Waiter Rant

by Steve Dublanica

  I tell him.

  “Caesar’s crazy,” my brother replies, a weariness creeping into his voice.

  “Thanks for getting me into Amici’s,” I say. “But you need that job there more than I do. I’ll just go quietly.”

  “Maybe Sammy can work something out for you. He’s grateful you didn’t punch Caesar out.”

  “Believe me, I felt like it.”

  “Let me see what I can do on my end.”

  “Okay.”

  “Later, bro.”

  Sammy calls me a few hours later. He tells me he can get my job back for a hundred bucks. After a few choice words I hang up on him. He forgot his gratitude real quick.

  The next day I’m out looking for another job. When applying for these gigs, applicants should always show up in person and never pester management during service. That just screams you’re inexperienced. Hopeful waiters should apply before lunch or during the lull before dinner, preferably with an appointment. As I’m driving to my next interview my cell phone rings.

  “Hello?”

  “Ah yes, hello, is that you?” a vaguely familiar voice says.

  “Who is this?” I ask.

  “This is Fluvio.”

  “Fluvio,” I say, “how are you? How’s the new restaurant?”

  “It’s okay,” he says. “But my manager disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “He do drugs, you know?” Fluvio says, his voice pushing through the cellular static. “He don’t come to work for three days. I have no idea where he is.”

  “That sucks.”

  “So you got fired, eh?” Fluvio asks.

  “News travels fast.” The restaurant grapevine is faster than Reuters.

  “Sammy’s a piece of shit,” Fluvio says. “Listen, come up by my new place. We’ll talk.”

  “You need a waiter?”

  “I need a manager,” Fluvio says. “I don’t know you well, but from what I’ve seen I think I can trust you.”

  “Even though my brother got you fired?” I ask incredulously.

  “Don’t you worry,” Fluvio says. “Why don’t you come see me tomorrow and we talk.”

  “How about two o’clock?”

  “See you then.”

  I hang up the phone. A smile creeps across my face. I know Fluvio will hire me. I chuckle softly to myself. I’ve been a waiter for only eight months, and I’ve already ended up with an offer to manage a place. I’ll work at Fluvio’s bistro for a couple of months, a year tops, and then move on to something else. I crumple up my list of restaurants and throw it into the garbage.

  Chapter 4

  Waiter Jedi

  Waiter!” my customer, an expensively dressed Wall Street type, whines. “Why can’t I have the Pollo Cardinale tonight? I have it here all the time.”

  “Because it’s New Year’s Eve, sir,” I reply patiently. “We have a special menu tonight.”

  “So I can’t have anything off the regular menu?”

  In a few hours it will be 2006. I’ve been working at Fluvio’s restaurant, The Bistro, for six years. No longer that Padawan waiter from Amici’s, I’ve developed into a full-fledged Waiter Jedi. Along the way I even started a popular Web site, called Waiter Rant, to share my restaurant war stories. To millions of people I’m the anonymous Internet writer known only as “The Waiter.” The experience I’ve gleaned over the years tells me to answer this customer carefully. When people go out to eat, they don’t want to hear the word no.

  “Pollo Cardinale’s usually served in autumn, sir,” I explain. “To celebrate New Year’s, the chef’s offering the traditional winter foods he grew up with as a child in Tuscany.”

  “Oh,” the man says, his face brightening, “that sounds wonderful.”

  My explanation is complete and utter bullshit. Pollo Cardinale, a chicken dish made with roasted peppers, mozzarella cheese, and mushrooms, doesn’t have a seasonal niche. I lied.

  I lied because if I had to explain to every customer that the owner limited his holiday offerings to a small selection of items guaranteed to deliver a high profit, the unpleasant smack of cold, hard reality would start exerting a downward pressure on my tips. Since I couched my reply in foodiespeak, however, the gastronomically seductive language of Big Food Media, the guy bought my line of bullshit hook, line, and sinker. My tip is secure.

  “The wild boar is very good tonight, sir,” I continue. “This evening we’re offering it in either a porcini mushroom truffle sauce or a preparation of white beans, goose confit, and rabbit sausage.”

  The man stares at me, his mouth slackening with desire. A good server can make a customer order anything he or she feels like selling. It’s an old Jedi—I mean, waiter—mind trick.

  “Oh my God,” the man breathes. “I think I’ll have that.”

  “I recommend you have it medium rare, sir.”

  “I’ll take your advice, waiter. You seem to know your stuff.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Will that be with the mushroom sauce or the goose confit and sausage?”

  “With the goose stuff.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  My next table orders a $300 bottle of Brunello. I fetch it from the wine cellar and present it to the host. After he examines the label I take out my expensive black horn Laguiole wine opener, flick open the blade, make a quick vertical incision in the foil, score it below the bottle’s neck, and remove the cap in one fluid motion. Folding the blade, I open the corkscrew one-handed, place the stainless steel spiral into the center of the cork, and screw it in, careful not go in to far and push bits of cork into the wine. I brace the lever on the lip of the bottle’s mouth, pull the handle upward, and slide the cork out without a pop.

  As I’m executing this maneuver I’m not paying attention to what I’m doing. I don’t have to. I’ve done it twenty thousand times. It’s all muscle memory by now. Instead, I’m listening to the young couple at the table behind me. They’re talking about having a baby.

  I pour out an ounce of the wine, gently twisting the bottle so I don’t spill a drop. The host samples it. He likes it, so I pour out some more. I wipe the lip of the bottle with a napkin and start answering questions about the holiday menu. The rehearsed adjectives tumble out of my mouth with practiced ease. Fooled by my mask of feigned interest, the customers think my attention is riveted on them. It isn’t. I’m still listening to the couple behind me. The girl’s afraid to have children. She’s afraid she’ll abandon them like her mother abandoned her. Her husband tells her not to worry: She’s not her mother. She’s a different person. She’ll be a wonderful mother. They’ll be happy.

  My four top’s host thanks me. His wife compliments my memory. How can you remember so much stuff? I respond with a witty stock answer. They all laugh. I tell them I’ll give them time to consider their choices. I turn and look at the table behind me. The girl has tears in her eyes. The boy’s holding her hand. For the thousandth time I marvel how much people reveal about themselves inside a restaurant. I shouldn’t be surprised. When people are stuffing their faces, they often let their guard down. Eating is a primal activity that triggers an array of emotional responses. Think of all the arguments that erupt around family dinner tables. Food and the human condition are inextricably linked. Because of this, waiters often get to see the unpleasant sides of people. Yet, amid all the petulance, anger, and entitlement, the occasional crumb of human grace falls from the table. I look at the boy and girl. They need their privacy. This is an important moment. Do not disturb. I walk way.

  The Bistro’s a small fifty-seat restaurant nestled in an artsy neighborhood somewhere in the New York area. A long rectangle tucked inside an old building, its walls are painted off-white, and the high ceilings and exposed ductwork are terra-cotta red. The kitchen occupies most of The Bistro’s left-hand side, pushing the tables running parallel to it against the restaurant’s right wall, forming a narrow aisle connecting the tables clustered near the front window with the three semicircula
r banquettes in the back. Impressionistic Italian landscapes hang on the walls while large wooden ceiling fans gently stir the air overhead. Votive candles flickering in the center of the linen-covered tables provide a warm counterpoint to the subdued lighting, allowing shifting patterns of light and shadow to play against the walls and polished hardwood floors. The Bistro’s cuisine is northern Italian—Tuscan to be precise—lots of game, wild boar, fowl, fish, dried legumes, and the ever present porcini mushroom. Zagat rated and New York Times reviewed, the restaurant enjoys an excellent reputation and is patronized by many of the famous celebrities who live nearby. When you combine supersized incomes with high menu prices and an expensive wine list, it doesn’t take long to realize that, for a waiter, The Bistro’s a goldmine.

  As my fingers glide along the POS computer’s touch screen inputting an order, I look at how the other waiters are faring on the floor. Toward the front door I spot Inez, our Peruvian waitress with the expired student visa, struggling to keep pace with the other waiters. Tall, blond, and built like an athlete, Inez is a disaster as a server; she’s slow, argumentative, and always trying to scam out of work early. Yet Inez and I are the type of people who hate each other on the job but get along after work. When Inez sheds her mannish waitress uniform of dress shirt, black pants, and badly knotted tie, it’s like she transforms into a different woman—pretty, exuberant, and a delight to be around. Right now, however, I want to throttle her.

  “Louis,” I ask the waiter waiting for me to finish with the computer, “how many customers has Inez had tonight?”

  “Not many,” Louis grunts. “I can’t believe we’re gonna divvy up our tips with her.”

  I understand Louis’s feelings. For most waiters New Year’s Eve is the biggest money night of the year. Last year I made most of my month’s rent in ten hours. Because of the amounts of money involved, Fluvio makes us combine our tips into a “pool” and divides the money evenly among the servers at the end of the night. Normally waiters at The Bistro are lone operators, keeping only the tips they earn from tables they personally work. New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s Day are the few times a year when we abandon the independent-contractor model and act as a “pool house.” Pooling tips is okay—as long as everyone pulls his or her own weight. Inez’s slowness, however, makes it certain that she’ll make same amount of money as the rest of us but serve only half the customers.

  “Goddamnit,” I say, “I’m already up to four hundred in tips.”

  “I’ll bet she hasn’t even cracked a hundred yet,” Louis mutters.

  Standing over six feet tall, Louis is one of most experienced waiters ever to work at The Bistro. Having worked everything from diners to exclusive French restaurants, if every restaurant has to have at least one gay waiter, then Louis is gay enough for two. Alternating between the polar extremes of being flamboyantly gay and staunch Republican, Louis is a schmoozer and a favorite with the customers.

  “Look on the bright side,” I say. “She’s moving upstate in a couple of months.”

  “Going back to school?”

  “That’s what she tells me,” I say. “She said she’s gonna get a restaurant job up there.”

  “They’ll kill her the first day.”

  I log off the POS computer and let Louis in.

  “How you doing?” I ask, patting him on the back.

  “Hanging in there, brother.”

  “Only five more hours to go.”

  “The moment I get home,” Louis says, grinning, “I’m gonna smoke a major bowl.”

  “Whatever works for you,” I chuckle.

  Marijuana seems to be the waiter’s drug of choice. Tonight, stressed-out servers worldwide will smoke up 20 percent of the global supply. Me? I’m more of a vodka man myself.

  New Year’s Eve shouldn’t be a stressful holiday. Because customers are restricted to ordering a small number of holiday entrées, taking orders is a snap. There are no complicated menus to navigate or impossibly long lists of specials to memorize. Since The Bistro offers only three seatings on New Year’s Eve—5:30, 7:30, and the last and most expensive at 10:00 P.M.—we’re able to hustle the patrons along in a nice orderly fashion. What makes New Year’s stressful is that customers are spending large amounts of money and expecting a superb restaurant experience in return. I don’t blame them. But any waiter will tell you holidays are the worst time to eat in a restaurant. The sheer volume of customers guarantees that most kitchens will be pushed beyond their ability to produce a high-quality product. Think about all the orders of rubber chicken Francese you’ve eaten at two-hundred-person wedding receptions. Combine this phenomenon with harried waiters and owners cutting corners to milk profits, and you’re looking at a very expensive and disappointing night out. Since shit rolls downhill, customers, in turn, usually vent their displeasure on the waiters.

  Of course, every restaurant is different. The Bistro’s kitchen is crazy busy, but food quality hasn’t suffered—portion size has. When I delivered the plates to my first table of the evening, I noticed the salads had shrunk by half and the rack of lamb was missing a few pieces. The regular customers noticed and weren’t afraid to bitch about it. I felt like telling them. “What did you expect? It’s the same story all over the world tonight.” Savvy customers avoid eating out on busy restaurant days, namely holidays and Saturday nights. Hey, the greatest meals I’ve ever had in a restaurant were on a quiet Tuesday or Wednesday evening.

  Suddenly I feel a finger tap my shoulder. It’s Saroya.

  “There’s a problem,” she says.

  Saroya is the longest-serving waiter at The Bistro after me. A curvy twenty-seven-year-old Nicaraguan woman with a winning smile and a pile of lustrous black hair, Saroya is mother to a very smart and friendly seven-year-old girl. In a bit of romantic restaurant drama, Saroya recently moved in with Armando, the Bistro’s sous-chef. Since Armando is the owner’s cousin, Saroya’s acting like she’s gotten some kind of promotion. These inter-restaurant romances are always problematic. I like Saroya, but I’ve always been aware that her sweet, smiling exterior hides a tough-as-nails personality. I guess you have to be tough to travel to America at nine months pregnant so your daughter can be born a U.S. citizen. I give her credit. She’s taken excellent care of herself and raised a well-adjusted kid. I’m almost forty, and I’ve never come close to having a kid myself.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  “There’s a man and a woman in the ladies’ room,” Saroya whispers, her Central American accent barely noticeable, “and they’ve been in there a long time.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Ladies are getting pissed they can’t use the bathroom.”

  The Bistro has two small bathrooms that each can accommodate only one customer at a time. Occasionally a drunken couple let horniness get the better of them and try doing the wild thing in the restroom, often using the sink as a less-than-sturdy platform for their coital maneuvering. (I know a restaurant where a couple’s amorous thrusting snapped the bathroom sink right off the wall.) Since the ladies’ room is slightly bigger and nicer than the men’s room, most customers have their alcohol-fueled trysts in there.

  “I’ll take care of it,” I sigh. When did making people stop having sex become part of my job? I thought I had quit the seminary.

  I walk over to the ladies’ room and find several women anxiously waiting for their turn to get inside.

  “They still in there?” I ask one of the women.

  “Yes,” she says unhappily.

  I lean in close to the bathroom door. I don’t hear the sounds one normally associates with sexual congress. Maybe they’re finished. I knock on the door authoritatively.

  “Is everything all right in there?” I ask through the door.

  “We’re fine,” a tremulous female voice answers. In the background I swear I can hear a zipper being pulled up.

  “We have several people who need to use the bathroom,” I say, letting my words hang in the air.


  “I’m coming,” the woman replies. I’m sure no pun’s intended.

  A few seconds later the door opens and a man and woman stumble out. The lady’s face is flushed, and her cocktail dress is rumpled. The boyfriend’s pupils are red pinpricks floating on top of the whites of his eyes. He’s high as a kite. The couple bow their heads, mutter embarrassed apologies, and take the walk of shame back to their table. Before I permit access to the ladies’ room I take a quick peek to make sure everything’s in order. Sometimes people forget to clean up after themselves. Noting with satisfaction that the bathroom sink’s still attached to the wall, I reopen the commode to the female dining public.

  “Can you believe that?” Saroya asks.

  “I believe it,” I reply.

  “What happened?” Louis asks, joining the conversation.

  “People having sex in the bathroom again,” I say.

  “Those two?” Louis snorts. “I saw them in the bathroom together earlier.”

  “You think they went two rounds in a restaurant bathroom?”

  “Nah,” Louis says. “I think they were snorting coke the first time around.”

  “Classy.”

  I look at my watch. My customer’s entrées should be ready. I look back at the young couple’s table. They’re still holding hands. The girl’s stopped crying. Two people sharing an ordinary moment in an ordinary restaurant. Sometimes everyday little moments become chances for people to start over. That young couple is having such a moment. A light’s shining in the girl’s eyes. Maybe she’s gonna have that baby after all. Generational redemption’s happening inside a busy restaurant, and I’m the only one seeing it.

  When you work in a restaurant, there’s never a shortage of interesting stories. Anyone can learn about people by watching them eat, but I think I’m especially attenuated to what’s going on around me. You see, I’ve always had a need to know people’s stories. Part of that need developed early in life. Knowing what made people tick helped me to protect myself from them. I became adept at gauging other people’s moods and emotions. To this day I often know what people are feeling before they know what they’re feeling themselves. As a child I learned to pay attention to the timbre of people’s voices, note the words they used, and watch how their faces and bodies moved as they talked. I developed a talent for spotting liars and forecasting emotional storms. My rector in the seminary told me I was adept at quickly reading horizons. But sometimes I misread those horizons and got into trouble. Sometimes I acted without possessing all the facts. Time on the analytical couch eventually stopped me from doing stupid things, but like military training from a long-ago war, my ear for dialogue and antenna for human emotions never went away. I still needed to know people’s stories. And at The Bistro these stories can go from the sublime to the ridiculous in ten seconds flat. It’s amazing what you see when you keep your eyes open.