Waiter Rant

by Steve Dublanica

  “Still cold out?” I ask Felipe.

  “Muy frío, jefe,” he says, his voice quaking with cold. “Muy frío.”

  I move to one side and let Felipe pass. Outside I can hear the wind shrieking. Going out in this weather to smoke is nuts. You know you’re an addict when you seek to indulge a habit in environments reasonable people avoid. No matter. As I climb the stairs to the alley I pull up the collar of my coat and pretend I’m a German sub commander ascending the conning tower of his U-boat. As I indulge my Das Boot fantasy I imagine I’m scouring the stormy North Atlantic for Food Network cruise ships to sink.

  The brutal blast of cold air that greets my face dispels my daydream. I scamper over to the side of the alley that affords some protection from the wind and spark up a Marlboro Light. Even though it’s freezing out, I inhale slowly, forcing myself to relax. If I suck down my cigarette in a mad rush, I’ll get dizzy and throw up.

  As I watch the white smoke reluctantly struggle out of my cigarette, the door from the basement crashes open and Eduardo, one of the prep cooks, tumbles out. Clad in kitchen checks, he’s not wearing a coat.

  “Smoke? Por favor?” he asks, using the index and middle finger of his right hand to mimic smoking a cigarette, the universal sign language of nicotine addicts everywhere.

  “Sure,” I reply. With a practiced motion I jiggle a cigarette halfway out of my soft pack and offer it to him. After he takes it, I return the pack to my pocket, produce a Zippo, and spark up the flame. The harsh smell of lighter fluid hits my nose. In the cold air the warmth from the lighter feels good in my hand. Eduardo cups his hands around flame, leans in, and lights up, completing the cigarette liturgy.

  “Gracias,” Eduardo says.

  “De nada.”

  Hopping up and down in the cold, Eduardo puffs on his cigarette. “Ay!” he says, smiling. “Está frío.”

  “Yeah, man,” I reply. “Where’s your coat?”

  “Don’t need it,” he says quickly.

  As I watch Eduardo smoke I silently wonder if he even has a winter coat. Every day I see his countrymen huddled on street corners as they wait for contractors to hire them for a day’s work. Many of them are wearing only sweatshirts to protect them from the cold. I make a mental note to make sure Eduardo has a coat. If he doesn’t, the staff will all chip in to buy him one. They’re good that way.

  “You working all day?” I ask.

  “Como?” Eduardo replies. He’s been in the country only a few months and his English isn’t great—but he’s learning quickly.

  “Trabaja todo al día?”

  “Sí. Todo al día.”

  “Ouch,” I exclaim. Eduardo’s going to work a fourteen-hour day.

  I like Eduardo. Eighteen years old, he hails from the Iztapalapa section of Mexico City. As I watch him smoke I smile inwardly. This kid is crazy about Shakira, the Colombian hottie who sings “Hips Don’t Lie.” Every morning he pops his Shakira CD into the boom box, plays it all day, and cleans it lovingly with Windex before returning it to its jewel case. He treats that CD the way some people treat the Scriptures.

  “Hey, Eduardo,” I say. “Aren’t Moises and the guys sick of listening to Shakira yet?”

  Eduardo doesn’t understand what I’m saying, but he recognizes the word Shakira.

  “Shakira! Shakira!” he shouts, pumpingh his fist in the air.

  “Te gusta Shakira?”

  “Sí, sí.”

  I chuckle softly. When I was his age, I thought Kelly LeBrock was the hottest thing going. Come to think of it, watching Weird Science still does it for me.

  “Shakira’s muy bonita,” I concur.

  Eduardo shakes his head in the affirmative, takes a last drag of his cigarette, and flicks it into the street. “Está frío,” he yelps, racing back downstairs.

  Alone again, I stand in the cold and savor my cigarette. I give Eduardo a lot of credit. Born when I graduated from high school, he’s a stranger in a strange land trying to make a better life for himself. When I was his age, I was in the seminary, ensconced inside academia and guaranteed three square meals a day. I never worried about having a coat when it got cold out. Eduardo’s a lot tougher than I was at his age. Heck, he’s a lot tougher than most people in general. When you’re an immigrant, you have to be.

  Of course, no one brings it to immigrants like other immigrants. Caesar, who hailed from Paraguay himself, was so fearful that his undocumented peons were stealing from him that he paid one of his workers extra money to spy on everybody. At Amici’s the role of undercover operative was played by Rodolfo, our socially maladjusted salad man. Bribed with the allure of covert authority and a smidgen of extra money, Rodolfo transformed into an outsize version of Bobby Brady’s fascist hall monitor overnight. Of course this little shit surveilled the waiters as well, faithfully noting everyone who showed up late and recording every overheard criticism about management. Rodolfo was always solemnly whispering exaggerated tales of waiter mistakes and misbehavior into Caesar’s ear. Okay, so we did misbehave and make mistakes, but I always thought it was pathetic that Rodolfo sold his soul to a scumbag like Caesar for a couple of bucks an hour. Rizzo had a special disdain for Rodolfo. You see, Rizzo drank a bottle of wine every shift. Rodolfo always reported Rizzo’s drinking on the job to Caesar. But since Caesar was afraid of Rizzo, no action was ever taken. That the headwaiter was immune to his exercise of power drove Rodolfo up the wall. Rizzo loved calling attention to Rodolfo’s impotence by calling him a “salad-tossing Uncle Tom house Negro motherfucker.”

  The use of “Uncle Toms,” however, isn’t limited to Amici’s. Fluvio has his own control issues, so he has his own spies. And he has spies spying on the spies! For example, he’ll call me and ask how things are going at the restaurant. After I tell him he’ll call Max, the head busboy, and ask him what I’m doing. When he gets off the phone with Max, Fluvio will call Armando and ask what we are both doing. There are times when working at The Bistro feels like living in Stasi-saturated East Germany. At this point everyone’s so sick of Fluvio’s distrustfulness that I’m able to run Fluvio’s “Uncle Toms” like double agents and stay informed of his machinations and plans. That Fluvio fancies himself a shrewd operator and master manipulator plays right into my hands. He’s neither, but I let him think he is. Fluvio telegraphs his intentions the way a poor fighter telegraphs a punch. You can see him coming from a mile away.

  I take a long drag off my cigarette. I haven’t thought about Rodolfo in years. Caesar eventually fired him, of course, but I’m sure he’s whoring himself out at some other restaurant. I should feel sorry for him, but I don’t. The craving for recognition and respect can tempt people who don’t have much to look for dignity in all the wrong places. It’s the reason why criminals romanticize their stupid brutishness into codes of honor and respect. The early Mafia rationalized preying on Italian immigrants by pretending they were protecting them. Omertà, my ass.

  I look around the alley I’m standing in. It’s a part of the restaurant customers never see. Literally the mouth and anus of the restaurant, it’s where deliveries come in and garbage goes out. It’s also a place where tired guys try catching a break before returning to their never-ending routine. Some restaurants instruct their staff to use the service door when entering and exiting the building. God forbid people should see the servants.

  Years ago I saw a painting of Catherine the Great, the czarina of Russia, touring the wintry Crimean countryside in her imperial sleigh. In the painting clusters of well-fed villagers stand in front of prosperous-looking buildings and cheerfully wave to their passing sovereign. In another part of the painting it’s revealed that the buildings are actually cheap facades erected to fool the czarina into thinking her subjects are happy. Hidden behind the plywood theatrics are the actual villagers, starving, dressed in rags, and freezing to death in the cruel Russian winter. Legend has it General Potemkin, the military governor of the Crimea, had these fake settlements built to curry favor with the czarina�
��hence their name—Potemkin villages.

  As I look around the dirty alley I’m reminded that restaurants are culinary versions of Potemkin villages—manufactured glitz facades hiding a hot and turbulent reality that customers never want to see. Behind every restaurant’s jewel-box exterior there’s an overflowing Dumpster in the back. Patrons don’t want to know that illegal immigrants are cooking their meals or busing their tables. They don’t want to know that the staff’s working for an amoral ogre. They don’t care that the bus girls might not have enough money for food or that their waiter’s sweating the rent. Most customers care about only one thing—getting what they want when they want it. They watch celebrity chefs on the Food Network and think that restaurants are magical places designed to jerk off their taste buds. They don’t realize restaurants are places where people struggle to make a living. I’ve found that most people are cravenly indifferent to what happens in the back alleys of affluence—whether it’s behind a restaurant or a Wal-Mart.

  I drop my cigarette to the ground and grind it under my heel. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on people. I still have a healthy core of outraged self-righteousness left over from my seminary days. When I go out to eat, I just want to forget my problems, too. But then again I don’t act like a complete shit.

  As I head back inside, the shock of warm air cues my frozen earlobes to start throbbing with pain. If I had stayed outside another minute, I’d be suffering from frostbite. For the thousandth time I curse the hold nicotine has on me. Years ago, trapped in my apartment by a blizzard and out of smokes, I walked three blocks in waist-high snow to buy a pack at a nearby gas station. It was a hellish, out-of-breath, forty-five-minute round-trip. At one point I feared being overcome with exhaustion and dying in the snow, my corpse hidden until the spring thaw. Like I said—it’s a stupid habit.

  Once upstairs I head into the kitchen. As I help myself to a small bowl of soup I notice ground meat browning on the stove and Ernesto chopping up cheese and tomatoes on a cutting board.

  “Tacos?” I ask.

  Ernesto gives me a thumbs-up.

  “You the man, Ernesto,” I say, carrying my soup into the dining room.

  I eat my soup and continue reading the newspaper. Outside the wind howls. After a while Ernesto emerges from the kitchen with a platter laden with tacos. Finally. I’m starving.

  “Mucho gusto tacos!” I yelp.

  Ernesto gives me a look. “How long you work here?” he asks.

  “Six years.”

  “And your Spanish still sucks.”

  “True,” I say, grabbing a taco off the platter. “But if I was a busboy in Mexico City, I’d learn fast.”

  “I’d love to see you in Mexico City,” Imelda says, laughing. “You’d get your ass kicked.”

  Ernesto shouts downstairs to the prep kitchen that lunch is ready. Bedlam breaks loose as Eduardo, Felipe, and the other kitchen guys run upstairs. Soon everyone’s running around—grabbing sodas, Tabasco sauce, knives, forks, and napkins—then settling into their chairs to devour lunch. Everyone’s famished.

  A few minutes later The Bistro’s alive with the pleasant noise of people enjoying good food and good company. Of course, the front door chimes. A man and a woman walk in off the street, trudging slush on the newly polished floor.

  “Are you open?” the woman calls out.

  I get up and walk to the front of the restaurant.

  “Yes, we are,” I reply pleasantly. “Two for lunch?”

  “Yeah,” the man barks. “We want to sit in the back.”

  The staff’s eating in the back. If I pop a customer in the back, they’ll get uncomfortable and rush to finish.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I reply. “The back’s closed. I have a lovely table in the window, though.”

  “We need to sit in the back,” the woman says, looking around uncomfortably. Call me cynical, but over the years I’ve noticed that people who cheat on their spouses patronize restaurants at odd hours. Maybe that’s the case here.

  “Well,” I say, “if you don’t mind sitting with the staff. They’re having their lunch.”

  “When will they be done?” the man asks.

  Now I’m angry. The staff deserves to eat like human beings.

  “When they’re finished.”

  The man shrugs like I’ve said something stupid. “So when will that be?”

  “Probably not soon enough for you,” I snap, activating my thousand-yard waiter stare.

  The couple turn around without saying a word and walk out into the windy frigid air. Watching the staff eat might mean peeking behind the facade of the Potemkin village. That might be too much reality for a pair of yuppies to handle. Or maybe I’m right about the cheating thing.

  “What happened?” Imelda asks as I sit back down.

  I look around the table. Moises is telling a joke. Pilar, another bus girl, is showing Lourdes pictures of her newborn baby. Felipe looks tired, and Eduardo’s stuffing his teenage gut with as many tacos as he can. These guys have been doing weekend food prep nonstop all day. They deserve to sit down and enjoy their food. They are men and women—not peons. This isn’t a yuppie plantation.

  I think about the struggles some of my coworkers have endured to live in this country. Ernesto had to pay a human smuggler—a mule—$10,000 to get his son up from El Salvador. Moises flew his family in one at a time, while Lourdes and Imelda bounced all over the country looking for work until they settled here. When you’re a native of this country, you sometimes get blasé about what this country stands for. It’s like living in New York City and never going to the top of the Empire State Building. The United States has a lot of problems, sure, but when you work in a restaurant, you realize there are millions of people willing to risk everything to chase the American dream.

  “Nothing happened, Imelda,” I answer. “Nothing at all.”

  I finish my lunch. Eduardo gets up to take his plate to the dishwasher. He grabs my plate, too.

  “Thanks, man,” I say.

  “No problema.”

  Once Eduardo walks out of earshot, I whisper to Imelda. “Hey, does Eduardo have a winter coat?”

  “Yes, he does,” Imelda replies.

  I look at the snow billowing outside the front window. I think about the delivery guy from the Thai restaurant, the day laborers huddled on their street corners, and the Russian villagers shivering behind their Potemkin villages. My teeth almost start chattering in the imaginary cold.

  “Good,” I say. “He’s gonna need it.”

  Chapter 9

  The Tip’s the Thing

  It’s the first Saturday in April. The middle-aged couple at table 23 polish off $200 worth of food and wine and ask for the check.

  “Here you are,” I say, placing the bill in the politically correct center of the table.

  “Thank you!” the woman purrs. “That was a fantastic meal.”

  “Yes, it was,” the woman’s husband says. “Please send our compliments to the chef.”

  “I will, sir.”

  “And you!” the woman exclaims. “You’re a great waiter.”

  “Thank you, madam,” I reply, executing a slight bow.

  “It’s been years since I’ve had such good service,” the woman continues raving. “Isn’t that right, Andy?”

  “Yes, dear,” the husband replies. “He’s the best waiter we’ve had in a long time.”

  A sudden feeling of unease settles over me. It’s not that I’m uncomfortable with praise—far from it; it’s just that experience has shown me that customers who heap verbal tribute upon their servers often do so at the expense of financial tribute. Operating under the gravely mistaken assumption that my landlord will accept utterances of “Good job” or “You’re the best” in lieu of government-backed currencies, these customers assign a monetary value to their laudations and deduct it from my financial compensation. We waiters call this “the verbal tip.”

  “Here,” the man says, handing me a credit card. “And
thank you again.”

  “I’ll be right back, sir,” I say. I go to the register and run the credit card. After the receipt prints up I return to the table.

  “You’re all set,” I say, handing back the check holder. “Have a lovely weekend, and please come again soon.”

  “Oh, we will,” the woman gushes. “And we only want you to be our waiter.”

  “Thank you, madam.”

  “Thanks again,” the man says. “Great job. Excellent service.”

  The couple get up and head for the door. On their way out I overhear them tell Fluvio what a great waiter I am. After six years working together, Fluvio and I bicker and disagree on many things, but the receipts don’t lie. I’m the best waiter he has. It kills him when customers remind him of that fact.

  The couple give me one last wave good-bye. Smiling my best fake waiter smile, I wave back. The moment the couple goes out the door Fluvio and I race toward the table. Fluvio gets there first and scoops the check off the table.

  “The tip’s going to be shit,” he says, grinning.

  “Probably.”

  Fluvio opens the check and giggles. “It’s shit.”

  “The verbal tip strikes again.”

  “They left you less than eight percent.”

  “Jesus,” I mutter, “worse than I thought.”

  Chuckling, Fluvio hands me the check. The couple left me $15. Verbal tippers are the fucking bane of my existence.

  “Assholes,” I grumble.

  “Great waiter, my ass,” Fluvio crows.

  I look at the check, shrug, and put it in my pocket. While I’m annoyed, it’s not the worst fate that could have befallen me. They could have been impolite customers and left a bad tip. That would have been a lose-lose scenario. At least this couple didn’t take a toll on my psychological well-being.

  In seven years I’ve developed my own ideas about how and why customers tip. It’s gotten to the point where I can tell how much money I’m going to make off a customer within ten seconds of meeting them. It’s like I can see the tip percentage floating over their heads.