- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1997
A productive day. Daughter to camp, AMA, Maps and Health Insurance, Bank, deposit cheques, write up a years worth of child support, various other things...
Then Lunch with A*****. His last night, Saturday, he's on vacation with the rest of us, going back to Italy, but he's decided not to return. I don't blame him. Life here, in this restaurant, it's fucking shit. He misses his daughter, his common-law, well, there are problems there, but whatever battles he faces there are easier than the restaurant here. He's done.
So is the restaurant. Lunch, a cheap ethnic buffet, we talk about it, how tired it is, the faded and worn linen, dirty, old, it's over, it's time. The owner, the customers, the freeloaders and moochers, it was, still is, an institution, but it should be done. Over. Now. He's free, I still have a month left, and the impending vacation with the daughter, the trip (just passed) to Saskatchewan, they're all threatening my finances...
We talk, of his past few days, the going away parties, the people he saw, people he missed....he didn't miss much. In the two years he worked here he left the city maybe 3 or 4 times, always, only with me, to Waterton one weekend, Banff another, Prospecting, Drumheller another. His life, otherwise, was work, the classic immigrant-on-immigrant slavery, the Conservative sanctioned and thinly veiled "TFW" program, the 12 and 15 hour work days, 5 and 6 days a week...
The restaurant, we've been besieged as of late with Corporate Realtors, Accountants, he's making plans, we don't know what they are but we can guess, the Nephew, supposedly the "Inside Scoop", he isn't privy, he provides us with contradictory guesses as to what it's all about twice a day...
I'm envious of him. I don't want to go back, at all, ever, we've been through a lot, me and him, we and the nephew, he's been a sport, born all our innuendo and insults, dark gallows humor, he's been a good worker, a proper colleague, co-worker, another stand-up guy in the trenches, these are rare, and we talk about his job offers, opportunities back home, they are not so good, restaurants there are run much the same as restaurants here, shit pay, long hours...but there, there's no tipping, no compensation, it's worse, if it can be imagined...
Awkward, these goodbyes, he still has to pack, get to the airport, me, to pick up my daughter from camp...
But it's time, and he comes round the jeep to give me a hug, he's crying, and I feel it, feel every fucking inch of shit this country dumped on him, there's no reason for it, fucking hell, and a slight epiphany, selfish motives perhaps, mediocre financial gain, but I'm in the same boat, and why is it so fine that the restaurant so shit on me, and I double my resolve to leave...
...he's crying, leaves quickly, I promise to visit him, but time and paths weave and I think we both know better...
In a sporting good humor, good-naturedly wearing the boots, belts, cowboy shirt I picked up for him, he'd never been hit on by so many men in his life...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 2258
Found this scrap of paper, the nephews notes for a tables order:
...and I take him to task on it, it's the writing of a madman, a lunatic, spelling aside it looks like a four year old cut out a ransom note for the family cat, I want to make a font out of it, type out my manifesto, my plan to rule the world or learn to speak European, he laughs, he gets it ...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 2007
The owner's daughter has dropped by with her own child for a free meal. The owner's sleeping in the basement. She orders a couple of free seafood risottos off of the Filipino slave and wanders about the restaurant, saying hi to the staff...
I avoid her. I know her from a previous life, even if I didn't, she's fucked up. Alcoholic, 40 year old, the body of the A&W Root Bear, freeloader, scavenger extraordinaire, she'll come to steal from the liquor, the fridge, she's no shame, the government subsidizes her housing, the owner her expenses (his lover coming in every week to lobby for more, poor single mother, she wants to fix everything, she's convinced she can...)...She's failure at every level, but she's the only kid that turned out "well"...the other two, well, we won't discuss them here...
She tells the sous-chef about all the food- leftovers - she wants from the restaurant when we close for vacation. All of it. All for her. She's his kid, has kids, after all...
...and after eating their fancy risottos on the patio, the owner wakes up and discovers them...
..."Give him a hug" mom tells her daughter, but her Pa ain't buying it...
"FUCK OFF. GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! I TOLD YOU NEVER TO COME HERE...MAKING MY STAFF WORK FOR YOU? FUCK OFF!"
Sad to say but he's right. The risotto is packed up, they quietly disappears, we knew when we saw her, and the owner storms the restaurant suppressing his temper all the rest of the night...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 2165
It wasn't the last of them, they continued to be as regular as ever. By which I'm referring to P & C (follow embedded link).
It was C's 50th birthday and P wanted to arrange a big surprise. He bargained with the owner, got a 4 course set menu for $35.00 per person. This is unbelievable. I've not been to a fine restaurant where you could get even one course for that, they're getting 4, but they're friends of the owners...And being as all their friends are the freeloading scourges of the restaurant we were not looking forward to it...
The night, darkly anticipated and dreaded for months before, finally arrives. We pull out all stops, bring in all the part-timers. I can't deal with them, I'll handle the "regular" customers on the other side of the restaurant.
The night goes. Late. Their final bill, $4400.00 for 58 people. They're all hammered, loaded, 6 hours straight drinking, no brakes at all these folk, P thanks us, tips 15%, they leave in the nether hours after midnight...all hammered, soused to the gills, their friends, my age, alcoholics every one...
3 weeks later P texts the owner, wants to talk in private, he feels that he's been charged too much. The wine, they could have bought it at the liquor store for $20.00 per bottle, the guests, they drank too much...
A*****, thankfully he was on to them, he told P every bottle of wine opened, got approval, the PPA (Per person average) worked out to $74.00 per person, cheap, free by fine dining standards, it's fucking unbelievable, but he meets with the owner to complain, and the owner finally loses it, tells him that he's offended, he gave him a deal (he did, a hell of a deal, I'd be thrilled to get that deal any day of the week), and yet still they complain, never cheap enough, never free enough, never enough, they're the narcissists, and finally he leaves and we're relieved, this little disagreement means we won't be seeing them for a while, the worst of our customers (and it's a tough competition), still, another 100 or so to go...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1887
A ridiculously slow day, broken up with news that M***** had died. Perhaps 57, a waiter there on and off, career waiter throughout the city so a few people were affected. The owner, he pretends, doesn't really care, seems a bit callous, but that's him, his own kids could die and he wouldn't give a damn...
M*****, to sum him up, career alcoholic waiter, perpetually drunk, short, balding, didn't look a day over 70 (and so to discover his real age was a surprise...), dead on vacation to Europe visiting relatives. And so the nephew regales us the entire day with tales of his drunkenness, his propping himself against the chair while he took the order, so as not to fall over, a notepad for a table of 2, and the letters of complaint that often followed his service...me, I'd happily frequent a restaurant where the waiters felt free to be drunk ass-over-keister at 12:00 noon, but others of our customers weren't so forgiving...
...and the hiring of him, he'd worked here before me, been fired for being a drunk, this time, he came for lunch with his wife, younger, the sad pretty of someone who's made a bad marriage, lived her life in regret, the owner speaks to him, receives assurances of his sobriety, M***** is quick to give them, "been months since I've touched a drop..." even if this were true this wouldn't be the job to keep that promise, but if the owner had looked closer the martini and the half liter of wine on the table might have given him away...
M*****, dead, we'd often wondered and shared his many adventures aloud, the other waiter, A***** never knew him, but knows him well enough through the legends, RIP.