Big Hits

I know I haven’t posted for a long time. Well, the Lakers won the World Championship (aka NBA Championship)! I’ve been on a high, naturally. I was previously adhering to a no-drinking-till-after-writing rule. I dropped that system temporarily.

I remember the glory years (both five titles in the ’80s and the three titles from ‘01-’03), and the times between. If you’re not a serious (translation: of dubious sanity) sports fan, you won’t understand, but there is a major endorphin rush from winning the title (as a fan). So much so, that it colors your own off-season. You have a generally bright outlook. There’s a snap in your step. You feel more confident.

Likewise, when you lose (as a fan) you are actually depressed for a certain amount of time. It’s embarrassing and, really, unconscionable considering the true gravity of sports in your life and the world in general. But it’s real.

So when the boys took home the title this year, I decided to revel in the happiness and spend my next week or so reading everything I could find about them. I kind of went into vacation mode. You know vacation mode: You’d never consider having a drink at 11 a.m. under any circumstances in your normal life, but on vacation . . . what the hell?

For the record, I don’t drink in the afternoon, even when the Lakers have won the championship. Just an analogy there.

The other reason I haven’t posted is because there’s been a strange massive spike in my ‘readership.’ I’ve kind of been mesmerized by it. Which is exactly the opposite of the normal state of affairs – wherein I don’t post for awhile, hits go way down, and I get nervous and write something new.

For some reason, this post has gotten assigned a high-ranking search result for “Jack Daniels.” Yes, Jack Daniels whiskey is mentioned (and pictured) in the post, but it’s only the subject of a short quip. Some days traffic is up more than 500% from my previous normal. Most days it’s double or triple the old normal.

I don’t regard these hits as particularly ‘real,’ but they are hits and they might lead to new people reading my writing, so I’m grateful.

I’m also grateful that this seemingly random event has led surfers to what I consider one of my better pages (it’s the one about Real Life Waiter Nightmares). Hell, I could just as easily have ended up with a throwaway Tivo/Lakers post getting all the attention.

Anyway, if you haven’t read it yet check out Real Life Waiter Nightmare Type 2 (cont’d). It’s a good read. Everybody’s doing it. Come on . . . What? Are you chicken or somethin’?

Something In The Air

A furious day at Michael’s on Friday. Not me furious, as in my grumpy post about Restaurant Overstaffing, but furious business.

It’s funny that ideas and thoughts are just out there in the air . . . Have you ever had what you thought was a great idea for a movie or TV show, or a simple great invention, or just a new feature for an existing product – only to find out days or weeks later that exact thing in the marketplace? You thought of it on your own, yet obviously the parties bringing this idea out had been working on it well before you came up with the concept.

For some reason, after my post complaining about the overstaffing at lunch vs. dinner at Michael’s (which I concluded by saying I was ‘this close’ to having a sit-down with management on the subject), the next three days bore out exactly the result I was hoping for. And of course I never had the chance to talk to management about my objections.

Each day, management ran the floor with a small staff, forgoing the on-call server. Each day, we had relatively solid business – nothing enough to crash the system, but enough so we all felt busy enough – and the servers on the floor got another 30% more covers than has been usual. Instead of $40-60 days, we had $75-90 days. I was lucky each day, as I got some prime tables. I made $150, $155, and $194.

The last of these days, Friday, though, was a crusher. I had 29 covers, most of them in one seating (tables of 5, 8, 4, and 4). If you recall the last post, us lunch servers had been averaging 9 a shift. But it ended up proving my point magnificently . . . as if management really knew my exact ‘point.’

It was like a Christmas rush day. There were three of us on the floor, and we were all taxed about as far as we could go. We got some life-saving help from available management in running food or at least expediting it. We were totally selfless for each other regarding food-running. I was nowhere to be seen for entrée-delivery of several of my tables. Likewise, after checking back, I returned to several tables to find them cleared and crumbed. I did the same kinds of things for the other two waiters whenever I had an extra moment or hand – including refilling waters and drinks.

And we all got out of it with no more than the normal hiccups, and zero major situations.

Here’s where it proved my point: This was a blockbuster day for three servers to handle, but we did it. In other words, we ran into the absolute outside expectations for customer traffic and we still got through just fine.

I don’t warrant going with three waiters in a situation where you know business is going to be like that. It was hard on everybody, and things could have gone wrong. In that case where management has a pretty damn good idea, then bring on another waiter. But as I said, we saw the enemy, and we still beat him.

Meantime, I hope they’ve learned something here. Unless there are a tremendous number of reservations on the books, just let us go with what we have. There is excess production capacity here.

* * * * *

I haven’t written much about Carney’s here lately. A couple of things:

After our amazing hot streak from January through part of April, things have cooled off. Some weekends have been $120, $150 (Fri-Sat). Some have been $120, $185). But we haven’t been hitting $200+ each day like we were. (For those of you in other parts of the country, things are different where I live in California. I’ve discussed it before. Rent for a 2-bedroom apartment is about $1800 a month. A small 2-bedroom 1-bath house would be $2200. Mortgage on same house, even at today’s prices and interest rates and with 20% down payment would be $2900 a month. My own mortgage is almost $4000 a month.)

Ciera is always having the best time and the worst time. She’s flying to Vegas with a new boyfriend for two days, and she’s making a deal with her landlord to pay her rent weekly so she won’t get evicted.

She really hit a bad deal a couple weeks ago. Her cousin, who was like a sister to her when she lived back in Chicago, was part of a murder/suicide tragedy. The cousin had even been out for a week’s visit with Ciera only a couple of months earlier. The estranged husband killed her with a knife and then shot himself when he returned to his own home.

Of course, Carney tried to spin it as her own tragedy: ‘We have to cover her shifts so she can go back for the funeral. We just don’t know what we’re going to do . . .’

Ciera self-medicates religiously (actually, more than religiously) with pot-smoking and drinking. She usually portrays her travails in a kind of humorous, ‘what else can happen?’ manner. And it’s usually true. Hell, late rent, boyfriend-juggling, car trouble are part of living. And she understands she reaps what she sows, so most of the time she’s not bitter. She’s the kind of person who can have the most vile, screaming phone argument with a boyfriend, then hang up and start cheerfully making jokes about it.

But this. Her real vulnerability is pain and suffering. She always has between 3-7 dogs – all of them rescue animals. Kind of like her boyfriends, but I digress . . .

She has been understandably torn apart with this family disaster. Very sad. She went back for five days to grieve with her family and attend the funeral/wake. Because it involved a few shift-switches, Carney called it ‘her vacation.’

* * * * *

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t tip-off (pun intended) everyone to what I hope is the final game of the Los Angeles Lakers 2008-09 season today. Game Five, the Lakers lead the series 3-1 and can finish off the Orlando Magic today at 5 p.m. Pacific Time. If you don’t care, please root for the Lakers just because I’m asking you to.

Can’t wait till about 6:15 p.m., when I’ll fire up the Tivo (having buffered an hour or so of recorded game), shake up a New Amsterdam gin Martini, and watch it unfold.

Go Lakers!

Tivo, The Lakers, And Smug Idiots

I’m guessing many of you think I’m the idiot for including the Los Angeles Lakers so often in my ‘Waiter Blog.’ I know it’s completely off-topic, but the Lakers are such a large part of my life (a little embarrassingly) I just can’t avoid it.

Well, this time the Lakers and Tivo do have waiter-relevance.

I’ve been a Lakers fan since 1979, when Magic Johnson was drafted by Los Angeles. Magic hails from Lansing, Michigan, where he won the state championship in high school and later won the NCAA championship at Michigan State, also in (East) Lansing. It happens that during that same period of time, I also lived in Lansing for my grade school years and one year of high school. I even almost went to the same junior high that Magic attended, but my family moved to a different district before the year started.

I moved to Northern California in 1977. Because I was already following Magic, and because he, as a rookie, immediately won the NBA Championship in ‘79-’80, I became a permanent Lakers fan. Coming from Lansing, I had one of the few legitimate excuses for rooting for Los Angeles while living in Northern California.

After graduating high school, I moved with my family to Southern California, and from that point, it was really on. I could watch every televised game. I could listen to all the others on radio. I spent many an evening in the garage with a portable radio, listening to Chick Hearn while I practiced writing on a Smith-Corona electric typewriter. Before cable television lines were planted in the ground in our neighborhood, I leaned on my step-dad to subscribe to ON-TV, which carried all the Lakers home games. ON-TV was a crazy idea that most people would have a hard time understanding. It was a set-top box that decoded a scrambled over-the-air broadcast signal, UHF channel 52 in Los Angeles. The station carried mostly local sports and movies, like an early HBO. There was also soft-core porn after midnight. If memory serves, you would put the TV on channel 3, then flip the big black knob on the box to ON. I assume the box was permanently tuned to channel 52. Just like that, Lakers!

Around this same time, we got our first VCR. And around this time in the post, we finally get to the relevance of Tivo and the Lakers to the life of a waiter.

I started recording Lakers games to be able to watch them later. In those days, I played a lot of basketball. I would head down to the lighted courts around 5:30 or 6 p.m. and play till about 9 p.m. I would do this like five days a week. It’s not like there were games going all day and night at those courts – those were the prime time hours. No one played earlier, and the lights shut off at 10 p.m.

As you can guess, I needed to have my cake and eat it too. Lakers home games started at 7 p.m. in those days (if I recall correctly), and many road games much earlier. So I learned how to program the VCR and taught the family how watch TV without screwing up the recording. I would return sweaty and salty, have something to eat, and periodically snipe flashes of live TV (with the sound off) to see if the game was over. Usually I would stare a few feet above the set so I could kind of only see the colors and shapes but definitely not make out a score or a particular play. When I saw Chick and his color man (Keith Erickson at the time – and by far the best partner I heard work with Chick) doing a ’stand-up’ in front of the camera, I knew the game was over. So I’d wait another ten minutes, rewind the tape, and settle in for my fix.

At that time, I was working at pizza parlors for my money, living with Mom and step-dad for free, going to community college.

Fast forward to the mid-’80s. The hey-day of Showtime. I’m now working nights as a waiter, making more money than anyone else my age that I knew, and I’m taping every single Lakers game of the season. Even games I could have watched live. I had gotten to where I preferred the extra control I had (not to mention the time savings by being able to FF commercials). Pause, FF, Slow-Mo. I even archived a few particularly great games every year.

Of course, most restaurants have bars, and have TVs in the bars. And the most popular (almost exclusive) fare for those TVs is local sports. I should mention here that I watch the games because I love and follow the team. But my greatest joy is rooting for the victory, enjoying the rollercoaster of hope/despair over whether the Lakers will win or not.

I went through a lot, trying to avoid learning anything about the game that was being played that night during my shift. Failing that, I was absolutely desperate to dodge learning the outcome. Sometimes it was unavoidable. I come up to the bar and the eyes reflexively jumped to the TV, and sometimes I’d see a mid-game score. Damn! That much suspense ruined! Other times a guest would yell something about the score or the nature of the game or describe a play. Nothing you could do about that.

I trained (and pleaded with) my co-workers about how serious I was about not learning about the game. They mostly all cooperated. I had a lot of fun nights coming home with $100 in my wallet and settling in with my VCR to watch the Lakers at 11 p.m. It wasn’t the icing on the cake, it was the whole thing.

The intermittent and aggravating problem came with the garden variety public when I was off work. After a shift I would not infrequently end up having a drink or two in our bar or some other bar. Also not infrequently, there would be game highlights playing on the silent TVs. And again not infrequently, this would lead to desultory conversation with another guy at the bar.

‘How ’bout that game?’ he would ask.

‘Wait,’ I would caution as I held up my hands, ‘please don’t say anything about the Lakers game. I recorded it and I’m gonna watch it when I get home. Please. If you don’t mind.’

The Grin appears. If it’s possible to get a sick feeling in your spine, I start to get it.

‘Oh yeah? Okay.’ The eyes shift a bit. He’s thinking. Here comes . . . ‘You won’t want to watch it anyway. They lost. Ha-ha-ha!’

‘Why did you say that?’ I ask, pained and sad.

‘Okay. They won! Ha-ha-ha! Now you don’t know!’

But now I do know, you jackass. They won. You’re so stupid you can’t figure out that to ‘fake’ tell me the real outcome would make you just a cruel asshole who ignored my polite, earnest plea. So your cagey mind master-stroked: Tell him the opposite!

Except for a few scattered seasons in the last 30 years, the Lakers generally win about 2/3’s of their games. I know this. I know, as above, that whenever a jackass tells me with a retarded, thumb-up-my-ass grin, that the Lakers lost, it means they won. Big surprise here, but I’ve never been outsmarted on the matter by one of these idiots.

Then there’s the opposite – which isn’t really any different. ‘Ha-ha! It’s a great game. They won!’

These buffoons think they’re doing me a favor. He’ll get to the end of the game and Wow! It doesn’t end like he thought it would!

Thank you for orchestrating my evening of entertainment, numbnuts.

Then there are the ones who just can’t resist showing off. Though they don’t reveal the eventual winner, they insist on telling you some significant aspect of the game.

‘Kobe makes an amazing play in the 3^rd quarter.’

‘Wait till you what happens just before halftime.’

‘You’re going to be surprised.’

I say they’re showing off because these people are the same ones who once they learn something, absolutely must show off what they know. Ever have to share a newspaper with someone and they hand you the section they’ve just read?

‘Check the obituaries. The Skipper from Gilligan’s Island died. Did you know he was a minor movie star before Gilligan’s Island?’

It’s almost as if these clowns are proud of the play they saw in the Lakers game – as if they had some ownership of it.

Hearing these snippets of their real life experience is about half as bad as hearing the ‘fake’ result of the game. Though I don’t know who wins, I do have a significant landmark to anticipate. So if I know, for instance, that something big happens just before halftime, more often than not I get a good idea of what it will be, based on what’s happening in the game. An obvious example would be that nothing cool has happened and Kobe has the ball, dribbling down the clock as the half is about to expire. Well, when he drains a long 3-pointer, I’m not really that surprised.

Or the guy who said simply, ‘You’re going to be surprised.’ Well, now I’m not, because that 25-point Lakers lead at halftime is almost certainly going to be eaten away and the Lakers will either lose or narrowly win. Because, after a 25-point halftime lead what else would be surprising?

My strategy for the threat has evolved over the years. I used to plead and explain nicely. Then I started making a firm and concise statement, and immediately walking away. Later, I would literally put my fingers in my ears and hum loudly. Eventually I discovered the best approach was nothing at all. If I hear talk of the game, I leave quickly (humming so I can’t hear). If there’s no talk but highlights are on, I don’t watch and I don’t mention. This works best because it doesn’t put the forbidden fruit out there for these bozos to impulsively snatch at.

Yet, many times every season, especially in the playoffs, I have to make the mini-speech about how I’m recording on Tivo and plan to watch the game when I get off.

It happened to the wife last night. She was off early and stopped at a local watering hole for a glass of wine before heading home. She had to make The Speech to an adult man and his mother.

‘Oh, they won,’ said the jackass.

‘Why did you say that?’ the wife asked. ‘I asked you not to say anything.’

‘Well . . . ‘

‘I hope you realize that you have actually ruined my evening. I was going to go home, make dinner, have a glass of wine, and watch the game. Now, because of you, I know they already won and all the excitement is gone. Thanks.’

He apologized. Better still, his mom verbally beat the crap out of him for a few minutes. A grown man in a public restaurant, being called rude, inconsiderate and immature by his mother.

I was impressed to hear her tell this story. There’s a lot to learn from women. I should listen when the wife tells me things.

Maybe that’s what I’ll do next time I get one of these smug idiots: ‘Thanks. I bet your mom would be amused and very proud of you right now. Have a great night. I’m leaving.’

Lakers Playoff 2009

Always plenty of waiter stuff to talk about. But you all know what a Lakers fan I am. Today marks the start of the “real season” for pro basketball. The playoffs. In this case, I put the real season in double quotes because I’m not the cynical type who says the regular season doesn’t matter – that teams only make their mark by performance and achievement in the playoffs. If I may make an analogy to other popular media, the NBA regular season is like watching a great TV series for its multi-year run. The playoffs are like watching that series in its last season, including the triumphant (or not) final episode.

All those games are good. Watching the ups-and-downs and twists-and-turns are good. The whole experience is not merely the fact that the Seinfeld clan ended up in jail. It was all the stuff along the way, plus what happened at the end.

My fave soap is the Lakers. Every year, even when they suck. Which they don’t often, in the whole multi-decade scheme of pro basketball. They start their ‘09 season finale today at 12 p.m. PST. Please root for us.

If you’re interested already, you already know the Lakers saga this year. Lots of hue and cry about killer instinct, bad bench, Bynum being injured, losing games they should have won, winning games by less than they should have won . . .

But damn it, they won 65 games. By my check, that ties them for 14^th of all time in the history of the NBA (82 game schedule) for best winning percentage. Why is everyone freaking out so much?

The Lakers are a very good team. I think better than any other this year. So aside from my biased rooting interest, I really believe they will win it all this year. But as always, it’s the journey that’s the fun part. Today I’ll be watching, slightly delayed on the Tivo, to see them shut down the Utah Jazz for their first of 16 victories this post season.

On the way to the championship.

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.

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

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.

* * * * *

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.

* * * * *

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.

Waiter’s Life vs. life of the waiter living it

Okay, you dragged me into it.

I wasn’t resisting, but I’ve been busy lately with a lot of other stuff.

The thing is, the Waiter’s Life, and the life of the waiter living it, are two different things. Read that last sentence twice.

The Waiter’s Life is what goes on in the restaurant. It’s how his/her job experiences affect his view of the world. It’s how his work interacts with his personal world.

The life of the waiter living it, however, is just like anyone else’s life. We have significant-others. We get married. We accrue debt. We pay bills. We buy a house. We have health problems unrelated to ‘waiting tables.’ We have family controversies. We have car trouble. We find a $20 bill in the street. The dishes in our kitchen pile up for three days . . .

You get the idea – although not necessarily all of the above apply to me.

The thing is . . . (wait, wasn’t there just another ‘the thing is’ earlier?) . . . working is a full-time occupation. So in my case, I work two jobs – essentially full-time – and spend a lot of the extra time contemplating/preparing for/recovering from those jobs. That leaves the other hours in the week for the remainder of my life.

I’ve been full lately.

I mean, the Lakers are playing at championship-level. That’s 9 or 10 hours a week. *ouch*

I have to read everything I can about the Lakers at championship level . . . another 5 hours.

I have to read the rest of the paper (internet or hard copy) everyday . . . that’s 5 hours.

Then there’s the requisite martini and ‘relaxation time’ after . . . well, actually after any activity (including a day off) that begs relaxation at its conclusion. I don’t know . . . give it 5 or 10 more hours.

God forbid I currently had an exercise regimen.

So this is my way of apologizing and also explaining.

I’m a waiter. I write a waiter blog. And I haven’t been doing it. These are the things I’ve been doing instead.

Look for more from me tomorrow.

For today: An excellent night at Carney’s Corner. A poor day at Michael’s – $46. Carney’s yielded $305, supported primarily by my massive contribution of $473 to the pool.

I had a party of 13 women – three generations – celebrating Grandma’s 70^th birthday. They were so noisy, another table (party of four) was incensed, but didn’t say anything (except to me). I refused to dampen the spirits of the ladies.

Further, I would almost never tell a table to be quiet. Sorry, but it’s a public place, and people are here to have fun. No matter if I think the noise is obnoxious and rude – this is the bargain everyone makes when they go to a restaurant. Frankly, what about the opposite when guests come to a place expecting some action and liveliness but only get a dead and quiet restaurant? Do they complain to the waiter that the lack of other loud patrons is ruining their experience?

Anyway, our 13 ladies were of absolutely of the first class. They were sensitive enough to notice the discomfort the ‘other’ table was feeling. The hostess of the party came to Carney privately and said she didn’t care what they said, she was positively going to buy their dinner, in addition, of course, to the whole tab for her own party. She handed Carney a black metal (titanium?) Amex.

That turned around the attitude of the ‘offended’ party right quick. The beauty of it was that the benefactor was being genuine, and not trying to rub her wealth in the face of the ‘offended.’ Had it been me, I might have been inclined otherwise. But I don’t have a black titanium Amex.

At the end, I totaled both parties’ checks together and added on the automatic 20% gratuity. As I approached the hostess with the check, she reminded me that the other table’s check should be included. I said it was. She said great. Without looking, she handed the check presenter back to me and said, ‘Add a 30% tip.’

Ching.

Too Much Fun

Yesterday (Tuesday) felt packed to the gills. I worked lunch at Michael’s. I was fortunate to get a long-time VIP. He was sitting with another regular customer of more recent vintage (the AAA guy). ‘Hey, I didn’t know you guys knew each other,’ I said. We discussed how long each had been a fixture at Michael’s, but they didn’t divulge to me how or how long they knew each other.

AAA guy bears some mention. He’s not in the Rainmaker category, but he’s the kind of guy you’re always are happy to see in your station. He doesn’t drink, but he orders off the more-expensive dinner menu – and this usually encourages his guests to do the same. He also always orders an additional full meal to go, with dessert. And finally, he tips 20%.

Some wine was drunk, though AAA guy stuck with his Arnold Palmer. Towards the end AAA guy told me to put a $300 gift certificate on the tab before I brought the check. Surprisingly, it was the VIP, not AAA guy who accepted the check, $700+. I got $100 from him.

I was home in no time, with perfect traffic. I relaxed in bed just long enough to fall asleep for about five minutes, and that was fine. Arrangements were underway for Buddy Miner (remember him?) to come over for dinner, leading to an excursion to the local vintage theater (recently renovated) to see The Wrestler. Buddy had recently found a misplaced six pack of 2002 Pahlmeyer Proprietary Red, so he brought one of those. It was amazing with our shrimp pasta. Check the link for an interesting review of Austin Wine Guy’s 5-wine Pahlmeyer dinner.

We found an amazing parking spot for the theater. It was bustling. We were happy to see this local place doing some business.

Oops! Turns out the movie was cancelled that night. There was a crowd because a local councilwoman was having a community event and had taken over the theater.

We have some Screeners courtesy of my brother in the film industry, so there was talk of going home to watch The Reader. Ultimately we decided we were already on a night out, so we found something else, Last Chance Harvey, at another theater. That show was about an hour later, so we stopped and had a drink. I had a Tanqueray 10 martini.

Last Chance Harvey was just about OK. Not good. Not really bad. Perfunctory love story between people with seemingly no options left. The problem was you didn’t get any real chemistry between Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. You never even saw them French kiss, much less make love. I believe that stuff was shot, but it probably just ‘didn’t work.’

We dropped off Buddy and continued on to have another drink. There was much to talk about.

I mentioned briefly about the in-laws visiting. Let me go a little more in depth. Due to the original purchase terms of our house, my parents are part owners. At the time, they signed on to pay the 2^nd mortgage and live in the downstairs bedroom for two years. It came out to around 24% stake. When two years were up, we appraised the house. Son-of-a-gun if the place hadn’t appreciated tremendously – like $200,000. Remember those times? That was the end of our agreement, so we kind of locked in their equity right there. It came to about $50k. We didn’t have the money to pay them, but that was okay – these were the go-go days. Meantime, my parents (who had been more or less splitting their time between here and Michigan) elected to keep hold of that room for when they visited, and paid us rent. The rent thing went in and out of effect. Mostly I didn’t want to charge them, but on a couple occasions we had to contemplate renting that room to make our nut. That’s when they paid. They did so 12 or 15 months.

This year, as usual, they came around Thanksgiving and set up shop. Around the same time, the wife got a call from her Dad, Phineas (coincidentally, also from Michigan).

‘Great news! We’re coming to visit!’

‘Great! When? And how long are you staying,’ my wife said.

‘Well, we’ll be there for Christmas. And we’re staying until April.’

Come again?

The wife explained that would be difficult, told them the story about my parents, and that they will already be here.

‘Oh, that’s okay. We’ll be down in San Diego with Dotty (another daughter, with a one-bedroom apartment) quite a bit. We’ll be back and forth,’ he said.

He steamrolled it. This clearly was wrong on many levels. Even with the split time with Dotty, that’s still an F’ of a long stay. And these people are not easy to begin with. And, my wife feels exactly the same, so it’s not just ’cause they’re not my parents.

I started polling people at random about our situation. Turns out, no one has ever had, or ever heard of someone having, both sets of in-laws at the same time. It just isn’t done. The indignity of it is that it was Phineas and Adele who forced themselves on us.

It is bad taken merely at that. But these are also difficult people. They are both retired, and they’re both more like grandparents than regular parents. They have nothing to do, and all day to do it. They just want to talk.

Is that so hard? No, not for a week or so. Good to spend time with the folks, establish a rapport, build some history. But people with jobs and a crushing mortgage, and lots of other things they like to do, not to mention friends – you don’t really have 3-4 hours a day to set aside for this. And I’m not joking about 3-4 hours. The day starts (for us) with a pot of coffee, perhaps the newspaper or email . . . And they’re already up, waiting at the table downstairs, ready to talk. And boy can they talk after a full night’s rest and some coffee in them! There goes about an hour, before we gratefully leave for work. Coming home around 3 or 4 p.m., they’re waiting again. This session is limited to an hour or so if we are both working doubles. If it’s not – uh-oh. Then getting home at 11 p.m. sets up the Big Session. They’ve accommodatingly adjusted their schedule (mostly Phineas, actually) to go to bed later so they can enjoy more time with us. This is the 2-3 hour Big Session. The Big Session is typically Phineas goading his daughter (the wife) into playing solitaire while he watches, ‘helps,’ and comments on everything.

What do Phineas and Adele talk about? Mostly about food. What they’ve having later, what they already had, where we would like to eat with them, meals they’ve eaten, meals they’ve prepared. Aside from that, Phineas likes to uncork homespun nuggets of wisdom about life in general. He has few that are not completely trite and extremely time-worn. Actually, he has few in general, tending to repeat himself whenever the unbearable silence stretches out past 2 or 3 seconds. Adele is actually worse. She’s very unintelligent, the kind of person who latches onto a factoid she’s heard and invariably misunderstands it. Then she compounds her stupidity by using her misunderstood factoid to extrapolate new theories – themselves equally half-baked.

Their coffee maker was malfunctioning (yes, they brought their own coffee maker), as in, the coffee didn’t brew – the water came through the machine into the carafe hot but still clear. Her proposed solution was to figure out how to reprogram the clock. I asked why she thought that would affect the actual brewing of the coffee? She said that it worked fine when the clock was set correctly, but it had since become unplugged, which had reset the clock. I told her I didn’t think that was the problem and I would look at it. She told me not to bother, she would find the manual and try to fix it herself. Or else she’d take it to San Diego and have Dotty’s boyfriend take a shot at it – after all, he was the one who set the clock properly in the first place.

Meantime, my parents hadn’t really been behaving all that maturely themselves. After about a week of Phineas and Adele, they became sullen, pouting, unresponsive. They mostly stayed in their room unless absolutely necessary. My step-dad would sit out on the couch with his computer for hours and not even acknowledge hellos. My mom made a better effort, at least maintaining conversation when she was in their presence. But she would pretty quickly retreat to the room. They weren’t making things any better, but neither I nor my wife blamed them too much. We were doing the same thing.

The wife would purposely stay out after work and have a drink or two with friends rather than come home right away. I spend a lot of time up here on the computer with the door closed. Whenever the Big Session commences, I decline the invitation to play cards, and head up here. I can’t watch the Lakers in the living room because Phineas talks too much, so I do so in the bedroom. We usually dodge their attempts to sequester us for lunch somewhere on our days off. An account of what happens when we’re not successful at this can be found in the previous post, I Don’t Hate Mondays.

All in all, this was not working. But come Tuesday, they left (finally) for San Diego for a mere 9 days. They’ve been here for a month and a half solid (excepting their respective stays in the hospital – don’t ask, but be assured it’s just as ridiculous as everything else).

So to get back to my Tuesday recap, this is why we wanted to have another drink somewhere: so we could talk about the situation now that there’s some breathing room.

We had a frustrating half hour trying several bars that didn’t work: one was closed, one had pool night with no open chairs, another had karaoke with no open chairs, another we didn’t even enter because the people outside were seriously scary. We ended up at a familiar haunt and had three Cadillac Margaritas total: 1.5 each.

Most of the time we groused about the situation and how selfish and insensitive her father and stepmother were. (It should be noted that this same duo had almost zero input – financially and spiritually and time-spent – into the wife’s life until about five years ago. Phineas never paid child support after he left [when the wife was 6 years old]. The wife lived with them for a year, during which she was mostly grounded and they stole her paychecks.) We are all for acknowledging what your parents did in sacrificing for your well-being, but these people didn’t have any deposits in that bank. They just kind of appeared in her life once everything was fine again. And appeared here once we had a big house and they didn’t feel like spending the winter in Michigan and their other three kids had moved out – though they weren’t staying with any of them for some reason

Our discussion went on like that. And it ended with the wife saying she didn’t know what to do. I offered to be the one to have The Talk with them, as long as she was present. The talk will be frank and firm, but as diplomatic as possible. I’ll probably have to say something like, ‘A week or two is fine – we love it. But we have too much going on to put you up for four months. My parents are paying rent. They own part of this house. They have a say in staying here. But you’ve kind of overstepped your bounds by assuming it would be all right to live with us.’

I hope I can say something like that. But it might be hard . . .

So we get home and I still have the Lakers on Tivo. Well, nothing like a martini and the Lakers . . .

Come morning, I had clearly had Too Much Fun the night before. I spent most of the day with my version of a hangover: a tension headache across the back of my neck and head, and a general feeling of disorientation. It was a good day at Michael’s: $144. I made it through without screwing up anything.

When I got home I snuggled into bed for a nap . . . that lasted till 9:30 p.m.

My days of being hungover at work are behind me, but every now and then things get away from you.

Weekends Going Strong

There’s been some concern about me in cyberspace after my blowout in the luxury box at the Lakers/Clippers game. In fact, I’m fine. I’ve merely had a relatively busy three days, and was also spending time working on my screenplay again after abandoning it through the holidays.

The game was essentially a Lakers laugher. Personally, I ate enough free food to cause bloat pain. Drank four beers, too. The box was pretty cool. Previously, my only luxury box experience was at New Comiskey for a White Sox game. The Staples Center has done a better job with their boxes. The baseball game was a fun experience. It was a lot like watching a game from a great distance in someone’s really cool living room. The orientation of the box actually served to divert your attention from the field (unless you were watching on one of the numerous TVs). For this basketball game, you still have that effect in the ‘living room’ portion of the box: carpet; granite counters laden with all kinds of prepared food; two refrigerators stocked with beer, water, and soft drinks; a freezer full of ice; a sofa and comfortable chairs; flat panel TV and several regular tube-type models; art on the walls. The difference (and it’s a big difference) is that to the front of the box there are 20 stadium seats on three stepped rows. These rows extend into the arena, with open air above and below you, so you feel again part of the live event experience. A+ for Staples Center.

Buddy poured Merus Reserve at his condo while we watched Keith Olbermann act smug and act funny on MSNBC. The drive to downtown L.A. was extremely smooth: 40 minutes door to parking lot. Home was even better: 25 minutes. We all had a nice time. It turned out the banker feteing Buddy was actually his ex-banker. He had switched banks and was trying to steal Buddy back.

Since Wednesday, I’ve had some very good days on the job. Lunch Thursday was $109. Dinner at Carney’s Thur-Sat: $165, $220, $275. I continue to marvel at the resiliency of the local economy – at least my section of it.

We lost a busboy last night. He had put in his notice. We’re not sad to see him go. Peoro is Primo’s (our main busser) brother. He came from a neighboring restaurant where he had been promoted to waiter, then got ‘laid off.’ He was very frustrating to us servers. My take is that he never got it out of his head that he was no longer a waiter. Among his many irritating habits:

1. Watching us count our money at the end of the shift.
2. Taking orders from tables instead of sending the waiter to do it.
3. Obliviousness to table maintenance. Getting him to fill waters was literally a matter of pointing to an empty glass and asking him to please fill it.
4. Shyness about asking guests if they were done so he could clear their plates. This was surprising in view of his eagerness to approach diners to take drink, food, and dessert orders.
5. Walking around to appear busy while never actually picking anything up.
6. Refusal/inability to learn position numbers for running entrees (he was with us the better part of a year).
7. Asking ‘Decaf?’ when we ask him to bring coffees. No. I want two coffees. If I wanted Decaf I would have said ‘Two Decafs.’ If I wanted one Decaf, one Regular I would have said, ‘One Coffee, one Decaf.’
8. And my all-time busser pet peeve: Showing up to take dirty plates out of my hands after I’ve just cleared the whole table. Where were you 60 seconds ago? I’ve already done all the work. Don’t act like you’re doing your job showing up now.

He’s going to become a waiter again at a new Lebanese restaurant in a poor section of town.

Fair Approximation Of Peoro’s Table Maintenance

Last night I had another Elbow Man. He didn’t go to the Nth degree with it, but he trapped that damned thing for a good fifteen minutes after a 3 hour meal. And it was indeed the scenario where he was lording over the moment so his guests could fully appreciate his generosity. And it was indeed him who held forth that entire fifteen minutes. And it was him who made a joke about the tip just before he filled in and totaled his charge voucher. (Every waiter knows that any mention of the tip in any context means you’re getting a bad tip. A joke of ‘We’ll take that off your tip. Ha-ha!’ The boast, ‘Don’t worry, I’m gonna take good care of you.’ The question, ‘Is the tip included?’ All these comments and more are sure death.)

I’ve had a history with this guy. The first time he came in, he brought his own wine and we charged $25 each corkage. It turned out that one of the wines he brought was the label of someone I knew personally – a friend of a friend. It was a boutique-type wine very few know about. It also turned out he knew the vintner as well. So we traded stories and such. This diner is the kind who likes to talk wine. (Last night he chastised me for pouring too much of his precious Behrens & Hitchcock in everyone’s glasses: ‘Less is more.’ Incidentally, the level I poured was less than half a normal glass of wine as poured at Carney’s.) Anyway, that first occasion he complained bitterly about the corkage price. I gave him my usual (and quite valid) spiel that Carney prices her wines at less than double markup from wholesale, which is very inexpensive for a nice restaurant. She wants to encourage guests to take advantage of her award winning wine list. I also pointed out that while $25 might be a little higher than average for fine dining, I had seen many restaurants with $30, $40, even $50 corkage fees.

‘Well it’s ridiculous. With this corkage, I might as well have bought something off the list . . .’

Right. Now you’re getting the idea, dude.

Back to last night, he received the charge voucher (total before tip: $293), poised his pen over the tip line, and said, ‘Okay. So this means you get $29. Ha-ha!’

I just walked away. The tip was $45.

Tivo At Rest

My Tivo machine will be getting a day off today, as I attend the Lakers-Clippers game in person at Staples Center. Buddy Miner, a regular customer who became a friend (who said it can’t be done?) received some seats in a luxury box from his banker. Since Buddy and I watch a Lakers game on TV together every now and then, he thought of me.

It’s a Clippers home game. The funny thing is that the Game is the same, but if the Clippers host at Staples Center, it’s the best game of the season. If the Lakers host at Staples Center, it’s the worst game. So I’m going to the best game of the season. Thankfully, Kobe Bryant will be in the lineup despite suffering a dislocated finger in the last game.

The festivities start at Buddy’s penthouse(ish) condo in a downtown tower. He’s a big wine guy, so no doubt we’ll be drinking some $100 stuff like Hundred Acre or Pahlmeyer. Then off to the Box. Can’t wait!

It was a $55 day at Michael’s. Not much business. My best party was a 7-top of bankers. They were in conversation the whole meal, mostly about the bank bailout situation. I heard some things like, the next phase of bail out money is more likely to be deployed helping distressed mortgage holders. One said he didn’t think it would fly to take another round of money and have nothing to show for it to the public. In other words, he as much as acknowledged that the first $350 billion just disappeared, leaving ‘us’ no better off than before. They also discussed that the government wouldn’t take over the banking industry, as is happening to a large degree in other countries, because the People won’t tolerate it. They said that even if private takeovers don’t occur because they don’t make sense for the buying institution, the government is urging those institutions to continue with their diligence, because an opportunity might come up later through the government under better terms.

To their credit, it was a light meal – mostly salads and iced teas. No fiddling while Rome burns today.

Back From Vegas (to reality)

Well, like a lot of investments these days, the ol’ Waiter’s 401k took a hit recently. All told, we were probably down about $500 for the 2.5 day visit. The gambling itself didn’t go too badly. I spent some time slightly up, a lot of time at about even, and finished about $200 in the red.

We stayed at the Golden Nugget, downtown. Upon arriving at 2:30 a.m. we visited the coffee shop for some food, and to redeem a buy-one-get-one-free coupon. Across the dining room I saw Jamie-Lynn Sigler, aka Meadow Soprano from the old HBO show, The Sopranos. She was stunning and young, having a late meal with what appeared to be some family and friends – about nine people. I always like seeing celebrities.

We had dinner at Hugo’s Cellar in the basement of the Four Queens hotel. People in the know are aware of Hugo’s. It’s an excellent restaurant of the steak and seafood variety. Their best features in my opinion: a red rose for each lady, non-a la carte menu, bundled build it yourself salad prepared tableside by your server, lemon sorbet intermezzo, and generous martinis that come with an additional side car buried in crushed ice to keep cold. The sommelier, John, is very gracious and helpful with wine selection. He also told us that business had been slower recently, as with all restaurants. I find it refreshing when someone tells the truth about such things. He also pointed out that several venerable restaurants had closed recently, with more coming every month.

The gambling highlight had to be when we decided to head for the Strip to party and get something to eat. We were on a tight budget, but we didn’t want to drive, as we would be drinking. Frankly, we hesitated a bit about the cost of the cab. As a solution we decided to make the money for the cab before we set out. We put down a $25 chip on an empty blackjack table. Shuffle. We got 11 to the dealer’s 6. Well, you have to double. We got a ten, then the dealer busted. Sweet! Once we got to Caesar’s we decided to do some more traipsing around, and thus repeated the cab fare endeavor a few times. We won every hand and made another $100.

The room at the Nugget was superb. They’ve really fixed up the place a lot. In fact, all of downtown has been fixed up. Although the casinos and hotels are definitely on the low end, every single one we visited was very clean, with new carpet, and often a recent general remodel job. In the old days, downtown was pretty damn funky, excluding the Nugget. I used to like that about the Horseshoe (which isn’t even called the Horseshoe anymore – Binion’s). It was old timey, dark and cozy, kind of dirty, and very genial. Now they’re all much more ‘corporate’ feeling.

First night we were up until 8:30 in the morning. The next night we were responsible, hitting the bed at 6:30 a.m. We got a fair amount of sleep, but the adrenaline and the drinking really burned us out. On returning home, it wasn’t until last night/this morning that I’ve felt normal and rested again.

Fairly slow at both jobs since returning. However, Wednesday at Michael’s I had my best call party, Kool. He’s been MIA mostly the last 3-4 months, and even when I have seen him, he hasn’t been drinking. Wednesday, though, he was back in every way. He ordered two bottles of 100 Acre Cab: $450 a bottle. His six-top had appetizers and ordered from the dinner menu, plus desserts all round. That was a $285 tip for me. So, though it was slow, I did very well and ended the week (today) with a $135 daily average for lunch.

Dinner shift last night, the BCS Championship Game (and economic doldrums) killed us. We made only $45 and were out the door at 8 p.m. Tonight will be better. Looking forward to $150+ and an icy martini at the end of the night to enjoy whilst watching the Lakers on Tivo.