst the carnage because they are comfortable in the fact that they are doing the right thing. They know the end is coming and they don't care--because they know that eventually the end comes for all of us and they also know that their ending will be glorious.

Glorious. This Samurai and his men meet their end against insurmountable odds and it is glorious in every sense of the word. The scene reduces me to tears every time I see it.

So, here I am thinking of this movie. And I am thinking about right living and honorable living and making the right choices and the hard choices and-----------

"so, what do you say?

SO, what do you say?

LAST ONE HOME! WHAT DO YOU SAY?"

"Wha--?"

"I said, there's going to be a place for you. And there's going to be at least the same amount of money for you. And I need you! Can I count on you?"

As I snap back to reality I remember where I am. I'm sitting on the huge seating veranda of one of our other restaurants, deserted except for me and my employer. It is a Friday morning at 10am and he has been telling me about the deal he has just inked to sell his restaurants to a large multi-state operator. He has been telling me about how this company approached him after hearing from their law firm [also his law firm] that he was looking into either curtailing or completely halting his operations. He has been telling me about the last month and a half of meetings he has had, and about all of the offers this company has made--each one richer than the last. He has been telling me about how he refused all of them out of hand just as he has refused hundreds of other offers over the years.

And then I hear him say three words--"Board of Directors"--and then I understand. These people--these suitors of ours--are very astute. They have read my boss like a book and have identified something about him that I had overlooked. My boss has gotten tired--not tired like I get tired, with the sweat-through shirt under my jacket and the bloody feet and falling asleep at my desk after everyone else has gone home for the night--tired like, "I don't want to worry about all this shit anymore" tired.

These people are going to bank him up--which I'm sure is important to him, but frankly not vital. More importantly, they are giving him his easy out--he's not quitting, not selling out, not abandoning hundreds of loyal employees --he's merging with a multi-state company that has a track record of success and a very well-known name, and he's "staying on" as part of their Board--not quitting, no, of course not.

"So, what do you say, are you coming along?", he asks again.

"I've got to get back to Steakhouse, I'm short-staffed for lunch. Let me know how the announcement is going to go down, please."

"YOU DIDN'T ANSWER ME. I NEED YOU ALONG. ARE YOU COMING ALONG?"

"I'll let you know, Bill." And with that, I walked off the veranda and toward my car.

A few minutes later as I drove toward my office something occurred to me--in well more than a decade, that was the first time I had ever called my employer by his first name while working. We have shared countless social occasions over the years, including a couple of vacations with our significant others during all of which we acted as the friends I always believed us to be--but in the restaurants or in any professional capacity I never spoken to him or referred to him except as Mr. LOH'sBoss [not too much of a stretch to admit that his real name isn't Bill LOH'sBoss, but you get the idea]--not because he wanted it that way, much to the contrary, but because I thought it was the proper thing to do.

Just as that fact was sinking in and I was pondering what such a subconscious slip like that might really mean, another thought occurred to me--one that nearly drove me off the road. Suddenly shaking as if I had been sucker-punched, I managed to pull over to the shoulder and get into a fast food parking lot. Something wasn't right. Something was missing from the story. And I also realized that I had left before the meeting was supposed to be over. I was suddenly sure that if I had stayed on that veranda and agreed to "come along", I would have heard what the late Paul Harvey would have called "the rest of the story". After a few minutes taken to compose myself, I grabbed my cellphone and called.

"I was really hoping you would call--I really didn't like the way you just walked--"

"Why do I have to "come along", Bill? Why can't I just stay where I am? What's the new plan, Bill? What do our new bosses have in mind?" My heart was beating out of my chest and I was sweating and chilled at the same time--and I was angry.

tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick

"Bill?"

After a seemingly endless silence, "The reason the talks took so long and the reason the offer got so--"

"Bill!"

"They're going to close everything but The Mountain [our catering and events business, housed in a massive sixty-year-old facility and nicknamed "The Mountain" because getting to the top of the five-story faux-mansion building while moving tables, chairs, portable bars, etc, can be like climbing a mountain--and frankly it even looks a little like a mountain] and install their concepts. The only one of our places showing positive revenue right now is Steakhouse, and they feel that with current competition, the two pending chain openings, and the continued recession that it will be a loser pretty soon as well."

His statement sounded almost rehearsed, like he had been dreading the moment when he would have to give it and had been trying to get it straight, but it also sounded pretty genuine.

"Why not The Mountain?" Even though I knew the answer, I was in shock and it was the only thing I could think to say.

"Money. She's mostly booked for the next nine months--that's nearly $2 million in potential sales and we've already taken in nearly $300,000.00 in deposits. They don't want to give up the sales or give back the deposits."

"I'll call you back from the office, I'm on the road right now." Click.

When I got back to my office and spent some more time on the phone with my employer I received what can only be described as a brutal closure schedule. The first of our places would close at the end of business the next night [Saturday], and on Sunday and Monday all their food and beverage products would be moved to my property. Within a month all of our other restaurants would close using the same program--the process slowed only by the fact that we would need at least a few days after each closure to use up enough of their inventories that we would be able to accept more stuff from the next victim. Five weeks and one day after my Friday morning meeting would be Steakhouse's last operating day, and the following Sunday and Monday I would oversee the transfer of my final inventories to The Mountain.

End of story. Done. Finis.

Restaurants close every day--it is literally almost the worst possible business to open. Definitely over 80% and possible over 90% of all restaurants close within one year of opening. That is a terrible figure by itself, and when you include among the survivors those stores belonging to gigantic chains [how many Subways, McDonald's, and Wendy's have you ever seen close within one year] it becomes a nearly insurmountable challenge for any independent operator. Over the years we had received inventory from a failed sibling more than once, but in addition to Steakhouse we were also able to field a number of winners--if not for the current poor economy and the anti-small business attitude at the federal level, I don't think I would be writing this now.

As for my employer, my feelings are conflicted to say the least. Many people would see no difference between his closing up shop over a pending health care debacle [still happily unresolved and hopefully soon defeated] before it had the chance to destroy his business or make all of us wards of the federal government, and doing what he actually did--"merging" with a larger company whose announced plan included the closing of the very same restaurants for other reasons. After all, the net result is the same.

In the first case, I found his position surprising but not objectionable--a matter of self-determination, a sort of "this far and no further" kind of stand. After I got over the initial shock of his statement, it reminded me a little bit of when that awful woman attempted to pressure Augusta National several years ago on their men-only membership policy. Augusta of course hosts the Master's Golf Tournament, and this woman demanded Augusta--a private club legally entitled to an exclusive membership policy--admit women, or she would organize a boycott of the Tournament's sponsors. The president of Augusta at the time, the unfortunately named Hootie Johnson, was delightfully non-plussed. He announced that in order spare the Tournament's long-time valued sponsors from being sullied and bullied, he would suspend sponsorship of the event [it went on television commercial free and made the event and the Club even more beloved]. Further, he announced, the Club's membership policies were their own and would only be changed for reasons of and at a time of the membership's own choosing. If the Club's neighbors and sponsors continued to be harassed, he said, they would probably just stop having the Tournament altogether. Not surprisingly, this show of resolve, so uncommon in the modern era, resulted in the woman being marginalized [rightfully so] and the "controversy" disappearing.

It is sometimes right to declare that if something cannot be done my way, it will be done no way. A vital component of freedom.

In the situation of our "merger" however, its harder for me to find and recognize his high ground. A point he tried to make to me on the phone after the Friday meeting was that the negotiations took so long because he kept refusing the closures--at the time I cut him off, but later, when we were meeting about severances he was finally able to make this point, which was clearly very important to him. As this particular meeting was one of the low points of my entire career [figuring out what to pay people who were being laid off for no good reason before sending them out into the worst job market in history], I did not ask my boss what changed his mind. Of course, I didn't have to ask him, because I knew--they made it easy for him. The easier they made it for him, the less important everyone else's potential difficulties became. The restaurants are his, the decision is his. Throughout his career he has been an honorable and respectful employer, evidenced by the huge group of employees who have stayed with him for over a decade at numerous different properties. It would never occur to me to say, "You can't do this", or anything similar. Still though...

It just doesn't seem right. Maybe I'm just feeling sorry for myself, or regretting the end of an era that, at the very least, I was hoping to end my involvement with on my own terms. More likely, I'm picking up on the fact that he feels guilty about the decision himself, that he knows he took the easy way out.

But for me, it is not so easy. Easy doesn't appeal to me. In all honesty, I have quite a bit of contempt for easy. I have his open job offer. The money is very good, the position probably less physically demanding than the one that I am preparing to leave, and I want to work. I don't need to work, which is a luxury that also embarrasses me right now, but I want to work. If I take the job I can probably find jobs for many of our past employees once the properties are re-concepted and start to re-open [all will be re-concepted and re-modeled except for our perennial loser which will become the big company's new corporate offices], and that is important to me. On the other hand, if I take the job I believe I will also ease my employer's conscience, and I believe that my acceptance will be a tacit endorsement of the whole deal, and that I do not like.

It has been a long time since I had to hunt for a job, usually being hired from one place to another, and staying at the last one through three Presidents and four administrations has me a bit out of practice even before you get to it being the worst market in history.

I have to tell you, I still kind of like that climax from The Last Samurai. That's a good way to go out. The only problem is that when I went in the hut to put on my armor, my Samurai lord walked down the hill and surrendered.

2009-07-17T15:23:00.000-07:00

"The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap..."--Ayn Rand

"What are you doing right now?"

"Finishing up a schedule and getting ready to make up a liquor order. Why?"

"Forget about that...Come on over to the office as fast as you can, please."

"On my way."

I can't remember the last time I was in my employer's office, which is also to say that I can't remember the last time he was in his office either. The corporate offices for our small company house our controller, a receptionist who covers the phones for the office as well as for all of our places during down time and shift changes, and my employer himself--technically. For the last four years or so my boss has pretty much done business via Blackberry and "ask Last One Home". On my last visit to this facility to drop something off for our controller, the open door to his office revealed a pile of military memorabilia [he is an avid collector] that covered the desk and the two visitor's chairs as well as the blueprint table left over from the last store we built from scratch--it was obvious from the dust atop this priceless pile of crap that the room itself had not been occupied in quite some time.

As I grab my jacket and briefcase and head for my car, I wonder what's up.

"Thanks for coming so quickly. You know, Last One Home, when we first started working together all those years ago, I didn't give you nearly as much credit and recognition as you deserved. I hope that I have remedied that over the years, but I know I've gotten lazy as time has gone on and I also know that I don't always communicate as well as I should--so I just want to start by telling you that, truly, none of this would exist without you. Seriously."

"Am I getting fired?" [You have to imagine the situation for me, as I asked this question out of honest curiosity as well as with some eagerness--I don't mean to belittle the financial trouble that so many are facing right now--but for me getting fired would be, in a way, like being paroled from prison].

"No you're not getting fired...sorry to disappoint you. [apparently the eagerness in my voice came through more than I had expected]

I'm seriously thinking about closing, however. I wanted to tell you before any of the financial people I've had preliminaries with start to blab."

"The Steakhouse??" At this I was truly surprised. We have been by no means immune to the collapse of our nation into Socialism, and both our check average and general revenues have suffered. However, financially speaking we weren't anywhere near where closing should be any sort of a consideration. We were still profitable, as a matter of fact.

"All of the stores."

"What the fuck is going on? Are you sick?"

"I'm not sick. No one is sick. Did you ever read the short story the movie 'The Shawshank Redemption' was based on?"

"I don't think so, but I did see the movie a long time ago. What was the story called? And why?"

"I don't remember exactly, but it had 'Shawshank' in the title. Anyway, in the book the Tim Robbins character was talking to the black guy about how, when he knew he was probably going to be convicted, he started to protect his assets. The Tim Robbins guy made a comparison between two men who live on the beach, both with priceless art collections. A hurricane is on the way, and one guy thinks that God or Providence or whatever would never let all his beautiful art be destroyed, and so he is sure the storm will turn and he does nothing. You know, those storms are so fickle anyway, they almost never end up where anyone expects. Well, the second guy also hopes for the best, and knows alot can happen in between the storm forming and it hitting land, but he still doesn't want to take any chances--so the second guy takes down all of his art and crates it up and moves it inland away from the storm, to protect his investment."

"Riight?"

"I believe you are aware of what is going to happen when the stimulus money that extended unemployment benefits and raised benefit amounts runs out next year, yes?"

"Yes. In return for the states getting the money, they had to guarantee that those longer terms and higher pay-outs would be maintained indefinitely--that means that when the "free" money is gone, our unemployment insurance rates and fees go up."

"They will go up substantially, even though we haven't laid a single person off."

"And that's why you are thinking of selling out?"

"Not selling, just closing."

"I have to tell you, boss--I'm at a total loss."

"Do you think this ridiculous health care bill is going to pass?"

"Unfortunately I do."

"So do I, and I have spent the last week with our lawyers and accountants and the controller looking at numbers--some of our well-connected friends back east have made sure we got the text of the bill as soon as it became available--you know they didn't have it when they voted on it--but it is out now.

Businesses like ours will have two choices--pay for the health care for our employees, or pay a penalty that amounts to 8% of total labor cost if we do not. Paying for the health care puts us out of business--straight up. Paying these cocksuckers the penalty almost puts us out of business--and those two conclusions are drawn using last years' numbers, which are a damn sight better than 2009."

"Why close them instead of sell them?"

"A few reasons. I can't imagine that anyone is looking to buy restaurants right now even without this health care bullshit, and I don't want to have them on the market forever just to get lowballed. Half of them are almost worthless without our name anyway, and I'm not going to sell the name. In closing them, I can eliminate most of the operating debt on the properties through the process and in the case of Steakhouse and [one other restaurant] avoid the two big improvement assessments that are about to hit at the same time. And finally, if I close them, the cocksuckers can't tax me like they could if I sell them. I don't think I'm going to be able to save them like the guy from he story, but I'm damn well going to decide what happens to them myself.

I'm fed up with it. I'm thinking about fronting some of our long-time guys in little places--bars mostly. Two or three or four guys working as partners--so there aren't technically any employees. Small footage places, pubs and cool little places like that Pegu Club and PDT we went to when we were in Manhattan last year--but smaller. Maybe some of our kitchen guys want to do the same kind of thing with a little bakery or sandwich shop or something. Nothing too big--no more big equipment, big rents, big anything--and no more employees. I'm thinking of fronting "hospitality LLP's".

I'm so tired of everybody's hands in my pockets constantly. Do you know there are three fucking music licensing companies now? I swear to God if I could play only music in the public domain I would do that too--or maybe just no music at all--just turn up the TV's. Licenses--do you know when I started with 'Harry's' thirty years ago I had two licenses on my wall--the occupational license and the liquor license. Two. How many are on the wall at Steakhouse right now?"

"Twelve or thirteen."

"And how many of them make any fucking sense at all?"

"Two."

"Exactly. Listen, my friend--we've come a long way together. I've made you rich and you've made me richer--but we have both worked till we bled for every penny--you a good deal more over the last ten years or so than me, but I had plenty of hard, lean years in the 70's and 80's. You know, when 'Harry's' opened it took every last penny I had--I sold my car and got evicted from my apartment--I slept on the bar for three months till I could afford an efficiency finally. But my own place was my dream, and I'm so sad and so angry that we are where we are right now--but I can't see any other way if this shit gets passed--I refuse to get sucked down with everyone else. I always believed that my people worked with me instead of for me--everybody. But all this new stuff has made it so that I'm going to be working for them--and I can't abide that--I just can't."

"You know we're talking about over 400 people, unless you plan to back 200 bakeries and underground bars."

"I know it. I'm sick over it. But here's how I look at it. I have given thousands of people good jobs over the years--great working conditions, good salaries, hourly wages, and good shifts. I've given millions in bonuses, spent hundreds of thousands on parties [our holiday and anniversary parties are legendary and epic]. I've never been able to afford health coverage for the whole staff, just management, but I've paid for emergency room bills, root canals, appendectomies, broken ankles, and all sorts of surprise shit that could have really hurt my guys when they weren't prepared for it--I've fronted down payments, tuition, and bail--I've cosigned a hundred loans. I have paid people more than the going rate because we didn't have insurance, and hoped they would put the extra money toward their own program. I have been stand-up my whole life--my whole life.

But this. This is just like a union trying to push their way into my business. The only difference is that the employees don't have any more control over it than I do. If a union successfully pushed into our places I would close them the next day, I told you that a long time ago. I'm thinking about doing the same thing here for the same reasons--once some other group decides they can tell me what I'm going to do beyond what is right and decent in my own business, I'm up up and away."

My employer might be a little ahead of the curve here, but by no means do I think he is going to be alone in his conclusions. I believe the recent passed and pending legislation in congress will close more than half of all US small businesses.

In responding to a recent comment on another post, I mentioned that I might possibly exit restaurants in a year or so, and that when and if I did I would identify myself and answer any and all questions anyone might have. After the meeting I just came back from, I'm guessing I might be able to do that somewhat sooner than originally anticipated.

2009-07-09T16:13:00.000-07:00

"We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge..."--John Naisbitt

"Good evening, thank you for calling--"

"Frankie playin' tonight?"

"Yes, sir, Frank is playing the--"

"ahright listen! I need a table for two in the showroom in 'bout twenty minutes--we're gonna eat early before the show. And I want a nice table, don't bullshit me! Close to the stage, but not too close!"

"Sir, I'll be happy to take your reservation for two, but--"

"Just put it down--this is Carmine." Click.

As I stare at the handset, one of our hostesses asks, "What was that all about?"

"That, apparently, was a reservation for two for 'Carmine' in about twenty minutes...in the 'showroom'."

"What?"

"Yes, in the 'showroom'. And make sure he gets a table close to the stage, but not too close."

"What stage?"

"The guy on the phone asked if Frank was playing tonight, and when I said that he was the guy directed me to make sure he got a nice able in the showroom close to the stage--he wants to eat early, you know, before the show."

"What show?"

"I don't know. Maybe Frank used to be in a band or something. I tried to explain to the guy how our entertainment was set up here, but he was all talking and no listening. Hold a table in the bar room for him and we'll see what happens."

The restaurant's current entertainment is a pianist who has one of those machines that provides extra orchestration for a huge number of songs. The machine allows one musician to sound like a band. He also sings. He plays four or five nights a week, and while he is located in our small bar and lounge room, his music is played thoughout the restaurant on our sound system during his sets. He's been with us for about three years, and does a very good job. He doesn't drink [many lounge musicians are huge drunks] and he constantly updates his set lists [most lounge musicians find thirty songs they like and play them ad nauseum for the rest of their lives--usually in the same order each night]. However, he plays alone, and is set up on our carpeted lounge floor. There is no "stage" and no real "show".

Approximately thirty minutes after Carmine's call, the man himself arrived--along with a companion best described as his "moll". Here was the woman keeping Estee Lauder and Frederick's of Hollywood in business.

"I'm Carmine, you got me a table in the showroom to see Frankie."

"We're all set for you, sir, but if I may, I should probably take a moment and describe our entertainment to you--"

"No grease!"

"Sir?"

"I said no grease. No grease the first time. If you treat me right this time I'll duke you when I come back, but no grease now--you need to impress me the first time--so there ain't no reason for you to 'explain' nothin'. Got it?"

"Show Mr. Carmine to 602, please."

Thirty seconds later, "Ay pal! I said the showroom near the stage, not a kiddie table in Siberia!"

"Well, sir. We showed you to a table in our bar room near our piano. The piano Frank will start playing in about forty minutes. We'll certainly be happy to show you to any other unoccupied table in the restaurant--we were just trying to seat you according to your request."

"No showroom?"

"No sir."

"No stage?"

"No sir."

"What kind of supper club you people trying to run here?"

"Actually, we're trying to run a steakhouse that offers live piano music a few nights a week in addition to a number of other amenities. We've been trying to do it nearly every night for the last fifteen years.

Sir, are you sure you have the right restaurant?"

"If you've got Frankie playin', I've got the right place--I just wasn't expectin' such a crazy set-up. Ahright, the 'bar room' it is."

Carmine and his lovely guest returned to their table in the bar and ordered quickly, probably not wanting the food to interfere with the 'show'. They were halfway through their meals when our musician arrived and began setting up for the evening.

While I didn't see it transpire, apparently Carmine hopped up and approached Frank as soon as he saw him. What I did see was Carmine and his "special lady" making a bee-line for the front door, doggie bags in hand, about five minutes afterward.

"Not staying for the show?" [I couldn't help myself]

"You got me! You really got me! All I can say is you got me! That's not Frankie Jacuzzi!!"

"You never gave a last name when you were asking on the phone, sir. I tried to stop you on the phone and I also tried to explain before you were sat--I didn't think you were in the right place."

"Whatever you say, hotshot. You got me, that's all. You got me."

"Sir, with all due respect--you called us."

Shaking his head in disgust, Carmine exited the building positive that I was revelling in my betrayal of his sacred trust.

"What was that guy's problem?" Frank asked, coming up behind me at the desk.

"He thought you were some guy named Frankie Jacuzzi."

"Seriously? That guy died like eight years ago."

"Well, thats not too bad. He outlived supper clubs by about thirty years."

2009-07-08T14:43:00.000-07:00

"And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor..."--the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence

"On Independence Day, a few hours ago, they killed my son, Aaron in Afghanistan"--David M Masters

One of my favorite speeches of all time I discovered just recently was actually the work of Rush Limbaugh, Jr., the father of the very popular radio host of the same name. I suppose it is odd to brand something a favorite when it brings tears to my eyes every time I hear or read it--but this speech is perhaps the most succinct expression of what actually made this country--the attitudes and sacrifices and the sheer will--that exists today.

A girl I dated several years ago [who, unfortunately, I realized I was in love with only after she had moved 2000 miles away and gotten engaged to someone else] had the speech framed for me. It is a big piece--a little larger than a full-size movie poster--and it hangs in a prominent place in my home office. To this very day it is difficult for me to walk past the piece without reading at least a little of what is printed there.

When most of us think of the men who created this country we think of the fighting kids in the militia that evaded, outlasted, and eventually outfought the British--and we think of those patriots who had the strongest hand in guiding our young country once it had been created--Washington, Jefferson, and Adams. That fighting force and those individuals deserve all the credit given them and more, but for me personally the men I think most of when I think of our founding are those other signers, the ones who in many cases lost nearly everything after affixing their names to the Declaration.

Jefferson, Adams, and Washington [the general, in the field at the time, was not a signer] all risked their lives and property, but for the most part lucked out for lack of a better term--their homes, estates, and businesses survived largely untouched. For many of their brethren however the toll of freedom was high and harsh indeed.

The vast majority of these men were rich and had large families. Most of them committed to the cause knowing full well that their possessions, families, and lands were, for the most part, located in areas under the direct control or within the near reach of the British forces.

Francis Lewis of New York lost everything, including his wife who was captured, raped, and tortured by British soldiers. She died shortly after being returned to him in a prisoner exchange.

William Floyd of New York saved his family but lost all of his possessions and was forced to live as a fugitive for seven years.

Phillips Livingstone of New York lost all of his great wealth and his life before ever getting to see the dawn of the new nation he had given everything for.

John Hart of New Jersey was nearly captured trying to return home to see his dying wife. When he finally snuck back to the ruins of his property his wife was already dead and his thirteen children gone. He never found his children and died broke and broken in 1779.

Robert Morris of Pennsylvania spent his vast fortune in support of Washington's army. The effort destroyed his merchant fleet of nearly 150 ships and reduced him to a pauper.

Abraham Clark of New Jersey was offered the lives of his two captured sons near the end of the war if he would publicly renounce the Revolution and endorse the British throne. He refused, and his sons died in captivity.

My favorite of these generally unknown heros however is without a doubt Governor Thomas Nelson of Virginia. Nelson commanded the Virginia militia throughout the war and was in command at the epic battle of Yorktown. As American artillery began to zero in on the British, their General Cornwallis ordered his command relocated to Nelson's own immense, opulent home. American cannoneers would not fire on the residence.

"Why do you spare my home?", demanded the angry Nelson.

"Sir, out of respect to you," replied the artillery commander.

Nelson cried, "Give me the cannon!", and went on to demolish his own home in order to defeat Cornwallis.

In total, nine of the signers died during the war, five were captured, twelve lost their homes, seventeen were completely bankrupted, and two saw their wives ravaged at the hands of the enemy.

I have often wondered if I could have made any of the sacrifices that these men did, just as I wonder sometimes whether I would have found myself at a recruitment office on 09.12.01 had I been a younger man.

I have lived my life doing things the hard way, because usually the hard way is the best way. I understand, as apparently fewer people do each and every day, that in order for something to have real value and foundation there must be labor expended, sacrifices made, and even sometimes little blood drawn. I comfortably admit owning a tremendous amount of contempt for those who have decided that their life path will be the easiest, simplest one--no matter how many broken promises, cut corners, failures, and disappointments are left in the wake of that path. I would rather accept responsibility than pass the buck, would rather break trail than follow meekly, would rather do battle than dodge the draft.

When someone says, "I've heard of you," I have no worries whatsoever. My word is good, my credit is good, my bills are paid, my businesses are successful, my reputation is intact, and I sleep like a baby--if a baby only slept about four hours a day, that is. That is the only way I know to live my life.

Could I have made the sacrifices that many of those fifty-six signers made? I don't know--I suppose that is a question that can only be answered just as the deadline looms.

The problem, unfortunately, is that I am much more sure of the answer to another question, namely: "How many of those in our current government would make the sacrifices that many of those fifty-six signers made?"

The answer to that question is a very low, disgustingly low number--and I'm speaking about both parties.

Ironically, the only name that hits me right away as a resounding "yes" is a man in such questionable health that he probably wouldn't last two weeks in such a stressful situation--former Vice President Dick Cheney. Probably Senator Lieberman, who has shown a refreshing willingness to speak plainly about important issues regardless of party line. Probably former President George W. Bush, if he has anything left in the tank. Maybe the two magnificent senators from Oklahoma--but I don't know enough about them personally to be sure. Maybe crazy Dennis Kucinich--his idea of America is diametrically opposed to mine, but he nevertheless seems to go about his business--his insane business--in a pretty forthright manner.

Not only would our current "leaders" have recanted revolution to save their two sons as Abraham Clark refused to do--they would have recanted for a 757 ride [private of course] home to San Francisco, a trip to Paris [excuse me, fact-finding mission], a post office named after their grandfather, $1.2 trillion for the union thugs that get them re-elected every two, four, or six years, hair plugs, custom-made Allen Edmonds loafers, a cheese steak, aluminum collar stays, a can of aqua net, etc. Not only would they have recanted for the most minor of trinkets and geegaws, they never would have considered revolution in the first place unless they could have been exponentially enriched by it--not the other way around.

Yes, I am still furious.

2009-07-01T16:18:00.000-07:00

"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength..."--Eric Hoffer

"We need another bartender over here."

"Is something wrong, sir?"

"She's got no sense of humor. Me and my buddies are just trying to have a good time, she's supposed to help us have a good time, and she's acting like some kind of robot."

The gentleman and his "buddies", for the moment, are enjoying the benefit of the doubt. They are in our empty lounge on a very slow Sunday, and up to this point have done nothing I have noticed that would brand them as troublemakers.

The bartender is one of my best, but she does have a tendency to be a little sparing with her words. She has lot of regular guests who love her, and she can rock and roll when its busy like few others I have seen--but she is much more focused on the mechanical aspects of her job than the social ones. Normally such a trait would go virtually unnoticed, but because she is quite beautiful and graced with a flawless body, some men take her natural economy with words personally.

I find her in the kitchen, and as I suspected she is clearly upset. She is sensitive to this type of situation, and has trouble with the concept of being blamed for simply being herself.

"What's up with the three stooges?", I ask.

Looking stricken, and near tears, she responds, "I don't know what to do. They sat down, and I asked them if I could get them a drink, and the first thing one of them says is 'I don't know, can you?' so I say 'I'll certainly try' and one of the other one asks 'Well, what else do you like to try?'

Then they asked me how my 'rack' was like they were talking about the lamb, and when I finally got a drink order and they settled down a little and started looking at menus, one of them called me over to say there was something in his drink--he had eaten a mouthful of barsnacks and chewed them up and spit them back into the beer glass and--"

"OK, that's enough--I get the idea. What are you doing back here now?"

"Getting their bread."

"Forget the bread, they won't be needing it. Head back to the bar in case someone else comes in, but say away from them."

As one would suspect, my benefit of the doubt evaporated at "what else do you like to try". I suppose I could dismiss them as three drunks, but it isn't my style to allow people to blame unacceptable behavior on chemical deviation. As I entered the lounge to expel the 'gentlemen' I see a large party gathering for an 80-something birthday--as they weren't the normal crowd for a barfight I quickly and regretfully soften my game plan.

"Sorry gentlemen, I'm afraid I don't have another bartender available this evening--so, this round is on the house and we'll wish you a good evening. Thanks for stopping in."

"That's OK--we'll make due with this little filly--once she gets to know us I'm sure she'll come around."

"She's not going to get to know you. We're not going to serve you anything else. It's time to go, gentlemen. Drinks are on me, I'll walk you to the door."

Like the rising dawn, I can see the realization come over one of the guys that he and his buddies are being thrown out.

"JUST YOU are gonna walk ALL THREE OF US to the door, now??"

"Without a doubt."

--First, It should be mentioned that while I relate a fair number of stories like this, and such incidents are ever more numerous, they don't happen constantly. However, I don't need to write about the five hours of bright, beaming smiles and "everything was wonderful, as usual" comments that I often experience in order to keep myself sane--I need to write about 'The Amazing Douchebags' and people like them to keep myself sane. Secondly, I am more surprised each day by the ever-growing number of men willing to imply or outrightly threaten violence during similar confrontations who immediately and shamelessly back down when I, or people like me, don't immediately yield. Its like they've been watching way, way too much TV.--

"Uh, uh, you're making a big mistake here. We're just havin' some fun--she's too uptight. Uh, you know, we're gonna go right down the street to [insert new outpost of national steakhouse chain that we are currently demolishing] and spend our money there. You're makin' a big mistake."

"I make mistakes all the time."

"You don't know what you're doing, pal!"

"Opinions vary." [Yes, I know, its a line from a bad Patrick Swayze movie--but I've always loved it and do use it on very rare occassion--always to great effect]

"Come on guys, we're outta here."

As they exited the restaurant I returned to their spot at the bar, which in fifteen minutes had been ravaged. Bar stools pushed up against each other on either side, snack mix all over the floor, bevnaps balled up everywhere, a rubber drink pad that they had pulled out of the well stretched sideways across the bar for some inexplicable reason.

After a quick clean-up I turned around to find a little tiny fellow from the still-gathering Octegenarian birthday bash standing right behind me, and I steeled myself for a complaint about the 'scene' I had just made.

"Yes, sir?"

"Thanks for throwing those guys out. When we came in, they told my grandmother she had a nice ass. Thank God she's almost deaf!"

2009-06-29T18:50:00.000-07:00

"When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary..."--Thomas Payne

--Olbermann said so, so that means you don't know what you're talking about, so you should just shut up."

The speaker, as the above-imbedded citation would indicate, is a moron. One of my most disappointing hires--a scatter-brained under-achiever more concerned with text messaging than seeing to her guests. She already has two written warnings and a one-week suspension and though she has been informed that the next violation of policy will trigger her dismissal she is unafraid, because, as she puts it, "I've never been fired before". The fact that she has never worked for anyone besides her father before apparently hasn't affected her logical reasoning on the matter.

I catch the statement fragment as I am moving through the kitchen near an area where staff hangs out before we get busy, and I know I should ignore it. I know that facts only matter to a tiny and apparently shrinking few these days, I know this foolish girl is under the thrawl of MSNBC and their Wizards of Bullshit, and I know I should just keep on going--but it is so hard.

I heard a story once about an old man who used to go to one of the Naval storage yards every day and paint the rusting hulls of the WW II era vessels that had been left there at moorings, naked to the ravages of time after years of proud and valuable service. He was a naval veteran who couldn't bear the thought of all that decay--rot coming to noble vessels once so proud and vibrant and special--and so he bought his own gray paint, brushes, and ladder and he painted. And back then, in the days when the right things were sometimes still allowed to happen, the yard master let him go about his business--who knows, in his heart of hearts he may have even wished he could grab a bucket and join him.

I feel about this country the way that sailor felt about that mooring yard. My rational self knows the fight is lost. I know the rot is everwhere, and I know the decay is too deep in too many places for the paint of my words to remedy--but I can't ignore it. The job is so big, and has been neglected for so long, that I don't know where to start--as I'm sure that old man didn't know where to begin either--but I still cannot accept in my heart what my brain has already reconciled.

I should just keep moving toward the front of the restaurant, but instead I grab my brush and my bucket, so to speak, and turn back toward the small grouping of staff.

"What you guys talking about?"

Immediately, two long-time servers and one nearly brilliant new-hire perk up--the oldtimers know what is coming, and the newer member of my staff and I have had some very interesting, very civil, and very specific debates on politics and the American future over the last few months. The new employee is a life-long democrat born and raised in Illinois who finally admitted to me that she had been terrifed at the prospect of President Obama's election and can already see the "Chicago Way" spreading through the federal government. She is probably interested to see how I handle the cable TV professor in front of everyone else, while the oldtimers just smell blood in the water--they can see my big, sharp fin sticking up above the waves and headed toward their poor, doomed co-worker.

"Climate change", the server piped up.

"Global warming bullshit", came the slightly accented reply from a surprising source--one of our line cooks, Carlos.

"Fuck you. Go back behind the line before I call La Migra", chimed in my darling server.

"Actually Hanna, Carlos is a US citizen. I know because I attended his swearing in last year. Before he was a citizen he was a legal resident. I know because I hired him and checked his new hire paperwork completely, as I do with everyone, in all of our restaurants. I came over here because I heard you mention Kieth Olbermann like you were citing the Encyclopedia Brittanica instead of a bad sports announcer turned Democrat apologist. I was going to give you some factual information in the hopes that you might actually listen, but I don't need to get involved. Carlos lived in Mexico for 18 years before he came here. No one here understands corruption, ignorance, and misinformation better than he does--you don't stand a chance."

As I leave the simmering battle behind and head toward the front of the restaurant my assistant hands me a new menu draft for approval and asks, "what was that idiot talking about back there?"

"She was commenting on the great global warming hoax. Not surprisingly, she believes everything MSNBC tells her about it."

"Maybe all that time in front of the TV is the reason she can never make her lunch shifts on time. Or maybe its just the stupidity. I fucking hate her. My birthday is coming up, please fire her for my birthday present."

My assistant, my invaluable assistant who is worth her weight in gold, does not mince words.

"I doubt she'll make it that long, but you can sit it in when I do it if you like. I'll tell her I need another manager present as a witness."

"Don't tease...[long pause]...Actually, I guess I should't be so mean about her--I used to be that stupid, I used to be just like Hanna. I used to believe President Bush stole the election because Dan Rather said he did. I used to think the best job in the world would be a union job because I couldn't get fired. I used to think that everything could be fixed if everyone would just sit down and talk."

"What changed your mind? 9-11?"

"No. 9-11 made me appreciate President Bush. I remember thinking the day after, after the shock had worn off a little, I remember thinking 'thank God its not Al Gore'."

"So what was it?", I asked again, now truly intrigued.

"It was you. You changed my mind about alot of things. All those nights at the door when we would talk about what was on the TV's [the TV's in our lounge can be seen from the entranceway and front desk]--you would never argue. You would give your opinion and tell why you thought something was the way it was, and you would ask me why I thought certain things. Over and over. Why why why."

"I didn't mean to badger you."

"No, you didn't. It wasn't mean, you actually seemed interested in my opinions, where they came from, but I could never answer you--because they weren't opinions, they were just feelings. So I started to pay attention and get the facts on stuff so I could answer you and beat you, but once I started to get real facts I started to come to the same conclusions as you."

Years ago, before she was my assistant, this young lady was a hostess. She was so obviously intelligent and able that I always made sure she was scheduled for my shifts on the door--in all honesty I don't remember us having many political or philosophical discussions, but apparently we had. In answering my question, the young lady had given me one of the greatest compliments I have ever received.

Later that night over a drink I remembered something from my past. I went to a very small private elementary school, and actually had the same teacher from second through fifth grade. The class was the "gifted class" [a sort of new invention at the time], and it was actually made up of kids from all grades second through fifth. She taught us all--sometimes different lessons tailored to our particular age and skills, sometimes general lessons presented to everyone. The woman was remarkable. I honestly could have gone from that class directly to high school--that was how much I learned while there. Not just simple data either; but logic, reasoning, problem-solving--even a little practical philosophy. I credit that woman for whatever mental acuity I have to this day.

Though I never went back after moving on to junior high school and beyond, she came to my mother's funeral mass roughly ten years later--she must have seen one of the obituaries. I was touched beyond measure--and had the occassion not been so glum it would have been a true delight. After a few minutes of small talk I walked the lady to her car, parked next to mine. As we said goodbye, I opened the back door to retrieve my overcoat [the weather was turning and I was going to need it at the mausoleum service], and she let out a disgusted little whistle, then, "Oh my God, another one!"

She was looking at my Bush/Quayle re-election bumper sticker.

"So many of my kids are Republicans now. Where did I go wrong?", she asked theatrically. She had a smile on her face when she said it, and as I kissed her goodbye, I told her that so many of us were Republicans because she had taught us to always think for ourselves and never stop searching for the facts [I didn't mention that becoming aware of the world during the Carter Presidency probably hadn't hurt, either].

It would be many years later before I remembered that exchange, and it was during her funeral that the conversation came back to me. In that packed church were countless success stories, including three men and one woman whose names grace the tops of their respective fields to this day, in both practical professions as well as the arts.

If we pay attention and are taught the right things in the right way, we all learn. If we don't get lazy, I guess we all teach. I've been painting and keeping the rot away and I didn't even know it, and that is a really good feeling.

The problem comes when you realize that no matter how many ships are sea-worthy, there may simply not be anywhere left to sail. Both political parties are steeped in self-serving corruption, the media turns a blind eye to the crimes, and the government itself is so bloated and intractable that soon nothing will be able to escape its stifling grasp.

The story is disjointed, and for that I apologize--but then again everything is disjointed and polarized these days to the point of being farcical. Daily our soldiers commit acts of unimaginable heroism that go unreported. A young lady is murdered on the streets of Tehran during a protest that could have begun seminal change in that oppressed country--technology allows us the horror of actually seeing the life leave that young lady's eyes. From our government, tepid words--only slightly warmer than those used to acknowledge the death of a pop music star.

"Lawmakers" ram though nonsensical, contrived laws that literally have not even been completely written--much less read--with sanctimonious, condescending smirks toward their opponents. The Honduran people remove a President trying to make himself into the newest Hugo Chavez, and rather than celebrate their commitment to their country's constitution, we publicly side with Communist Cuba and Dictatorial Venezuela in condemning the act.

I'm told Hanna's attempt to defend her position on "climate change" after I left the argument included references to both "The Day after Tomorrow" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still" as if they were National Geographic documentaries ather than theatrical works of fiction. When pressed on her choice of MSNBC as a primary news source she demurred, insisting proudly that she also watches the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. A 26-year-old mother of one who thinks a show on Comedy Central is "the news". Too bad she hadn't seen "The Happening"--she might have won the debate using the "Shamaylan Killer Tree Principle".

How big a brush do I need? Do they even have that much paint? I'm so furious.

2009-06-29T17:08:00.000-07:00

"What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous..."--Voltaire

"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever..."--Napoleon Bonaparte

"Someone on the phone says they need a private room".

"No problem, let them know the events coordinator will be back in the restaurant on Monday morning--they can call back, or leave a voicemail now--also ask them if they would like her email address."

"They want a private room at 5:30..."

"Tonight??"

"Yes, tonight. He says there is someone very famous and very important in the party and they need privacy."

With a sigh, "I'll be right there...

This is Last One Home, how can we help you?"

"We'll be at your restaurant in about two hours for dinner and I need to make sure we have absolute privacy--and believe me, this is as much for you as it is for us--if people see my client your restaurant will be mobbed, absolutely mobbed."

"I'm sorry, sir. All of our private accommodations are booked for this evening--I'm afraid I just don't have much to offer--"

"Move them!"

"I can't do that, sir. What we might be--"

"Just move them--we'll pay for their dinners--just tell them someone more important needed the room, but was nice enough to pay for their dinner--I don't care how big the party is."

At this point in the exchange I have to admit that I was struck dumb with surprise--and after nearly a quarter of a century in these trenches almost nothing remains that has the power to surprise me. In all the countless instances of blustering, staging, and social wrestling that I have endured, no one has ever actually put their money where their mouth was in the way that this man was doing. As soon as he uttered the words, I knew he meant them. And if I agreed to his terms, and showed them into a room that was supposed to have hosted a wedding reception for 80 guests, and later handed him a bill for $15,000 in addition to his own dinner bill, I am sure he would not have blinked. This guy's tone was, while somewhat abrasive, absolutely matter-of-fact.

It didn't mean he was going to get what he wanted--but it was impressive nonetheless.

"I believe you, sir. And I would like to help you. But I simply cannot do what you are asking--it would be betraying everything we are about."

"My client wants to eat at your restaurant as soon as we land. He simply MUST have privacy. We are at an impasse, and I am paid very, very well to make sure we do not EVER encounter an impasse. I presume you are paid...paid to make your customers happy. How can you make me and my client happy under these circumstances? By you not doing your job you are making it impossible for me to do my job.

Fifteen to twenty seconds of silence on the phone, followed by...

[sigh] Very well, what CAN you do for us?"

"Your party is arriving very early in our evening, sir. We can seat you in the very back of the restaurant, and most likely no one will be seated in your vicinity for the greater part of two hours. The earlier you arrive, the longer you'll have to yourselves."

"Back of the dining room? I'm afraid that won't [voice in the background]...hold on, please...[more voices]...very well, it seems that is acceptable. We're seven, we'll be there at 5:30."

"May I have the name, sir?"

"You won't need it." Click.

The gentleman on the phone was right, too--we didn't need a name. At 5:25pm two blacked-out suburbans pulled into our driveway and one giant man got out of each vehicle. One giant made a perimeter walk of the outside of the building while the other bounded though the doors of the restaurant and silently surveyed the interior.

"We're good," he said into a small microphone, and a moment later after the occupants of the vehicle apparently heard the same report from the exterior giant, the doors of the two vehicles flew wide--expelling first two more giants, then four devastatingly beautiful young women, and then three nondescript looking men--or more specifically two nondescript looking men and one man wearing a gigantic white panama hat.

The hat itself was a magnificent indicator of things to come. Think regular panama hat-- white, straw, almost fedora-like--and then literally make it as big as a Mexican sombrero. A caricature of a panama hat really--so big and floppy that I was oddly reminded of the Rick Moranis character "Dark Helmet" from Mel Brooks' Star Wars spoof "Spaceballs". True, the gentleman beneath this monstrosity was properly hidden from view, but the hat itself would automatically draw the attention of anyone within sight of it. The only thing that could have made it worse was if one of the giants had started screaming, "move along, move along, nothing to see here..." to the empty street adjacent to our driveway.

As this spectacular group entered the restaurant I retreated to a safe distance, wanting to observe the festivities without being personally involved.

The group was shown to their table and began to sit, until "phone guy" saw the arrangements.

"This won't do, we can't be exposed to the windows."

My maitre d', a pro's pro, smoothly began to respond, "Sir, if you're concerned about the security of the glass, it is ballistic and over an inch thick--tornado-qualified for all office buildings in this area."

"No, not bullets. Cameras. Papparazzi. We need to move--we'll sit in there," gesturing to a room filled with balloons, wrapped gifts, four tables of ten, and a huge banner reading "Happy 60th Wendy".

"No."

Apparently my polished maitre d', a bit off his game after the "papparazzi" comment, decided "direct" would be the best approach from that point forward. And for the next three minutes as he toured the entire restaurant with "phone guy" and the rest of the party in tow [exposing themselves to all of the other guests already in the restaurant, all 20 of them] he continued to say "no". "No" to the room with the AV crew setting up an LCD projector and the long table of twenty covered with literature, "no" to the small one-table room with a party of eight already seated in it, and finally "no" to the empty room that had been reserved for a party of six--a little odd in itself because those guests had readily agreed to the $2000 revenue minimum for such a small party just to have the privacy.

"That room is empty--why can't we sit there?"

"The reserved guests will be arriving within the hour, sir."

"Then we will sit here," gesturing to a hemispheric booth usually used for parties of four, with direct sight to the empty private room and in clear view of 80% of the restaurant and its soon-to-arrive guests, but away from the windows and those pesky papparazzi.

"If you believe your party will be comfortable there, sir, you are welcome to the table."

And so the six members of the party [all but "phone guy"] squeezed themselves into the booth, while "phone guy" made a beeline for my position about thirty feet away.

"I know you're the one in charge, you're the one I talked to on the phone [part of this guy was utterly ridiculous, but part of him was very impressive]. I want you to know that if that empty room doesn't get sat with a private party, I am going to be very troubled. Very troubled."

"How did you know I was the one in charge when we were speaking on the phone--I could have just been a host, or the maitre d'?" I asked the question out of real curiosity--another rarity for me these days.

"I could tell."

"Phone guy" proceeded back to the both, squeezed himself onto one end, and they all proceeded to have, presumedly, lovely meal. "Mr. Hat" turned out to be unfailingly polite, to the point of making sure everyone at the table, speaking a foreign language amongst themsleves, all spoke English whenever my staff was present. He chose two excellent $600 bottles of wine with dinner, tipped extravagently, and joked with me about the world record for the greatest number of people ever seated at one table for four.

And, when one of our closing [and foreign-born] cocktail servers arrived about an hour into his meal, we finally found out who the utterly unrecognizable man in the gigantic hat actually was. When I googled his name, here were over 6 million hits--mostly in other languages. I have no doubt that "phone guy's" concerns would have been perfectly valid--in New York, Rio de Janiero, Jakarta, Mexico City, Johannisberg, or even Miami. Here, however, he was just another guy in a ridiculous hat. Someone may have wanted to take a picture, but not of the man, just of the hat itself.

And when, also about an hour into his meal, a very well-known US governor [not ours, and not Mark Sanford] walked into the vacant private room as a guest of the host, and everyone in the restaurant recognized him--I was even off the hook with "phone guy".

2009-05-25T17:20:00.001-07:00

"In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher..."--The Dalai Lama

Our Easter service this year was picture perfect...almost. Not quite masochistic enough to subject ourselves to brunch, we do open an hour early for dinner service and generally receive throngs of pink pants, scores of baby-blue sport coats, and wagons full of screaming children just as the doors are unlocked.

This year was no different, and within fifteen minutes of opening a full third of our evening's reservations had been seated. Easter is easy--a couple of classic holiday specials are added to our regular menu, and while the check averages are unusually low due to the hordes of kids and once-a-year diners--guests generally keep the glory of the day in mind--its hard to be a pompous ass while out with your family to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The cherry on top of this relatively painless Sundae [pun mildly intended] is that because we open early and see mostly very early business, we close early as well--a full 90 minutes early--allowing me the rare thrill of NOT being "the last one home".

I could taste the getaway, was actually planning out a productive early evening campaign of drinking and relaxing, when it happened...

At 8:25pm a fat, slovenly, haphazardly dressed man strode through the door like the Saracens through the Christopher Gate--dimwitted, oafish son in tow.

"Your still serving, right--of course you are, its barely dark out...come on Nimrod [throughout the meal he referred to his giant, intensely stupid 20-ish son by name and in a fashion as if he were not even there--and while that constantly repeated name was not actually "Nimrod", it was pretty similar in timbre and foolishness], I'm going to pick my own table because I'm very particular and everything has to be just so and a third will be joining us eventually but we'll start with drinks and wait for him to arrive have someone follow us with menus...", and away he went.

The restaurant was nearly empty at this point, and the last dinners had been sent out of the kitchen over a half hour before--we were literally five minutes from being home free before this clearly troublesome man entered the building. I began to consider my options--the most attractive of which was to turn the dial on my watch ahead to 8:30pm, and then fetch the rude, fat man from my dining room and send him away to spread his personal brand of terror elsewhere. But then conscience got in the way.

Easter means alot to me--the years working in restaurants have not deadened the holiday's magic for me as they have for many other holidays [and my birthday]. Raised as a Roman Catholic and forever delighted with the comfort and elegance of the Rite of Mass, my religious philosophy is much more Deist than based in classic Catholic theology. The details of Easter as they relate to resurrection do not hold my attention nearly as much as the miracle of the story, the moral it delivers, and the myriad lessons that can be learned from the Easter Scripture. After all, nothing puts a bad day in perspective faster than the Stations of the Cross.

It was with these monumental events in mind that I considered how to approach my own personal King Herod. The answer presented itself in the form of the party's third guest, a delightful, frail old gentleman who entered the restaurant apologizing for his tardiness and telling me how much he had been looking forward to finally dining with us and how this visit from his departed wife's brother seemed the perfect occasion.

This nice old man enjoyed his meal and has since been back twice, thankfully with other companions. Before leaving that Easter evening, he also apologized for his brother-in-law with a simple, honestly-meant, "He's a lawyer, I hope you can forgive him".

It has taken me a while to describe this event because the verbatim exchanges between this most evil of men and my servers and between my servers and myself would go on nearly forever [even though the visit itself listed less than 90 minutes--the son apparently can't contain his truly bizarre behavior more than about an hour and twenty], and I have been trying to figure out the best way to indicate the travesty of the visit without boring anyone to tears.

In the end, a synopsis seemed most direct and effective:

1. Demanded a new waiter within five minutes of sitting down because the original server didn't "try to sell him" on tap water. To be more specific, the server approached the table and poured ice water as per policy. The guest then ordered a bottle of sparkling water, and when the waiter asked if he should remove the ice water or leave it, the guy asked how the ice water was. The server responded that our water was filtered and that he thought it was very good and often drank it himself. The guest tried the water, and then told the server that he could go ahead and bring the sparkling water anyway[dismissively, in the description given by the waiter, which I have no reason to doubt]. When the waiter returned in about one minute from retrieving the bottle of water, he was ordered away from the table because even though he had been specifically directed to get the bottle of water, he had not stayed to take the appetizer order that the guest had secretly wanted to place.

This guy replaced his waiter for not pushing bottled water as most restaurants do, pouring ice water, honestly giving positive responses to questions regarding he ice water, and then delivering the bottled water that the guest continued to request even after receiving the positive review of the tap water. Although, in the guest's defense, the waiter did fail to telepathically realize that the guest, whose party was incomplete, wanted to order appetizers at the same time as the drinks even though he had not yet opened the menu. So there is that, I guess...

2. Became very upset that he could not specifically pick his replacement from among the terrified cabal of servers clustered around me begging not to be given the table

3. Was then consecutively upset by first, how happy his "rejected" server seemed at losing the honor of waiting on him, and secondly by the replacement server's refusal to agree that what the original person had done was reprehensible.

4. Returned his caesar salad because he did not like, "a creamy caesar dressing--the only real caesar salad dressing is the vinaigrette caesar salad dressing".

5. Was put out that we did not have some sort of hand-held video game available for his gigantic son to use.

6. Ordered without consultation a bottle of wine, tasted and approved it, refused to have any poured beyond the initial taste, refused to admit any dissatisfaction with it or allow us to replace it, and at the end of the meal insisted on only paying for 7% [yes, seven percent was the quoted amount] of the bottle because it was "repugnant" [I declined to charge for any of the wine, which was quite nice, and drank the entire bottle myself in record time once he was out of sight].

7. Ordered his steak black and blue but demanded that only one side of the steak be charred. Was unhappy with the steak because it didn't "taste charred enough" and because it wasn't medium rare--which is not surprising given the fact that the steak was ordered black and blue. When the server suggested cooking the steak a bit more and charring the other side to alleviate his concerns the guest at first refused, then relented after entreating the server "not to let any cooks or that terrible first waiter spit on my steak". When his charred medium rare steak was returned to the table he complemented us on providing a "perfect black and blue" on the second try and was kind enough to let us know that there might actually be hope for us to be successful one day.

8. Left a 4% tip

Now, I have mentioned on more than one occasion that I have never, in my entire career, witnessed true sinister adulteration of someones food. Never seen anyone make a phlegm burger, or a butt steak, or a visine daiquiri [not even back in the day when such drink would have really acted as a violent laxative], or a "broom sandwich" [where the bread is slid along the dirty kitchen floor for a ways before the mayo is added and the sandwich finished],or any of the other legendary evil payback dishes. I have seen a server heat a cappuccino to such a degree after having it sent back three times for "being cold" that the woman left the first seven layers of her lips on the edge of the mug when she attempted to drink from it, and I have seen a server purposely dump a full bottle of wine all over the biggest prick in the world all the while making it look like a simple comedy of errors, but I have never seen an attack on food. With that said, I will bet you that this particular guest has consumed more restaurant staff biological matter in his life than a band of cannibals attacking a Cheesecake Factory. This guy absolutely begs to be poisoned.

Google result on the guy I call my "Easter penance": a personal injury lawyer from Saskatchewan.

2009-05-05T17:33:00.000-07:00

"I claim to be an average man of less than average ability. I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith"--Mahatma Gandhi

"Where's Mr. O'Leary been?"

The question from one of our longest-tenured servers catches me unawares. Mr. O'Leary is one of our most prized guests and one of the richest men in our generally very prosperous city. He is a legend throughout the local dining community--out to dinner six or seven nights a week, choosing from a small group of favored restaurants and literally showering them with his largess.

Every time I see Mr. O'Leary I think of the scene in "My Blue Heaven", an otherwise exceedingly ordinary comedy about a gangster stuck in middle America as part of the Witness Protection Program. Steve Martin plays the mobster, who attempts to tip his FBI caseworker [Rick Moranis] upon first meeting him--When Rick Moranis' character questions the action, the gangster responds matter-of-factly by saying, "Ay...I tip evvverrrrybodddy!"

Mr. O'Leary tips everybody as well. To use another gangster movie allusion, this one from "Goodfellas", when Mr. O'Leary is in the house, the bartender gets $20 just for keeping the ice cubes cold.

Once the server mentioned Mr. O'Leary's absence, it occurred to me that indeed we probably hadn't seen him for nearly six weeks--immediately I was both concerned and embarrassed. Concerned because while in good health, he is an older guy, and I was afraid something might have happened. Embarrassed because over the last few months my attention has been diverted by other things and my observational powers have suffered as a result--I hadn't noticed his absence at all.

After a few minutes on the phone with friends of mine from some of the other restaurants within Mr. O'Leary's favored circle I discerned that he wasn't going out to dinner anywhere, and indeed hadn't been seen in any of his favorite haunts in over two months. Now I was just concerned.

Calling his home number I got voicemail, calling his company I received non-committal responses about him not keeping office hours, and about it not being unusual for him to be absent from the office for months at a time.

A few days after the revelation that he had been gone, another one of our cherished guests came in to the restaurant for drinks. This particular man, a well-regarded attorney, was also a good friend of Mr. O'Leary's and someone to whom I could mention my concerns.

"Mr. Lasher, may I ask you a question?" I had hurried over to his table right after his first drink arrived, wanting to find out what was going on before others arrived to join him--Mr. Lasher being the kind of successful guy who always seemed to attract a crowd.

"How can I help you, Last One Home?"

"Well, I don't want to pry...but I know you have known John O'Leary for a long time and I know you two are close friends--is he OK? I mean, we used to see him once a week at least, like clockwork, but he hasn't been around in months--and no one else has seen him either--so I don't think its just because we pissed him off or something. He has just dropped out of sight."

"Can you sit down for second, Last One Home?"

At the question, my heart sank. I was sure that the news I was about to receive would have the word "cancer" or "stroke" or some other horror featured prominently in the text. Resigned, I pulled up a chair and sat down close to Mr. Lasher.

" I have known John O'Leary for a long time. He was my first client as a matter of fact, and I believe I was his first lawyer--I was a bad attorney and he was a deadbeat client. Over time we both improved--we both became successful and we got to be best friends. I talk to John almost every day on the phone, but even I haven't seen him in months--he won't leave the house."

"Is it cancer?"

Mr. Lasher's look was surprised, then he chuckled. "No, no, not cancer. His health is fine. I'm sorry, I probably should have led with that--now I understand how concerned you must be.

Last One Home, do you know the name R. Allen Stanford?"

When Mr. Lasher asked if I knew Allen Stanford, two things happened simultaneously. First, I knew instantly what the problem with Mr. O'Leary was, and secondly I remembered all of the times that Allen Stanford had dined in our restaurant, including a couple of times with Mr. O'Leary.

"He's frozen, isn't he?", I asked.

"John's frozen solid. He's been investing with Stanford for years, and the SEC has seized everything until they figure out what, if any, extra liability he might have. He had to go begging on the street for a line of credit to meet his basic obligations--he needs about $100,000.00 a month just to operate and take care of his family, and that doesn't include dinners, golf, travel, or any of the other small luxuries that make our later years bearable."

"He isn't upside down with the fund, is he?"

--As a brief explanation for those who may not know. R. Allen Stanford is a billionaire Texan who oversaw a number of financial funds. Shortly after the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme hit the public eye, Allen Stanford was accused of similar fraudulent dealings. Because the amounts were generally lower and the victims generally less famous, not to mention far away from Manhattan [for the most part], Stanford didn't get much publicity after the initial government announcement, and only then because no one could locate him for a few days right afterward. Learning quickly from the Madoff case, government agents froze all the assets of many of the people invested in the funds--reason being that if someone had been invested for a very long time. they could actually have received more in "interest payments" from the Ponzi scheme than the amount they had on deposit--as a result, even though they would have lost their entire investment they could also possibly owe additional monies back--because the extra "interest" they received over time was actually someone else's principal. When I asked Mr. Lasher about Mr. O'Leary being upside down with the fund, I was asking if he might owe more back to the government than he had in frozen liquid assets. At the time Mr. Lasher and I talked, I was already aware of two other long-time guests of the restaurant who were in similar circumstances because of Allen Stanford and to whom the restaurant had extended house charge privileges--

"Oh no. Hell, no. John's probably got close to $60 million total--we figure his exposure to the fund is less than $5 million including the principal. The problem, actually, is that John doesn't have any hidden money--so when the freeze order came they got everything--and as you well know the government is never in as much of a hurry to give your money back as they are to take it. Now, John is a self-made man and he grew up poor. He will not spend an extra penny that he can't put his hands on...so he's been locked up like a hermit in that mansion of his."

I thanked Mr. Lasher and went about my business, comfortable at least in the fact that our guest wasn't dead or dying, but troubled still that someone so successful and intelligent who spent his life working so hard could have his entire existence turned upside down by such an event.

Now I would like to tell you that I always had a bad feeling about Allen Stanford, but I didn't. He came to the restaurant numerous times whenever traveling in our area and was often in the company of many of our best guests. Over the years I actually joked with him, cordially, about his penchant for donating to high-profile Democrats. He was polite and a big spender and we always looked forward to seeing him.

I have made a success of myself by doing the right things. Not a billionaire by any means, but I've definitely torn the shit out of the grading curve for "restaurant manager". I simply don't understand how so many people regularly mortgage their integrity, their self-respect, and the regard of their fellow man for the same gains that are readily available through proper action and in that way free of all the awful collateral damage.

I have an envelope sitting in front of me right now with $2000 cash inside. Originally, when I dropped the envelope in Mr. O'Leary's mailbox a month ago, it had $1000 inside--as well as an unmarked, unsigned note that said, "Go out somewhere and have a good time. You've been so generous to so many for so long. Please let those of us who have enjoyed your generosity give a little back." I figured that over the years I have pocketed $40,000.00 from this guy--and I wanted him to go out and have a good time at least once and know that he had made an impression on those around him.

Mr. O'Leary's money was released about a week ago. He immediately left town to attend to business elsewhere. He apparently got back his afternoon and came right here. He came alone, probably for the first time, had dinner at the bar, definitely for the first time, and on the way out made a bee-line for me, slipped this envelope into my inside jacket pocket, hugged me [ABSOLUTELY for the first time], and said simply, "if you do good when you don't have to, you should get back double. You brought a smile to my face..."

I haven't written in a long time--as I alluded to earlier I've had a lot on my mind. But as I sit at my desk tears are pouring down my face. I'm not the kind of person who generally seeks reward, glory, or notoriety. I have no idea how he figured out that it was me who left the money--maybe Lasher said something to him, maybe he's seen my handwriting before, maybe he saw me at the mailbox [although its like an eighth of a mile from his giant house]--but in such dark times it is really nice to know I was able to do a little good.

2009-03-13T17:05:00.000-07:00

"I've been working in restaurants all my life...but I hate this business"--Sirio Maccione; the first spoken words heard at the beginning of the HBO documentary "A Table in Heaven"

One busy Wednesday night recently:

As a crowd of people start to squeeze through the front door, "Good evening and wel--"

"There's nine of us!"

"Welcome, may I have the name on the reservation?"

"My name is Tommy, but we don't have a reservation. With the economy like it is, you're happy to have us. Now we'll take a table for nine--a big table--we want to stretch out."

"Certainly sir. We'll be ready to seat you in about two hours [big, big smile--like a great white shark]."

"Maybe in the old days pal, but not now. I've got money to spend, and you need my money. We'll sit now, got it?"

"If I had a table for nine available sir, or any table for that matter, I would absolutely be happy to seat you. As it is the dining room is currently full, and all those guests you see in the bar room there to your left have reservations and are patiently waiting their turn."

"Bullshit! Now way! Not with things the way they are."

"Sir, feel free to take a stroll through the dining room. If you can find a vacant table, no matter what the size, I will not only seat your party, but I will pay for dinner."

The look on my face tells the guy that I am not kidding.

"Come on guys, we're going to Asshat O'Herlihy's around the corner. Fuck this place, I know Asshat, he'll take real good care of us!"

"O'Herlihy's closed four months ago sir. Perhaps Asshat forgot to mention that the last time you two talked. Enjoy your meal."

The next night:

"The guy on table 40 wants to talk to a manager", says my sommelier with a tired look on his face.

"You are a manager."

"I know I am, but apparently the gentleman didn't like my responses..."

"Responses to what?"

"His demands that we take his offer on what he is willing to pay for a variety of the wines on our list."

"He's trying to bargain with the winelist prices?"

"Yup. I should have stayed in graduate school."

"Why? So you could be a waiter instead of a sommelier? All right, I'll be there in a minute."

The guest in question has been to the restaurant on a few occasions, and has always made a point to be uncomfortably self-deprecating--the "I know I'm not rich like the rest of these people" or "I'm surprised your valet would take my car, its just an old Pontiac" kind of comments that are supposed to be funny on the surface, but actually betray a predisposition to being affronted or disappointed because "I really shouldn't be here". On this particular evening the weather is very bad, and we have taken a ton of cancellations--we are slow. What I expect as I approach the table is quickly proven true.

"Good evening sir, you asked to see another manager?"

"Yeah, I want to talk to you about a favor I'm gonna do for you. I'm going to help keep you in business awhile longer. You see, I'm not crazy with my money like all the people that used to come in here, so I've still got mine. The rest of the people with the nice cars and the big suits and the $40 haircuts [I swear to God--"the big suits and the $40 haircuts" is an exact quote], where are they now? McDonald's, that's where. I'm still here, and I want to enjoy a nice bottle of wine or two with my friends here, but these prices...these prices were good when you people ruled the roost...but now some things are gonna change."

Before I can respond the gentleman opens the winelist with a flourish and points at a very tasty American Cabernet listed at...$36.00.

"This one I'm willing to spend $15 on. This other one, for the meal [the pages shuffle to a selection of French reds and this time I am shown to a $55 bottle from the Haut Medoc]...this one I'm gonna be a sweetheart about 'cuz I know the exchange with the europound and everything costs a little extra...this one I'm gonna give you $40 for. What do you say?"

"I'm afraid our pricing is not subject to discussion, sir. We have set what we believe are reasonable prices for all our offerings and we proudly stand behind them."

"But I don't want to pay your prices, and you need my business now. If you don't sell to me you're gonna go out of business. Then where will you be?"

"Probably packing up the restaurant and drinking wine, sir...for free. Enjoy your meal."

The night after that:

"Come quick!"

"What's wrong?" A server has just approached me at a table while I was speaking with guests and interrupted me with the above plea. Just the fact that she didn't wait until I was finished tells me we have a serious problem.

"Chef's down!"

Our chef has collapsed behind the line. An overweight alcoholic, he himself had been trying to fight off the flu while running a kitchen decimated by sick calls. Even with fill-ins from our other properties, we were still running one or two people down each night, and this had been going on for nearly three weeks. His lifestyle, the heat, and the extra work topped off with a weakened immune system had finally done him in, and down goes Frazier.

As he is helped off the line to his office, I turn to survey the remaining line staff and am met with a sea of mediocrity staring back at me through forty hanging dinner checks--each check representing not a single dinner but rather a whole table of hungry guests waiting for their meal.

For only the third time in well over a decade, I take off my jacket in the middle of service...and then I head behind the line.

Anyone who knows me knows I can't cook, and won't even pretend otherwise. What I do know is my restaurant, my food, and my people--and I set about trying to make the best of a bad situation. I failed, but I did manage to mitigate the damage as could be hoped for. I pulled the checks that belonged to regular guests of the restaurant that were reasonable people and moved them to the back of the line [and called on their servers to explain to them there would be a delay and make the necessary offerings to compensate]. I next pushed out a handful of easy checks to give a little breathing room, and then turned to the remaining checks and began to call "all days".

An "all day" is a total count called out to a station cook of everything he should have working at that moment. An "all day" lets someone confirm that they are cooking everything they are supposed to be cooking and to make the necessary additions if they missed a call or two here or there. It soon became apparent that the chef in his distress had stopped calling the tickets about fifteen minutes before he went down.

Fifteen minutes may not be very important in the real world, but in a restaurant kitchen it is a lifetime. Sixty dinners that should have been almost ready for the plate had not even been started.

I. Was. Fucked.

So, we started digging. And we dug and we dug and we dug, and in the end I comped about $800 in stuff and found reasonable, understanding, happy guests at every turn but one.

One set of four guys, or more specifically one guy out of one set of four guys. By my estimation the party waited eighteen minutes longer than they should have for dinner, and one steak, a huge porterhouse steak for two, was slightly underdone--I mean it was a coin toss. I brought the steak back to the table myself--not because I wanted to add little extra personal touch, but because we were finally caught up and winding down and more importantly their table was on the way to the bar, where I was planning to spend a lot of time.

"I'm sorry for the delay gentleman, here's your--"

"Fuck you sorry for the delay! We've been fucking waiting for dinner for a fucking hour and then it finally fucking comes out and its fucking raw. This is bullshit, fucking bullshit. You charge these fucking prices and you make us fucking dress up just to fucking eat here and you don't have any fucking Coors beer and then the steak finally fucking comes out and its fucking raw! I want to know what the fuck is going on and what the fuck you're going to do about it."

"Chef had a fucking stroke. I'm not going to charge you for the fucking steak. Enjoy your meal."

2009-03-11T19:43:00.001-07:00

An Open Letter to the People of Great Britain

Dear Friends

Our long relationship is one born in adventure, raised in fealty, matured in blood, but yet still lived for nearly two hundred years in close, brotherly friendship.

For decades American and British sons and daughters have stood together to face dangers from all across the globe. Side by side, sometimes back to back, our blood and tears have run together, soaking the ground of far-away continents and unforgiving battlefields.

Though Presidents and Prime Ministers may come and go, our friendship--our Resolute friendship--has endured unwavering.

It is with this rich, invaluable history in mind that I offer my sincerest apologies for the affronts recently perpetrated against Great Britain and her Prime Minister by the United States government and her current President. Though our media will neither report on nor even acknowledge these shameful events or our horrified reaction to them, please trust that the complicit silence of our media does not reflect an endorsement of these offensive acts by the American People.

The symbolic and heartfelt gift of the Churchill bust in the days following the 9-11-01 attacks on the United States was a clear, obvious, and loving gesture of solidarity during one of the darkest times in our history. President Bush displayed the bust proudly in the Oval Office, allowing it to stand as public reminder of who our friends truly are.

Why President Obama attempted to return the bust immediately after taking office is a question troubling to many of us. At first, it could be supposed that a simple misunderstanding of the piece's significance was to blame. However, the President still insisted that the bust be collected by the British Government even after its significance was well-established and explained--an act wholly contrary to the goodwill so long in place between our respective nations.

During the recent visit to the United States by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, there came time for the traditional exchange of gifts between the two principals. From the Prime Minister came a custom-crafted pen made from wood originally part of HMS Resolute. Resolute, herself a truly noble British vessel for the ages, played an integral part in the forging of the strong bond between us. The two Resolute Desks, also made from her wood, that stand today in the Oval Office and in the Queen's personal study signify the roots of our relationship. The gifted pen from Prime Minister Brown made a handsome statement, an affirmation that we would see to the future just as we had seen to the past.

President Obama's gift to the Prime Minister, as I am sure you know, two dozen DVD's of American movies. Farcically impersonal as well as technically useless--the discs not even formatted for your European players.

I am no fan of your Prime Minister or of his politics, which I believe are as ill-considered and destructive as those of our own new President. However, no matter who leads your government and no matter what their policies, that person should always receive the utmost care and respect at the hands of our President and government.

Please know that millions of Americans feel as I do, and that we are regretful and embarrassed at the recent actions of our President.

With Brotherhood.

May God Bless Great Britain and The United States of America.

2009-02-12T20:01:00.000-08:00

"There were giants in the earth in those days..."-- The Holy Bible

"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants..."--Sir Isaac Newton

"The sky is crying..."--Stevie Ray Vaughn

I was born knock-kneed and pigeon-toed. Without "repairs" I would barely have been able to walk. The "repairs" began with having my legs broken and re-set like they should have been naturally, and that worked--only it didn't work enough. So my legs were broken again and set into casts again--for over two years I wore casts on my legs.

As you can imagine, not the best beginning for a very young child--but probably better than the agonizing, clumsy metal braces that followed. Think...think Forrest Gump.

My father took me to every doctor's appointment. Every single one. My mother couldn't bear to see the pain I was in, so just the two of us went. Remarkable unto itself as I think back now was the fact that we were alone--my father never went anywhere alone. There as always an assistant, maybe a secretary, a counsel, and if we were traveling probably some sort of security and an interpreter if he didn't speak the language. People always wanted to talk to him, to hang out with him, to have a word, to be seen with him, etc...But we went to the doctor alone.

In the beginning, when the doctors would start to tell my father about the prognosis and the procedures and everything else he would stop them and say, "They're his legs, talk to him--I'm just the driver". He made them acknowledge me as more than an object to be worked on, and to this day I cannot explain how much better that made me feel.

When I had the braces, he taught me card games, played board games, and had a heated pool dug so that we could swim, so that I could swim free of the braces. Being in that pool was like heaven.

After the braces came the corrective shoes, quickly coined "Frankenstein shoes" by my adoring classmates. Each shoe weighed four pounds. I wore varying versions of them for years, with weights adjusted at each refitting to further correct my stride, but they never got any lighter or any more normal-looking. To this day, my legs are huge--a byproduct of endless long days of involuntary weightlifting.

He wore them too.

Being barely ambulatory throughout most of my early childhood coupled with having a family chef and parents with a taste for rich cooking led to me being a very fat little kid. When I saw those shoes for the first time, I was devastated--I mean I was probably more distraught at the prospect of wearing those huge, square, black monstrosities than at any other time in my entire life. Within a week my father had his own pair. Whenever we went anywhere together, he put on his shoes just as I put on mine. When he left the house each morning he had them on, and indeed whenever he went anywhere he left the house wearing those hideous shoes.

Do I think the shoes stayed on long after he was out of sight? Probably not. But was his act of solidarity indescribably supportive? You have no idea...no idea at all.

When I was ten or eleven or thereabouts and I got caught stealing a pack of bubble gum trading cards from a convenience store. He was there then as well. I wasn't hit or screamed at, he simply told me how foolish the act had been and how embarassed of me he was because of it. The scare tactic had alread been applied by the store manager who had finger-printed me [and who is probably still laughing about it, dead or alive], and whatever my grounding punishment was didn't matter--I had been crushed by my father's disappointment.

He wasn't at all of my football games, but he came far more often than another man in his position would have. In my junior year we reached the state championship, but the game overlapped a visit by very old, very important friends of my parents--I assumed out of hand that he would have other responsiblities--only to look up at halftime and see him sitting in the stands with Princess Soraya, the widow of the Shah of Iran and her entourage.

In college I got in a horrific accident driving back home for a weekend. I woke up in intensive care to my parent's faces. When I hadn't checked in on time my father had turned his machine loose and tracked me down.

My father brought a former President of the United States to my college graduation.

He built a fireplace with his own hands, fought for our country, made millions of dollars, and taught me countless lessons both overt and implied [I remember begging to wash and wax one of his spotless cars one Saturday for some extra money--I think he relented only because I was asking to work for it. He left for an errand right before I started the wax and came back long after I was "finished". Walking in, he dropped a cheap packaged toothbrush on the floor next to where I was lounging and said, "Use that to get the wax out of the emblems and off the trim". He knew what mistake I was going to make well before I made it, and didn't even have to witness the event].

In the end, he loved me and he hated me, he had held me up to praise and piled upon me ridicule.

But he was always there, even if "there" was thousands of miles and a continent away. And, like most of those of his generation, he seemed eternal.

He is not there any more, and my devastation has neither bounds nor description.

2009-01-20T12:01:00.000-08:00

"Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy"--F. Scott Fitzgerald

January 20th, 2009

The Honorable George Walker Bush
President of the United States of America
43 Prairie Chapel Ranch
Crawford, Texas 76638

Dear Mr. President

Welcome home, sir. I hope that as these next few months roll by you can turn back the clock, past the awful burdens you have shouldered for the last eight years. I hope that you can forget he vitriol, the unhinged rage, and out-and-out fabrication hurled at you without ending by deranged private citizen and "impartial journalist" alike. Who knows, you may even see some of the black spring back amongst all those grey hairs.

You restored honor to an office that had been diminished by your predecessor, and governed fairly and with conviction at every turn. Few of your decisions have been easy, and fewer still were given the benefit of the doubt by those screeching harridans in constant opposition to you.

In my opinion you spent far too much money, growing a bloated, ineffective government that you should have been dismantling. Your natural compassion also drove you to ignore rule of law in favor of a reckless immigration policy.

However, I am that rare person who does not expect to agree with everything my President does, everything he says, or every stand he takes. Instead, I can take comfort and pride in the fact that my President acted with honor, in a steadfast and forthright fashion. You are a man of principle and conviction, and you have my undying gratitude.

I wish you had fought some of those who constantly attacked you, refuted at least some of the ludicrous accusations hurled endlessly at your office. I would have loved to see you point out the hundreds of tons of yellowcake uranium that were found in Iraq, or question the efficacy of an investigation into the outing of a covert CIA operative who was not actually covert, an investigation that continued on even after the leaker identified himself and was found to be from outside the White House. Even at the beginning, I wish you could have taken a moment to remind people that Al Gore was suing in Florida not just to have the votes in three counties recounted, but also suing to STOP the legally-mandated recount of all of the rest of the counties in the state [the three counties the Vice President was so interested in were overwhelmingly democrat, while the rest of the state is apparently solidly republican].

I wish more Americans could have seen the real you in public--the eloquent, earnest speaker with a great sense of humor. A less biased media might have remarked on your love of reading, specifically your fascination with world and American history. I wish your magnetism in front of four, forty, or four hundred would have translated to forty million.

I am heartbroken that the thirty years of legislative corruption and ineptitude that started with Jimmy Carter finally came to a head and burst, like a pus-filled boil, in the last year of your administration. The fact that decades of lax regulation, ridiculous laws, and bad loans will be made out, by the media, to look like your fault is criminal; that those truly most responsible will, rather than being blamed, instead be handed a checkbook and asked to fix it is indicative of the huge problems that face us.

I wish you peace and contentment as you leave office. I also wish that you live long enough to be appreciated for all you have done. I have no doubt that millions of us owe you, and those you have so honorably commanded, our lives. I can't say that you're nomination, election, or re-election "sent a tingle down my leg", but I remain proud to have seen you come and sad to see you go.

God bless you and your family.

2009-01-13T19:46:00.001-08:00

"A work of art has an author, and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is anonymous about it..."--Simone Weil

I don't read all of the comments my posts receive--on some posts, generally the political ones, I don't read any of the comments--or at least I have not read them yet. I don't want to debate anyone or feel the necessity to clarify points or retort--this venue, as I have mentioned previously, is one for my own expression with a little anonymous exhibitionism thrown in for vicarious thrill.

However, a very kind and thoughtful comment recently impressed upon me that I should probably clarify certain details about my writing in general, as well as about my identity such as it is.

I am, as previously stated, a steakhouse general manager with well over two decades of restaurant experience in total. I have held my current post for over ten years, and it has become extremely lucrative--more so than any other steakhouse general manager [large or small, corporate or independent] reading this could probably imagine. I have become the de facto CEO of the restaurant company I work for, and my employer has happily abdicated almost all of his responsibilities to me--and he has paid me handsomely for it. I still work almost every night on the floor of my home restaurant, which is our flagship--all of my responsibilities together currently take about 83 hours a week to properly execute.

For over a decade I have also kept a very detailed work log on a nearly nightly basis--this log coupled with an excellent memory, for which I daily thank God, allows me an unusual amount of recall regarding events in my professional past, both great and small.

Mr. Troutman, in his kind and complementary comment, wonders whether I am who I say I am, or if I may in fact be more of a storyteller, or a designed persona.

Anyone who honors me enough to regularly check these often ignored pages deserves proper clarification of a few details insofar as I am willing to clarify.

I am in my late-thirties to nearly-fifty. Politically conservative, physically large [too large, probably], college-educated, successful, and self-made. I was born of rich and well-connected parents but have always made my own way. I was raised with the sensibilities of someone much older, as my father was himself much older than a normal Dad with a young son. My upbringing lacked many "normal" things, but made up for those deficiencies with many other "extraordinary" things, such as the roster of famous and influential people who considered my parents friends and made our houses regular stops. My home restaurant rests somewhere within a roughly 6 million square mile area that contains at least thirty possible candidates, by my estimation. My exceedingly vague references to location are, of course, entirely deliberate. All events described herein have happened, though the timeline is subject to change in order to protect the innocent. My recent story about Gladys' unfortunate evening may have happened last summer, or possibly six years ago--but it did happen. All conversations and interactions related in any post here are probably at least 85% accurate--and the most memorable or arresting quotes probably almost 100% accurate as I usually write those down almost immediately after hearing them.

Details that could identify me or my restaurant will be changed without affecting the content of posts--for example we may not own three restaurants--we may own six or four or seven with an eighth on the way. When I say it was snowing it might actually have been raining or vice versa, our signature ribeye might really be a bison steak or a porterhouse or huge bone-on New York. If I went to Per Se, I went--just maybe not when I said I went.

The details regarding my family are, unfortunately, painfully accurate.

I have led, so far, a somewhat unique and for my own purposes a very interesting life. I am a private person with a small group of very, very close friends and thousands of other people who know me on sight but with whom I share only the most superficial personal exchanges. I have an odd, localized, small kind of celebrity--a result of the prominence of my restaurant and the power I wield within it.

I am, as once described by an ex-employee, "not a normal guy". I do however hope to be an entertaining one.

Lastly, eat at The Scargo Cafe--from the looks of the website it is a really cool place.

2009-01-13T17:44:00.000-08:00

"We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace when Arabs love their children more than thy hate us..."--Golda Meir

I overheard this exchange in our lounge a few nights ago as I sat at an adjacent table waiting for an old girlfriend of mine to join me for a New Year's drink. Some of the dialogue throughout and most of the last part is paraphrased [though the last two sentences are dead on, those I remember specifically], but I think I captured the feel of the exchange pretty well, and the details of the summer conflict I think I have almost perfect :

A father and son were seated having a discussion about the current Israeli incursion into Gaza. The father is a regular guest of ours--a very nice guy who has been dining with us for just short of a decade. His college-age son lives in another state with his mother, but has been a periodic guest of the restaurant throughout his youth whenever visiting. In the seven or eight minutes I snooped, I was able to discern that this young man while clearly very well raised and respectful, was also incredibly liberal. Many of the points he attempted to make to his exceedingly sharp and intellectually adroit father could have come straight off of the United Nations homepage or out of the mouth of an New York Times copy-writer.

Now, as an aside, I have always had understanding and appreciation for that old saying, "any person not liberal when in youth is heartless, any person not conservative once an adult is brainless", but here I think I might have been spying not so much on natural youthful naivete as much as an ingrained ideology taught in order to brainwash future generations--but I digress.

The father let his son go on first with his points--that Hamas were the oppressed, innocents were being killed, Israel had no right to the land, they were defying international demands to cease fire, the people in Gaza were starving, the rockets being shot into Israel by Hamas were harmless, and my personal favorite, that oldie but goodie, the Hamas fighters and leaders were just like our founding fathers fighting the Revolutionary War.

Dad took a sip of his bourbon and responded, "You're too young to remember Tom Travis, our neighbor on Carsten Road. When your mom moved away with you, that old neighborhood was already going to shit, but I stayed another six or seven years before finally moving to the condo downtown--I was alone and it didn't really bother me one way or the other--except for one incident over the summer you turned five, or thereabouts. Tom divided his big old place next door into a rooming house, and after a while these three guys moved into the ground floor back apartment--absolute white trash. Mullets, prison tats, and an old busted-up Buick station wagon that they were trying to run a handyman/lawn business out of. These fellas had a liking for shithouse beer and an apparent aversion to garbage cans. They'd sit on the back porch of that old house and drink thirty cent cans of beer all night, and most of the empties would end up in our backyard.

Well, at first I tried to do the Christian thing--I turned the other cheek and picked up the cans and tossed them in the garbage. After about a week and three cases worth I spied the ringleader one morning and mentioned to him, nicely, that there was someone living in the house next to him and would he and his buddies mind not tossing their empties over the fence? Well, this fellow looked all sheepish and apologetic and he told that of course he would never do such a thing, but he'd mention it to "his boys", and he was sure I didn't have anything else to worry about. And I didn't...for three days.

After three days came Friday, and Friday meant Friday night, and Saturday morning I found not just ten empties--but potato chip bags, two quart-size glass orange juice bottles, and a paper towel filled with dog shit from their mangy poodle-looking mutt. As I was inspecting my new garbage dump a couple of the fellas, including the one I had already spoken to, walked out to have a morning camel and ball scratch and so I stuck my head over the fence and once again asked their cooperation in not using my backyard for a fucking garbage dump.

Their response was to tell me that it wasn't them, that there must be someone 'camping' in our yard at night, and that I should stop 'harassing' them.

Again, trying to be civilized, I decided to call Tom and get his help with these guys. Old Tom's response was to tell me what 'good boys' these fellas were, how they cut the grass at that house for free, and how they were paid up on the rent. He went on to surmise that I might be making up my problems because they were 'long hairs'--this from the man who decided our neighborhood was shot and that he should move out and turn his house of forty years into a tenement because an Indian family, who he loudly termed 'grey niggers', had moved in down the street.

"Dad, what does some neighborhoo--"

"Hush--I let you tell me all about what your pals on MSNBC think about the current mideast crisis--now its my turn to explain it to you my way.

Where was I? Oh, right--that evening they were right back on duty drinking, and I decided I would slowfoot it out by the fence and have a listen to them, with my Winchester--I wasn't out there in the dark for five minutes before the first empty can came over the fence--and without thinking, I sent it right back over followed by the empty bags, the rest of the cans, and the two empty orange juice jars. I will admit, hearing the two jars smash on the flagstones warmed my heart."

Now, I noticed out of he corner of my eye that when the father mentioned having a rifle with him the young man perked right up, his face losing the small trace of frustration it had been wearing up to that point.

"Those pricks were heated up, I will tell you. The youngest one scaled the fence to my side and the other two started making noise as if to follow--all three of them were cursing up one side and down the other--until Junior hit the ground in our yard and saw the rifle. Suddenly you could have heard pin drop, and that's when I spoke. 'This here is a Winchester 30-30, and it sits in my gun safe with five or six friends', I told them without raising my voice, 'I don't expect you fellas have anything like this in your little shithole apartment there because I'm positive your gun-owning and voting days are already over, ain't they? I have all the licenses and permits I need to own these guns lawfully, and all the right in the world to use them if I feel threatened--or at least that's what my cousin tells me--and seein' as he is the city attorney I guess I have to believe him. What I want, and what I have every right to expect is one simple thing--that you will respect my property and throw your fucking garbage out properly--which is to say in your own fucking garbage cans. Imagine how stupid you'll feel wearing a bullet just because you decided to pick on the wrong neighbor. I would rather be reading the paper than standing out here with you jack-offs--just leave me alone."

"Did you really tell Pete about those guys, " the son asked, apparently referencing our then-city attorney who has now a well-respected judge.

"Not just Pete, but also the cops that watched our neighborhood, and I tried to talk to Tom again. I got plenty full of shooting people in the Marines, son, and I wasn't looking forward to spilling any more blood--but I also wasn't going to let those three pieces of crap ride roughshod over me either."

"What did the authorities do about the guys", the son asked, now riveted to a story he had never heard before told by a man who probably suddenly seemed much different to him.

"No one could do anything--it was littering, and the evidence was non-specific and gone. I mean, Pete and the cops believed me, but at the same time they told me it wasn't a big deal, that I needed to be the bigger man, that they would stop on their own, that maybe I should try chatting with them again--you know, all the usual shit that never has any effect on any situation."

"So what finally happened?"

"Well, my show of force settled the guys down for about a month, until Labor Day weekend. That Sunday I threw the annual picnic party for all my people out at the lake, and didn't get home till after ten. When I pulled into the driveway I noticed a couple of things right away--all of my rose bushes had been pulled up, and there was something piled up on the front door."

"What?"

"Dogshit. A giant pile of dogshit. If I had to guess, I would say that every shit that dog of theirs had taken since the night with the rifle had been collected and deposited on my front door and stoop.

I got back in my car and I drove away, because mad as I was I didn't want to kill all three of them and that is exactly what I would have done at that moment.

I went to the office, and I slept in the lounge. The next morning I woke up, went home, and cleaned up the front door and steps. I tossed out the roses, and then I went to the nursery and bought gardenias to replace them. As soon as it got dark, I took my 12-gauge, loaded the magazine with slugs, put a fifth in the chamber, and walked next door. I put two shots into the engine block of their wagon, one through the windshield into the driver's seat, one into the driver's door, and the fifth through one of the back windows and into their lawnmower. Then I went back home, put the shotgun back in its bag, and propped it behind the boiler in the basement."

The kid was speechless--he was actually staring at his dad as if he had never seen him before.

"Someone called the police, as you might expect. Nowadays shots fired in that neighborhood is a regular occurrence, but back then it was still unheard of, and the police took their time, probably expecting to find kids with bottle rockets or a used Roman candle or some other fireworks left over from somebody's Labor Day picnic What they weren't expecting to find was an old station wagon literally destroyed by heavy gunfire.

They went to ask the fellas what happened, only to discover those boys were nowhere to be found. Mrs. Singer across the street played dumb, and while the police clearly viewed my surprised reaction with some scepticism, they never asked any real questions beyond inquiring as to whether or not I had brought a bazooka back from Vietnam.

They took some pictures, and came back the next day to look around for the three guys--but no one ever saw them again. They must have figured that after the car, they would be next--plus without the car and the lawnmower they were unemployed anyway. Tom tried unsuccessfully to get me arrested for the murder of a '73 Vista Cruiser, and later on tried to get me to reimburse him for having the thing hauled away--but he remains to this day unfulfilled."

"Holy shit. My dad is Dirty Harry!"

"No, son, I'm not--and that is my whole point in telling you the story--which I have never told anyone before, by the way. Israel has tried ignoring, they have tried talking, they have tried threatening, and they have tried shows of force. They have tried all of these things over and over. The individuals that are the subject of Israeli attacks will not stop no matter what, as long as they live. They have no respect for diplomacy, for the rule of law, or even for the simple rules of human conduct. The organization Hamas has at its heart, written in its charter, the destruction of Israel as its stated goal. Israel's restraint in regard to Hamas' violence is miles well beyond my restraint in dealing with a few scumbags--but any peaceful conclusion rests with the same type of action--simple overwhelming force--these people just don't understand anything else.

These people set up their rocket launchers in school courtyards, they have their meetings in mosques, they fill their homes with all of the children from the neighborhood. If Israel attacks--'Oh my God look at the destruction of civilian buildings, the loss of civilian lives, the children killed!!' If Israel doesn't attack because of the civilian liability, then rockets get fired, Hamas business gets done, and terrorists continue to live to plot Israel's destruction."

"Why is everyone on Israel's case then? Why don't the two sides just make peace?"

"Only the journalists, to use the word very loosely, can answer the first question, son. And unfortunately I think only God may be able to answer the second."

2008-12-30T18:40:00.000-08:00

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long..."--Pablo Neruda

As we are closed on Christmas and Thanksgiving, these important holidays are actually also the only real days off I have. With no restaurant operations, there is nothing to worry about, nothing to lodge in the back of my mind, no unfinished business or undone minor repair able to nag at my consciousness.

With members of my family--such as they are--scattered about the country and world and with none actually sharing the same time zone with me, I also often spend these two holidays alone. While my brusque, curmudgeonly nature would tend to make this fact a foregone conclusion, I actually have a number of close friends, and my solitude is not the result of a lack of offers.

I like spending these days alone. I like the silence. I like the normal passage of time. I remember back in the day, Dallas star Tony Hagman used to take some flack for having a "silent day", a day when the show was not filming each week when he refused to talk to anyone, and would endeavor to be as alone as possible. Even back then when I was much younger, I got that--I understood the need to back out of the tent and sit in the field beyond the midway and the rides.

The trouble with having this glorious solitude on a holiday like Christmas or Thanksgiving is that memories show up like distant in-laws or drunken neighbors--sometimes they can be a delightful distraction, but usually they just cause trouble.

Earlier this year my last living grandparent died. My mother's mother had four marriages [and four big inheritances] under her belt by the time she headed off to her heavenly reward. She never really liked children [even once they had grown apparently], and after the death of her last husband about eight years ago she happily trucked off to Monaco by herself to live the final years of her life around other snooty, rich old people. While elderly, her death was a little bit of a surprise because she really never stayed in touch with anyone unless she had family business with them. A doting grandmother she was not--but as with many of her generation and station she was a great actor, and she understood the value of, for lack of a better word, "occasion"--and many of my most vivid holiday memories involve her.

My grandmother would only cook on Thanksgiving, but when she did her recall of the fantastic dishes made by her own mother decades before was absolutely uncanny--and everything was from scratch. She was the youngest of nineteen children, and the stories she could tell of her youth were almost otherwordly when seen through the prism of my own, much more sparsely populated childhood. Her family was very poor when she was born, but by the time she was a pre-teen her father began to make some money, and by the time she was high school-aged the family was straight-out rich--as a result she never experienced the hardships felt by the rest of her siblings [while nineteenth and youngest, she was probably a real surprise to her parents as she was youngest by nearly six years] and they always resented her for it. The chill between her and my legion of great-uncles and aunts kept them far from us, and gave her stories an even more Fairy Tale-like tone.

The only girl I've ever really been in love with, who I have been tortured by seeing on a regular basis around town for the last several years, announced her pregnancy earlier this year and recently gave birth to a beautiful daughter. My chosen profession was the cause of the end of our relationship many years ago, and while as I've probably said before I am not parent material, seeing her so incredibly happy with both her new daughter and her new daughter's father does make me wonder about "Christmas' that could have been", not to mention "Christmas' still to come".

Several years ago at Thanksgiving I hosted about fifteen people for a holiday dinner at a venerable local competitor of ours--one of the only fine dining restaurants in this area open for the holiday [the place is nearly 100 years old as are many of their regular guests, making it a hotspot on both Thanksgiving and Christmas]. They were incredibly kind to me, and actually seated my party in a private room--because we were all alone I couldn't be distracted by the place's operations and as a result I remember everything about that day. That dinner, legendary in my memory, is the reason that I try so hard to make sure we never have a misstep anytime a large group is here for a truly special occasion. My date to that dinner was killed by a drunk driver about three years after that meal, while two of the couples so in love with each other on that Thanksgiving Day have since been married and divorced--and nastily so in both cases. I forgot my cellphone that day and used my girl's phone to call my dad to wish him a happy holiday--he actually answered the phone because he didn't recognize the number and must have been shocked into good spirits--I think that was probably the last civil conversation we had.

Two years ago when I went to buy my Christmas tree it was cold--cold. I like the cold and I didn't want to get out of my car--it was probably like...9. There was a big old work van parked in the field next to the tree stand that I assumed belonged to the stand, until I got inside the tent and saw this huge family looking to pick up a tree. A dad about my age, his wife, and five or six kids--and they were too lightly dressed. The kids were warm because they were picking out a Christmas tree and were probably already thinking about wrapped boxes underneath it, but you could tell the parents were colder than the air around them--because they were poor and they were about to disappoint their children. As I walked through the rows of trees, I heard one of the tree guys ask the other what the man with his family had asked him about a minute ago, probably right before I walked in. The man had asked the attendant if there was any way to work off the price of a tree, or if they had any damaged or old trees that wouldn't cost more than a few dollars. When the attendant told him that unfortunately they didn't have any work or any extra trees, the man assured them that he wouldn't be any trouble, but that he wanted to let his kids look around for a little while longer if it was OK.

He needed time to think of an excuse for not buying a tree. Any restaurant manager knows instinctively when someone is stalling for time to make up an excuse.

I interrupted the guys and asked how much their most expensive tree was--and was treated to one of the nastiest looks imaginable--they realized I had heard them talking and thought I was planning to upstage the man in front of his family on purpose. Before the guys could answer I told them never mind, handed them $100, and asked that they give the man and his family an $80 tree, keep $20 for themselves, and make up some story about an extra tree or whatever and I hauled ass out of there. I value money--probably too much--but $100 doesn't matter to me. I have dropped Benjamins on rounds of drinks, dancing girls [not to mention sitting girls and standing girls], Christmas tips, yard plants, tropical fish, fountain pens, and countless other ridiculous items and events. That $100 for me, that day, was the very spirit of Christmas itself. When I finally got back to the lot nearly a week later to buy my tree a few days before the holiday the attendants remembered me. They told me the children were laughing and the parents were crying.

I don't know that man from that day, but I size people up all day long. That man was a hard-working man with more bills to pay than bills in his wallet--a man who had a big family that he loved, assuredly a bigger family than he should have had if he had been planning rthings out with his head rather than his heart. He wouldn't have taken money from me, or anything else, directly. If I hadn't taken off from that lot like Junior Johnson with a load of moonshine he probably would have refused even the tree. But, I got out ahead of him--like Santa Claus up the chimney.

These holidays for me mark the passage of time--I am conflicted these days--more than ever before. Maybe a midlife crisis, though thankfully without the baldness, the boiler, or the prostate problems. Maybe just sedentary boredom from being in the same place for so long, maybe wanderlust, maybe even the spiritual emptiness that I am sometimes accused of.

This Thanksgiving and Christmas were spent thinking much on anecdotes like these from my past, as well as the paths that lay ahead of me in my future.

I am interested in seeing what becomes of all of us over the next couple of years as we are now faced with a complete vacuum of ethics and character not just within our own government but across the very face of the earth in most positions of leadership. I am interested in the new challenges that may face the company I work for, solid as it is, as we move into an economic firestorm created by 30 years of corrupt, underhanded governmental meddling in our economic system. I also hear that Ireland and New Zealand are very nice places to live, though understandably somewhat standoffish about immigration.

I'm at a crossroads, with a bunch of silver and gold and a yearning to see what's over the next rise. Hopefully I won't need a gas mask and an automatic weapon to get there, but I guess that is just part of the adventure.

2008-12-26T13:39:00.000-08:00

ring ring, ring ring...

"Jesus Christ dude, what the fuck is her problem???"

My "celly" has been, as the kids say, "blowin' up" over the last 40 minutes or so while a good friend of mine and I have dinner in celebration of his birthday. Each call is from my steadily more panicked assistant manager--an extremely competent professional who is nonetheless prone to finding herself in bizarre, once-in-a-lifetime restaurant situations on a regular basis. On this evening, she is unfortunately afflicted with a person who would soon prove himself to be one of the most vile excuses for humanity I have ever encountered.

As I end the sixth call that hour and turn back to the last of my lamb and our second bottle of super-fucking-fantastic Penfolds Grange, I am relatively sure I will never see dessert. The reason my manager keeps calling is because this piece of human offal and his ten companions are not settling down as unruly guests usually do once the law is laid to them, but indeed they are getting worse as the evening progresses.

What started as a classic pushy, arrogant guest situation has escalated to criminality and disorderly conduct. On the surface, the group is pretty easy to quantify--eight or nine pieces of Eurotrash that are either an extended family or a weird mix of hookers, bargain-basement sugar daddies, and relatives--together with a host American couple--poseurs who had probably spent the weekend trying to impress friends at the club with their "sophisticated" European guests.

Their reservation was for four, they showed up with fifteen. While they were waiting to be seated, the douchebag in charge somehow so offended one of the women in the party that she and her companion along with another couple left the restaurant--muttering as they left, "how did we end up with these scumbags for half the night, anyway?"

Not a good sign. The first call came before they even got to the table, as the ringleader, henceforth to be called "Slobodan" in tribute to his thick Eastern European accent and passing resemblance to the war criminal/mass murderer Slobodan Milosevic, attempted to light up a big, fat, cheap cigar in the middle of our full and smoke-free restaurant.

"He says he can smoke anywhere because he has diplomatic immunity", she says to me.

"Is he still smoking?"

"Yes".

"Very well. Put me on hold and tell him that if he continues to smoke or if anyone else in the party begins to smoke we will halt service to the party and ask them to leave".

A moment later she is back on the line, "He put the cigar out, but he called me an ignorant peasant and told me that he was with the UN and could do anything he wanted".

The next two calls related to Slobodan's attempts to provide alcoholic beverages to the sleazy teenaged whores that made up a little less than half his party. The adults would order drinks and attempt to pass them, we would pick the drinks up...lather, rinse, and repeat. After about twenty minutes of this Slobby got up to complain to my peasant assistant manager about the "harassment" and "assault" his guests were suffering at our hands. My assistant was was steeled for something like this--what she wasn't ready for was this guy identifying himself by name as a plaque holder in the restaurant.

--Now, as an aside--many steakhouses have traditional tools that they use to honor regular and valued guests. Many of the chains have wine or cigar lockers that they assign to their best guests gratis. The Palm covers their walls--literally--with caricatures of their regulars. The 21 Club is chock full of mementos given to the restaurant by their most revered guests and proudly displayed by the ownership. In our case, we have a "wall of fame"--brass plaques that list guest names with the approximate date that they began patronizing the restaurant. We are painfully careful about who gets one of these plaques, and indeed after serving nearly 2,000,000 guests there are still less than fifty plaques.

So again the phone rings. "Yes Gladys, what is he doing now?"

"He says he is Boris Gartovsky and wants his plaque taken down immediately--he says he can't believe how he is being treated after all the years that he has been coming here. Did I do something wrong? I mean, these people are just horrible. Is he always like this?"

"What does this guy look like?"

"He's got a bunch of messy white hair, he's really tall like 6'3" or something and he's dressed like they're going to a 1970's disco after dinner. He's probably in his late 40's maybe early 50's".

"Boris Gartovsky is 5'5'', bald, and nearly 80 years old. He is also one of the most considerate people you will ever meet in your entire life. This piece of shit, whoever he is, is not Boris Gartovsky--this guy just picked a name off the wall he figured he could get away with using--he's certainly not going to try to tell you he's Mike McFee."

"Hold on a second, some of the girls are coming up here..."

"Call me if back if anything else happens."

As I close my phone, look at my friend and say, "drink up, this situation isn't getting any better". I down the last of my Grange while my friend flirts with the bartender--as I reach for my wallet the phone rings again.

As I turn and head for the door, I hear my friend say to the bartender in response to her question about how he was enjoying his celebration, "everything is great! excellent dinner, kick-ass wine, and now I think we're going to get to beat some guys up!"

Walking out the door as I answer my phone, I'm silently agreeing with my friend's assessment of the situation. "Hello...Hello? [audible gasp, maybe a half-sob as response] HELLO?"

"OK, those girls that walked up before were going outside to smoke and one of them had a glass of wine and when I told her I had to take the glass of wine and she's only like 16 and I told her we had to take the glass and she just dumped it all over the front desk and then she and the awful girls she is with just laughed and they walked out the door and one of the servers just told me that this guy Boris or whatever his name is just sent back his steak without even touching it and said it was revenge for harassing his party and that he was going to buy the restaurant and fire everybody and that he is an ambassador and that we were breaking the law and...."

"Gladys, take a breath...Jesus Christ...just relax. I'm five minutes away, I'll be right there."

"OK, but hurry--I think one of the other guys is getting nervous that I'm calling the police and he just asked for the check."

Now, I will admit that when this whole saga had begun, I was more annoyed at Gladys than anything else. Like I said, valuable as she is, she has a bizarre knack of finding trouble in the most unusual ways, and it happens alot. It is almost never her fault, but after awhile it does tend to wear on the nerves nonetheless. As I sped toward my restaurant however, fury at the contemptible nature of Slobodan and his party began to grow inside me at an alarming rate--both of my assistants in the restaurant that night were women as was the majority of the staff--I think this piece of shit sized up his surroundings and assumed it was the perfect venue for a free-for-all--and concerned as I was for the mental well-being of my staff I was also gravely offended by a person who would come into my house when I wasn't there and terrorize my family, so to speak.

Most people who do what I do and do it for a long time leave the industry after a seminal moment of some kind--a "Niagara Falls" moment for those of you who are fans of the Three Stooges. Someone or something so offends us in our core that it poisons the very nature of what we do We are left unable to "smile and nod", unable to play the good host in the face of even the most mild social ineptitude after such an event.

When I burst through the front doors of my restaurant, friend in tow, we were a combined 480 pounds of malevolence--both of us old enough to really know how to fight and how to hurt people, both big enough to achieve that goal, and both angry enough to not care about the consequences.

As it was, the squirrelly little guy who paid the check [probably the local host I alluded to at the beginning] knew something bad was on its way, and was watching the front door. As we arrived and I checked in with Gladys, he made a quiet announcement to Slobodan, who's facial expression and physical demeanor changed dramatically upon catching sight of me. As we walked back toward their location, these two guys put the party in formation with the young whores and the other women surrounding the dickless blowhard men--the guys were literally hiding behind the women.

Now that I had arrived, my rage was settling a bit--Gladys was much more calm, the incident was at an end, and most importantly I now had visual record of all the attendees and could make sure that they would never be let back in the restaurant again.

My friend was less interest in peaceful coexistence, however. "I can't believe those cocksuckers are hiding behind the women! What do you want to do, wait till they get outside and go to get in the cars?"

"No, let's just have a drink and--"

Gladys spoke up, "Actually, except for the tall guy, the women were the worst ones in the whole bunch! They're the underaged ones that kept trying to drink, if it wasn't for them this guy would have been just another Sunday night asshole".

"Really?", says friend, just as the group drew abreast of us on their way toward the front door. Seeing, as I did, that all five men [using the word "men" loosely indeed] in the party, two older and three about the girls' age, all were staring at the floor as they walked, friend cleared his throat.

Friend, loudly, "I don't understand why these guys were trying to get the girls drunk, they all look whorish enough to not need much persuading!"

Gladys, not used to the uniquely blunt worldview of my 36 year-old aerospace engineer best friend born and bred in the rugged Dakota mountains, took a surprised gasp and then burst out laughing.

Continuing, "Didn't you pieces of shit hear me? Isn't there at least one set of balls between you now that a couple of men have arrived? Or are you just tough guys when the little girls are around?"

By now, the train of shame was almost all the way out the door, when one of the delightful young ladies turned around and shot the double bird at my verbose friend, causing an immediate eruption of laughter from all of us left in the restaurant.

"I guess the whores had all the balls after all. Thanks man, this is the best birthday ever!"

And that should have been the end of the story, but for one of my servers walking up to the bar where we were seated about five minutes later--with a purse.

The Addams Family had left a purse--a cheap Dooney and Bourke knockoff to be sure, but a purse nonetheless.

When a cab pulled up ten minutes later and one of the younger men gingerly approached the front door of the restaurant, all I could think of was the wondrous power of the giant wheel of Karma. Sternly admonishing my friend to stay silent at the bar and listen, I approached and opened the front door with the purse in my hand and the biggest, most horrifying smile imaginable on my face, "May I help you?"

"Um, is the lady manager, um, the nice lady, um that works here is she here? We left a purse behind we had dinner here tonight."

"Actually, Gladys is in our office resting--she had a horrible night tonight with some awful, awful, just reprehensible guests in the restaurant..."

"um--"

"You know, the kind of people that make you wonder what sort of a cesspool some people must come from, what an absolute sewer some people must have been raised in to be that awful. You know what I mean?"

"Well, tell her I'm sorry she had a bad night and could I just have that purse, please?"

"Please? Did you actually say please? Wow. What purse?"

"The purse in your hand?"

"Ohhhh. this purse. [I look at him closely] Is it your purse?"

"Well, um no, um it belongs to my girlfriend. Could I just have it? Um please?"

"She's going to have to claim it herself, that's her in the cab, right?"

"Does she have to, I mean she's not feeling good."

"Yes she has to."

As he walked back to the cab and opened the door, I asked Gladys, who was around the corner out of sight, if the fellow I was talking to had been a problem as well.

"They were all obnoxious except for the little guy that paid the check and his wife--some were just worse than others."

Then, as the cab door opened and the girlfriend got out, I knew there was truly a Divine Arbiter--it was "bird girl".

"I came back for my purse," she said.

"Please," he said.

As I stepped outside the restaurant to face Mickey and Mallory I closed the door behind me, "You two are young enough to maybe still turn things around, so listen to me. What we should have done the minute we found your purse was throw it in the garbage compacter and have a good laugh at your expense when you came back for it. Every word and action you take in the real world has an impact, and has consequences. You can't just come into a business like you did tonight--"

Her, "Hey it wasn't even our party..."

Him, "We don't need to be lectured by you..."

"Well you are going to be fucking lectured by me if you want this flea market piece of crap back--because there are ten people standing behind me right now who will swear no purse was found. And as for it not being your party, one is judged by one's companions--breaking bread with a douchebag makes you a douchebag. f you don't want to be treated like scumbags for the rest of your life stop acting like scumbags. [To her] Stop acting like Courtney Love, if you want respect show respect. [To him] You need to learn some humility, and not just the kind of fake humility when you get busted at something, like now, but a real understanding that there is always a bigger fish...you need a beating, but I'm afraid that if I start I won't be able to stop"

Her, "and just who the fuck are you?"

Laughing, "I'm the guy that can see where you dropped your purse in the middle of the road", as I flung it with all my might into the unfortunately empty highway in front of the restaurant. "You should pick it up before it gets run over."

Nearly two months after the afore described night I was in early on a Saturday morning cleaning behind and underneath a bank of refrigerators in the kitchen. Trapped behind these three door monsters I heard the receptionist, "you have a phone call".

"Now?? Could you take a message, I'm a little busy right now!"

"It sounds important, he says he's with the United Nations!"

Someday I will recount the funniest phone call I have ever received...

2008-11-16T20:45:00.000-08:00

"You may dispense with the pleasantries commander, I'm here to put you back on schedule..."--Darth Vader

"I find your lack of faith disturbing..."--Darth Vader

"So...it's treason then..."--Emperor Palpatine

Every once in a while a guest of the restaurant, a friend, or a co-worker is amazed by some little tidbit of inside information that I possess. In response to their surprise, I usually tell them, "I hear everything...I'm like J. Edgar Hoover without the dress or the long-time male companion".

Recently, at a birthday party attended by some current and many past employees of mine, my name apparently surfaced and a debate commenced. Now, I would like to tell you that this debate was a pro/con affair with at least half the attendees defending me and a small group of vile malcontents unfairly impugning my honor.

The debate, in reality, was about whether I was more like Darth Vader or more like Emperor Palpatine.

Nice...

Now, I have watched all the Star Wars movies and enjoyed them--all of them. I watch movies as entertainment. Because of this fact I rarely watch anything weighty or anything supposedly "socially conscious". By the same token, if a movie, any movie, takes my mind off of the wood chipper that is my every-day life, then its a good movie, period. Don't comment about JarJar Binks or how horrible Episode 2 was, or how Jimmy Smits wasn't right for the part or any of that supercilious bullshit...they are six entertaining movies that made billions of dollars.

But, I digress. I have watched the movies, and I believe I have a decent understanding of the two specific characters to whom I was being compared. The part of me that relishes my notoriety in the local restaurant community thinks I win either way, but that the more accurate comparison would be to the emperor--after all, throughout my entire career I have left those around me wondering, "how did he know that", "how did he figure that out?", and "how is he ALWAYS one step ahead of us/me?" Plans within plans baby, that has been my stock in trade.

The other part of me though--the part of me that hates going to work and is sometimes nearly reduced to tears by the constant barrage of betrayals, both large and small, that I am faced with on a regular basis--that part of me was troubled enough by the debate to ruminate over it for quite a while.

Darth Vader? Really? A character whose enduring persona established in the first three movies is that of an absolutely relentless villain with nary a shred of good or compassion within him--an individual who is only granted the tiniest bit of humanity as he lay dying, and even that humanity framed by hideous physical deformity.?

Emperor Palpatine? The very embodiment of evil, a power-hungry schemer willing to stop at nothing short of total galactic domination--heartless, soulless malice personified?

So I was troubled, and in this current climate when there is so much troubling going on in general I had a hard time shaking the feeling. Then, one night after work I went for a drink or four. Slipping into a favorite bar of mine I approached the bar just as the bartender, a guy I know well, was turning away from his view of the door to ring a check. Not thinking much of it, I walked up to the bar and sat down right in front of the screen he was using with his back to me [a place many in-the-biz people will often sit because it makes it easier to talk to their working friends while they ring and close checks]. When he turned around from closing checks he let out a screech in the lightly populated bar and nearly fell over.

"What the fuck is wrong with--", I started to say before I realized what had happened. My friend had surveyed one entirely empty side of his bar and a closed front door before turning to do some paperwork. As he turned I opened the door quietly [I'm naturally stealthy], walked quickly to the bar [I'm naturally quick], and sat down right behind him. When he turned around, it looked as though I had appeared out of thin air.

Just as I started to laugh at his startled reaction, he said it--"What are you, some sort of a fucking Jedi Knight or something?? Jesus Christ you almost fucking scared me to death!"

And I thought to myself, "Yes. That's exactly what I am. I am a fucking Jedi Knight. Maybe I'm the last one, but that's exactly what I am."

I have attained my position through years of rigorous, exhaustive training. My mentors and teachers were stern, unforgiving, and demanding. I adhere to a code of ethics and conduct that most people consider outdated and anachronistic. I am treated with suspicion and concern by the guilty but sought out by the troubled. No one wants to see me when they are fucking around but everyone wants to see me when they are in trouble. I seemingly appear out of nowhere, and both my actions and judgements are swift.

As a teacher I am stern, unforgiving, and demanding. Many of those who attempt to learn from me do not succeed and are cast away. Those who understood the lessons I was teaching and applied themselves to the tests have gone forth to populate many of the best restaurants in this city, state, and beyond.

I am humble in regard to my successes and aggrieved at my failures--my labors are executed for the sake of themselves nearly as much if not more than for any personally profitable result.

I feel a great dark tide rising and can neither see its specific source nor propose any specific solution--I can only continue working to maintain the sanctity of own little domain.

There is a good chance that I may soon be the last of my kind, and that I will then move to the middle of a great desert to finish my days.

"Try not. Do...or do not. There is no try..."--Master Yoda

2008-11-12T05:41:00.000-08:00

"To lash the vices of a guilty age..."--Charles Churchill

"undeserved merit is satire..."--Samuel Sullivan Cox

So we have this third restaurant that closed about six months ago--originally a casual place, a small group of loyal and vocal local guests pushed the place in a more formal, more expensive direction until finally those people were almost the only ones that wanted to eat there, and it went out of business. It still made a little money, but my boss didn't think the profit was worth the effort and didn't want to wait for the place's heyday to come around again. My employer has vacillated over the last few months about whether or not to re-open the place in some form--he shares my concerns about the sad changes taking place in both the general workforce and general guest base, and has been thinking that maybe now would be a good time to cash out and sail away on a giant barge made of cash.

After much thought, he decided to float one more concept--a classic neighborhood place that would this time be immune to outside criticism and pressure, a place that would either succeed or fail on its own merits. The help I have been giving him over the last couple of months is the main source of my silence--during the busiest time of my year my workload has nearly doubled.

So we are concepted, designed, and ready to roll--now it is time to bring on the staff. Completely opposed to the idea of having anything to do with the operation of this property myself, it has fallen to me to hire the staff, managers, and chef.

Everything was cruising along very nicely with the exception of choosing a chief administrator for this property--although there were many people who applied and interviewed for the job, no one caught my eye. There were a few energetic young guys and one nearly captivating girl, but they just didn't have the experience--they were also all new to the area and so lacked the necessary contact base. Most of the others were old mules--guys and girls that had been worn down and blunted by the industry in general and institutional restaurants in particular. Most of you know the type--no new ideas, no free thinking--just rhetoric and cliches all the way.

This uninspiring pool of prospective managers was kind of to be expected, with one exception. There was incredible pressure on me to interview one particular guy--or to be more specific, to hire one particular guy. Now, in my long career I have been leaned on scores of times to make a hire--somebody's kid would make a great busboy while someone else's girlfriend would be a fantastic bartender and yet another guy's mistress is supposed to be my next superstar hostess. These people can usually be put off, placated or lied to until the issue goes away, though rarely I have had to grind through a sham interview only to later act heartbroken when the job "just doesn't open up" for some reason.

In this case, the pressure was coming from numerous odd sources, and was relentless. Purveyors we don't use, liquor and wine companies with no placements in our restaurants, a terrible exterminator, a restaurant cleaning company famous for liquor disappearing overnight from their clients, four of the seemingly endless number of "chambers of commerce" in our area, a trucking company with no discernible connection to the restaurant industry, and the head of a placement company I had never heard of. All these people seemed at least slightly distasteful for one reason or another, but they were all so jazzed up over this guy that I thought they had to be sincere.

Now normally, I would dismiss this bizarre campaign out of hand, but because of the dearth of other viable options I decided to interview the guy--I mean what the hell...

When the guy showed up I was impressed--good looking young guy, clean-shaven and wearing a suit. He had a nice smile for me and a solid handshake and he looked me right in the eye.

As we sat down in the shining dining room with its trademark details that identify it as being one of my employer's places, I began the interview:

me: What do you think of the place?

him: One day, this will be a great place...far greater than the sick, sad shell we see here today.

me: Ohhh Kay...well, I suppose any empty restaurant seems a little sad, and we are certainly looking for a higher level of success with our new concept, but the last restaurant that was here did pretty well for a long, long time.

him: I see a new entity rising out of this fetid wreckage--a new day...you know, restaurant-wise.

me: yeah...let's see...let's get through the basics first. Your resume doesn't seem to describe much of your experience. There's lots of "organizing" and "observing" listed, but I can't seem to find many details. What are you doing now?

him: I am currently in an advisory position with the state restaurant association.

me: No kidding. That's interesting. The restaurant association has always puzzled me--they are supposed to help us be a stronger industry, but they seem to spend most of the time inventing new license fees and industry fees for us to pay and all they ever seem to do with the money is raise their own salaries. Were you offered that job while you were still working in restaurants, or did you leave the industry and come back to the association later?

him: Yes!!

me: Yes what? Yes the SRA hired you when you were still a restaurant manager, or yes you decided to take the SRA job after leaving our industry for a while?

him: The past isn't important, the future is important! This isn't a job that requires experience, this is a job that requires vision...VISION...and that's what I have.

me: Well, actually it does require experience, and an understanding of our concept front to back--we are going to be pricing low to appeal to everyone in the dining community here, we want to attract a huge number of people and we want to give all those people great value for their investment so that they stay happy and come back over and over. We want to appeal to everyone, and motivate them to return. We want a small, focused, well managed staff that works hard and gets the rewards of their labor--and for all of this to happen we need a leader in here who has experience and an understanding of what has historically made an American restaurant successful.

him: No, sir...what you need is CHANGE. What you described is the past, and the past has failed...FAILED...all that so-called experience you prize has failed everywhere, every time. See, people don't know what they want, they need someone to TELL THEM WHAT THEY WANT. If that person is charismatic enough and good looking enough and can speak really well provided he has time to rehearse and no one asks him any mean questions--that person can then take almost everything from the people who are in this restaurant and they won't know any better. Like, see here, this menu item you have---$12 for a hamburger with a choice of either french fries or onion rings and a choice of three cheeses, THREE cheeses. One burger, one side, no cheese, $32.00--that's what the dining public needs--they just don't know it yet till I make them believe it

me: Are you serious? These people know their own minds and they know value--they aren't going to let someone blow smoke up their ass just 'cuz he has a nice smile and a pleasant voice. Most people can't afford a $32 burger and they aren't going to come here, and the ones that can afford it will go somewhere else because there's no choice, no value.

him: No, no, no...you can't see the beauty of it. You don't tell them its a $32 burger, you tell them its a burger deal, a burger party, a burger give-away, tell them whatever you want--once they're here and they have the burger, you get to work on the check--there will be a health care surcharge because all the staff has to have full health care, a carbon user surcharge because they drove to the restaurant in one of those terrible cars, a landfill surcharge because of the toilet paper and napkins, and a hunger-abatement co-pay because if they are selfish enough to be eating out in a world like this they should have to think about and pay for those who are less fortunate than themselves and can't afford to go to restaurants. See, once you sucker them in, you've got them. The higher the prices, the better--the rich ones have plenty of money, and they should have to pay more than everyone else--and the poorer ones will eventually get jobs here because they'll need the extra money to keep eating here...the more people we hire the bigger we can make our surcharges to support them and their healthcare and their housing and their children--oh, wait, no they shouldn't have children--well, you get the picture. This is how American restaurants should really work--not these old, antiquated ideas of hard work and good ideas and profit--it is time that the rest of us get to make the rules--after all, why should I and those poor souls like me continue to toil and struggle and sweat...

me: Your sweat, good point--let's talk about your sweat. What was your income last year at the SRA?

him: $4.5 million, and a house that some guy gave me...

me: You must have sweat quite a bit to make that much money, what were your responsibilities?

him: well, there were meetings...quite a few actually..and you know, votes on...stuff. You'll have to forgive me, in the six months I was working there I spent most of the time looking for a manager's job.

me: No problem, that sounds like something that happens to everybody[the candidate doesn't notice my exaggerated eye-roll]. What other management jobs have you had?

him: I have had a number of advisory positions, some theoretical executive fellowships, a number of attempts to design Utopian restaurant models...

me: Describe, however briefly, one thing that you have actually accomplished...at any time...anything...in a real-world, real market setting. Please!!

him: I have spent my life working for change...CHANGE...

me: Well, that isn't an answer to my question, but okay. Describe then, however briefly, one thing that you have actually changed. Please!!

him: I can see you're skeptical, but maybe instead of tearing me down you should allow me to lift you up...hire me and I will lift you up.

me: How will you lift me up--by charging me $32 for a suck-ass hamburger in a restaurant that you will be running in a revolutionary and enlightening manner even though you have never, ever run anything before...ever?

him: Well, when you put it that way...HEY!!...did I mention I have a great partner with all sorts of that practical restaurant hospitality running stuff you seem so hung up on? Did I mention it? Because I do, I have a great partner and he has all sorts of that experience stuff you keep trying to make me look bad by pointing out I don't have.

me: Great, get him in here and let's meet him

him: Yeah, well there's just one thing with that...he's not too good with talking to people and not infuriating them.

me: So, let me get this straight after everything else. You have this "great" partner who is supposed to have all the experience you lack and really understand the hospitality and public relations that are so important to what we want to do here, but he makes people angry when he talks?

him: Yeah, he enrages people--he's really very boorish and offensive--but he has a wonderful resume--look I have a copy right here, you can't help but read it and fall in love with him. He's so eloquent, every one of his words is poetry on paper--please just read it, OK? Huh?

So, seeing as I couldn't imagine the interview getting any worse or any stranger and I just wanted it to end, I took the resume and began to read the lengthy cover letter...and sure enough the words were eloquent, the turns of phrase artistic, and the syntax flawless--it was one of the finest cover letters I had ever read, and it didn't differ so much as a single word from when I had first read it fifteen years earlier in the Merriam's Resume Handbook.

me: Your partner's a plagiarist...this is the copied example of an executive cover letter printed in the world's most famous resume how-to guide. Your partner is a liar and a cheat stealing someone else's words and attempting to take credit for them as his own. Plagiarism is a vile, despicable act and if your "great" partner were here in front of me I would slap him across the face, so affronted would I be by his mere, offensive presence. I could never consider a plagiarist for any position of responsibility.

So, after a little more self-aggrandizing bombast from my prospective manager/savior, I sent him on his way along with his disgraced partner's manufactured resume and it was back to the drawing board...because after all I certainly couldn't hire two clowns like that, right? Right? I mean, no one would be foolish enough to make such a vital decision based on someone's smile, or the beauty of their children, or on the endless stream of feckless, nonsensical platitudes spewing from that person's piehole, right?

Yeah, that could never happen...

2008-09-19T19:55:00.000-07:00

"I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old..."--Charles Baudelaire

"To understand a man, you must know his memories. The same is true of a nation..."--Anthony Quayle

I am usually blessed [though sometimes cursed] with an excellent memory--not quite photographic, but extremely accurate and clear. Earlier this week I walked into a store to buy a gift for a friend and ran smack dab into the parents of one of my first girlfriends--a girl I dated throughout most of high school and still saw on occasion during and even just beyond college. We were very close--close enough that we lost our virginity's to one another--and her parents knew it. They knew it, unfortunately, because once sex between us became a regular thing it often took place in her home after they went to sleep, or after we thought that they had gone to sleep. Her parents were apparently much lighter sleepers than we gave them credit for.

We were never confronted as a couple, thank God, but my girlfriend's mother did confront her privately at some point, and after that my visits to their home were as brief as possible.

They didn't recognize me in the store, and I didn't attempt to re-open old wounds. I briefly considered pretending to be someone else so I could ask after their wonderful daughter [who I know is now a happily-married child psychologist], but quickly realized that while they had gotten older they probably hadn't gotten any stupider and would most likely recognize me as soon as I started talking.

My old girlfriend's parents left the store shortly after I arrived. Seeing them that day however has awakened a sort of archival review in the back of my mind, where most of my personal memories are kept. Recently, as I go about the moribund daily tasks that generally constitute my existence, I have often been surprised [usually pleasantly] with flash floods of the past...

I remember things about my first restaurant job. I remember the first time I saw a restaurant employee eat from a guest's cleared plate [I was horrified then and would still be horrified now--I haven't actually seen it in years because I fired the last two people I saw doing it and my feelings on the matter are well-known]. I remember Tim Kelly the head-waiter [certainly long-dead], a man that would handle his six-table station like an absolute champion--never lose his cool, never fall in the weeds, and never forget to say please and thank-you to those he worked with, even if they were chubby, snot-nosed busboys. I remember when the manager told me that I would be in Tim's station every night that we worked together because Tim had requested me. I remember showing up early and icing down the bartender's wells to make an extra $5 a night. I remember when one worldly guest actually asked for espresso when I offered coffee, and I remembered that Tim Kelly was the only person in the whole restaurant who knew what the guy was talking about. After fifteen minutes of hunting the manager came up with a bottle of instant espresso. I remember being angry that the guest didn't actually drink the "espresso" that we had gone to so much trouble to produce. I remember working four roll-over doubles in a row during a huge convention one summer and making nearly $1000 during the four grueling days--back then I thought that was all the money in the world--now its lunch at Olives in the Bellagio. I remember a record-breaking Saturday night at this restaurant, and I remember being asked to come out for drinks with the waiters after the shift, to the dive bar in the hotel next door. When I sheepishly mentioned that I was only 14, the response was, "oh yeah, 14's too young...tell Jim you're 16 if he asks. Now come on". I remember that Saturday night as the beginning of a six year love affair with rum that lasted until I met that sleazy whore vodka.

I remember borrowing a bottle of Bacardi Light from Jim two years later and sharing it with the aforementioned girlfriend. I also remember that only after the fact did I realize how nearly impossible it would be for me to replace said bottle of Bacardi [which I remember did its job fantastically well], because I was, of course, 16 years old. When I tried to simply give Jim the bartender the money to replace the bottle, he informed me sternly that when an honorable man borrows something, he must return it in kind--it took me three weeks to figure out how to buy a bottle of Bacardi Light [and in all honesty I don't remember who I finally found to make the purchase for me]. When I returned the bottle to Jim and apologized for the delay, he shook my hand, said not to worry about it, and further told me that an honorable man could always count on his help.

Oddly enough, the paradox of a bartender willing to regularly serve a 14-year old hard liquor but unwilling to let that same child slide on a favor of honor never struck me until this very minute. If I wasn't positive that Jim the bartender was also long dead I would try to look him up and ask him about it.

I remember the thrill of playing football--the base joy in understanding that I was faster, stronger, and/or meaner than those that opposed me. In remember the pride I felt when opposing players would point me out during warm-ups and issue warnings to their teammates, "there he is, that's 74. Watch him, he's alot better than he looks. Shut him down or he's going to get to the quarterback". I know I still hold the record for most-safeties-forced in the county I played in, and I held the record for most points scored by a defensive player for nearly fifteen years. I don't dwell on those years, but I do remember them--and when I walk into a competing restaurant now I feel a familiar version of that same pride as I get recognized and the buzz starts to circulate through the staff, "that's Last One Home, from the Steakhouse. They do $10 million...he's been there forever...he fired my roommate just for making noise...he hates girl servers...I heard he's a cocaine addict...that guy's an arrogant prick...etc." You almost never get the honest credit, so you may as well enjoy the notoriety. Over 400,000 bottles of wine sold and well over $100 million in total property sales--maybe not as cool as the record for most safeties, but damn close and a hell of a lot more profitable.

I remember giving the Heimlich maneuver, six or seven times. I remember one time in particular when the gentleman who was choking was a frail, older man. I remember pulling him gently to his feet from his chair and whispering in his ear, "you're going to be fine, but to help you I have to force this food out, and its going to hurt. I'm sorry". I saved his life and I cracked two of his ribs.

I remember a lavish Christmas party thrown by a large restaurant company I worked for just after college. The company had properties strewn along an interstate corridor for nearly 100 miles--the staff from my restaurant and two others nearby were bussed to a nightclub owned by the company that was about 50 miles away--to this day it was one of the best parties I have ever been to. I remember Digital Underground's "Humpty Dance" was the big hit at the time, and I remember that a waitress I absolutely hated came to the party with her boyfriend. I also remember that toward the end of the party the boyfriend decided it would be cool to punch the waitress I hated. I don't remember whether or not the boyfriend got a broken nose, but I do remember that he didn't make the bus ride back, and I remember that my hands hurt like a bitch the next morning. I also remember that the event impressed upon me the fact that most of what makes people what they are is hidden from our view--that party was the end of punchy boyfriend, and the waitress almost instantly became a much more likable person.

I remember that I have never been arrested, but I also remember two times when I should have been. remember being pulled over after foolishly racing through town with an old 5-series BMW. The officer, not being an imbecile, could tell I was drunk and administered the "follow the moving pen with your eyes [don't move your head, don't move your head, HEY I SAID DON'T MOVE YOUR HEAD]" test. After about five minutes of the most singular, focused concentration I have ever executed in my life, I passed and he let me go [after ascertaining I was only about four blocks from my house]. It wasn't Christmastime, but I still got a huge gift that night.

I remember the second time I should have been arrested, but it will remain a mystery...

I remember lots of things, and I think I will write most of them down here over the next few days. But right now, I remember I have a cute girl waiting for me at a bar down the street. New memories in the making...

2008-09-03T20:03:00.001-07:00

"Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?"--Christopher Marlowe

I am in love, head over heels. I am in love with a married, 44-year old mother of five.

I have been conflicted for months over the daunting choice facing me--either abstain from voting in the upcoming presidential election because I could not truly endorse the representatives of my party, or vote for them as the lesser of two evils though I remained sure that if elected they would take the country and its government farther in the wrong direction [though obviously not to the catastrophic ends dreamed of by their opponents].

Governor Palin has made me a believer again. And if John McCain could willingly pick a person made of such stuff to run with him, then he deserves my vote as well.

My God but I cannot remember the last time an office-seeker so captivated me. Ability, eloquence, personality, intelligence--and values--real, bona fide intransigent values not likely to change with each new audience. A real person who has lived a real life in the real world. The douchebag media must be absolutely twisted in knots over this.

That Todd Palin is a lucky fucking guy--that's all I'm saying.

I've got to run out now and get a yard sign and some bumper stickers...

2008-08-28T20:10:00.000-07:00

"How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours..."--Wayne Dyer

"My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand..."--Thich Nhat Hanh

"Helena is looking for you..." Great. Helena is one of our bartenders, and if she's looking for me that means there is a problem--its also the middle of a Saturday night and I am busy--no, I'm more than busy--I'm in the weeds big time.

Steeling myself for the worst, but still hoping the problem might be as simple as her needing a back-up bottle of something, I head for the bar. Getting up there I see our other bartender busy in the service well, but no sign of Helena--however we are a big restaurant and she could easily still be looking for me--as I turn to go hunt her down a guest at the far side of the bar starts frantically waving to get my attention--assuming that this person is the reason Helena was seeking me out in the first place I head over to see what's up.

"Yes sir, how can I--"

"It's tangy. It's vinegar-ey. I don't like it!", interrupts a tiny, pinch-faced woman sitting next to the gentleman who had waved me over.

"There's clearly something wrong with the wine. Try it. You'll have to agree." Now this is the waver, gesturing disgustedly toward a decanter sitting on the bar before his party of three. In an instant it all starts to come back--about ten minutes before I had dropped a bottle of Quintessa off at the bar, and then about five minutes after that Pete the other bartender had come to me and gotten a decanter for it. I remembered thinking at the time that the decanter was odd, as Quintessa is a pretty soft wine, but just wrote the request off to a "Wine Spectator" expert and went back to digging myself out of the weeds. It was now clear and obvious that I should have brought the decanter up myself.

Looking quickly I see that most of the wine is still accounted for, dismissing one type of scam perpetrated when a small party will quickly drink half a bottle between them and then attempt to return the rest, usually getting a much cheaper bottle as replacement.

Reaching over I grab the decanter, lift it near my face, and inhale deeply through my nose. Just as I expected--the wine smells...like...wine. Not corked wine or maderized wine, but perfectly good over-priced California blended red wine.

"Well sir, the wine doesn't seem corked, but as a courtesy you're welcome to make the choice of another wine from the list", I say, politely and with a smile on my face.

"But you didn't even taste it! It's vinegarrrreeeyyyyyyy!"--pinch-face again.

"Sir, miss, I'm terribly sorry you didn't find the wine to your taste, and as I mentioned, you are welcome to choose another from the list--I would just ask that you not choose another bottle of Quintessa, because this bottle seems sound."

"You didn't taste it"' --waver this time.

"He didn't taste it...he didn't even taste it"--pinch-face yet again, first to the waver, then to the so far blessedly silent third member of their party.

"Listen", waver starts again, this time throwing in the finger wag for emphasis, "We've had Quinatesta [sic] lots of times, and it doesn't taste like shit. This tastes like shit. I think so, she thinks so, and my brother-in-law thinks so [as waver says this, brother-in-law immediately hops off his stool with neither word nor backward glance and makes a bee-line for the men's room]. I've only sent about ten bottles of wine back in my entire life, and I've never had to deal with anything like this. And you won't even taste this shitty-tasting Quinatesta [sic].

Now, right here I knew I was fucked. Anyone who admits to sending back "only...about ten bottles of wine" is, first, lying. A person who is a big enough cock to admit sending back ten bottles of wine, even over an entire dining lifetime [this guy was in his mid-forties], is a serial offender who has probably done it [or at least attempted to do it] scores of times, so much so that admitting to the ten no longer seems horrific and unacceptable, which of course it is. But, I was already hip-deep in this quicksand of douchebaggery and there wasn't much to lose by slogging forward.

"I don't want to seem dismissive, sir, and I have no doubt you have had this wine before as you state, but the smell of a corked wine is very often much stronger then the taste. This wine, which I have also encountered numerous times, smells perfectly fine to me. Taste is subjective in everyone, and can be effected by a wide range of outside factors--that's why I'm happy to offer you any other bottle of wine--but if I bring you another bottle of Quintessa I am quite sure that it is going to taste no different than this one , which means you will do one of two things. You will either fight your way through it without enjoying it, or you will attempt to send that bottle back as well, and I can't endorse either of those results I'm afraid. I'm sorry if it seems like you're being subjected to unacceptable treatment, but while we are a hospitality concern, we are also a business that must have reasonable controls over its valuable inventory.

"What do you mean, 'corked wine'?"

Seeing the chance to possibly explain to this retard why he wasn't getting his way, I was delighted to answer, "In almost every case of a wine being bad sir, the reason is an improperly sanitized cork [for purposes of my brevity and his idiocy I elected not to mention the rare cases of cork taint being caused by contaminated winery facilities, and also skipped over the very rare cases of maderized wine]. If the cork isn't properly sanitized, an organic compound can form on it that will interact with the wine, destroying it. The result can be dull and muted flavors, but more obviously the smells that result from this contamination are moldy, wet smells--some describe wet dog, wet newspaper, and wet basement smells. The aromas are usually strong, sometimes overpowering, and aren't to be found in this particular bottle of wine we have in front of us".

As I finished speaking, I looked up hoping to see the dawning of understanding, but should have known better.

"So, I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, is that what you're telling me, hotshot?"

"He didn't even TAAYYYSSSTT it", again Pinchie.

"By all means, ma'am, let me allay your concerns". I grabbed a glass from the shelf behind me, poured an inch of wine into it, smelled it again, and drank. Once again I found perfectly good over-priced California wine.

"WELL????"

"Like I said before, all taste is subjective, but this tastes like perfectly good Quintessa to me."

"Then you fucking drink it..."

Suddenly my Saturday night came to a halt in an instant. Here I was again in the place where I am finding myself [and all my friends are complaining of the same thing] far too often of late, thinking with a smile on my face that you can't spell 'hospitality' without 'hospital', and wondering how long this guy would be eating through a straw once I finished with him and if I could find a lawyer good enough to impanel a jury full of restaurant workers.

"I'm not asking you to drink it, sir. I'm offering to take it back and let you choose another bottle from the more than 800 other choices on the list. If you don't care to do that, you are welcome to enjoy your dinner without wine. If neither of those two choices are acceptable, I will cancel your entrees, have you checked out just for your cocktails and appetizers, and you may seek "Quinatesta" and dinner elsewhere, with our regrets of course.

"No sir, that won't be necessary", brother-in-law finally breaks the vow of silence. "I'll be happy to make another choice from the winelist and I'm sure it will be fine".

After handing brother-in-law the list I headed back to the floor for what would prove, as a result of my five wasted minutes with the sphincter twins, to be one of the hardest Saturday nights in memory as I ran behind for the next two hours.

As I was leaving the bar Helena grabbed me, "I'm sooo sorry--I was trying to get to you first, I had a back story to give you that explains everything."

"Great", I said, "Save it for later--it'll be entertainment while I drink myself to death--give the rest of the Quintessa to the McIllnenny's [a father and two sons, all firefighters, who come to our bar once a month for a guys night out]".

As the night came to a close, I did indeed return to our now deserted bar to bask in the soft, non-judgemental glow of my new love, Three Olives flavored vodkas [two flavors specifically that will remain top secret lest I be identified by my newest liquid vice]. The first glass I emptied in a matter of about a minute. Halfway through the second Helena came over to fill me in...

"Well, I've actually got two things about that dick to tell you now. The first thing I wanted to tell you before you went behind the bar was the story they told me when they first sat down. When they first sat I hadn't gotten busy yet, so I was chit-chatting and I asked them if they were locals and they said no, they were in town for [no big surprise, a labor union event that I will redact]... I asked them if they had been to any other good restaurants, and they said 'no good ones'. They went on to say that they had gone to Asshat O' Herlihy's last night and had had a horrible meal [our self-proclaimed 'biggest competition', this is the restaurant I had mentioned in an earlier post that seemingly set out for no good reason to directly challenge us and has not been doing well--it is probably costing its misguided owner $200,000.00 a month in losses and is rumored to be closing any day]. They said the service sucked, the food sucked, the dinner took three hours, and then the guy said, 'and we had to send three corked bottles of wine back before we found one we liked', then--"

"WAIT--he said 'corked'. You're sure, he said 'corked'?", I asked.

"Yeah I'm sure, but I'm so sorry. What happened then was that party of fifteen came in and that other eight came in and they all hit the bar and I got weeded and I didn't even know they were going to have dinner and Pete took over with them and the next thing I know they've got wine and it wasn't till they started to complain and want to talk to someone and I tried to find you but then you got there first and I'm so sorry."

"Forget about it. What you just told me takes the guy from being an entitled moron, which is bad enough, and promotes him to a lying, conniving piece of shit--shit like that is obviously how he gets his jollies and I didn't let him get away with it this time and what you told me lets me know I made the right decision. Cocksucker knows all about corked wine, real or not. Of course he does."

As Helena turned to get me glorious drink #3, I remembered the other thing she mentioned, "Helena, what was the other story?"

"Oh, that's the best. You remember you had me give the bottle to the firemen--oh yeah, they left this for you [she hands me $50]--well, once we started to slow down a little they asked about the bottle, and they come so often and they're like family so I told them the story [I frown a little here, but I don't really mind], and did you know Joe [the dad, sort of a cross between R. Lee Ermey and Randy Savage--big and bad, though unfailingly courteous] worked on a cruise ship when he was a kid? So anyway, they'd already had beers and a bottle of wine when I brought the Quintessa over, so they were feeling good, and when I told them the story Joe got a weird look on his face and he got all quiet and--hey Pete, come 'ere. Pete actually heard what he said, Pete! What did Joe Fireman say to that tool down in service 1?"

Pete walks over, a big smile on his face, "Joe walked up behind the guy who gave you all the shit and tapped him on the shoulder. When the guy turned around he had a nasty look on his face, I think maybe he thought it was going to be you. When he turned around all he could see was Joe Fireman's chest and the look on his face went right away and Joe said, 'Mister, I just wanted to let you know, I've been drinking wine for forty years and that bottle of Quintessa is one of the finest I've ever had. Thanks for being such a terrible jackass. Make sure you tip my daughter real well, now!' And then he slapped the guy on the back like you see guys do sometimes, but it looked really hard, and then he came back to his side of the bar. Man, it was great."

"What did he leave?", I asked.

"$200 on $500. That slap must have really loosened up the prick's wallet."

Normally such an exchange, even in our favor like that, would trouble me. But in all honesty I'm just glad the good guys came out on top for once.

2008-08-17T00:55:00.000-07:00

"We must all suffer one of two things; the pain of discipline or the pain of regret and disappointment"--Jim Rohn

"Make the most of your regrets...to regret deeply is to live afresh"--Henry David Thoreau

My eyes snap open and it is 7:38am by the clock next to the TV in my living room. I have been asleep for three hours--an amount of slumber that a few years ago would have been plenty but recently has proven woefully lacking. I'm not surprised to find myself still in the living room--I have a very comfortable couch and it is a wonder that I ever get off of it and do anything. What surprises me is that I'm up--my alarm won't begin to blare for another hour [once home from work, I set my alarm and make sure it travels from room to room with me--crashing at my desk, on my couch, or even in springtime or fall on my outside deck is not unheard of].

Not wanting to waste the rare opportunity to be ahead of the game for once, I gingerly rise from the couch, steeling myself against the familiar shooting pains that are to be expected after four years of brutal high school athletics, several summers of the most grueling menial labor imaginable, and twenty plus years of roaming restaurants in what amounts to a ten or fifteen mile nightly powerwalk.

No pain. No stiffness. No immediate thought of, "'I'm too old for this shit". It occured to me later that I was probably dreaming of something I actually WANTED to do and that the subconscious excitement and adrenalin had not only wakened me, but turned the clock back on my broken body by a decade or so. Walking to the kitchen for my inaugural diet soda of the day I tried in my mind to set a plan of attack for the day ahead, and got the most interesting response from my now conscious mind.

The first image that came to mind was my flying south on the interstate for two hours to a wonderful chunk of land I have owned for three years but only seen once in person for about ten minutes. Secluded and wooded with wetland and a natural spring--perfect for the hermit I hope one day to become. My eventual plans are to install a bauhaus-style prefab on a clearing in the middle of the property, but this morning all I could think of was motoring on down there and sitting on a blanket and reading a book or two. The drive itself was certainly part of the allure--my car has well more than 500 horsepower but hardly ever leaves the city and gets to stretch its legs--but mostly the plan shone in its perfect non-workness. It was so far removed from my daily grind as to seem utterly radical by comparison.

If this particular day was one of those rare days that was supposed to be a day off for me I have no doubt I would have been on the road ten minutes later, but alas it was not to be.

Pushing aside the fantasy of a road trip I again concentrate on a day's program, only to be greeted with a mind's eye image of being greeted at McCarren Airport by a driver from the Bellagio and my casino host. Now, I'm not the hugest gambler, but I'm pretty good at it, which means my average bets are high and my table time is also high. As a result I'm well rated , but more important I think is the fact that I'm not an unbearable, arrogant prick--my attitude probably doesn't matter to the hotel itself but it clearly matters to the hosts and all the other staffmembers who appreciate courtesy and gratuity. As a result, coming to Bellagio for me is like going to Disney World for a little kid--it never gets old or loses its luster. I love, absolutely love Las Vegas--the physical place itself is so unlike anything I have ever experienced before that I don't think I could ever live there and feel comfortable, but that didn't stop me from spending two hours with a hotel-recommended realtor the last time I was there.

I see it all--short flight to Vegas, courtesy Bentley to the hotel, right up to a penthouse suite or even a villa if no real high rollers are in town [Vegas is having their worst summer in 30 years], then back down to the floor for poker and blackjack--maybe even that WPT casino poker table game that I have recently taken a shine to--it is so real in my mind that I can taste it--but that, of course, won't work either.

By now I'm out of the shower and as my fantasies fade, so does my physical comfort. In an odd reversal of morning routine, I am actually starting to stiffen up after my hot shower just when I would ordinarily be starting to loosen, and I'm also starting to think seriously about the regrettably real day ahead of me. As reality sets in I see the real me, like Dorian Gray once the portrait is burned--I am the guy who keeps an old, expensive restaurant running profitably in the worst restaurant economy in a generation. The guy who's sales are flat when everyone else's are down 20, 30 or 40%. The guy who still pays the bills for the company's seafood restaurant [a third, more casual American restaurant we own, heretofor unmentioned, has closed to be reconcepted--we own the building its in and are trying to find the best possible idea for this new economy]. I'm the guy who still plunges toilets, changes bulbs, mops floors, and writes schedules.

I'm the guy who tried to quit two months ago, only to be told that if I did, my employer would most likely cash out--sell his two other freestanders for land value and sell this landmark restaurant to the highest bidder, most likely a chain dying for the location. Now, this wasn't a threat from him, this was just the truth--my boss is old and rich, and while he loves having his restaurants I am positive he does not want to even consider running them himself or going through the trouble of breaking in a new general--he would rather cash out and let the chips fall where they may.

When my boss and I had this meeting and he told me what he thought, I saw all the pink slips from our other two restaurants. I saw The Palm, The Capital Grille, Ruth's Chris, or Morton's taking the keys to this restaurant and inviting all of our employees to "reapply" for their positions, after the remodeling of course. I saw myself regretting giving up the job that I usually spend most of my time regretting ever having taken in the first place.

I think quickly about my beautiful land, I think quickly about my beloved Sin City, and then I stop thinking, 'cause its time to make the donuts...

2008-08-16T21:07:00.000-07:00

"There is a pleasure, sure, in being mad which none but madmen know"--John Dryden

"The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye"--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"ARE YOU THE MANAGER??!", blares a strident, aged female voice from the phone before I am more than halfway through our standard phone greeting.

"As...luck would have it I am ma'am, how may I help you?"

"Well, we were there last night, and we had dinner there last night, and you, you weren't there last night, right? RIGHT?! You weren't there last night, RIGHT??!!"

"Actually, ma'am I was in my office for about two hours last evening, but it is true I was not on the restaurant floor last evening, that is correct. May I ask why?"

The voice. Again. "Well, we were there last night, and we had a horrible dinner--A HORRIBLE DINNER is what we had last night at YOUR restaurant!!"

At this point I scan the phone board, positive that one of the kitchen lines will be lit--because this absolutely has to be a practical joke--but no such luck.

"May I ask what went wro--", I start, only to be countered with, "What went wrong? WHAT WENT RIGHT??! First I ordered that wedge salad...you know, that wedge salad you all are so proud of for some reason, whatever for I don't know because the salad is well, the salad is well, THE LETTUCE WAS YELLOW. So this lettuce on this so-called fabulous salad of yours in this Big Time Big City Steakhouse is yellow--horrible putrid yellow--not a beautiful lettuce green, but YELLOW!! And then the dinners--well, my granddaughter's caesar salad was wonderful and the server was just so charming, such a charming young girl and of course the wine was fabulous but the lettuce on my salad was YELLOW--I mean just come out and say that your not serving that salad tonight, that the lettuce is not right, that you don't have it. Don't just serve it and have me horrified, HORRIFIED--so we get our meals and my son has the tuna and right there I knew there was trouble because I mean really tuna, tuna here--I mean tuna in the middle of the country--well I guess we should have known what to expect there and my granddaughter had the chicken which was wonderful again and my steak was so overdone I couldn't even eat it so the meal was just a total disaster and we've been there so many times and we'll be coming back and we had to get my granddaughter to the airport and we couldn't have dessert and how come you don't have any live music on Mondays [her dinner was on a Sunday]?

Now, this wasn't actually the end of the story as this woman, obviously channeling Jack Kerouac, continued her stream of consciousness complaining, but I was busy and had to cut things a bit short.

"Ma'am...ma'am...MA'AM MA'AM MA'AM! I'm terribly sorry things with your meal went so awry. May I ask what happened when you brought these issues to your server's attention?"

"Oh, I didn't complain to the server, she was such a lovely young lady she wants to be a singer did you know that I'll bet she has a lovely voice, so it would have definitely been rude to complain to her about all the horrible things going on so I didn't say anything."

"Did the server ask why you were sending back your entire lettuce wedge salad untouched?"

Silence [finally] greeted this question, then, "Oh, I ate that terrible salad. Waste not want not that's what my parents taught me and if someone went to the trouble to grow it, it would be a sin not to eat it and my granddaughter was just enjoying everything so much I didn't want to upset her by not finishing that horrible salad"

"And I believe you were saying there was a problem with the gentleman's tuna [sushi-quality Ahi flown to the city daily--I have had some of the best sushi ever in this little corner of nowhere, hours and hours away from the nearest ocean]--".

"That tuna!! Gory, that was the devil's fish if ever there was one--red, blood red in the center its a wonder he's still alive. I warned him off it but he just laughed and said he had eaten worse he's so brave my granddaughter just has the best daddy ever and he's a good son also but I'm surprised it didn't kill him"

"I...see...and your steak ma'am...it was overdone?"

"Like it had been cooked in a kiln. The next day I could barely manage to cut it into sandwich meat it was so overdone for me...

"You took it home. Of course you did. And I'm guessing you didn't say anything to the server about your steak either?"

"I'm not a rude woman, young man!"

"Of course not, ma'am, I didn't mean to imply you were. Ma'am, how may I help you?"

"Help me? Oh no, young man, I want to help you. I just wanted to tell you what happened so you could address that awful, unbelievable lettuce and the blood tuna and our server was such a lovely girl..." CLICK.

Now, this was the middle of a fairly busy Monday, and on this evening I happened to be at the front door of the restaurant. The call actually didn't take terribly long, and I had been able to get a couple small groups of guests seated using hand signals to my hostesses [I knew there would be no putting this woman on hold]. One couple who were regular guests were transfixed by the call, as the woman's voice was clearly audible well beyond the phone, and actually stayed at the podium listening until I put the phone down. When I hung up the handset the man, who always seems to be in the restaurant when something odd is happening, handed me $100 [twice the normal $50 I usually get from him] and said, "I think you have one of the hardest jobs in the world".

I'm starting to agree.

Now, I do have a charming young female server with a beautiful voice--good enough to go pro, and good enough that when she asks for time off I'm always afraid its for an American Idol audition. She was indeed working last Sunday night [the call came last Monday], and looking up her tables in the computer she did indeed wait on an early party of three and the reservation had a woman's name.

When I spoke to the server, I received the answers I expected [though I forgot to ask how our guest knew about her vocal skills]. She didn't ask about the first course because everything was eaten. She checked on the dinners twice and got positive answers both times--the man ate all his tuna, and the woman took her steak home after eating a little more than half of it. Never a negative word or a negative vibe, though she did notice that the woman spoke "kind of loudly" and "took a ton of pills right after dinner".

Loud talking--that's my girl. Taking a ton of pills--I'm thinking I got her on one of the days when she decided to skip her dose.

2008-08-12T19:50:00.000-07:00

"Yeeessss...denim like a jean"--Bernie Mac as Frank Catton in "Ocean's 11"

Bernie Mac had been a guest in our restaurant a few times over the years, though not recently. In between movies I guess he was still pretty much a stand-up comic and he would come to our city periodically on tour. It was always very gratifying when someone would call to make the reservation and let us know, "he loves your restaurant and always looks forward to coming back".

Bernie Mac was a perfect gentleman and a dream guest--no ridiculous requests, no grandstanding, no arrogance, none of the crap you sometimes hear attributed to celebrity restaurant guests. Our restaurant is a beacon for those who are near the top of the heap in whatever they do, and since many of those people understand the value of a simple, peaceful dinner, Bernie Mac was rarely approached by other diners while he ate. When he was approached, he responded to the attention with true grace and kindness. He was also a great tipper--even shelling out a little money for your humble author before leaving back to his hotel. One year he ate in the restaurant each of the three night he was in town--a true compliment if there ever was one.

I was thinking of Bernie Mac this past Saturday night, while at the same time trying my hardest not to break someones neck. This someone, who for purposes of comparison I have decided we will call "Bernie MacDouchebag" had brought his family to the restaurant for drinks, and to "think about having dinner if you can impress us enough while we're relaxing in the bar". The pure toolishness wafting off this guy in waves stopped me from informing him that his walk-in party of six was looking at a three hour wait before I would have a table available--I figured there would be plenty of time to give him that delightful bit of info once we had "impressed" him. As it was, the point became moot. One of the members of Mr. MacDouchebag's party was his granddaughter, who appeared to be perhaps nineteen, possibly even nineteen and a half years old, and certainly not one day older. When her demand for a perennially sophisticated Long Island Ice Tea was met with a request for proof-of-age, her response was to hold up her left hand, upon which was perched a huge and obviously fake diamond ring, "I'm engaged! I don't need I.D...."

"Congratulations on your engagement", said the server, "but you need I.D. if you wish to consume alcohol here". With that simple and correct answer, here came Mr. MacDouchebag out of his chair and after the server, a tiny young lady [Tila Tequila-sized, and probably the only person in the entire restaurant smaller than her attacker] who then had to endure being grabbed by the arm and poked in the chest twice by this Lilliputian piece of shit before I was able to arrive on the scene.

More and more, average dinner guests are being replaced by passive-aggressive, simmering pots of rage in human form--shrieking harridans just waiting to explode upon those they perceive to be easy prey, namely harried, "subservient" restaurant workers.

"YOU IGNORANT LITTLE THING, WHO ARE YOU TO DARE ASK A MEMBER OF MY--", The words trailed off when my right hand came down upon this awful little fellow's shoulder from behind, and I squeezed...hard. As he turned around to face me [with a little forceful guidance from yours truly] he realized I was "just another restaurant employee" and he started spouting off again--some people, mostly the really stupid ones, just don't know when to quit.

Now, I have been in this industry for about twenty-five years, and in all that time [leaving out nightclub jobs where fights and confrontations are readily bred by the alcohol] I have spoken to and/or placed my hands on a guest in a confrontational manner less than ten times--ten times out of literally millions of exchanges. The troubling thing is that nine of those ten times have come in the last few years, and I am comfortable saying after a great deal of self-searching [in addition to the opinions of those around me at the time of the conflicts] that it ain't me--people are changing, and not for the better.

So here I am with this little mink of a man snarling and chattering at me--full of threats and insults--and I am thinking of Bernie Mac and trying to retain my composure. What the guy was saying didn't matter [indeed looking back I couldn't remember one bit of the diatribe] but it was clear that the restaurant was filling up and that Tom Thumb was making a scene, and so I leaned in close to him, put my hand back on his shoulder and whispered, "get out of here before I kill you".

I'm pretty sure I meant it, and I'm positive that he thought I meant it--he was out the door so fast that if a hostess hadn't opened it he would have gone right through the glass. These types of incredibly offensive episodes and behaviors are becoming so much more prevalent as time goes on that I am starting to wonder if I can really keep my cool. When I was much younger and some self-important douche decided to make me wait forever at the table while he went though some ridiculous, over-the-top tasting ritual I would amuse myself [and take my mind off how weeded the asshole was making me] by imagining what it would be like to just crack the guy on top of the head with the bottle once or twice--now I'm thinking that the time may come soon when someone is actually going to deserve that treatment--and I may just go ahead and give it to them.

2008-08-10T20:12:00.000-07:00

08.13.08--This post has already attracted a few comments--quite surprising considering it is the first thing I have written in two months. It addresses passionate subject matter with a partisan eye, and was written not to attract adherants or offend/persuade those opposed to my point of view--it was written to vent and verbalize many of the things I find most troubling about our world right now. I appreciate the comments, and if others want to leave more of them, knock yourselves out--but be advised that I am not going to read them, or at least not for a long time. If you were hoping for a restaurant post, you will shortly be satisfied. If you hate George W. Bush and think Barack Obama is the Messiah, those opinions constitute a right properly afforded you by our Bill of Rights. I've got too much crap piled inside of me right now to engage in comment debate such as I have done here and there previously.

"...the election is a choice between Larry(D), Curly(D), or Moe(R)"--Mark Shea

"...so, the choice is between a giant douche or a turd sandwich..."--Stan Marsh

Well, Larry is out of the race--besides that everything else is pretty much status quo.

There is a youtube video, which I think might be a clip from Boston Legal [I've never seen the show] that is William Shatner, in character, describing his personal platform and outlook previous to a possible run for the presidency.

The Shatner character is honest. He has solid positions and opinions, and while obviously designed for entertainment [and slightly farcical as a result], the clip really illustrates what is so incredibly, indelibly wrong with our government and our electoral process. You get the idea that he is going to establish a platform of ideas to run on. Period. Does anyone else remember when candidates ran on real issues? When they simply worked as hard as they could to attract as many people as possible who believed what they believed and wanted what they wanted.

There was one Reagan and one Mondale. No matter whether they were talking to old white veterans, young black men, housewives from the south, loggers from the pacific northwest, Cuban immigrants, West Virginia rednecks, or Manhattan socialites. Their inflections and accents did not change--much less their policies, opinions, and values--from group to group and speech to speech.

Mondale, while a good-hearted man and tireless public servant was also a socialist, and as a result he lost all but his home state--the same state by the way that later elected a pro wrestler and bad actor its governor and is now entertaining the possibility of electing a failed broadcaster and bad comedian as one of its senators. Reagan understood that to defeat evil one must fight evil--he also differed from our current President in that he could verbalize that understanding [and everything else] to the American people with flawless ease. You always knew where Ronald Reagan stood--and if you didn't agree with him you were going to mad about it for quite some time also, because no amount of polling, lobbying, or protesting was going to change his mind. The same man who became President in 1981 was the same man re-elected in 1984 was the same man who ran for President against a same-party incumbent in 1976 was the same man who previous to that California's governor was the same man who would at his end tragically succumb to the worst possible fate for a man who lived his life being so utterly self-possessed.

I'm no fan of John McCain. I think he is an honorable man, an intelligent man, and a man who must, due to his imprisonment, truly understand both the nature of despair and the value of self. Any man who spent years living in what amounts to half a refrigerator without going insane has to be supremely confident in what he can and cannot do. He is however, not a fan of conservative governance.

John McCain is a senator, as is his opponent, and there is a reason that only two senators have ever ascended directly from the Senate to the White House. They simply aren't leaders. Of the two that succeeded, one was a philandering criminal [Warren Harding] who was killed either by someone who was cheating him, someone he cheated, or possibly even by his wife who was tired of being cheated on. The other of course was our last democratic messiah, John F. Kennedy--the beneficiary of a actually corrupt and hijacked election the likes of which Al Gore and his rabid, entitled supporters couldn't even imagine. Illinois must have looked like a George Romero film on election day 1960 with all the thousands of zombies gleefully heading to the polls to vote democrat over and over again courtesy of Sam Giancano. In a bizarre twist that defies general convention, it was Nixon's civility and concern for his country in 1960 that precluded the legal challenges his supporters were screaming for. Ah, the good old days.

Senators do not make good Presidents--thankfully they make even worse candidates and rarely even sniff the golden ring as a result. As a group they are lazy, elitist douchebags who fall out of touch with and become contemptuous of their constituents from nearly the moment they are sworn in. The fact that they are at risk for their seats only every six years allows them 51/2 years to languish in their arrogance and ineptitude while spending our money and ignoring our wishes. John McCain is certainly less guilty of these things than most of his contemporaries, but he is still guilty. I have no doubt that he will keep us safe, and I have no doubt...well, that's actually about all I have no doubts about with regard to the senior senator from Arizona.

What McCain represents, to my horror, is the lesser of two evils. McCain's opponent, the wholly vacuous, completely disingenuous, and more than slightly sinister Barack Obama is simply terrifying to behold as a presidential possibility. If he wasn't so deadly stupid, his voting record coupled with his numerous speeches to left-wing fringe groups would also paint him as a possible "Manchurian Candidate"--but I doubt the conditioning would stick in one so smoothly devoid of real substance. I know that he can learn, because he has clearly graduated from the Joe Biden/Ted Kennedy Senatorial Arrogance School with flying colors--but, other than mastering condescension and outrage, I cannot tell what else he actually has learned.

For conservatives the situation is the same now as it was in 1976, after Reagan's attempt to re-take the Republican Party for the conservatives failed. To vote for Gerald Ford was to vote for a "country club" republican, a decent and genteel man nevertheless wholly lacking any determined conservative compass--he was the lesser of two evils--and while the four years following Carter's win were four of the darkest years in our history, the Republican Party re-emerged as a viable conservative entity led by Ronald Reagan and he brought us as a country back to the light.

What differs from then and now are two very important things. First, while I have no doubt that Senator Obama would be at least as inept as Carter should he be elected--Carter was still an honest man. President Carter had the best of intentions, he was just an absolute and utter failure--Senator Obama is by comparison so contrived and superficial that the true concept of things like "values" and "consequences" may be wholly foreign to him. Secondly, while Jimmy Carter destroyed our economy, hamstrung our military, and birthed modern terrorism by abandoning our embassy in Tehran and allowing terrorists to win, we were still able to survive him and prosper afterward. In 2009, the result of electing an ignorant, America-hating socialist as our President may well spell the end of our country as we know it.

Hate him if you want, but we are currently safe because there isn't a militant in the world who isn't terrified of George W. Bush--Barack Obama ehh...not so much.

John McCain will continue the current tradition of "taking the fight to them", and that will keep us safe--but what then? Our government has become so corrupt, on both sides and on all levels, that status quo bullshit isn't going to cut it anymore. If not for September 11th, I believe our country and my political party could have made some real headway towards coming back to earth--to daily addressing problems and at least attempting solutions. As it was, one day [that was decades in the making] changed the whole ballgame. Now, I want someone who can articulate and demand the common sense that we need to survive and prosper in the coming century--the problem is that there is no one in the running who can or will do that.

I haven't written for awhile because I have been evaluating alot of things recently--both about the small things in my daily life as well as the big things in the world around me. I've done some traveling and I've made some plans. I need to get a bunch of stuff written out here over the next few weeks because it is choking my brain, but after that I don't know. I've been thinking about a move...

2008-06-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

"A country depends upon the heart of men. It is miniscule if the heart is small, and immense if the heart is great"--Simone Schwartz-Bart

About a month ago I was out alone on a Sunday evening, sitting at the bar of a well-run chain restaurant watching bad sports in half-assed fashion and making "to-do" notes for myself. The chain is upscale though not fine dining with a decent winelist, decent menu, good food, and really well-done physical plant. The only thing I have trouble getting past is being asked fifteen times during the course of a short meal, "is there anything else I can bring you?!". That said, I've been there a hundred times and will go back a hundred more.

On this particular evening there was an older man about three stools to my left. He was well-dressed in a properly cut and styled suit and tie--squared away, as those from this part of the world like to say. He was alone, and he seemed set up to do just what I was doing--pretending to watch TV while eating, making occassional notes [in his case into a black leather notebook rather than a legal pad like me], and purposefully wandering in his own thoughts.

It took about ten minutes before I realized that something was wrong with the picture, and when I realized what it was I immediately found myself in a terrible quandary. Sitting in front of this gentleman on the bar was The Macallan 55 in its unmistakable Lalique decanter--a $10,000.00 wholesale bottle of liquor--a bottle so rare that I doubted there would be a single one found behind any bar in my city, much less in this fine but unremarkable chain establishment.

To the quandary--when I am out to dinner alone, which is about half the time, I will often order a bottle of wine rather than drink vodka or wine-by-the-glass. I rarely finish the bottle, and servers/bartenders who know me are usually doubly happy to see me coming, as my arrival solo signals normal fat tippage PLUS some tasty leftover juice. Sometimes however, other patrons can be so surprised by the sight of a single person having a "whole bottle of wine all by themselves" that they just can't seem to shut the fuck up about it. Because of how annoying this has been to me in the past, the last thing in the world I would ever want to do is intrude on this gentleman's privacy in the same fashion. To be honest though, the mystery of the scotch was killing me and I resolved to wait the guy out no matter how long he stayed so that I could quiz the bartender once he had departed.

A little time passed and the raging itch of my curiosity subsided a little, allowing me to return to my thoughts. That's when I heard a soft, unaccented voice say, "absent friends". As I write anonymously now and after a fair amount of introspection during the intervening time, I am pretty confident when I say that what happened next was purely unconscious on my part. As the gentleman uttered his singular toast I was just about to take a sip of wine, and following his "absent friends" automatically came my "missing comrades". For a moment I didn't even realize that I had finished the toast, the same one I had heard my father and his friends give scores of times--what I noticed right away was that the gentleman's eyes were set on me like the gaze of a hawk.

Surely just a second passed before he spoke, but it was long enough for me to feel like I had intruded.

"Desert Storm, young man? Your hair is a little too long and your skin a little too light for you to be on the job now, and you're not old enough for anything else I don't think."

I realized that this man assumed I was a veteran. "Oh no, you give me way too much credit. I was just finishing the toast I've heard my father and his friends give over and over."

"Your old man, eh? Korea for him?"

"Actually World War II...Pacific Theatre. Maybe he'd even cop to a little Chinese adventure before that if he was drunk enough."

A pause, and a sip.

"If your father was in the war [said just like that], then either you have a fantastic plastic surgeon or he's a man of uncommon vigor"

"Almost fifty when I was born, sir. As for being vigorous, I expect he'll outlive me."

After a second during which I quickly hoped this man had not outlived any of his children, thus making me into an instant asshole, he responded without any change in inflection or tone, "long life is a blessing, but it's a small victory to be the last man standing."

Immediately struck dumb with embarassment, he thankfully went on, "there used to be four of us gathered around this bottle every year--last summer and fall the other three passed on."

"I'm almost surprised. That's a bottle worth sticking around for", I said.

The story was remarkable to hear, though I imagine similar traditions and meetings were once as common as fantasy sports leagues before time started getting short for members of "the greatest generation".

Remarkable men. Paratroopers. This man and his comrades were some of the first soldiers to meet the enemy on June 6, 1944--drifting down slowly silhouetted against the white of their parachutes--easy targets if anyone was looking. One out of every three men from this man's company never left Europe. One third of his fellow troopers have been there every day since, resting under granite crosses. This man and his three best mates all made it. All four were wounded during the invasion, none seriously. All four received a personal thanks from their commander Maxwell Taylor, all four had suitcases full of medals. They all eventually came back home, married, had families, and were successful. They all retired with money. They all met every year on June 6th to drink a toast, or truth be told to drink many. Each year the destination was different. Everyone got a turn in their home city, then a trip to England, then the next year to France, then they started over. Many different bottles of scotch, always the finest they could afford. Better stuff all the time as the years passed, but never the real reason for the meeting. For 63 years.

This year it has been a different schedule. A quiet dinner and a toast on each missing friend's birthday--the night I was lucky enough to meet this remarkable gentleman was the last of the birthday dinners, leaving only one more stop.

Tonight that old man is somewhere in France with their bottle of Macallan 55. In a small bistro, perhaps near the coast, maybe near one of those massive cemetaries he will sit. He'll make notes, he'll have a meal, and he'll raise his glass three times.

Absent friends, missing comrades.

2008-04-30T19:18:00.000-07:00

"Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy--the bankruptcy of a soul that expended too much in hope and expectation..."--Eric Hoffer

"The price of excellence is discipline. The cost of mediocrity is disappointment..."--William Arthur Ward

A close friend of mine has referred three employees to me over the last year. The first was a part-time bartender for me--a girl who had been an important manager in a very busy casual spot nearby for many years before burning out and going in another direction. At the time I needed one bar shift filled--my fourth Saturday night person--it is always a challenge for me to fill this position without overstaffing the rest of the week or screwing someone on their schedule. I had one night and she wanted one night--perfect. I took her over two other interested parties from neighboring properties hoping to get their feet in the door. I chose her because my friend recommended her, and because she had been a manager before [I cling to this idea that a manager--someone who has shed the same blood in the same mud as I--will be a better employee because of their past experiences. I cling to this notion, apparently, like Don Quixote clung to his imaginary lance]. The first Saturday her feet hurt and she left early, the second she was "a little under the weather" [read: hungover], the third her recently broken ankle was acting up and, "I'm willing to be a champ and come in, but I'm just telling you I'm going to be useless...". When she called on the day before her fourth Saturday to tell me she had "forgotten" about a wedding she "needed" to go to, my assistant told her that her name was off the schedule. She was actually sincerely bewildered over how I could have done such a thing. The other two original candidates for her shift no longer had Saturdays free when I went back to them and it took me three months to recover from my error.

The second guy was a lunch server for me. He has worked in the same very busy fine dining barbecue restaurant [yeah, yeah--laugh it up--they do $4 million a year] for over 8 years, but wanted to supplement his very nice evening income in order to afford a very expensive new car. I hired him on a handshake, again with respect for his resume as well as the referral from my good friend. Two weeks after starting, he hosed one of our regular lunch guests down in red wine and salad dressing. Saying nothing about the incident to anyone, he hid in the bathroom for ten minutes before coming to my office to tell me that he had never been properly trained in our system, felt the teamwork here was substandard, and couldn't deal with the "resulting stress". He "resigned" on the spot and walked out the back door. By the time we figured out what had actually happened, our guest had been marinating in one of our side rooms for nearly twenty minutes--obviously expecting that someone, anyone would be returning to help him clean up and continue his meal. It took three months before this guy, usually a four-times-a-week man, returned to the property. In addition, I personally had to finish the rest of this batshit crazy server's lunch shifts that week as a little icing on the cake of absurdity.

Third referral was another bartender, again part-time. This fellow I put through three interviews and an exhaustive vetting of previous employment. He checked out well and really seemed to want the job--after considerable pondering on my part I went ahead and put him on the schedule. After all, it couldn't happen three times in a row, right? This friend of mine is a restaurant lifer with impeccable credentials and a great eye for people--no way we have another implosion! Well, the guy in all honesty was a little slow. "Sense of urgency" was probably not carved into the ceiling above his bed--but he was friendly and he worked on nights when there was plenty of help to bail him out of the weeds. Success? Well, certainly a qualified one at the very least--until he managed to not recognize the owner of the restaurant at his bar one evening and decided to cock-block him and his date--going so far as to tell my boss when the girl went to the bathroom that he may as well pay the check and, "leave the girl behind because that ass belongs to me". My employer, not the most comedic of fellows but still an intelligent guy with a quick wit, stuck out his hand, introduced himself [for the second time in four days--the retard bartender had already met him once] and asked, "so, how long did you work for me?" The resulting two-hour meeting my employer and I had was not the highlight of my career.

This old friend of mine and I don't talk much anymore. This distance isn't my doing. I don't hold her responsible for this trio of failures--I think she is partly embarrassed at the performance of those she recommended, but more so [and most disappointing] I think she is mostly annoyed at me for not "going easy on them".

My favorite female server has been trying to get pregnant for years. She had a miscarriage about two years ago, but got pregnant again last spring. Now, when I say she is my favorite I mean this chick could rock. Smart, hard-working, down-to-earth, body-of-death. She could team, she could kick ass working alone, she was there when I needed an extra shift filled, and she understood the big picture of fine dining. She worked at a country club back east for fourteen years before moving here, and she worked with me for another ten. This young lady is my age and has only had two jobs her whole life--once you got this chick on your schedule you didn't want to let her go. The day before she took her leave I asked what her plans were, if she had given thought to whether or not she was going to return. She averred strenuously that she would be returning--that she needed to work once the baby was on a regular schedule and she was fully recovered, she said. She was going to try for full-time but might have to go to three or four shifts. She called three times after her beautiful daughter was born to give me updates and adjust the ETA for her return.

Then she left me a voicemail thanking me for my gift [a big old Gapkids gift certificate]--and also announcing that she had decided not to return to us after all. A voicemail. After ten years. After ten years, after I held her spot through the most tortuously busy winter we have ever had, after I paid for her plane ticket back home for a family funeral two years ago, after I had given her a magnum of Phelps Insignia to celebrate the birth of her first child, after ten years of consideration and what I would have been pleased to call friendship.

I don't blame the young lady one iota for deciding to stay home and be a mother to the baby that has been her heart's desire. I do not regret any of the considerations I paid her over the years. I am devastated that she would not tell me in person or at least in a live phone conversation.

For the last few months I have had a bartender problem. My bar manager is a superstar--hard-working, personable, and very popular with the guests. She reminds me alot of myself, which is probably why I date her. My problem lately has stemmed from my other two full-time bartenders--one of whom is moving away and one of whom is a drunken, self-obsessed malcontent who perceives the restaurant as his own personal ATM machine/open bar. Two weeks ago the moving-away bartender got a lead on a half-empty moving truck heading to her new home--she jumped on it, "resigning" with an effective date that left two previously scheduled shifts uncovered [apparently, douchebags LOVE to "resign"]. Four days after moving-away bartender "resigned", superstar bar manager was scheduled to fly home to see her family. I re-arranged the schedule to cover moving-away's shifts just in time for drunken malcontent to quit--on purpose--the night before superstar left for home for five days.

Now, left to themselves, neither of these losses caused any real trouble--in the long run they were actually hugely positive--both positions have already been filled by far more talented, far more valuable people. Even facing five days with no bartenders wasn't the end of the world because I have a back-up--a long-time server of mine who started as a bartender and could be counted on to fill in until superstar got back [aided by my no. 4 part-time bartender]. Or at least, that's what I thought.

It turns out that my server-cum-bartender had some friends in town. Friends. In. Town. She wasn't "available" to help me alleviate a true honest-to-God restaurant staffing emergency because she was entertaining. I was speechless, which is exceedingly rare. I suppose I could have dropped the ultimatum-the "work the bar shifts or work somewhere else" line, but I didn't. As a matter of fact, I don't believe I have ever given anyone such an ultimatum. There have certainly been times when someones refusal to be of service has doomed their employment, but it was never made into a confrontation--they simply found that sometime in the future following their refusal, their shifts disappeared. I am still debating whether or not this is one of those times.

I was speechless because the wind was knocked out of me. I literally felt sick. You see, this server-cum-bartender, in her more than six years of employment here, has received a giant laundry list of aid and favor. She has quit [with notice] twice to move away, only to find her plans scuttled both times [each time because of other peoples' shortcomings]--and even though I had replaced her both times I allowed her to return. The first time she left I actually threw her a going-away dinner with twenty guests at one of the nicest places in town. After a DWI three years ago it was my call to a friend in the police department that got her released without bail, and my referral to a top criminal attorney that got the charges reduced [it was a pretty flimsy case anyway]--she never got a bill. I could literally fill a legal pad with the shit I have done for this girl over the years, but I'm getting ill again just reading my own writing--just suffice it to say that I would feel wholly justified asking this girl to work on her wedding day if it pleased me to do so--and she SHOULD be happy to oblige.

Now, I don't want to give the impression that I'm a score-keeper as far as good deeds are concerned. A long time ago one of my teachers passed along a bit of wisdom to me that I have always taken to heart--"the best measure of a friend is how many favors are owed him when he dies", or in other words, the guy that does the most but asks the least is really the best friend. I have never and will never start a sentence with, "remember when I did [this for you]..." At the same time though, I don't think its unreasonable to expect some normal, simple consideration in extreme situations such as these.

Over the last six to nine months I have been growing more and more disappointed with many of my staff members. The arrogance and short recall of these people, many of whom thought they had wandered into Nirvana when first hired here and exposed to our money and our fair work environment, is simply disgusting to me. It has never taken more effort on my part to come here each day, see to my responsibilities, and treat everyone with equal respect--I'm starting to wonder if I have spent the last decade giving too many people too much credit and being taken for a ride by a bunch of users.

Now, everything is starting to seem negative. One of my assistants, with us about a year, has a shot at the move of a lifetime. I should be delighted for her, but all I can think of is how much money we spent training her, how much time I spent teaching her, and how difficult it will be to make the replacement. Even though I know it isn't true, I even wonder if she knew all along that she would only be here a year.

Servers ask for new aprons and I demand they bring me the old ones that they say are stained or torn. A server comes to me nearly in tears because he forgot to ask for Passover off and the schedule is already written [a huge no-no here], and all I can think of is, "what do you really want the weekend off for?" I get a void for a side of broccoli at the end of the night and I launch a thirty minute investigation to make sure it was really never served.

I am turning into that guy. I am turning into that guy, and God damn it the fault lies elsewhere--I am hard but I am fair and I run through rings of fire to do the right things and help people whenever I can and I have nothing to show for it but scars.

2008-04-12T11:47:00.000-07:00

"they have tied me to a stake. I cannot fly, but bear-like I must fight the course..." Macbeth, William Shakespeare

In the big pile of mostly finished, un-posted entries I alluded to awhile back there is one I cannot decide how to put a finish to. It is about me, not surprisingly, and about how I am starting to wonder why. About everything.

I'm comfortable in the fact that my existence is mostly a solitary one--even more than comfortable I am relieved in that fact. However, once the life-long obligation of family is removed from an individual, where then should focus be placed. In my case that focus is obviously professional, but now I wonder more and more about the "whys" of my work as well. Maybe it is the unusually busy winter we have had, clearly about to be followed by a very busy spring judging from heavy advance reservations--but I think it is more.

Nearly 25 years in this punishing, grueling industry. Well over a decade at this single restaurant as hard-working viceroy to a mostly absent king. This place is stale to me, its rigors seemingly more onerous as each day passes. Its successes commonplace, its failures annoying.

I could never work elsewhere though--I have had near total control of my domain for so long the only feasible answer to staying in this industry would be my own restaurant. Huge money offers from corporate steakhouse chains come to me monthly, as well as less lucrative offers from independents that include, in some cases, world-renowned reputation and prestige. Been there. Done that.

The problems in having my own place are myriad, but center around two central pitfalls. First, I don't cook--meaning the success or failure of any endeavor would be tied to a cooking partner [a famously dicey basket for someone like me to put all his chickens into]. Secondly, it would still be the restaurant business--and I fear I have fallen out of love. Rents ever higher, supplies ever more expensive, guests ever more demanding and unreasonable, government on all levels ever more invasive and hampering. A wine bar? A bar bar? Cooking school [fucking hilarious]?

I'm a successful landlord, a successful gambler, and a success at using my money to make more money--but none of this sparks the adoration in me that restaurants once did.

I feel like a salmon swimming upstream. For so long the constant fight of the journey has been a challenge handled successfully--I have made amazing progress, kept my color, and maintained my body weight so to speak. The drag of the current and the influence of all the weaker fish whispering to "just quit", to stop trying so hard--has never up until now had an effect. What is finally draining the vivacity from me, finally sapping my strength and my will to press on, is the fact that NOTHING ever gets easier. I have fewer competent employees, fewer valued guests, more regulations, more competition, higher prices, higher costs, fewer allies, and more weak sisters needing to be fed by hand seemingly every day.

I am literally sustained by stubbornness and intransigence alone. Recently when Bobby Knight, the incredibly successful, incredibly prickly, and incredibly controversial college basketball coach retired in mid-season, ESPN aired a series of shows in retrospect of his life and career. Through the myriad of anecdotes, stories, and cautionary tales told during those programs a crystal clear portrait of the man emerged. He was a soul who forged an iron-clad creed of right and wrong based on traditional values and never wavered. He knew right, he knew wrong, and that was all he needed to know. AJ Foyt summed it up in a handful of words--"there is no gray in Bobby--there is black, white, and get the fuck [bleeped of course] out out of here, but no gray". He graduated more of his players than almost any other college coach at his level and he improved every program he came on contact with--most he improved exponentially. If someone needs an ass-whipping, he administers it no matter what popular public sensitivity has to say about it. If you deserve a hug and a kiss, you get one--if you deserve a slap in the face, you get one. Who says you deserve those things, who decides? Why, he does, of course--without excuses, without qualifications, without any ifs, ands, or buts. He has many regrets, and most of them regard personal exchanges. He regrets dressing down Jeremy Schaap on national television before walking out of the interview, telling him that he didn't measure up to his recently deceased father the great Dick Schaap [a long-time friend of Knight's]. He regrets throwing that chair, he regrets not keeping his mouth shut probably a thousand times.

I was sitting at our bar with one of my assistants after work one night watching one of these shows, and after about twenty minutes the guy looked at me and said, "you know, if they changed out the people and said "restaurant" instead of "basketball" and "team", they could be talking about you. At first I was a little pissed, but after about five minutes I realized he was right--and it also immediately made me remember an exchange from about two years before. During a staff meeting, an old assistant of mine [who was a dipshit] once compared me to Larry Bowa, the hot-head baseball manager, while trying to make the point that I needed to be more serene and less reactive. My employer's immediate reaction, both as a grateful boss and an absolute sports fanatic was an immediate, "No way! Bowa never won a world series as a manager--this man here you are talking about is a fucking restaurant world champion seven times over--he's Michael Jordan with hair". Now, I'm no Michael Jordan, restaurant or otherwise, but ever since that staff meeting and until that night at the bar a few months ago watching ESPN, I didn't have anyone else to compare myself to. I still don't know if I like it or not, but the parallels are undeniable.

The "Bobby Knight" manager is still with me, the "Larry Bowa" manager is long gone--some players get a hug, some players get a smack in the head...

Maybe its getting time for me to call my press conference.

2008-03-04T19:05:00.000-08:00

[from "The Hunt for Red October": an exchange between the captain and first officer of a Russian fast attack submarine who suddenly find they are very far away from, and late getting started after, a very important target]

Captain, to first officer: "Inquire of the engineer about the possibility of going to one hundred and five [percent] on the reactor"

First officer: "Captain, the engineer reports one hundred and five percent on the reactor possible, BUT NOT RECOMMENDED"

Captain: ..."go to one hundred and five on the reactor..."

So it is the end of the Valentine's Day service--newly minted in our record books as the busiest and most lucrative evening we have ever had--and I am nearer to absolute exhaustion and surrender than I ever have been before. I am sitting at the nearby late night hang-out finishing my fourth vodka and still stone-cold sober. As I call for my fifth drink, I look around to see a few of my people scattered here and there--they aren't as exhausted as I am, but they are close.

Our winter has been busier than any other on record, and I don't know why. With enough time I might theorize a little, but frankly I just don't have the time--most evenings these days I dart through the restaurant's halls on my last legs, humming the refrain from an old Christmastime cartoon about, if I remember correctly, Frosty the Snowman--"put one foot in front of the other...and soon you'll be walking out the do-oo-or...put one foot in front of the other...". When not humming, I just mutter to myself over and over, "I'm sooo fucking tired..."

As I sit at the bar and drink, I am thinking about the unthinkable. I am thinking about putting the brakes on--slowing things down by tightening the book before we have some sort of major meltdown that does the restaurant permanent harm. I can't remember my last day off, and many of my servers are ten days from their last. The cooks are bleary-eyed, many having to nap in dry storage after the shift before heading out in the cold for the dark drive home. I am doing what I swore I would never do--using my clout to cannibalize the staff of our younger, slower sister restaurant in order to fill the ever-growing holes on my team.

In this industry, when business can dry up tomorrow for no good reason, I am actually thinking about cutting our volume on purpose to save my people and myself--after all, if we don't get some rest, the traditional spring pick-up will annihilate us. Then, I hear it...

Someone has just asked this annoying little fellow a few seats down from me, who has identified himself as, "the boss of the best restaurant in the city", if he is a manager at my restaurant. I only notice because I overhear the phrase, "...the manager at blah blah blah".

The answer: "Fuck no, I don't work there!! We're brand new, and we are THE SHIT...I'm the general manager of "Asscrack O'Herlihy's"--that tired old barn [my restaurant] just became number "2" around here--as a matter of fact number "3"even, because we are going to open another new place in six months just down the street on the other side [as he says "2" and "3" he makes exaggerated finger gestures to signify the importance of those demoralizing, non-number "1" numerals.

Little Restaurant Napoleon is admitting to being the general manager of a new property that opened some distance away from us a couple of months ago. Owned by the local heir to a media fortune, it is what you might imagine Gordon Gekko's [or even Patrick Bateman's] favorite restaurant/bar might look like--a $5 million monument to stone, glass, metal, and noise. Neon backlighting, a plexiglass bar, hardwood floors, and composite chairs. It is perhaps the hardest restaurant I have ever seen, and from what I hear it gets louder than Arrowhead Stadium with only a handful of people inside. The owner was a regular guest of the restaurant, and someone I always looked forward to seeing come to dinner--when he first opened I wished him the best of luck.

He has hired a band of hoodlums to run the place. They've gotten in fights around town, are drunk every night, and have already been banned from a couple of the local bars. For whatever reason, these yahoos have convinced themselves that they are going to knock us off the top of our hill and claim the unofficial [to the point of being nonexistent] title of best/busiest/most important restaurant in town.

I frankly can't tell you what kind of impact they might be having on us so far--maybe instead of being up 32% for the year we would be up 34% had they never opened--oh, the horror!

So here I am, slumped and spent on my barstool--wanting only to drink as much of Russia as possible while dreaming of the Bahamas--and this little douchebag, oblivious to my comparatively hulking presence, won't shut up. The details of his Dos Equis [yes, dos equis for Christ's Sake] fueled tirade are unimportant--suffice it to say my ire was piqued, though more as a measure of annoyance than real offense. It was the second voice chiming in that caught my attention, because that slurring, over-served fellow was none other than the owner himself, Mr. O'Herlihy, being equally if not more disrespectful toward my property, my employer, and even toward little, old me. Two-faced cocksucker had been all smiles and back slaps up to that point.

No longer as tired or as despondent as a moment before, I got up to go, and having to walk past this brain-trust on my way to the door I caught Mr. O' Herlihy's rheumy eye. Oblivious to the fact that he had been overheard, I got the obligatory hug and demand to stay for a drink. Not being revitalized enough for a brawl, I kindly demurred and continued toward the door when he asked me why I hadn't been to his place yet and when I was coming over, "to see what all the buzz is about" [for the record and not surprisingly, the place is terribly run and pissing almost everyone off unfortunate enough to stumble through the doors].

My response, off-the-cuff and wholly impulsive was, "I'll come for the auction..."

As I left my stunned colleague behind me and headed out into the night I was not humming the Christmas song or lamenting my state of fatigue--instead, I was thinking about the possibility of going to one hundred and five on the reactor.

You shouldn't poke the old bear.

2008-02-03T19:04:00.000-08:00

"do not despair of life. You have force enough to overcome your obstacles..."--Thoreau

When I was ten or eleven years old I did a mightily foolish thing. With money in my pocket and fearsome parents, I stole a pack of trading cards from a convenience store--even worse, they were "Battlestar Galactica" trading cards. I got caught. I wasn't three feet out the door of that store before I heard a fearsome adult's voice summoning me back. I can remember that feeling--that hot, sinking, dark feeling--to this very day, this very moment. I don't remember much else about the experience other than the fake fingerprinting the [obviously amused] clerk put me through and the disgusted look on my father's face, but I remember that feeling. That feeling told me that I was first helpless, and second guilty.

That feeling is now revisiting my adulthood, popping up more and more often.

In a restaurant, from a management point of view, there are bascally three types of employees [surprisingly enough, the breakdown is very similar to former GE CEO Jack Welch's famous human resources theorem].

There are the hopeless-- roughly ten percent of the schedule that are unable and/or unwilling to properly execute the tasks they are charged with. These people are always awaiting termination, their continued employment fully reliant on a shortage of proper employees. Often in this group are one's biggest disappointments [like Miniskirt Elvis] as well as the restaurant's biggest potential problems--walking time-bombs of incompetence.

There are the soldiers--seventy percent of your staff that know their jobs and take care of their responsibilities effectively--for the most part. Many have a touch of laziness, self-importance, or wanderlust that keep them from the summit, but mostly they show up for work on time, follow policy and direction, and almost never melt down or abjectly fail. They can rarely work that extra shift, will usually call out with the sniffles or an achy ankle, and do a little more than their fair share of bitching, but they value their jobs and actually recognize that working in a particular place actually has positive benefits.

There are the angels--this ten percent of the staff are worth their weight in gold. They do their jobs and pick up the extra slack. They know when to talk and when to act. The have skill, knowledge, and self-confidence. Most importantly and most rare, they are able to see not just from their own point of view but with the eyes of others as well--they are the few who actually feel your pain.

Restaurants are portals for the unexpected, they attract emergency like rotting meat attracts flies. Nothing is ever guaranteed when there is a commercial kitchen and dining room involved, but once you have a certain amount of experience and a certain level of tenure in a particular spot, you can play the percentages and at least strive for some level of comfort and "expectability".

For me, January has had almost none of that. We have been very, very busy when usually winter slows things down. I would like to revel in the higher revenues and positive portents that go along with so many new people fighting their way to dine with us, but instead I have been racked by challenge after challenge. New restaurants, almost assuredly doomed to falure from poor concepts and execution, have actively recruited members of my staff--their success has been marginal from a standpoint of quality, but the "hopeless" bodies they have lured away were at least plugs for my leaking schedule. Qualified apllicants have dried up, business continues to build, and individual events, unimportant in and of themsleves, are converging to create a perfect storm of pain and, yes, despair.

One of my angels is pregnant, and can work less and less as I need her more and more. Another angel lives in a badly built house that is not doing well with the winter weather, and her distraction is starting to become evident on the floor. I can't get the cooks to show up for lunch, and when they do they tend to cut their own fingers [nearly] off. I can't get the servers to show up for lunch either, meaning my afternoon office time is now afternoon iced tea and patty melt time--no daytime office means that when I finally lock the doors near [or after] midnight, my normal three hours of waiting work is actually six. This month's bright spot should have been finally removing an incompent assistant in favor of a proven, viable replacement--said replacement immediately fulfilled all my long-frustrated hopes for the position--before needing a week off for a very reasonable and incredibly inconvenient reason. The week he has been away has been, not surprisingly, the busiest in nearly six months. With my rusty ass working the front door wine service has fallen to a new, emerging angel who did not disappoint--she did however fall in the kitchen and can now barely walk, leaving me door and wine on a chilly Thursday evening when nearly 200 people inexplicably decided to come to dinner.

Blood on the asphalt.

Meanwhile, my "hopeless" are worse than ever, but have more job security than at any point in the last few years.

My "soldiers" have been doing their best--except for the one annoying fellow who suddenly came down with a mysterious, "contagious" ear infection [or secret vacation] and can't work for ten days. He's the same fellow whose estranged wife faxes depressing, hand-written melodrama into my office at least once a day, but he shouldn't be confused with either the soldier who just decided to go back to school and down to four shifts, or with the other one that "forgot" to request the five days off she "had to have" for a wedding.

Eight servers this Friday night. Eight. Ocho. Count 'em on two hands. More blood.

On the bright side, I did have twelve servers last night. I also had a new bartender who trained and tested very well before completely collapsing under pressure, taking my whole restaurant with him.

Ah, that feeling...when I see half the bar guests frantically waving at me...when I open my e-mail to the "about our dinner" message...when the wine tickets are hanging halfway to the floor on the printer...when we inexplicably run out of napkins AND hand towels in the MIDDLE of the shift...when I see my wonderful new protege prone on the kitchen floor...when I stare gape-jawed at the busboy first carrying and then [not surprisingly] dropping the full food tray he had been convinced to take out into the dining room by a moron I can't fire because I need the warm body...when I can no longer hide my own despair.

All this crap will pass, and I can roll with it. The vast majority of our guests are leaving delighted, our traffic and sales are breaking records, and all my missing sheep will be back to the flock by tomorrow.

But the feeling still remains. I subsist on the fleeting, superficial, pseudo-personal exchanges I have with our legions of guests because I am not fully-formed personally. I do not crave human interaction, company, friendship, or any of those other things like most people do. As a result, many of the nuances that are apparent between people that spend alot of time together are lost to me. I can very easily and without rancor pass twenty people I work with every day without exchanging a single pleasantry and not think twice about it, bewildered employees left in my wake wondering why I'm such a dick. I work. I am a machine. It is why I am as successful as I am. I wish I was more rounded, I wish I was more collegial, and I regret much of the misunderstood pain I cause. However, I just don't have the awareness, and in all honestly I just don't have the time.

Over the last few weeks, this long-forgotten bad feeling has popped up numerous times when I found myself in the shit. When the crisis passes, so does the feeling. Underlying those spikes though is a more persistent unease, as I worry about losing a few on my staff, "angels" all, who seem fixated on the negative and are obviously connecting me personally with mostly imagined problems. If my "angels" become hopeless, I'm just plain fucked.

Whenever I can, I try to do nice things. I dragged everyone in early a few years ago for a pumpkin carving contest, complete with mounds and mounds of garbage food ranging from wings to fajitas to burthday cake and everything in between. I sent two of my angels to the National Championship game a few years ago--they both left me for a new restaurant about three months afterward. Phoned-in family meals, open bar at the end of particularly challenging evenings. I often show up at staff watering holes where I am otherwise not welcome to pick up tabs. No matter how much I may want to gouge out some imbecile's eyes at the end of he evening, everyone gets a "good night, good job" from me. I have done more extra work for people so that they could leave to do something important to them than anyone could ever imagine.

I give almost everyone credit for their flaws--I don't ask perfection from anyone. I just wish I could get a little credit for mine.

2008-01-18T20:32:00.000-08:00

"As we get older, the future gets shorter and the past gets longer, but the present deepens..."--Earon Davis

I suppose it is fitting that I dust this bad boy off, add a little to it, and post it on the day that Georgia Frontiere died. My father hated Georgia. One of my father's dearest friends was Carroll Rosenbloom, owner of the Baltimore Colts and later L.A. Rams, world-class gambler, and all-around bad-ass. For some reason that my father could never grasp, Carroll married Georgia Frontiere of his own free will [he was her fifth or sixth husband]. Carroll drowned to death in 1979 [my first funeral], and my father always said that Carroll drowned in the ocean because he went out too far, trying to get away from the sound of Georgia's voice.

Just as an aside, there were always rumors that Carroll was killed for gambling debts but that was pure bullshit--not only did every bookie in America know that Carroll's paper was gold, but if he had actually gotten in trouble, help was only one phone call to my dad away.

One of my father's other dear friends and a man I was honored to be in the company of countless times was President Ronald Reagan. What follows is a big pile of anger, angst, and frustration borne of my unique, formative exposure not just to President Reagan but also to some of those who have followed him.

Just as another aside, I don't ever remember President Reagan and Carroll Rosenbloom being in the same room at the same time, but it would have been possible--they were very different guys with very different motivations who would have loved each other.

What follows has been edited for spelling, often the first casualty of any fast typing on my part--beyond that I have left the ranting form and syntax just as it issued from me originally. The rest of the drafts I have, with one exception, are all restaurant-related and they will be out very soon--I just had to vomit this one out of my system first.

I sit here in face of the coming dawn unable to sleep, troubled by the possibility that the great uneducated and unwashed electorate that so terrified Alexander Hamilton has actually come into existence. My feet hurt from a very long, very trying holiday-season night at work--my hands are stained black with wine from the bottles I have opened, my shirt spotted with that from one of the bottles I have consumed. The heat blows like a frigging kiln when I turn it on, and while my mind is perfectly lucid, I don't trust my exhausted and inebriated body to successfully build a fire without risking the very real possibility that I will set myself ablaze. So, with ice outside I sit in my home office wearing my overcoat.

My dad raised millions of dollars for his friend Ronald Reagan to run for President--in 1976!! The two men met through a mutual friend, Alfred Bloomingdale, in the early '60's and hit it off as contemporaries--two guys with a bunch of great stories, a bunch of notable friends, and a deep, iron-clad love for this country. My father had fought for it and spilled blood for it, including quarts of his own. Reagan had stumped for it during earlier wars, and then dedicated a huge chunk of time to it while governing the state of California.

Many in our TV bullshit sound-bite reality show country remember the comedian's version of Reagan, especially at the end of his administration--a doddering old jelly-bean drooling figure-head who slept 18 hours a day. In truth, Reagan was a learned man, a contemplative man who read voraciously and was fiercely concerned with the direction and longevity of our nation. While the average douchebag will joke that he was probably already afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease during his last term, nothing horrifies me more than the fact that such an incredible, powerful man was slowly robbed of his faculties as well as the elegant and dignified journey at life's end that he so, so deserved. This isn't some bullshit I read out of a biography or on an RNC website, I know this because I used to listen to the conversations at dinner, on planes, in hotel rooms, at his ranch and at our home, and later at the White House.

Reagan didn't run in 1976 against the wishes of most in his party because he feared a democratic President [Carter or otherwise], he ran because he feared that a liberal "country-club" republican President [Ford] would mortally wound his party and doom the conservative values that he had come to hold so dear.

Reagan started out not just as a democrat, but as a very liberal democrat--reading, learning, and life-experience changed him over time. He was the personal embodiment of the old line, "anyone not liberal when they are young is heartless, and anyone not conservative when they mature is brainless".

I as made a republican because of Jimmy Carter's ineptitude--I was made conservative by Ronald Reagan's passion and idealism. And yes, I am heartless, so becoming a young [younger than Alex Keaton] conservative was perfectly natural for me. Reagan cared about elections and party power not because he wanted to become, but because he wanted to do. The Presidency was not the endgame to him, as it is for so many of the reprehensible crap-piles currently courting votes nearby, and soon nationwide. Reagan meant something--he BELIEVED in what he was doing, in the rightness of his actions and in the rightness of our people, in the rightness of AMERICA. He didn't bomb Libya because of poll numbers, didn't remove a communist government from Granada because he wanted to distract the public from some scandal.

Reagan drew wonderful people to him, young people who had been energized and invigorated by his words and his plans for the country. He wasn't a micro-manager, but he wasn't the feckless, disconnected figurehead that many made him out to be either--he trusted those around him to fill in the details of his policies, and almost all of the time they did so masterfully. He made mistakes, as all Presidents do--but he admitted his errors. He also knew when a bad guy was the right man for the job--I was in the same room with CIA director William Casey three times, and that guy was a chilling, dangerous guy--just the guy that should have been running that agency.

I have known George W. Bush for nearly 2o years. We first met while I was representing my family at the Vice-President's Christmas Party in 1988, a month before George Herbert Walker Bush became President. My family and the Bush family have become close over the years, though we had a rocky start. My dad and George H. W. Bush first met during the 1980 primaries when my father threatened to knock the future President on his ass after he used his famous "voodoo economics" crack against his then-primary opponent Ronald Reagan. My dad gives up a few years and several inches to President Bush, but he's always been a nasty bastard and my money would have been on my father.

I love President George W. Bush. We re-acquainted ourselves in 2000 when he noticed my name on a list of donors to his campaign. He's a good deal older than I am, but we have much in common and have always been comfortable around each other, though I do not wish to make it seem as if we spend alot of time together because that is not the case. I have been to his home in Crawford, Texas as I have been several times [though mostly as a child] to Kennebunkport, Mane. I wish people generally knew how intelligent he is, and how compelling and eloquent a speaker he is in small groups and impromptu situations. Without wanting to heap even more derision upon myself than I will probably receive already, I have to say that he is much like Thomas Jefferson--unbelievably magnetic in intimate settings, wooden to the point of being unwatchable during public address [Jefferson was such a poor public speaker, he wrote his State of the Union addresses and had them read to Congress, rather than giving the speech himself]. I have a minor in Western European history, and our historic conversations have been entertaining in the extreme. He is steadfast, unwavering--a leader--and that is what his opponents hate about him. That, and the fact that he is usually, eventually proven right. Turnaround in Iraq, alternate non-embryonic stem cells, tax cuts leading to record treasury collections. I used to say that, "the Presidency doesn't control the economy, the economy controls the Presidency...", but in reference to his tax cuts he has proven me wrong.

He also has a nasty, filthy mouth--I think that much of his stilted public speech is the result of active self-censorship as he delivers his words.

I hate that he never fights back. I hate it, hate it, hate it. So many in the media and in his own bureaucracy actively working against him at every turn and he refuses to besmirch the Office by laying out even a tiny bit of long-overdue ass-kicking.

I don't know what happened with his stance on illegal immigration--and his huge, compassionate heart has led him to spend way too frivolously, but I remain absolute in my conviction that he was the only man to be President for the last eight years.

What has me waxing both philosophical and historical here is the behavior of our current and potential representatives in government. Some of my disgust is partisan--I believe that liberal politicians and activists were so embittered by the fact that George W. Bush fought for his election victory in 2000 rather than retiring his objections [as Nixon did in 1960 when JFK's daddy bought him the election in Illinois] that they have trampled every tenant of responsible behavior in their fervor to hound and discredit him. They have comforted our enemies, undermined our military, stalled the already halting progress of our government, and sallied forth throughout the world to denigrate their own homeland in both word and deed.

Most of my disapointment is equal opportunity however. Earmarks, corruption, sloth, and idiocy abound on both sides of the aisle. No one seems to care about those they represent--they only care about their reelection, their pockets, and/or their dicks.

Ostensibly an elected official states his goals and positions while campaigning for office. Depending on how well these convictions are received, he should win or lose. If he wins, logic would then dictate that he would try his best to advance the agenda that he espoused while campaigning. When unexpected issues arise, he should be expected to vote/speak his conscience as it applies to the best interests of both the nation and his district [in that order].

In reality, a bunch of arrogant douchebags set about doing their best to lie and spend their way to victory. Should they be successful, they spend all their time in office pandering to those that got them there and remaining wholly focused on staying in office, or advancing higher. Different accents depending on where they are speaking. Different answers to the same questions depending on who is asking. Revising history as it applies to earlier elected offices. Flip-flopping on core issues, or in many cases flip-flop-flip-flopping.

In this terrible presidential campaign, only two men are saying what they stand for and consistently have the same answers. Only two men really seem to believe, to have conviction, and to be willing to make a stand and invite people to come to them, rather than trying to figure out what a particular group wants to hear before running over to say it to them.

Fred Thompson is saying mostly everything that I want to hear from a presidential candidate, and he has my money--but he won't win. Not only does he refuse to blow the smoke that retard voters demand from their "front-runners", he [rightfully, though disappointingly] doesn't really want the job. He feels the responsibility like Reagan did in 1976 and again in '80--he just doesn't have the energy.

Dennis Kucinich also has passion and conviction--he keeps them right next to his insanity. Crazy, but at least he isn't a liar.

I grew up surrounded by good men in government, including a number of democrats. Reasonable and focused men who loved their country more than almost anything. Now I just see a sea of scumbags and a gigantic broken machine peopled by sycophants tearing off pieces and throwing them at one another. I've got a long winter and 3,000 bottles of wine--lets see which lasts longer...

2008-01-13T19:41:00.001-08:00

"Only through dedicated work does a man fulfill himself..."--William S. Carlson

Check the date on my last post and it will appear that I have not written in nearly a month, but nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact I have written thousands of words ranging from restaurant happenings to global analysis--they remain in the draft section of this thing because the entries seem too truly representative of the person I really am.

As I read these hidden exhortations I picture them posted next to an 8 X 10 glossy of my [locally] very recognizable puss--for some reason these still-cloistered words are not nearly as anonymous as previous entries--they are filled to the brim with "me" and are as recognizable [as being my words] as the above-referenced picture of my face.

I am going to post them soon anyway, mainly because none of the consequences resulting from any potential discovery could be any worse for me than than a mild annoyance. One luxury of being both rich and deathly tired is that even the most public firing imaginable would still be a relief.

Much of this pending writing is borne of the fact that I am beginning to wonder what the hell I am doing with my life. I love what I do most of the time, and this restaurant is absolutely the centerpiece of my existence--I say that proudly rather than morosely or with resentment. However, the eleven years I have been here have passed in the blink of an eye--Christ, every year in August I still start to get nervous because I am worried about two-a-day football practices starting back up and I haven't been subjected to that hell in over TWENTY YEARS.

On the bright side I suppose this means I am young at heart, or at the very least blissfully unware that I am aging. My concern starts to brew on many different levels as I begin to contemplate my end--I don't want to be one of those guys who comes home one day[or one early morning, in my case], drops his briefcase on the kitchen table, loosens his tie, and drops dead with nothing to show for his existence but a pile of money and a few thousand bottles of undrunk wine waiting to be willed to distant relatives. I am starting to wonder about what I am missing. I am also starting to wonder about the pending state of the world and our country--selfishly becoming concerned about what environment will await me when and if I do finally decide to kick back and relax. Like many Americans [though probably for reasons diametrically opposed to many of them] I am extremely frustrated right now with the greater picture of our world.

So get ready for a different view of the Last One Home.

2007-12-15T20:23:00.000-08:00

Wine-wise, I don't really know what to call myself. I have always prided myself on opening as much of the wine in our restaurant as I can--it gives me a sense of accomplishment [I am busier and faster than any waiter on any night] and keeps me directly connected to our guests in a nice, unobtrusive way. However, when guests ask if I am the sommelier I have to say, "no, I'm the restaurant's manager, but I try to open as much of the wine as possible".

I love wine--I'm drinking some right now as a matter of fact--currently the Copain Le Copains James Berry Vin Rouge is very pleasantly kicking my ass as I shoddily type my innermost feelings. I own a huge amount of wine personally and have taken great pride professionally in building an award-winning wine program with a renowned commercial collection, all in a fairly non wine-savvy part of the country--thank God for business dining.

I just can't seem to connect with many other people who have made restaurant wine service either the whole of a large part of their career. I just think most of them are trying too hard.

We have here, as I have mentioned briefly before, a new lounge downtown that has heralded itself as our town's first temple to Dale DeGroff and Tony abu-Ganim. The bartenders refer to themselves as "mixologists" not with proper self-loathing but with pride, and it takes about 10 minutes to get a frigging Manhattan. Ice cubes are big enough to sink the QM II, every drink has a name that makes it sound like it could be a fringe character from "The Great Gatsby" instead of an alcoholic beverage, and the self-important douchebags--I mean "mixologists"--won't let you drink in peace but insist on constantly sermonizing on the history of the cocktail [usually employing less than accurate factual information as an extra insult]. The one saving grace for Club Cocksucker is that it has managed to stumble into a really nice winelist, exemplary in fact for a drinks-only establishment.

Recently, my girlfriend and I [apologies to the deceased trial lawyer William Keleher] stopped in to this place to drink ourselves sane and quickly realized we were sitting next to a table full of sommeliers, including six or seven nationally known names [at least well known in the wine and hospitality industries]--apparently this alcohol brain-trust had been traveling together from one high-profile wine festival in our neck of the woods to another in the west and had been way-laid either by shoddy weather or shoddy airline.

Ensconced in our snuggly booth with our equally snuggly 1996 Penfolds 707 Cab, we waited for these icons of imbibation to start in on the "quirky, edgy" stuff--the aligotes and albarinos, the gruner veltliners, and the crisp Portugese whites. The Greek reds, the Argentinian Malbecs, the obscure American barberas, and last but most important the hallowed, HOLY BURGUNDY. I know I am ignoring the oft-quoted sommelier's de riguer obsession with "bubbles", but have decided I will leave this publicly emasculating fixation with champagne and sparkling wine for another time.

They didn't want any of the garbage that they are constantly spouting off about in magazines, on the Food Network, or at the massive cattle-call tastings that wine snobs flock to three or four times a year. They wanted good wine. They wanted big cabs, full-forward California pinots [or failing one of those one of the near-perfect Oregon wines from Domaine Serene]. They were looking for Kongsgaard syrah, Pahlmeyer, Glaetzer Amon-Ra. The guy responsible for them [maybe an agent, maybe an event producer--I don't really know] was amenable to whatever they wanted as it became clear that several of the biggest names in "celebrity sommelier-dom" were just starting a surprise 10 or 11-hour lay-over that clearly did not include a hotel. When they asked us about our wine and I replied that it was great, but that I was disappointed that I had already drunk all of the 1992 Shafer Hillside Select [a blatant, calculated lie], the bird-like, female TV-personality in the group nearly swooned.

Here were these people that carry contempt for oaked chardonnay and high-alcohol cab around with them like the true cross traveling the path to Golgotha, yet "in private" they were drooling over just the wines they publicly rail against.

Full disclosure: dry rose's are mostly fabulous wines that I truly wish were more popular in this country. The re-emerging wine industries of Spain and Portugal are achieving great successes as they continue to modernize and mature--just as those of South America, South Africa, and even some parts of Eastern Europe. Champagne and sparkling wine can be unbelievably enjoyable and fulfilling in a myriad of situations and for a nearly-unending list of occasions. The crisp whites of Austria, Alsace, and Germany match many foods masterfully and are woefully under appreciated.

With this disclosure proudly stated, I still find no justification for most of the prominent wine professionals in and around the hospitality industry to so blatantly shill for the wine "fringe" while so obviously ignoring the public's [and, surreptitiously their own] tastes.

Cabernet is king because it deserves to be. The flavor of a Peter Michael chardonnay is not ponderous and over-oaked, it is the flavor of a Peter Michael chardonnay--it is also far more satisfying to almost everyone than drinking the liquid slate of a grand cru chablis Le Clos. The heady richness of the DuMol Green Pinot Noir simply tastes better than the washed out violets and pebbles of a tired old chambolle-musigny. When I travelled to New York last year and went to a famous restaurant and ordered the 1990 Penfolds Grange as a birthday present to myself, the famous sommelier admitted that it was one of his favorite wines of all time, and he helped my companion and I drink two bottles--three weeks later I read him quoted in an issue of Sante, or Wine Enthusiast, or some other trade rag about his love for sangiovese, temperanillo, and of course dirt-and-acid burgundy. He claimed to eschew oak and fruit for structure and "terroir" [my most hated term].

"In vino veritas"--In wine there is truth. Apparently, not so much.

2007-12-01T22:08:00.000-08:00

"A wise leader remembers that everyone views service in their own terms..."--unknown

When I was in New York gorging and drunkening myself last year, I noticed an odd trend during my occasional moments of lucidity. The bottles of wine, and there were very many of them, were almost never left at or near the table while we were dining. No matter whether brunch, lunch, or dinner and no matter whether a casual temple to food and wine or a NY Times four-star juggernaut--the bottles of wine I ordered were generally handled and kept out of sight.

It would never occur to me to not leave the bottle[s] where the guests could constantly see them. It would also never occur to me to open, pour, or decant wines away from the table. However, time after time these very actions were taken well away from my inebriated yet still attentive presence.

There have certainly been times when I have had a cork decompose, or have encountered one of those ridiculous clumps of wax wrapped around the top of a bottle [to supposedly denote quality] and have had to explain the problem I was faced with before excusing myself with the bottle so as to avoid making a mess at the table. But over and over again, I watched perfectly sound bottles whisked away from me after the initial presentation like brides before their ceremonies.

I am no expert. I am not Paul Roberts from Thomas Keller's restaurants or Larry Stone from Rubicon [first the restaurant, now the winery]. I can't out-taste Roger Dagorn or out-suggest Daniel Johnnes. I am, however, competent enough to open, serve, and even decant a wine if needed in front of my guests and without the need of a dedicated staging ground or conveyance of any kind.

I do not expect that any foul play occurred with any of the wines I ordered--I'm sure they were well-cared for and that we received all the wine from each bottle. The servers and wine professionals were adroit and courteous. I just don't understand, personally, why the bottles had to be kept sequestered.

These memories came rushing back to me tonight in the middle of a very challenging Saturday when one of our guests very courteously requested that, "the wine remain on our table". As soon as the gentleman made his request I informed him that such close placement was our policy. Later in the meal, once we had established a rapport, I asked him why he had made such a request. He then told me about staying in a very expensive, very luxurious hotel in Washington DC just a few days before and having his very expensive bottle of DRC burgundy whisked away to behind a Asian-style screen where it was badly decanted and where it remained throughout the meal--he remarked that his guests had no idea they were drinking La Tache until one of the men went to the bathroom and passed the empty bottle on his way. Upon his return the guest remarked as to the great fortune of whoever was lucky enough to be drinking the grand cru burgundy, forcing the host to let the guest know that his cloudy, particulate-filled glass of wine was the very same La Tache.

The best restaurants in New York [and other urban centers, I imagine] can get away with many things I would like to emulate but could never pull off. I would like to serve whites from storage at cellar temp and then politley ask if the guests would like "a bit more chill". I would like to have an inventory so vast that I could serve only mature wines, without apology to those who "don't like smelly old wine". I would covet the chance to refuse to chill champagne glasses and jump at the opportunity to match wines to a nine-course tasting menu. Unfortunately, it ain't gonna happen for me unless I relocate. What I am not dying to do however is kidnap every bottle that deserves a crystal upgrade and hold them hostage till the are empty and useless--if you love your wine, set it free and let me drink it--let me watch it disappear before my very eyes and don't go too far with that list, I might need to make another choice.

2007-11-30T20:23:00.001-08:00

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on"--Winston Churchill

A few weeks ago I actually stumbled on a day off--it was the Monday of Veteran's Day and without our normal business crowd we were unusually slow.

Attempting to behave like a normal human being is a constant challenge for me, and this day's little sojourn about town with my trusty girlfriend in tow met its share of setbacks.

First stop was our faithful watering hole, dead just like we were. Second stop was my fair city's new highly-hyped "art in cocktails" lounge, a sort of farmer's version of the Pegu Club, but they were having fire alarm issues. Third stop was girlfriend's favorite hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurant, but it was being either steam-cleaned or disinfected--I couldn't tell which but am quite sure the place is in dire need of both procedures, regardless.

Not wanting to risk a fourth strike, we headed off to a friendly competitor of ours, a great steakhouse that for whatever reason attracts an entirely different clientele than ours. Food is great, ambience is welcoming, the winelist is kick-ass, and enough staff members know me to insure us a good time no matter what--or at least that has always been the case in the past.

Our dinner this Veteran's Day was destined to be one of the most perplexing dining experiences I have ever had, both during and even after the meal itself. The place actually had a little business as they are much more a local hang-out than we are, but the maitre d' knew me and seated us right away in a nice out-of-the-way table overlooking the entrance where we could recognize and make fun of people as they entered and exited the property. At first I thought an old server of mine was going to be waiting on us [he left our restaurant because of a scheduling conflict, but on good terms], but he stopped by, said hi, and let us know that another server would be right over because he was buried with an ultra-high maintenance 8-top that had just sat down. Ten minutes later the ubiquitous server, who we shall henceforth refer to as "Schleprock" or "Schlep" for short, finally appeared and greeted us as if we had just been seated. Giving Schlep the wine order right away, we went back to people-watching and putting the final touches on our dinner order. Another ten minutes and Schelp finally showed up with the wine, opened the bottle with difficulty and proceeded to pour the taste all over my hand, which was a good four inches away from the glass. Wine was fine, Schleprock poured, and then we forced him to stay and take our order--I actually had to call after him twice as he began to wander away right after setting the bottle down.

After we ordered and he withdrew, an expected dialogue began between girlfriend and I--is he in the weeds? Are they short-staffed because they are busier than they expected for the holiday? Is he training someone? Is he also being crushed by the 8-top [who were clearly running my old waiter ragged]? As we looked around, the answers to our questions became readily available and were not at all comforting. We could see the whole station, and they weren't really busy. There seemed to be plenty of staff around, Schleprock had nothing to do with the evil 8, and there were none of the waiting throngs that can often make moving around this particular restaurant a real chore for the staff. We concluded it might just be an off night for the guy, but what did it matter--we weren't in a hurry, we had plenty to entertain us, and this place was as close to a 100% lock as we were. No worries.

As our appetizers arrived, basically on time, we began to relax. I noticed a limo drop off a pro hockey player and we saw a former Olympian [and regular guest of ours] come walking up the boulevard and into the restaurant. Another regular guest of our restaurant saw us in the corner and came over to chat for a little while--the very attentive busboy cleared the apps, crumbed the table, and re-poured wine and water. Nary a sign of Schlep this entire time excepting the odd glimpse here and there as he sauntered between the tables chatting with other guests.

Twenty-five minutes later our salads arrived. Yes, I'll write it again--TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER OUR SALADS ARRIVED. They were the wrong salads, but we didn't protest because we were just happy to have them. Ten minutes later super waiter returned with the correct salads and his only apology of the evening. When we let him know, graciously I might add, that the salads we had were fine he did one of the oddest, most maddeningly inappropriate things I have ever seen--Schlep turned to the two guys sitting next to us who had been seated when we got our wine and were already eating dinner, placed the two salads on their table and said, "here you go guys, I have a couple extra loaded wedges if you would like to give them a try on the house". First of all, the fucking guys were already eating dinner and the salads sat untouched until the busboy eventually cleared them. Second of all, if anyone was going to get to try them, it should have been us.

At this point, I simply stared at girlfriend like bigfoot had just walked through the dining room--I was incredulous to the point of near-collapse. Her response, "...I got $20 that says it's another half hour before we get dinner."

By the time Schleprock next appeared it was indeed twenty-five minutes later and my mood was, shall we say, somewhat delicate. As he glided near the table I caught his eye, looked at the empty table before me and spread my hands wide as if to say, "what the fuck?". His response was, "I guess I should go check on dinner", to which I replied, "Hey, I don't want to put you to any trouble". Here again in surreal fashion came his most stupefying retort, "Oh, I'm headed in that direction anyway".

When dinner finally came ten minutes later, girlfriend vocalized the growing quandary inside me. "How are you going to tip this retard?", she asked. As her words sank in, we both watched the hockey player, the former Olympian, and their guests walk out of the restaurant--finished with dinner in the time it took us to go from apps to entrees. When the busboy [again, the excellent busboy and not the awful server] stopped to ask if we needed anything else with dinner, I said, "please tell Bullet Bob Hayes to bring me the check". The clear look of alarm in the guy's eyes told me that at least one person realized that there was a problem.

Now, if I can digress for a moment--I understand that for people not familiar with our industry my quandary is no such thing. Standard logic says that if service sucks, you don't tip. In our industry however, there is no standard logic. If I didn't tip normally in this situation [which for me means tipping huge] I would have to find a manager and explain why--otherwise the possibility would exist that I would just be considered cheap or a dick. "Explaining" to a manager this battlefield amputation of a dining experience is another way of saying "complain", and for most of us complaining is simply not an option--the last thing in the world any of us want to do is become one of those screeching douchebags telling anyone who will listen that "they are in the business". So I was stuck, until providence showed me the way.

My bill should have been about $500 with wine, which by itself makes the whole situation even worse--it was obvious that I clearly had the biggest check of anyone in the room outside of the killer 8-top. Normally, a $500 check means a $150 cash tip not counting money at the door and valet, but of course this was far from normal--as a matter of fact this was the first time in my adult life I have ever been faced with such incompetence and indifference as it relates to service, made worse in comparison to the extraordinary quality of the venue.

As I watched someone at the 8-top slip a side-tip to the cocktail waitress, salvation was revealed to me. Busboy came back by and nearly froze when he saw that I still had not gotten my check--I waved him over, asked him to box our food [we had actually lost our appetites and had eaten nearly nothing], and gave him $50, thanking him specifically for his help. Schlep dropped the check a moment later, announcing that he had graciously removed the incorrect salads--before he could drift off I directed him to stay, looked over the check to find two side dishes we had ordered but never received, asked that they be removed, and handed him a credit card. As he departed I called him back again and asked, "just out of curiosity, does it usually take two guests 2 1/2 hours to eat dinner here without dessert?" Schleprock didn't disappoint even to the end: his answer was, "sometimes".

The food runner brought our boxed food back--I asked him to bring my claim ticket to the valet and let them know we would be out in a moment and then gave him $50 as well, thanking him specifically for his help. Thus, by tipping the busboy and runner I had hit my gratuity quota without actually having to overtip the waiter--experience also told me that the two guys would make sure Schlep knew that they had been nicely duked.

In a final insult, it took nearly ten more minutes before this walking cyst returned with my check and the most disembodied and offensive ?courtesy? ever--he put the check down, told me that "management" had taken 10% off the bill, and then turned and walked away. Never an apology, never an admission of any problem or error, never even a simple word of concern over our experience, not even a half-hearted "good night". I left him $60 in cash on what, after voids and discounts, had become a $380 check and we left before I could decide to get more involved in an "explanation".

Two days later my old waiter called me to ask what had happened, or more accurately to ask if anything had happened. As my description lengthened, the silence on the phone grew deeper and deeper--when I got to the explanation of how I tipped, my former server exploded in profanity. It turned out that Schleprock had pocketed the $60 I left him and told my old server, who was actually his partner, that "the dick" at table 71 had stiffed him. My guy was so busy with his 8-top that he never got a chance to explain to Schlep that he knew me or to tell him who I was, and none of the junior managers stuck working Veteran's Day were good enough to pick up on the problems--the 10% discount came from the MIT who happened to be Schlep's roommate.

Characteristically, my first concern was that there was a whole restaurant that thought I had stiffed someone, but my old waiter quickly let me know that the truth was readily known, and was actually the reason he had called--he said that when he questioned Schlep about the stiff and explained to him who I was, the guy had turned first bleach white and then purple. B-B-B-Busted. Then apparently the busboy and food runner had piped up about their side tips.

If anyone would like to hire the worst waiter in the world, who is also a thief, Schleprock is currently unemployed.

2007-10-31T18:49:00.000-07:00

"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try..."--Beverly Sills

Recently the ex-restaurant manager posted one of those "self-help"-style lists, a comparison of what makes a leader and what makes a manager. Listening to me as I read it, one would have thought they were overhearing a Simpsons episode as I kept blurting out first, "woo-hoo", and then, "d'oh", in succession all throughout the article. Every single entry applied to me.

The simple fact is that I am as negative as positive, as constructive as destructive, as much angel as demon--I vary my goals, attitudes, and executions depending on who I am addressing. The manager in me occasionally sees triumph when a near-lost cause rebounds, while the leader in me is sometimes heartbroken by the terminal collapse of one of his followers.

For Halloween, I guess it should be a horror story.

Several months ago I hired an unlikely young lady as a member of our staff. A little younger than most of my employees, a little less experienced than most, and possessed of a notably "different" look physically. Though I administrate a conservative restaurant in a conservative place serving conservative guests, I have been known to roll the dice from time to time where hiring is concerned, and this young lady seemed to merit such an exception.

She was bubbly without seeming stupid, articulate without being false or forced, and while straightforward regarding her lack of experience she seemed truly excited about the possibility of bettering herself professionally.

In the beginning she was all promise--a fast learner that quickly made friends on the staff and drew huge fans amongst our regular guests. She was willing to do a number if different jobs, even hostessing a few times when we, as most restaurants, were in dire need.

She was a superstar--Madonna in her prime, Celine Dion at the Grammys, Helen Mirren winning the Oscar.

Then, things started to change. I cannot climb inside her psyche to say what the trigger was, or where exactly the turn began, but a few things seemed to manifest themselves dramatically at almost the same exact time.

Suddenly, Ms. Overachiever slowed down dramatically in a physical sense--she went from a 12-speed road racer to one of those adult trikes--"sense of urgency" had clearly left the building. The young lady who once so nimbly traversed our narrow, busy hallways began wandering aimlessly through the restaurant as if she were trudging from her living room sofa to the refrigerator to get a pie and a fork. Two other possibly related though seemingly opposed changes also manifested themselves as she began gaining huge amounts of weight while simultaneously starting to fuck everyone--and when I say everyone I damn near mean it--half the cooks and more than a few of the waiters [and possibly a waitress as well].

Throughout the decomposition process I tried to stay involved, even as my alarm and dismay grew daily. The leader in me didn't want to lose a valuable asset while the manager didn't want to worry about another ass-dragger. There were encouraging words, pointers, mentions, comments, short discourses, chats, discussions, and finally incredulous challenges. Most of her responses were even more disappointing than the errors and failures. Vacuous apologies mixed in with half-hearted explanations and sarcastic retorts.

Then the climax, the "Here's Johnny!!" turning point of my little Halloween tale--seeing my once bright-eyed and bushy-tailed acolyte sitting on the floor of the restaurant before service, fat mini-skirted ass right on the carpet[any restaurant readers just cringed, thinking about how foul the carpets are in even the nicest restaurants], asleep in front of a sloppily-prepared pile of sugar caddies.

This moment of clarity illuminated my diva, once so full of promise, for what she had become--mini-skirt Elvis. And not the going-into-the-army, swivel-hipped, getting-censored-on-Ed-Sullivan Elvis either, but the oozing, sweaty, jump-suit wearing, pill-popping, scarf-throwing Elvis that staggered around the stages of Las Vegas before shitting himself to death.

Trick or treat.

2007-10-26T21:16:00.001-07:00

"Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying..."--Ram Dass

"Tolerance is the positive and cordial effort to understand anothers' beliefs, practices, and habits without necessarily sharing or accepting them..."--Joshua Liebman

"Tolerance is another word for indifference..."--William Somerset Maugham

My first entry in this blog, now shockingly more than a year old, mentions the fact that I will be, from time to time, writing about more than just my restaurant experiences. I have one of these busy, cocooned lives that most of us lead, and while my friendships are priceless and long-standing, the nature of my schedule means that when I am not working, I am often alone. This solitude doesn't bother me in the least, but suffers in that it is not greatly conducive to in-depth conversation or friendly debate--or at least not until I become wholly schizophrenic and can just carry on with myself.

I cannot expound on my worldviews and civic concerns with our guests, even those who are my friends, as such conversations are simply not appropriate as I function in the role of doting host. As a result, I have in the past and will in the future wax political, societal, and maniacal on occasion here on this page when struck by the need to do so.

What surprises me are some of the comments and activity I have received concerning these "off-topic" musings. In a few instances visitors have left very complementary comments on one of the restaurant posts only to redact them hours or days later, after clearly having read farther into the past and encountered a more political entry. In each case the link attached to the original comment tracked back to an obviously very liberal person--persons that in at least three cases had left me very kind words regarding my writing only to have a change of heart once they ascertained that I was [a dreaded] conservative.

In other cases the comments left have indicated disappointment and/or irritation with my personal views, including a few from readers who had obviously missed the point of the subject posts entirely.

I have to admit real surprise at these reactions. It seems strangely hypocritical to me that these people, individuals regularly searching the internet who have their own clearly opinionated and in some cases very unconventional websites, would be so quick to condemn little old me and my backward points of view.

Recalling an old lesson, I decided to look back through the mirror at myself, and see if I was similarly guilty:

I stop by the actor/writer Wil Wheaton's site every day because I think he is a very impressive guy. In addition to surviving child stardom he has developed a strong presence on the internet and become a successful author. He is a good husband, and even more impressive to me, an excellent father to his stepchildren. He has a great sense of humor, and a clearly self-deprecating manner that is very endearing to me. About 18 months ago I realized that his politics are absolutely abhorrent to me--Wil, after all, is short for Willow--it is clear that Mr. Wheaton has grown up just as one would expect the child of hippies to grow up--politically, at least. He thinks President Bush is a braying retard and that Vice-President Cheney is a money-grubbing anti-Christ gleefully feeding Haliburton the heads of murdered Iraqi children in return for a steady, dirty stream of oil. He will attack Trent Lott, Ted Stevens, and Mark Foley but apparently has never heard of William Jefferson, James Traficant, or Gerry Studds.

I don't care. If I pop on the site and he is going political, I go somewhere else and check back the next day. I won't change his mind any more than he will change mine, but it doesn't diminish his ability to interest and/or entertain me.

I recently pre-ordered Phoebe Damrosch's book, "Service Included", telling of her experiences as a captain at Per Se Restaurant in addition to being a general memoir. In it, she mentions breaking up with a guy because, in addition to a few other reasons, he was a republican. At one point past the halfway point in the text she rips off a paragraph-long anti-Bush/republican/conservative diatribe and then boasts thereafter that the rant should have cleared out the "red-staters". She proudly admits to not talking beyond the bare minimum to her out-of-town guests during the Republican National Convention in New York, just in case they were there for the event.

I read the book in 2 1/2 hours. She's a great writer and has so far led a very interesting life, not to mention being exposed intimately to an organization I have been obsessed with for most of the last decade. Her political foundations seem to me to be, by far, the most immature part of her, but I will pre-order her next book and look forward to its arrival.

I am comfortable that I can take the good with the bad, as I see it, in other citizens [excepting really annoying guests--but that is perfectly understandable behavioral revulsion rather than political or ideological aversion]. I just find it more than a little ironic that so many liberals cannot.

2007-10-24T20:17:00.000-07:00

"If you were arrested for kindness, would there be enough evidence to convict you?"--unknown

"Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in feeling creates love."--Lao Tzu

As I bulldoze through the pain and minutae of each working day, positive guest interaction is never far from my mind. I cheerfully check on the meals of people who I wouldn't piss on to extinguish were they aflame, and regularly engage in rapt conversations with individuals [and groups, unfortunately] so personally reprehensible, the very fact that I breathe the same air as they should be an affront to me.

The rare chance to truly welcome and look after a table, not because it is what I get paid to do but because it is what I want to do, is the sweetest of treats.

First time diners...anonymous guests, almost assuredly out of their element in our restaurant or in any steakhouse that doesn't offer a bloomin' onion or forced line-dancing. Eight elderly black ladies out to celebrate a birthday, dressed alike right down to the custom-made sequined red hats produced just for the dinner. First contact was over the phone, as the ring-leader called for enroute directions. The joy in this woman's voice literally leapt from the phone. They were on their way to my famous restaurant and they were a little late and a little lost but please, please don't give away the table because they were coming, "like Moses to the Promised Land". I was beaming from ear to ear as I told her that their table would be waiting for them whenever they arrived, and that they were going to do a good deal better than Moses, who never got past the doorway--they were coming to dinner and they were going to have the time of their lives.

The ladies upon arrival were everything I had expected them to be, and their good spirits were contagious. Their party was shown to a great table with one of my best servers--a young lady who fell in love with them even before I could give her my pep talk about not pre-judging our guests. Throughout the course of their dinner guests stopped by to ask after their meals and comment on their festive outfits with not even the tiniest bit of sarcasm or mean intent.

At the end of the meal the server was all smiles, even though the ladies' small check had brought her less than half the income she would have seen from a "normal" table of 8. On the way out I collected a kiss on the cheek and hug from each and every dear lady as thanks for their complementary birthday cake--warm gestures that filled my heart more than a pocket of benjamins ever has.

As icing, the server returned to help clear the table and found a hidden fifty-dollar bill with a post-it attached reading, "my oldest baby worked his way through college waiting tables...God Bless".

My days and nights are hard and often thankless, but those ladies will help lift my spirits for a long time indeed.

2007-10-23T20:50:00.000-07:00

"All stereotypes turn out to be true. This is a horrifying thing about life. All those things you fought against as a youth: You begin to realize they're stereotypes because they are true..." David Cronenberg

I constantly rail on to my staff about the pre-judging of guests. Look past color, past religion, past ethnicity, past gender, and past age. I urge everyone to remember all the times they have been pleasantly surprised. I constantly harp on them to see the big picture and give all of our guests the benefit of the doubt.

However, behind my earnest visage as I campaign for equal treatment beats the heart of a hypocrite. I don't sneer at jews or make jokes about black families or refuse latinos dinner seating. No Jimmy the Greek or Fuzzy Zoeller or Marge Schott am I.

My heart has been blackened not by general racism but by specific observations compiled during years of babysitting and riding herd on all manner of scumbags and reprobates.

The following behaviors and/or physical signs have, over the years, become grounds for me to dismiss a person [or sometimes even a group of people] in their entirety. Many of the infractions are wholly benign unto themselves, but almost always indicate a world-class douchebag primed to work his sour brand of magic at the first opportunity.

1. Ordering a regular cocktail or liquor and insisting it be served in a snifter. Also, doing the same and demanding a crystal red wine glass.

2. wearing a polo-style shirt with the collar up, or dress shoes without socks

3. telling me you deserve something for free before anything is offered. This behavior will almost always be found in conjunction with telling me how something should be done [i.e. your wines are too cold, you need to store them at 62, not 59...these steaks have no flavor, you need to get a good, thick char on your steaks for them to be any good...a good martini has to be shaken, never stirred, etc.]

4. grabbing hold of a bottle of wine while it is still in my grasp to gauge it's temperature/yanking a bottle out of my hand to inspect the label, cork, vintage, etc.

5. interviewing me regarding my personal life as if I had just hired you to be my biographer.

6. taking your shoes off, or putting your feet up on our furniture/rearranging restaurant furniture of your own volition.

7. prefacing some ridiculously invasive or inappropriate comment by telling me, "I was/am in the business..."

8. men with needlessly or superciliously elaborate facial hair

9. women known for "trademark" pieces of apparel [one former regular guest of ours wouldn't leave the house without wearing a ludicrous straw hat the size of a volkswagen]

10. faking allergies [just because your doctor tells you to cut down on cholesterol doesn't mean that you suddenly become "deathly allergic" to butter]

11. using a discover card

12. constantly reminding everyone that you are a doctor [note: I understand that in the 1950's this would guarantee a physician a great table and unending admiration--now it simply pre-signifies one as an arrogant tool, apt to get a worse table than if he/she had just stuck with Mr./Ms.]

13. writing us a novel and a Christmas wish list to go along with your Open Table reservation

14. trying to shoulder your way behind the maitre d's desk in order to look yourself up on the screen

15.deciding that the best way to get seated quickly is to not leave the front desk after checking in

None of these transgressors are going to find a knotted noose or a burning cross--they'll just find themselves unable to join that elusive "valued guest's club"--they can still come in and eat, eventually-- but instead of all the perks of membership they get the municipal-course version of the restaurant: fewer thrills, fewer perks, bigger crowds, and longer waits.

2007-10-02T21:34:00.000-07:00

"What is left when honor is lost?"...Pubilius Syrus

"Have you ever known a time when there was so much talk about ethics--or so little practice of it?"...Thomas Sowell

I have been much preoccupied with honor lately. People are changing, and not for the better. Even here, where an hour's drive outside the city limits will put you squarely in the land of Green Acres...a sea of amber fields dotted sparely with modern-day versions of Pixley and Hooterville. In this once-genteel world, Eb and Bobby Jo are now likely to throw a fit and threaten legal action if the char crust on their bone-in sirloin isn't just the way they specified.

When I was in college and still planning to lead a normal professional life I read a great deal of ancient history, as it was my degree minor. My attention was always captured by the fall of great civilizations, specifically the greatest of them all--the Roman Empire. The fact that a society so driven and industrious as Rome could be withered and washed away was truly troubling to me. How could they build structures that survive mostly intact to this very day, but not maintain the civic fortitude to remain viable as a government longer than they did?

Those who see history as clinical study rather than cyclical practice will tend to make the argument that geopolitical change, breaking lines of supply and communication, internal strife, and power struggles caused the Empire to become vulnerable to barbarian invasion. True, these factors were the main technical causes for Rome's subjugation--but why did they occur?

Rome failed because of sloth and greed. The Roman people and the body of the government became lazy and self-serving. Middle and upper-class families paid mercenaries to fulfill their children's statutory military requirements, thus robbing generations of the discipline and wider understanding of the "real world"they would need to govern. A bloated, corrupt bureaucracy and legislature slowed progress on all things to a crawl and steadily drained the vitality of the most dynamic enterprise in the history of the world. The Roman people grew fat and cynical, comfortable in the erroneous belief that they were still as great and formidable as once they actually were. I'm positive that at the very moment the barabrian horde crested the seventh hill, a bunch of Roman waiters were standing around somewhere wondering when and why all the guests had gone "douchebag" on them, or whatever the Roman equivalent to "douchebag" was at the time.

The loss of honor, individually or collectively, is an insidious thing. While the greater concerns facing our society are a treatise for another day, my focus on this challenging evening is my own little Rome and the barbarians constantly assaulting our walls.

Simple common courtesy is the first casualty. "Please" and "thank you" are routinely replaced by military-style orders and dismissive waves. The request, that delicate creature, has been nearly driven extinct by its ugly and often ineffective cousin the demand.

Courtesy is quickly followed to the grave by simple honesty. The number of people who will thoughtlessly surrender their integrity over a reservation time, a misunderstanding of the dress policy, an improperly ordered meal, or some other insignificant bauble of personal prestige has gone from a deviant minority to an obnoxious mob similar to the "infected" in "28 Days Later".

An apparent side effect to this dishonesty is stupidity, because many of these doomed souls end up arguing with me about prior phone conversations that were had, unbeknownst to them, with me. I sometimes play a cruel little game--I silently count how many times they tell me that "I" promised them something over the phone before admitting that "I" am "me".

To live as a human being is to live. To live as a carrion beast, preying on the weaker, kinder, and more fatigued is simply despicable--but apparently all the rage.

A woman leaves our valet one evening and calls the next day to say the driver broke her power window. While our valet, like every other valet in the world, maintains a policy requiring that any claims for damage be made before departure, we try to be courteous and ask for estimates on a possible repair. This industrious woman shows up the next day with three estimates for our perusal--all over two months old. I don't know if she ever got her window fixed.

Our location in a large, old office building is problematic in many ways--but not for those in wheelchairs. My employer has two extended family members who rely on wheelchairs, and we have made certain that access is easy and legal. Nevertheless, we were the subject of an ADA violation lawsuit filed by a private citizen several months ago--the suit was framed so that it would be cheaper to settle than to fight--a little investigation revealed that the plaintiff has filed over 100 of these suits locally using the same attorney, and it seems that these lawsuits are this attorney's sole business. We will see them in court for the ADA claim, as well as for our counter-suit and for the attorney's hearing before the State Bar.

An elderly couple walk in early one Saturday evening and ask to have dinner. Once seated, the gentleman indicates his disinterest in the specials by telling his server to, "stop that shit and just get me my fucking drink. This is followed by, "take our fucking order", and "it'd better be fucking medium rare or I'm gonna take it back there and throw it at the fucking cook". All the while Mrs. F-Bomb is silent. When this server who is truly mild mannered, a complete professional, and nearly my size finally counseled the gentleman--sternly--to refrain from further profanity the guest was shocked to silence, another paper tiger. Mrs. F however made a bee-line to the front desk to voice her displeasure with, and I swear to God this is an exact quote, "their uppity waiter". I don't know if Fred and Ethel ever did have dinner that night, but I know they didn't have it in our restaurant.

I'm tired of bad people, and I am furious that the bad ones are starting to eclipse the good ones. The wonderful regular guest of ours who brought me a gift this evening just because she appreciates what little bit I do for her should be first in my thoughts as I write this, but instead it is the guy, with his gram of cocaine, that I had to escort off the property about thirty minutes ago.

Is every one, every thing, and every place just a bridge to be burned?

I need a day off...and a retirement party.

2007-10-01T15:32:00.000-07:00

Why is he always so serious? What's so important all the time? How come he doesn't talk to us more? What's the deal with the fake smile when he's on the floor? Doesn't he know that this isn't brain surgery--that all this stuff really doesn't matter?

Few of our guests pick up on the rather severe countenance I carry most evenings. The reason for that is because when I talk to them [and I try to have at least a passing word with all of our guests each evening] I keep a little smile on my face, I make and accept small jokes and pleasantries, and thus I appear to be generally speaking a normal human being.

However, there is only so much of that to go around. If any group is going to be shorted their ration of happy-go-lucky Last One Home, it is my staff. I have tried to communicate the reasons for this situation to them on numerous ocassions, but still they often wonder aloud about my poor social skills.

So, if only to alleviate a little of my own frustration, here is why the smile dies the minute I step off the floor or turn my back on the tables--an actual litany of my concerns from a recent weekend service:

The valet is one runner short and cars are backing up into the alley, where they will be towed if found. The weather is turning and that means people will camp. Camping means we will back up into the lounge, where one of my cocktail servers, incompetent, is spending what little time she usually devotes to drink service trying instead to convince the bartender [male] to sleep with her. The other cocktail server, sometimes a bartender, is probably a thief--meaning that every time she makes up an excuse to go behind the bar I have to eye her every move. She is also nearly blind and awaiting new contact lenses but has not brought her glasses to work because, "they make her look ugly"--by 7pm she has already dropped two drinks and is taking ten minutes to ring in every order because she can't see the Micros screen. Behind the bar the automatic glass washer is hopelessly broken and the replacement is on back-order--expensive, dirty glassware is stacked up in piles like Jenga.

On the floor guests are crushing me with complaints over the one prime table, in clear view of these waiting masses, that has sat unoccupied for the entire evening. When I query my superstar maitre d' he informs me the the reserved guest that requested the table is here, but hasn't sat yet. Later, I recognize the guest as one who never makes reservations but will bribe handily for the consideration of a seat--sure enough the reservation name in Open Table doesn't match up with the guy--my maitre d', a modern-day Copernicus to be sure didn't even bother to get the fellow's real info to make the lie a little more believable. Two less-than-mediocre servers are bogging down in their three-table stations while I watch my new little coke-head make twelve trips to the bathroom [and those are just the ones I personally witnessed]. At the same time two long-time, rather jaded servers are having a conversation about the best ways to get around properly tipping out on checks transferred from the bar and lounge--all the while not realizing I am in the linen room behind them looking for extra napkins.

Our generally reliable broiler guy has picked this evening to cook with a hammer rather than a set of tongs, and by 7pm we have had four steaks returned overdone. Compounding the problem is the idiot's insistence on dissecting each rejected steak in search of properly cooked morsels, so that he might trumpet his innocence before begrudgingly starting on the replacement. At the third commencement of this ritual I took the rather extreme step of going behind the line myself to explain my dissatisfaction with Beefsteak Charlie face to face. [a manager, any manager going behind a working front-line when in conflict rather than trying to go through the chef is remarkable. It's not like a baseball manager coming onto the field, it's more like a baseball manager going into the opposing dugout].

One air conditioner under-performing, one women's restroom stall out of order, a party of sixteen arriving as twenty-two.

As the evening winds down I talk briefly and earnestly with both cocktail servers, the coke-head, and the broiler cook. I have a longer conversation with the scheming waiters, informing them personally and profanely of that which they already know--I consider transfer fraud to be stealing, I will fire someone on the spot for it, and I will be watching them.

I also have a twenty minute phone conservation with a guy who is positive the valet stole $8 in change out of his car.

Yeah, I should smile more.

2007-09-22T10:14:00.000-07:00

"The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship"--Francis Bacon

"Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne a sceptred hermit wrapped in the solitude of his own originality"--Charles Phillips

The Phillips quote is a description of Napoleon I, and I have come to enjoy it. I am thankfully a good deal taller than the late emperor and not nearly so grand nor even fractionally as historically significant--but I understand the mood that the description evokes. I have not yet met my Waterloo, but I hope it comes soon--this decade-long march is beginning to lose both color and purpose.

I must be two people--the one that runs my restaurant and the one that I am outside those walls. Many people have a professional and personal persona, but few have the professional one so dominate their lives as does mine. It is a matter of hours really--when 80 of them each week are spent suited--sweating, struggling, and bailing water--the personal me quickly finds itself the bit player in my boring two-man show.

I don't really mind the imbalance most of the time, because I am fatally flawed--the very quintessential workaholic. Where I am given pause however is at the border between the two people, where the personal and professional have daliance.

Most of my employees do not like me. Most respect me [which is all I really ask], but few find me to have any redeeming qualities on a personal level. I, after all, am the person who catches everyone, the person that foils plans, the person that prosecutes broken schemes, the person who professionally executes the capitally-unfit for service. My staff listens for my swift footfalls upon the tiles of the kitchen floor. They look over their shoulder to confirm I am not lurking. They avoid my office as if it were that pit in the desert from Return of the Jedi.

You see. I am the dick who makes such a big deal out of everything. The guy who doesn't understand that it hurts to work with a hangover. I'm the one who won't agree that it is too expensive to dryclean the uniform tie that they did not pay for, and that it is not ok to wear it filthy in order to avoid that expense. I am the one who won't allow them to carry their cell phones and use them "out of sight", and further and even worse I am the absolute piece of crap who has the gall to declare that texting is indeed "using the phone", and similarly banned. I am, in short, the monster that forces these hapless souls to actually do their jobs in proper and consistent fashion.

All this is standard operating procedure for anyone who does my job, and I accept it without pause. Where I differ a little bit, however, is that I do not trouble myself to pretend that our collective relationship is anything other than what it really is--all business. I have a manager friend that will have after-shift drinks with his employees and then be hurt the next day when his bartender buddy tells him that all those he bought rounds for started bashing him the minute he left. I do not go to birthday parties or 4th of July gatherings and force conversation, or cluster with other managers like the nerdy guys at the Sadie Hawkins Dance. I let them talk, let them have their fun, let them be friends--and I stay out of it.

As I have mentioned before--I have bailed people out, paid their rent, bought caskets for their deceased relatives, found them good plumbers [and paid the bills], and sent them on their honeymoons. I have sent them to concerts for Christmas and served them huge feasts on or near holidays. I know how hard our jobs are, and I try to lighten the mood and the load whenever I can. I do all this with as little mention and personal involvement as possible--because a fake, forced thank-you is far more bothersome than no words at all.

A conversation that ceases as soon as I come around the corner gives me not a second's pause. A group that moves their drinking elsewhere when I show up at the bar are given credit for their convictions rather than disdain for their intolerance. These lines are clear cut and obvious, just the way I like it.

Presently there are three people in my restaurant with whom I have a strong personal connecton. Two are associates, one new and one of long tenure--both are invaluable and both bring a smile to my heart [if not always to my face] whenever I see them. One is a staff member, and for the first time in more than seven years this one is a staff member who is also my girlfriend. While "no dating the staff" has been my mantra since before Bubba started hosing down his interns, this one was just irresistable.

Among the others, there is as much gold as there is flotsam and jetsam; but within that greater group consistency of action must rule the day. As much as I appreciate the good feelings and wishes and acts of friendship from the good ones, I will keep it all at arm's length so as to avoid the eye-rolling, finger-crossing, plastic words and motions of the rest.

Heavy lies the crown and sceptre, or micros card and plunger as the case may be.

2007-09-15T20:26:00.000-07:00

"When the game is over, the king and pawn go into the same box..."--unknown

"We are ever dying to one world and being born into another..." Thoreau

"When you hear that my body has ceased to exist, please do not feel sad. Just look deeply and see that my life and work continue in so many friends, so many young people, in their own ways and through their work. I will continue in everyone and everything I have ever touched. I have nothing to fear and nothing to regret."--Sister Chan Khong

If you work in a restaurant like mine long enough, your guests will start to die. Obviously [or hopefully] not all of them, but in my type of restaurant the clientele just tends to be more mature. We aren't a hospice by any means, and there are plenty of young people at our tables [more and more each night that are younger than I], but we still serve a big chunk of wealthy older folk. These more "seasoned" guests range from the just retired to the barely breathing and for the most part they make the same general impressions as any other guests--there are the awful, the bad, the unassuming, the good, the great, and the epic, all in percentages relative to those of the younger clientele.

The shining stars among these older guests are some of the finest people one can ever hope to know. It has been my great honor and privelege to have met and gotten to know scores of these wonderful individuals over my career, with some of the very finest among them touching my life over the last decade.

Dinner out is a ritual for many of these people, treated with reverence and given special consideration even if the process is repeated six or seven times a week [and it often is]. You are their "Monday night place", their "Wednesday steak", or the "Saturday tag-along" where the alpha male among each clicque of rich old people brings the same group to the same table in the same restaurant at the same time every Saturday, his treat. The best of them are witty, genteel, mannered, and charming. They have an old-world elegance that is enriched with an understanding of the modern world and an interest in keeping current. The man who has a 1972 Eldorado in pristine condition also owns a Mercedes s550 and his wife, wearing her hair the same way since Nixon was President, is likely to be decked out in Dolce & Gabbana.

They are highlights of your otherwise difficult evenings. They are generous, but the money doesn't matter after a while--they are nice, and genuinely happy to be in your restaurant and even to be around you. They are just good people who know how to behave, and you go out of your way to make everything perfect for them.

But, as I said, they are old. As time goes on, they get older. Their swift gaits eventually become more measured, until one day they are aided with canes. The canes sometimes give way to walkers, and from there often to wheelchairs. One day, they just don't come anymore.

I have held back tears as I watched an 80 year-old man grimly face our front stairs, determined to master his new prosthetic leg rather than enter our side doors in a wheelchair.

I have routinely dropped everything and put myself hopelessly in the weeds in order to walk my most favorite guest from his car to his table. This man, once hale and fit, eventually became so frail that getting anywhere without a fall was a victory. Ever keen of mind, even as his body wasted, we would make small talk and pretend things were just right as I nearly carried him through our dining room. Until my dying day I shall remain eternally honored that he would allow only me to give him this aid in public.

This great man finally found himself in dire straits, faced with a harrowing decision. Face a surgery that would probably restore much of his quality of life, but one that was also extremely dangerous due to the weakness of his body. After speaking with his wife, he decided that if he was to continue to live, he wanted to live right, and he signed on for the procedure.

At 9:11am on 09.11.07 this wonderful man was called home to his Maker. His poor body, unable to endure the rigors of the procedure, surrendered one of the most wonderful souls I have ever encountered to an eternity free of pain and infirmity. I have no doubt that the welcoming group waiting to usher him through Heaven's gates was both impressive and enthusiastic.

For those of us who have decided to do this permanently, a certain amount of connection is necessary. Remembering names, birthdays, favorite tables, regular drinks, steak temps. etc.--all very inportant--these are the things that make us different, make us better, and make us someone's "home away from home". Sometimes, though, that connection all by itself becomes much, much more. I miss many of these people as if they were my own relatives, passed on but not forgotten. I feel their absence, and I selfishly regret their departure. Since Patriot's Day, it has been a good deal worse than usual.

Eternal rest grant unto Them O Lord, and let Perpetual Light shine upon Them. May Their souls and all the souls of the Faithful Departed through Your mercy rest in peace. Amen.

2007-09-04T20:57:00.000-07:00

"anything worth doing is worth doing well..."--unknown

"It doesn't have to be good, it just has to be the same..."--Ray Kroc, blender salesman turned restaurateur

"Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones tend to take care of themselves..."--Andrew Carnegie

Many restaurant bloggers seem to have a dim view of their employers and places of business. I certainly understand, as is evidenced here, about the cathartic nature of expressing oneself in the vacuum of cyber-space. I also admit that the ability to stand in clear view and fire away without having even the slightest concern about a counterattack or fact-check can go beyond liberating and verge on bashing.

I regularly read all of the restaurant and bar blogs that I have so far discovered. I am impressed and humbled by much of that writing, both work-related and creative, and I take great solace whenever I'm able to read firsthand accounts that in some cases so clearly mirror my own experiences. Some of the stories on Waiterrant, Restaurant Gal, Clublife, Lobster Blog and many others are like distant train whistles to a lost hiker--they let me know that I am neither alone nor crazy.

I have a mental picture of what each writer looks like--so far three of them have offered small, incomplete peeks of themsleves either on their sites or their myspace pages and I am 2 for 3. Right on with waiterrant and clublife, way off with restaurant gal [my mental image of her was as a small, dark-haired woman maybe a bit on the frumpy side rather than the tall, ash-blonde and clearly younger woman that just surfaced on her site]. The Red Lobster guy I just picture in a white robe with wings and an halo--any guy that could work for that company for a decade is a far better man than I. I also have personality profiles to go with the faces, and they are as overwhelmingly positive as my reviews on content.

With one exception. There is one blogger who typifies a template for the classic restaurant hack constantly bitching about why everyone sucks but him. His often sickening commentary serves to perfectly illustrate the stunted point of view and remarkably short memory almost always connected to the classic "screwed-over" restaurant employee.

The "who" of him doesn't matter, because he is interchangeable with any one of a million other douchebags wearing a bistro apron and owning far more attitude than skill. The example of him matters because by describing him, a clear delineation can be made between those people who are in a bad job versus those people that are just bad for the job they are in.

To work in my industry successfully, one must be willing to take responsibility. I understand that this looks like an incomplete thought, but it is the closest I can come to succinctly describing the heart of what we do. There is a business and an organization. There is management, ownership, and there are co-workers. There are rules, regulations, guidelines, and policies. There are guests. There are all manner of myriad and never-ending variables both positive and negative surrounding you at all times.

In the end though, once the first person hits a chair in your section, stool at your bar, or bell at your pick-up window--it is all you. Your responsibility. There's help if you need it, but ask for it too often [or more importantly need it too often] or come to rely on it and you will quickly go from sketchy to laughingstock to untrusted to unemployed. Every one has a bad night, but put too many of them in a row or try to slip blame and here comes "sketchy" again.

For the runts and the stragglers it quickly goes from "what do you need?" to "what's wrong now?!" to get the fuck out of the way!!".

If you are responsible, you can more or less say whatever you want--your words may not be heeded, but your opinion will still be respected. Bitching is de rigeur from those who are responsible, whining from those who are not is an invitation to an ass-kicking [usually verbal, though not always].

If your current place of employment is so poorly suited to you--so ill-conceived, poorly run, and badly executed that you daily and constantly lament the fact that you are working there, that is the perfect indication that you should work elsewhere. Leave, quit, transfer, retire...whatever...just go away--it is possible that the sigh of relief you heave may be matched by those of your former co-workers and superiors.

I understand bad restaurants, owners, and managers. What I don't understand are those individuals that continue to stay in what they will endlessly describe as a totally untenable situation. When I was 21 I got a stop-gap job as a waiter in a middle-of-the-road Italian restaurant. The business was steady and the money was good, but the owner-operator was a lunatic--a compulsive gambler with a triple penchant for cocaine, whores, and confrontation. After I had been there about two weeks he called an employee meeting which he purposely held in an upstairs prep kitchen. The room was tiny, and never cooler than 100 degrees. Once everyone was crammed in and perched atop cooking equipment, crates, and boxes the screaming commenced. When he got to the point of announcing, "there's 11 motherfucking doors in this restaurant and I'll be happy to throw each and every one of you pieces of shit out all 11 of them", I knew it was time for a change. My offer of notice was vigorously refused, and I beat it on down the road.

If the managers are pinheads, get another job. If the maitre d' fucks you on the count every night and the owner or manager won't react, get another job. If the sidework includes picking up the owner's dry cleaning and peeling potatoes [above Italian restaurant had us clean and chop case upon case of romaine], get another job. If the stations are too small and the guests constantly offensive, get another job. I am not saying these things are right, they are not right by any stretch of the imagination--I am saying that such is sometimes the way of the world.

My counsel is not to quit every time some little thing doesn't go your way. My position is that if the normal operation of the restaurant totally depresses, infuriates, and/or stupefies you, then you yourself need to be the instrument of change.

A few posts ago I wrote about the impending termination of a server and I mentioned that he was a huge know-it-all complainer, just like the blogger in question. Whenever he wasn't buried in the weeds [in other words, whenever he did not have a table], he could be found holding forth in Shakespearean fashion on our poor plating, badly designed side stations, unfair sidework, impractical uniforms, incomplete procedures, and incompetent management to list a few of our shortcomings. When I fired him, he professed it to be a personal vendetta, just as I knew he would and mentioned how unfair my action was. When I brought up his massive, nightly billet of complaining he feigned ignorance, citing the fact that, "I love this place, and everyone loves me...you're the problem here!" My mild retort, that the average length of employment for a member of my staff was nearly four years and that I would have to commend all those others on being able to stand me for so long, met with a characteristic blank stare and a little ruffling of hair as the comment flew over his big, fat unemployed head.

My situation as a young waiter and my erstwhile server's departure, albeit forced, illustrate the same solution for what I hope are the two diametrically opposed ends of the spectrum. If you find yourself a crewman on the SS Clusterfuck, abandon ship as soon as you realize where you are. Similarly, if you are at work and look around to see a humming, effective machine with everything and everyone meshing, gliding, and executing but you, consider the fact that you may be the problem. It doesn't mean you're a bad person [though usually it absolutely means you're a bad person], it just means you are in the wrong place.

As for "bad" blogger, I cannot be positive which scenario he is faced with--but he sure sounds to me like a square peg annoying the shit out of everyone while languishing in a round hole.