I’m also hurt. Even though he’s a pain in the ass, I’ve always liked Louis. That makes his going around my back even more painful. If he were up front with me about wanting my job, I’d probably wish him luck. The same goes for Fluvio. He seems to be collapsing deeper and deeper into paranoid anxiety. That explains the new video cameras. Ever since the new restaurant opened, the dynamics among staff members have gotten more acrimonious and bitter. Everyone wants to be the boss. Everyone’s stressed and fighting. Everyone’s arguing over money and shifts. Louis and Saroya are circling around me like sharks sensing blood in the water. The atmosphere in The Bistro is becoming poisonous.
Thoroughly aggravated, I finish my espresso and head inside. The Bistro’s empty of customers now, but looks can be deceiving. In actuality, we’re booked to the hilt tonight. Everyone’s coming between seven and seven-thirty. All our tables are spoken for. The place is going to be a madhouse.
The front door chimes. A tall mustachioed man in a blazer with patches on the elbows walks in with his wife. They’re semi-regular customers. They’re assholes.
“Good evening,” I say, smiling politely. “Nice to see you again.”
The couple doesn’t acknowledge me. Instead, they walk over to a four top by the window and sit down. That the table has a reserved sign on it doesn’t seem to concern them.
“Are there four in your party?” I ask as I watch the woman push the reserved sign to the side.
“Just two,” the man replies brusquely. “Get me a Black on the rocks. My wife’ll have a cosmopolitan.”
I groan inwardly. I’m not in the mood for what’s coming next.
“Did you have a reservation to dine with us this evening?” I ask gingerly.
“No,” the woman says, looking surprised. “Do we need one?”
“I hate to say this,” I say, “but this table is reserved for a party of four.”
“Put them somewhere else,” the man snorts.
“I’m afraid I can’t, sir.”
The man looks incredulously at the empty restaurant. “The place is empty.”
“I know, sir. But all our reservations are coming in the next half hour, and I only have one table available for walk-ins.”
“Where would you put us?” the woman asks.
“Right there,” I say, pointing to a two top on the aisle.
“I don’t like that table.”
I shrug apologetically. “I’m sorry, madam, but—”
“We’ll move to that table,” the man declares, pointing to another table with a reserved sign on it.
“I’m sorry, sir, but that table’s reserved as well.”
“You mean I can’t have that table, either?”
“Sir,” I reply, “I have those tables set aside for people who have a reservation. I can’t give them away.”
“Well, we’re regulars,” the man huffs. “Figure out a way.”
This man’s arrogance is pissing me off. I’ve been on the receiving end of entitled bullshit like this so many times I’ve lost count. I feel my temper start to rise. Usually, I use humor to keep my emotions in check—but tonight I don’t feel like making the effort.
“Sir,” I say hotly, “if you had a reservation, how would you feel if I gave your table away to somebody else?”
The man looks at me like I’m dog shit on the bottom of his shoe. “C’mon, Dolores,” he says, abruptly getting out of his chair. “We’re leaving. I don’t like this guy’s attitude.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t accommodate you this evening,” I reply, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
“You’re a jerk,” the man says.
“I sincerely doubt you’d say that to me if we were outside this restaurant.”
“What did you say?” the man gasps.
“You heard me.”
“I’m going to talk to Fluvio about this.”
“Go ahead. Make sure you get the name right.”
“I’m never coming back here.”
“Good.”
The man and his wife storm out.
A sharp pain pokes me from the inside as my digestive juices start cannibalizing the lining of my stomach. I pull a roll of ant-acid tablets out of my pocket and toss one down my throat.
“Well,” I say to myself, “you handled that well.” I shake my head. I must be losing my touch.
“What happened with those people?” Beth asks, sidling up to me. “They looked pissed.”
“They wanted the front window, and they had no reservation.”
“That man looked like he wanted to punch you.”
“Can you believe that?” I say bitterly. “Getting that angry over a table?”
“Are you all right?” Beth asks. “You’ve looked out of it the past couple of weeks.”
“I need a vacation, Beth,” I reply. “Away from people like that.”
“Take it easy.”
“I’ll try.”
As Beth walks away I smile ruefully to myself. Deep down in my bones I know what’s happening to me—I’m suffering from burnout. Every server eventually faces this situation. Years of toiling in the dysfunctional atmosphere of the restaurant business slowly robs you of any desire to be hospitable. You start looking at the customers, the people who provide your income, as the enemy. Since waiters shouldn’t be nasty to the customers, they develop a customer-friendly armor to protect the soft parts of their psyche from emotional assault. You can wear that armor for a while, maybe a long time, but eventually the cracks begin to show. You can’t hide forever. The corrosive atmosphere inside The Bistro is rapidly eroding what little armor I have left.
Between Fluvio’s nonsense and the normal insanity you find in any restaurant, the spirit of hospitality deserted my soul a long time ago. I feel like I’m doing what I did during my last year in the seminary—faking it, going through the motions. I’ll admit, career cluelessness and poverty are some of the major factors that have kept me working as a waiter throughout my thirties. That’s my own fault—not Fluvio’s or the restaurant business. But after the book deal, when I realized that I didn’t need to depend on Fluvio or the customers at The Bistro anymore, a powerful rage emerged. I thought the ego boost would salve my bitterness and make waiting tables fun again. I was wrong. The exact opposite happened. Like a mill worker who wins the lottery and suddenly realizes he hates his job, I’ve been fighting the urge to run around telling everyone to take this job and shove it. Every day I feel like walking out the door and never coming back.
The door chimes, interrupting my thoughts. As I expected, the four retirees I saw outside earlier walk through the door and immediately start acting like they’re God’s gift to the world. There’s nothing worse than waiting on people when you’re a psychological mess yourself. You become hypersensitive to criticism. So much so that when a customer complains about a dirty fork, you see it as an indictment of your entire existence. Sometimes you want to freak out and disembowel yourself like the waiter in the old Monty Python skit. Despite the glow from my recent success, deep down I’m still struggling with feeling like a loser. Trust me, when you’re feeling inadequate, there’s nothing like waiting on arrogant people to exacerbate that feeling.
“That’s enough crybaby bullshit,” I tell myself. “You’ve already unloaded on one customer. Try being professional the rest of the night.”
Somehow, as I’ve done countless nights before, I pull my shit together, stuff my anger and sadness into a secure mental compartment, and smile. My waiter armor will just have to make it through another night. Within half an hour my entire section is seated, cocktailed, specialed, and busy eating their appetizers. There’s a tender mercy to waiting tables. You can get so engrossed in what you are doing that you almost forget your troubles. I feel like I’m relaxing inside my brain while my body does all the work. For a few small minutes I find solace in going through the motions of a job I know how to do so well. Of course, my peace doesn’t last.
“Louis has got a problem at table n
ine,” Saroya says, tugging on my arm.
“What now?” I reply wearily.
“That lesbian woman’s back, and she’s drunk.”
“Oh, brother.”
“You’re the manager, aren’t you?” Saroya says with a sly smile. “Go fix it.”
Aggravated, I head to the back to find Louis.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“You have to tell that lady to leave,” Louis snorts. “I ain’t gonna.”
“Is she drunk?”
“Yeah, and I ain’t serving her.”
The woman in question is a forty-year-old brunette who used to be one of The Bistro’s best customers. When I first started waiting on her, I found her to be standoffish, cold, and exacting—but she gave me a minimal amount of hassle and tipped a solid 20 percent. She’d always come in around five-thirty, order a dirty martini, and read the New York Times while she waited for her girlfriend to get off from work. Once her attractive blond girlfriend showed up, they’d order a nice dinner, share a bottle of wine, and cap off the evening with dessert and after-dinner drinks.
As the years went by, however, the brunette woman’s martini consumption went from one to two and, eventually, to three. By the time her girlfriend arrived the brunette would be sloppy drunk and unable to enunciate simple words. To make matters worse, she’d polish off a bottle of wine by herself and chug two after-dinner drinks. Eventually she started eating alone. I found out that her girlfriend left her because of her drinking. I later learned that her alcoholism cost her her friends, her job, and even her house. One time the poor woman got so drunk she tried paying her dinner tab with a Bloomingdale’s card. After several similar incidents Fluvio decreed we were not allowed to serve her alcohol if she came in smelling like booze. But that was easier said than done. The last time someone tried cutting her off, she got angry and made a small scene.
“So you gonna tell her to leave?” Louis asks. “I don’t want to wait on her.”
I peek around the corner. The woman’s slumped in her chair. The desiccated skin on her face is stretched tight across her cheekbones, highlighting the blotchy patches. The first of many broken capillaries is starting to spider across her nose. The alcohol’s now assaulting her health as well.
“All right, Louis,” I sigh. “I’ll take care of it.”
I walk over to the woman’s table.
“Hi there,” I say softly.
“Hey,” the woman replies.
A sickly sweet blast of alcoholic vapor floats out on the woman’s breath and up my nose. This lady’s been drinking cheap wine all day. Her bloodstream’s so saturated with the stuff that it’s leeching out of her pores.
“Would you like to hear the specials?” I ask.
“What I’d like is a bottle of Chianti,” the woman says, the remnants of her imperious former self making an appearance.
“I’m sorry, madam,” I say, modulating my voice to sound as nonjudgmental as possible. “I can’t serve you any alcohol.”
“Why not?” the woman asks, struggling to focus her eyes.
“You’ve had a few drinks already.”
“So what?”
“I really can’t argue with you over this. If you’re already intoxicated, I can’t serve you.”
“I want a drink,” the woman blurts, looking like she’s collapsing in on herself.
As I look at her and think of what to do next, a snippet from the Scriptures floats into my brain: “Even the little that he has will be taken away.” That line is from the Parable of Talents found in the Gospel of Matthew. The parable’s a simple story. A master sets out on a long journey. Before he leaves he gives his three servants different amounts of money to invest for him. When the master returns from his travels, he asks the servants what they did with the cash. The first servant reports that he was given five talents, and he had made five talents more. That’s better than a high-powered hedge fund, so the master was greatly pleased. The second servant reported that he had received two talents, and he had made two talents more. That was better than the average 401(k), so the master was thrilled, praised the two servants for being good and faithful, and asked them to share in his riches with him. Bonuses for everybody.
The third servant, the guy who received one talent, knew his master was a hard ass, so he buried the money he was given in the ground for safekeeping. He simply returned the original amount. The master freaked and called him a wicked and lazy servant. At minimum the guy should’ve put the money in a CD to make a little interest. The master commanded that the one talent be taken away from that lazy servant and given to the servant with ten talents. The master then ordered the lazy servant to be thrown outside into the darkness, where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth, saying, “Everyone who has much will be given more, and whoever has a little, even the little that he has will be taken away.”
This woman was once a bright, industrious person. Whatever resources she had, whatever talents she possessed, are now buried under a sea of booze. She’s literally wasted her talents. Everything’s being taken away from her. I don’t know why this woman is the way she is, but it’s obvious she’s in the grip of some awful pain. Instead of confronting her anguish, she’s self-medicating with cheap wine.
I can relate to this woman’s pain. I’ve wasted my talents, too. I’m like that fearful servant who just buried the one talent he was given. I know I shouldn’t be a waiter anymore. My friends and family, the people who know me and love me, see me doing something else. Don’t misunderstand, there’s nothing wrong with being a waiter. But if you’re a waiter who knows he should really be doing something else, the tension between what you are and who you think you should be can tear your psyche apart. It’s like marrying one person but being in love with someone else.
The reason I’ve been fearful to utilize my talents is because I’m afraid of failure. I’m always waiting for disaster to strike, for the other shoe to drop. That’s why I never opened that coffee shop. That’s why my relationships have turned sour. It’s why I’m still fearful my writing will amount to nothing. That’s the real reason I haven’t quit The Bistro. I’m afraid I’ll fail if I try to do anything else.
My anxiety’s been manifesting itself in awful nightmares—angry, wild visions where I howl in rage as the world takes everything away from me. People tell me I’m a fraud, old girlfriends taunt me from the shadows, hard-faced men chase me through the streets, sadists torture my dog, and old people cry as they point at dead babies rotting in the gutter. On the rare occasion I manage to trap one of my tormenters, the dream devolves into a hellish orgy of violence, where I use every weapon at my disposal—including my teeth. These are the dreams of a man who feels his life floating away on the current of time. I am in a place of “darkness and gnashing of teeth.”
“I can’t serve you alcohol,” I say to the woman, pulling myself back into the here and now. “But I’d love it if you ate with us this evening. We have that fettuccine carbonara you always used to order.”
The woman slumps in her chair, defeated. “That’s okay,” she says. “I wasn’t really hungry.”
“Stay here,” I prod. “Drink some water. Get some of your strength back. I’ll bring you some coffee.”
“That’s not necessary,” she says, getting up. “I should be going.”
“I’m sorry things didn’t work out, but please come back again. We miss having you.”
“Thank you.” As the woman walks past me she grabs my arm. “Thank you for being gentle,” she says.
I look into her eyes.
“You’re welcome,” I say.
“Bye.”
I watch the woman walk away, and Louis comes up to me.
“Well, you got her out quietly,” he says smugly.
“You couldn’t have done it,” I snap testily.
Louis just blinks at me.
“And you think you can do my job?” I say mockingly. “Please.”
A nervous grin spreads across Louis’s face
. Like a little boy who’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar—or in a lie.
“I—”
“Forget it, Louis. If you want my job, you’re welcome to it.”
I walk back to my section by the front window. The entire Bistro clatters and hums with the sounds of happy people eating. Through the expanse of plate glass I watch the drunken woman as she stumbles down the street into the coolness of the night. About a block away from The Bistro she stops and sits on a park bench and puts her head in her hands. I can’t be sure, but I think she’s crying. I feel my own eyes moisten with tears. This woman’s burying her life and talent under booze. I’m burying my talent under fear.
Ever since I was a kid I thought I wasn’t good enough. I was always afraid that if I tried to do something, I’d fail, and if I failed, I would be destroyed. My psychological makeup is composed of many factors, but I think that my fear of destruction is partly related to learning I had a twin brother who died at birth. When my parents, gently and with good intentions, told me the news, I cried uncontrollably. I was inconsolable. I would burst into tears just thinking about it months, even years, later. Of course, that ten-year-old boy had no idea what he was feeling—but I do. He was feeling fear. As a kid I learned that not even the intimacy of a loving womb could prevent bad things from happening—my brother’s fate could have easily been my own. It was a 50/50 proposition who would live and who would die. There was no pity, no second chances, no happy ending. My brother died right next to me. I learned early that the world can be a cruel and unforgiving place. If my brother could be destroyed, so could I. Thus, through some mishmash of survivor guilt and neurosis, I equated failure with annihilation.
Waiter Rant Page 27