Miscellany

Yesterday I got carried away talking about the Breakdown of Society, or Societal Collapse, as it relates to waiters. I said all I needed to say on the subject, but rereading it today, I realized I didn’t address one of SkippyMom’s main thrusts. Oops.

So here goes. She thought the concept of ‘Societal Breakdown’ was a little harsh for my impressions of fewer kids trick-or-treating. I agree. I didn’t really mean that this was going to ruin society. All I really meant was this is another aspect in that long slow process that I see happening.

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There was a pretty cool article in the L.A. Times today about old waiters who know their stuff. Take a look.

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So maybe this is what we’ve been waiting for (no pun intended). Three of us waiters today at Michael’s. Top dog (not me) took home $25. I walked with $17, as the closer.

Success at Michael’s is based on doing a solid job and biding your time until you get a big table ($-wise) that kicks your average into respectable, normal range. I’ve played that game for more than three years without any deviation from the formula. Time and again a week would come out with a $100 a day average, month after month. A rare $60 average per day week would be followed by two $120 average per day weeks . . . and on and on.

But the last month I’m seeing either a surprising run of bad luck, or else that the key component – the big hitter – has vanished. I’ve been averaging $50-60 a shift for a month. And obviously I’m not off to a good start this week.

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Wanted to give a holler to TheHootersGirl. She’s only made one short comment here, but she has linked to my blog and is driving a lot of traffic my way. Thanks!

I’ve read some of her writing, and it’s a lot of fun. And, of course, what could be more provocative than learning what a real Hooters Girl thinks of her customers? And maybe there’ll be pictures . . .

Check her out. Her writing.

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Hope you all had a fun St. Patrick’s Day. I was prepared to stay in while the wife worked, but a friend dropped in and pulled me out for a couple beers. It was fun. When it’s not degenerated into sloppy drunkenness, the excitement of St. Patty’s partying is a fun atmosphere. We went to the nearby restaurant row to an Irish bar. The street was full people, the vibe was lively. As I said, not sunken into sloppiness yet. We were out from about 8-9 p.m.

After that I came home and worked on the computer. Then I mixed a martini and watched the Lakers fall at home against the 76ers on a buzzer beating 3-pointer. This, after Kobe drained a jumper with 5 seconds left to go up by two. A stinging shocker.

Reflections On President Obama’s Inauguration Speech

I woke up late (on-call at Michael’s and they didn’t need me). Logging onto the L.A. Times as usual, fresh cup of coffee at the ready, I learned the President Obama had already been inaugurated. For some reason, I thought it would happen later on, evening East Coast time. Several people in my currently overpopulated household had thought the same thing.

So I read his address. It was tremendous. I even welled up with emotion reading the few closing paragraphs about George Washington’s message to the People in the Revolution’s darkest hour.

Later, I watched a video of the address on ABC.com. I was moved slightly more by the video, perhaps because of the delivery.

I was struck by the underlying message of the speech: We’re in for some tough times. And it won’t be just a blip.

Obama exhorted us to buckle down for the long haul, to be ready to fight for principles, fight with courage, sacrifice for our ideals. Because those things are all we’ll have to sustain us through the hard times ahead.

As if we couldn’t read the forecast anyway, President Obama laid it out for us pretty clearly. As bad as things are now, they’re going to get worse.

I understand that although currently my income hasn’t suffered excessively, and I can still make my mortgage, it’s probably only a matter of time before it gets really hard. If I’m lucky, ‘really hard’ will mean I still have both my jobs but the money is down. It could mean, however, that I lose one or both jobs.

We read daily about plunges in retail sales, wholesale revenues, exports, real estate values, financial market values. And for now, it’s just news. We sit in our homes watching our televisions, warm during these winter months (maybe too warm lately in California), content with food in the cupboard and refrigerator.

But President Obama is trying to prepare us for the next wave. As the economy continues to falter, fewer people will have jobs. Those with jobs will have less income. Those with something to spend will save it to protect themselves against tomorrow. All of which will lead to more of the same. Actually, it’s not just a wave. It’s a set of waves that will come breaking one after the other.

Perhaps the existing stimulus programs and the President’s forthcoming programs will arrest the trend. But surely we’re in for at least a couple of those waves before something positive takes hold.

Of course it’s mostly confidence. If the banks had confidence, they’d lend more money. If the people had confidence, they’d spend more money (and borrow more). If the businessmen had more confidence, they’d start new ventures, invest more money. And things would be rolling again in some semblance of normality.

Or maybe (just thinking out loud here) it’s all a conspiracy for our country to maintain its world dominance. The U.S. government owes a lot of money – probably too much. Which we have to pay back in dollars. If only we could just print up those dollars for free and pay everyone back . . . Well, you normally can’t do that because it leads to runaway inflation.

Yet we are doing it and inflation is virtually nil. How can this happen?

Remember the Golden Rule: He who has the Gold makes the Rules.

The U.S. is still the dominant nation. When the world economy falls into a tailspin, we all suffer, but the weak suffer the most. Imagine a forest fire that ends with only the largest, most hardy trees still standing. Yes, they are severely damaged, but they are the only ones left.

When this fire is over, it’s possible that we with the Gold will be the only ones left to make the Rules.

Don’t listen to me. I’ve always entertained conspiracy theories. Don’t even ask what my first thoughts were after 9/11.

At any rate, even with my crackpot half-hearted conspiracy theory, we’re still in for a difficult stretch – and it could be a long one.

Meantime, let’s all do our best. Let’s be productive and generous. Let’s help the people having a harder time than ourselves. As President Obama said, be willing to take a cut in pay so a friend can keep his job. With nothing but hope and virtue . . let’s meet the challenge.

Sunday Papers

The last four years or so I’ve been blessed with most Sundays off.  I start every Sunday with coffee and the Sunday L.A. Times. I pretty much go through the whole thing – maybe losing steam or time before hitting Calendar. Fascinating, huh?

Ciera was in the news again last night at Carney’s. She took a vacation to visit family in Chicago. Her father is a long-time pilot, so she gets to fly free anywhere (domestically only?), provided she goes stand-by. She arranged for a couple shifts off (that’s why I worked Wednesday), ‘planning’ to come back Saturday in time for her dinner shift.

Only she didn’t really plan that. She secretly negotiated that shift covered too, by Mark. I might have mentioned Mark earlier, though not by name. He’s the older millionaire alcoholic who works pretty much to stay out of trouble. He’s been fired by Carney and Harry three times before; he also is a peer of theirs – he and his wife, Joanna, vacation with the owners of Carney’s. Upon his most recent rehire he seemed pretty much done as a waiter – he’s at least 60. He doesn’t move real fast, doesn’t learn real fast, and isn’t in any hurry to start learning real fast. Mostly, he would do the opening shift, take a couple tables, and then bug out at the earliest possible hour – spending the intervening time chatting with his one or two tables or taking cigarette breaks.

With some time, however, he’s turned out to be a pretty good waiter. Nowhere near the hungry workhorses the rest of us are, but he does a great job with his tables, gets great tips, is always available to help with our greater workload, is content to stay as long as necessary, and even expects a smaller cut of the tip pool (though we give him a full share anyway).

All that said, he’s the weakest we’ve got. So Ciera recruiting him to work Saturday is not the kind of thing that would sit well with a micro-manager like Carney. Worse, Ciera was too chickenshit to give Carney the heads up; she called everybody on the staff – literally, even Frank the Bartender – finagling the situation, but left Carney to find out when she came in at 6 p.m. Ciera’s ‘official’ lie is that her flight got cancelled because of a snowstorm.

Predictably, Carney hit the roof when she found out, calling Ciera selfish and a liar. She started asking us what time Ciera talked to us, trying to triangulate whether it was a lie or not that she couldn’t get Carney on the phone. She griped that this was the thanks she got, after lending Ciera money . . . that this is what happens when Ciera hangs around Candy too much (Candy, Ciera’s best friend, was fired a year earlier) as Candy is just so disrespectful. ‘I just don’t know what I’m going to do!’ Carney says, picking up the phone to alert Harry at home.

‘Why don’t you fire her?’ Mark says.

‘Oh, no. We won’t do that. I just . . . I just . . .’

It was the perfect comment from Mark, one that we couldn’t make. It put some perspective on the situation. For Christsakes, shut up about it already.

There was a parade in our neighboring beach town last night which every year draws away our clientele for that evening. Yet we still had a respectable $160 night. And, yes, despite Ciera’s throwing a stick of dynamite into our fragile machine, the night went smoothly all around. Except for Carney freaking out.

Unfortunately, despite the calendar telling me it’s Sunday, I have to work tonight. Covering another shift. It’s funny how this time of year, you just don’t get any days off. The money is the best during December, yet that’s when everybody is desperate to give away their shifts. While the rest of the year everyone complains about how poor they are.

I’ll write a full column someday about my assertion that the only thing you can really depend on with a waiter is he will complain. Busy/slow. Long shift/short shift. On-call/day off. Full schedule/light schedule. Hands on manager/hands off manager. Marketing and promotion/no marketing and promotion. Large station/small station.

I can go on. Presented with a situation, a waiter will complain. Solve that complaint definitively, and he will complain about the reverse situation.

Waitress Upset Because She Works Too Much

Maybe tomorrow.