It's an old school Italian restaurant, this. You start at 10:00 AM in the morning, finish at close, anywhere between 10:00 and 12:00 PM. It's December, so it's usually 12:00 PM.
You set the restaurant up, turn the tables, stock the bar, cut the bruschetta, polish cutlery, fold napkins, get ice, check the candles, sugars, pepper-mills, put the bread in the bread warmer, one waiter vacuums, the other does stock, I fill in the gaps.
We stop between services for a half hour in the afternoon to eat. The owner's cooked us up some food, we sit, some days he leads the conversation with something that he's misread in the daily tabloid, the staff argue it for a bit before deciding that his opinions are undoubtedly the best ones to have on the topic, then it's back at it.
When the setup is done we wait for the customers, smoke cigarettes in the back, drink espresso, gallons of espresso, chat.
I'm not privy to their private jokes, the "newcomer", they're friendly enough but they want to see how I work out first, it's a clique. They talk about their affairs, their boyfriends or girlfriends, their families, all of them, not necessarily related to the owner but somehow or another almost all related to one another. I catch fragments only. They speak in Italian, thinking I don't understand it, talking about things over me when they want private conversations.
It doesn't matter. When it's busy you don't need Italian to understand "Take-a the fuckin-a food out" being screamed at you by an overstressed owner.
When it's not so busy everyone's cool.
They've all been here forever. The one waiter, 20 years, his sister, 10 years, another waiter 10 years.
None of them have ever worked in another restaurant. This is their first and only. Each of them took a break from the restaurant business for a few years to sell cars, but came back with the collapse in the economy.
They all work day and night. We all work day and night. No days off in December, except on Sunday when the restaurant's closed, and for a few days around Christmas. The rest of the year there's a floating day off, depending on business. No, none of them are too excited about it, but it's the wish of the owner and so they comply.
They're all Italian. They've given me an Italian name too, more out of a sense of humour than anything else."Antonio" they call me, after I unwisely told them of a previous restaurant where I'd been given a similar latin name.
It's a classic old-school Italian Restaurant.