Waiter Rant by Steve Dublanica

Author:Steve Dublanica [The Waiter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780061801235
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2008-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

No hot water in sink

No hand soap in dispensers

Cheap rub-your-ass-raw toilet paper

No paper towels

Overflowing garbage cans

No toilet paper dispenser, just a tattered roll on top of the tank

A toilet seat shifted off its base

Graffiti

Semen stains anywhere

In addition to the skid-row bathrooms this restaurant possessed, it also had those awful strips of fly paper hanging down from the ceiling in the service area behind the kitchen. There have been great advances in pest control since the 1930s, but the owner of this place, in a never-ending quest to save a buck, obviously had never heard of them. Whipped by the breeze generated from constantly opening and closing doors, the fly strips fluttered in the artificial wind like glistening black-studded pennants hung by primitive tribesmen trying to scare outsiders away from some kind of sacrificial burial pit. The mice writhing in agony on the floor as they tried to free themselves from sticky paper traps helped complete the forbidding effect. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that this restaurant’s customers were dying from the Ebola virus, much less garden-variety gastroenteritis. I quit after a couple of months.

And, since we’re on the subject of viruses, let’s discuss another nicety of the restaurant world, working while sick.

I remember reading somewhere that chefs have developed this macho ethos that compels them to work even when they’re injured or sick. Unless you’re dead, lost your hand in a meat-grinder accident, or are actively exsanguinating from a severed artery, you had better show up for work—you pussy! To some extent, that’s true. I’ve watched Fluvio cook in near delirium with a 102-degree fever and sweat as his sciatic nerve sent waves of racking pain up and down his legs and back. Armando pops so many antihistamines and Tylenol when he gets a cold I worry that his liver will pop out his navel before the end of the shift. Of course everyone in the restaurant works injured. Every cook has burns and scars tattooing his hands and forearms, testifying to his job history the way a junkie’s track marks bear witness to his addiction. I once saw a waitress come into work with a nasty hot-oil burn festering on her inner thigh. (I know because she showed me. Don’t ask.) I once sliced my finger open on the foil when opening a bottle of wine and bled all over a table. The outraged customers, fearing I had the Hanta virus or something, stormed out of the restaurant. I finished the shift with a bandage dripping Betadine on my thumb.

But I think that the Bushido kitchen code, if it ever existed, has been supplanted by something far less romantic and much more cynical—there are almost never any sick days in the restaurant business. If you don’t work, you don’t get paid. I’ll concede that higher-paid chefs might drag themselves into the kitchen because of old-school work ethics and fat paychecks, but those of us operating on the lower end of the totem pole come into work sick because we need the money.

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