Rice Foo Chop (part I)

Employment and I have a long, storied history, equaled only by my relationship with relationships.  Jobs, like women, come and go, usually seem great at first, but then invariably end up being a pain in my ass that I would rather do without than put up with their shit in order to get paid, or laid.  I should probably start a subsection on here with employment stories, both those that involve how I got fired as well as all the fucked up shit I’ve done at work that I never got caught doing.  Here is one such story, albeit of the former category.

Last fall, with the national and local economies both in the shitter, I found myself out of work.  I do lots of stupid little things to survive in a ski town, including just about anything that can be done in a bar or restaurant.  I’ve been a dishwasher, a cook, a server, a host, a bouncer, a bartender, a delivery guy, you name it.  I’ve fixed the stereo, the lights, and the plumbing. I’ve plunged the toilet, I’ve mopped the puke, and the piss, and the blood, I’ve stocked the beer and the liquor, I’ve seen people at their best, and I’ve seen people at their worst.  The ratio thereof depends mostly on the establishment where I may find myself employed at any given point in time, but there are no hard and fast rules.  Even in the nicest restaurants in America, people fall off their barstools and puke on the floor, but some of the dives I’ve worked in make it more of a regular occurrence.  One such place, the Talk of the Town, even puts their hard earned reputation as the drunkest bar in town right in their all-too-true slogan: Comedy and drama nightly.  My time at the Talk will one day make up a chapter unto itself.

In any event, when one has lived in a small town for a long time, one begins to develop, for better or worse, something of a reputation.  In my particular save the earth, earn your turns, kind rainbow dolphin brothers and sisters ski town, people don’t often speak their minds in brash, uncensored, literate manners.  I, however, am from the east coast, Philadelphia, specifically, and I was raised to get it off my chest.  Before I left the suburbs of the city of Brotherly Shove, I was under the impression that everyone was of the same mindset.  I found nothing the least bit peculiar about the grandmother behind me at Flyers games yelling at the top of her lungs that the opposing team’s goon, now seated a few rows in front of us in the penalty box, sucked donkey dick and was a cheap fucking piece of shit.  This is how I was raised, Italian, Philadelphian, hockey playing, and full of piss and vinegar.  All the sign language we needed to know was that most popular of digits, raised on high in salute.

So imagine my surprise when I got to Colorado, and everyone is peacefully eating their granola, hugging trees, or making sweet love in fields of wildflowers, all four hairy legs becoming entangled in the throes of passion.  Now perhaps I could see this sort of behavior passing for acceptable were everyone from, say, Boulder, but here’s the real kicker – mostly everyone that lives in a Rocky Mountain ski town is from the fucking EAST COAST.  We’re all a bunch of ski and snowboard punks that grew up riding the shit snow back east, got a taste of champagne pow and real mountains (and dank bud), said “Fuck it!”, and shipped out west.    So you would think that everyone out here would be free of speech and eager to share their opinion, wouldn’t you?  But apparently, there is some sort of magical, invisible, personality filter at the Mississippi River, and all the loud-mouthed assholes with attitudes get sent south to Florida, and all the weed smoking peaceniks pass through to Colorado.  I don’t know quite how I managed to sneak by, myself.

The only other guy I knew that really repped the east coast proper out here was a Masshole named Jeff Martin.  He was the biggest pain in the ass to deal with when I was working at the bar, mainly because he was constantly breaking glasses (intentionally) and getting into fights.  He was also the most fun to be with when I was not working at the bar, mainly because he was constantly breaking glasses (intentionally) and getting into fights.  He eventually got run out of town, because he just couldn’t stop breaking glasses (intentionally) and getting into fights.  But he was a gooder.  He was also the fastest fucker I have ever known on a dirt bike.  Our rides together consisted of me trying as hard as I could to keep him in my sights, but always failing and getting dropped within a few twists and turns.  That was the thing about Jeff, he had to be on the edge of control at all times.  But he wasn’t scared to show you who he was.  Not everyone liked him.  In fact, most people didn’t.  But those that did had his back.  Jeff was east coast.  Jeff was funny.  Jeff was real.

The moral of that story is that when you speak your mind and wear your heart on your sleeve, you quickly develop a reputation for yourself out here in the land of the small town, bro-bra network.  Another fun fact from the quaint village of hypocrisy:  When you write about it in the paper, the townsfolk laud your efforts.  They buy you beers and slap you on the back and say, “Thanks for saying what we all think!”  But then when you ask them for a job, they turn you down, the reason being that they see you as a loose cannon, a liability just waiting to bite them in the ass for saying what they wish they could.  Pussies, the lot of ‘em.

As an example, I offer to you the previously scribed story entitled, “The nicest letter anyone has ever written about me”, contained on this site in my blog archive.  That blog cost me my job, because the owner of the restaurant where I worked, a good friend of mine and a fan of my writing, objected to it for fear of potential lost customers.  He loves my art, until I happen to write about one of his customers.  Not that the douchebag who wrote that letter would ever read my response to him, as he would have no reason to ever be on my blog site.  Someday, though, I’m going to send my book to him, sign it “Fuck you”, and highlight his chapter.  I still have his home address.  But my friend, my employer at the time, objected to my response, and demanded that I remove it from my blog.  I told him to get fucked.  Then I quit.  Do you see what I go through to express myself?  I thought I was somehow guaranteed that right in this country.  Ha.  It’s a nice ideal, anyway.  My friend and I eventually kissed and made up.  He still loves my writing.  I still think he’s a good guy.  But speaking my mind cost me my job, and it wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last.

As my loose cannon reputation grew, I found it harder and harder to secure gainful employment.  So last fall, when a new restaurant was opening in town, and the ad for bartenders appeared in the local paper, and the proprietors were from Denver and didn’t know me from Charlie Manson, I jumped at the opportunity.  I like being behind the bar.  I’m pretty good back there.  I don’t put up with any bullshit, but if you can handle your liquor, chances are I’ll make you laugh and give you some psychological counseling for the price of a tip.  The restaurant was going to be a nice Chinese place.  Not quite upscale, but not one with those ridiculous fucking Chinese zodiac place-mats on every table.  Who ever made that rule, that if I’m going to eat food that has nothing to do with authentic Chinese cuisine whatsoever, but is served to me by funny looking people that know very rittr about Engrish, I must constantly be reminded that I was born in the year of the monkey?  And people wonder where stereotypes come from.  Anyway, I called in a favor to the owner of the building where the eatery was going to be, a self made real estate mogul who still likes and respects me because he’s a smart guy who can think for himself, and asked him to give me a recommendation.  He did so, and for that I am grateful.    I interviewed like a pro, as smiling and saying what people want to hear is a special skill of mine, and I got the job.

I found it odd at the time that these people from Denver, China were hiring only bartenders.  There were two main, visible proprietors, a Chinese woman who spoke decent, although hilariously accented Engrish, and her cracker ass, bike riding, Colorado boyfriend.  When I asked them of their employment strategy, they seemed to think that they could run the entire restaurant by themselves, cooking and bartending excluded.  Their kitchen staff was all off the boat, and didn’t even know how to say “herro”, but could run the fuck out of some woks, as I soon learned.  But who was going to wait on the 20 or so tables in the place?  China woman and Cracker boy seemed to think they could do it all themselves.  This seemed odd to me, because I have a lot of restaurant and bar experience, and I have never seen owners or management run the entire front of the house with no servers whatsoever.  I felt certain that they had no concept of being in the weeds, which, for you desk jockeys out there, is service industry terminology for “I’m so fucking busy I can’t even figure out what to do next”.  As I was to discover, though, these people didn’t really know a whole lot about running a restaurant, and were somewhat financially motivated, to say the least.

I didn’t really get any training.  Not that I need to be trained how to run a bar, which consists a little bit of making drinks, and a lot of dealing with people, but I am accustomed to a sort of orientation at each new establishment, a process which lays out the policies and procedures of said enterprise.  Usually, you have to sign a piece of paper that states that you have read and understand the rules, and that smoking weed in the bathroom or banging customers in the liquor room was grounds for immediate termination.  But here, there was none of that.  There was a menu of specialty drinks, but I was never told how to make any of them.  I just figured it out on my own from the descriptions.  I never got to taste any of the wine I was to be selling.  There wasn’t even a menu item roll out for the staff.  I had no idea what the shit on the menu even was.  Every shift, the cooks made us a family style staff meal, which usually consisted of rice and some wacky, presumably authentic, indigenous Chinese cuisine, like fish heads or chicken feet.  It was nice of them to make us that meal, even though my very brave stomach sometimes cowered at the offering, but I never got to taste any of the actual menu items.  That fact, of course, makes suggestive selling somewhat challenging, because every fucking person that sat at my bar with a menu asked the same question – “What do you like?”  Knowing that “cash and pussy” was not the right answer, albeit the accurate one, I was forced into bullshit mode right from the get-go.  So I lied, and I told them how tasty the General Chow’s Cat was, or how the flavors of curry and coriander played together in subtle nuance on the Spicy Dragon Ass, even though I had never tried either.  Regardless, I sold the shit, which was my job.  I didn’t say, “Well, the idiots running this place don’t ever let us eat the actual menu items, so I have no fucking clue what anything tastes like.”  I did, however, suggest to Cracker boy that perhaps a menu tasting would be of value to his establishment.  I explained to him that a well informed and educated staff would invariably sell more food, and more wine, and more accurately, and thereby create a happy, returning clientele, and a nice profit margin.  I was to learn later that although Cracker boy seemed to listen to me and take my well intentioned advice to heart, China woman wanted no part of it whatsoever.

I did everything in my power to get people into that place, and to sit at my bar.  I talked the joint up constantly.  I told people how good the food was, which was only partially true, but I knew that when coupled with my powers of suggestive bullshitting and my sparkling personality, they would enjoy their stray dog dumplings with hot mustard and green tea while drinking at my bar and laughing at my witty insights.  My bar became a microcosm of cross-promotion, what with twenty somethings, MILFs, cougars, ski bums, real estate moguls, families, you name it.  Lots of people like me, they just don’t want to have me on their payroll.  I thought I was doing a pretty good job.  No, fuck that.  I WAS doing a good job.  A damn good job.  I was talking the place up, getting people in there, ringing up good sales for the owners, making decent money myself, and people seemed to genuinely enjoy their experiences there.  Well, at least at my bar, they did.

After being open for about a week or so, the Christmas crush came.  This town is busy three times a year – Christmas, March, and July.  I thought it to be somewhat suicidal to be open only a week before Christmas, especially with no wait staff of which to speak.  First impressions are lasting, and Cracker boy and China woman could not afford to discover the joys of being in the weeds during the uber-commercialized, make-believe celebration of the supposed birth of Christ, a time when people like to travel to ski towns and dine out, even in Chinese restaurants.  Deck the harrs with boughs of horry, fa ra ra ra ra, ra ra ra ra.

Not surprisingly, the Christmas crush came, and those two went down like a crack whore at the Gunsmoke truck stop.  Out on the streets, I was hearing less than favorable things about the service at House of Cat.  Big fucking surprise, what with the inter-racial rookie duo running around like a couple of chickens whose heads had already been added to that evening’s employee meal.  Shortly thereafter, miscellaneous new employees began appearing every time I showed up to work.  I guess the “we’re going to run the whole front of the house by ourselves” strategy didn’t pan out as expected.  The funny thing about all these new hires, though, was that none of them had any previous restaurant experience whatsoever, save for the few that worked at one of the ski area eateries.  Now I love our mountain, and I am friendly with the owners of the ski area, but their restaurants are notoriously sucky, and it’s hard to say which sucks more, the food or the service.  There’s a new Culinary Figurehead every year.  Most of the places get a new manager annually, two new managers on the particularly bad years.  The culinary product is marginal at best, and the service is usually piss poor, provided by the newest kids to town that jump at the first job offer they can get.  So when you, as a restaurant owner, are hiring your employees from the shallow pool of on-mountain dining service hacks, you have not been well advised, or you’re just too stupid to care.

And how to best utilize the skill sets of these terribly under-qualified service technicians?  Why, with the team waiting approach, of course!  There were no sections in the House of Cat dining room.  Every table was waited on by everyone.  So now, instead of two headless chickens running around, there were five.  Dining room patrons told me that they had no idea who to ask for a fork, or a beer, or a fortune cookie.  Why the hell would anyone use this approach?  It made it impossible to develop any sort of rapport with the customers.  None of the guests knew who their server was, and none of the servers knew what was going on with any of the 20 tables.  At least the bar was still cool, because the people sitting there had me as their definite agent, and we shared good camaraderie.  The dining room was a mess, though.  And then I learned why.

It seems that all of the servers were ringing their tickets on the same server number, instead of individual numbers, consistent with the team waiting approach.  This made it impossible to track individual sales.  It also made it impossible to track tips.  And guess where all the tips went?  Into the mysterious black hole of gratuities, where they were filtered, sanitized, and dispersed according to an ancient Chinese mathematical equation, in each server’s PAYCHECK.  Maybe you, gentle reader, have never been fortunate enough to work in the service industry, but let me assure you of something.  When your server (servers) is (are) busting his or her ass(es), they expect to leave work that night with cash in their pockets.  Sections are divided according to skill, or prowess, or who has the biggest tits, server/client bonds are made, and gratuities are paid and pocketed.  When every single fucking dollar of gratuities goes into a giant pot, disappears, and is only distributed later on IRS verifiable paychecks, something is terribly amiss.  When I tell of this policy to my career service industry friends, they are indignant.  But when this scheme gets pulled on rookies with no frame of reference, no experience, and no alternate job prospects, it seems to work quite smoothly.  Except, of course, for the actual service, which still sucks.

Back to the bar, where financial dealings went a little more according to established practice.  I rang my own tickets, under my own number, and I left with my tips.  Usually, in a restaurant, bartenders also receive a tip-out from the waitstaff for making the drinks for their tables.  This amount is most often dependent upon individual servers’ liquor sales.  Of course, it’s hard to determine individual sales totals when everything in the front of the house is getting rung up on one number.  And I never got tipped out unless I asked Cracker boy for it at the end of the night.  At first he seemed okay, although unfamiliar, with the concept.  But as China woman twisted his little white balls more and more, it became a struggle to get paid.  I’d get hit with shit like, “Well, we let you take that table at the high bar” or “The servers ran your food for you”, which I came to learn through my Rosetta Stone foreign language course is Chinese for “We want to keep the money for ourselves.”

I also learned during my tenure there that to-go orders were a great way to make extra money.  When you take a to-go order, you just punch it up on the computer, it comes out of the kitchen all bagged and ready to go, the customer shows up, and usually tips you on the total for doing not much.  When the phone rang, I jumped on it.  An order usually took no more than a couple of minutes to take, save for the “What’s on your menu?” idiots, and I could expect to pull down five or ten bucks for my time, which interpolates to a great hourly wage.  Of course, when Cracker boy, China woman, or the other clueless wait staff took to-go orders, the tips went into the black hole of gratuities.  I started to suspect that China woman and Cracker boy didn’t like me horning in on their supplemental, undocumented income.  They never said anything to me, but I knew.  Those greedy fucks were trying to pocket every dollar they could, and at the expense of their clueless waitstaff, but I wasn’t going to go along with it.  I began considering my to-go tips to be hush money.  You can fuck the stupid waitstaff, but I’ll be God damned if you’re going to fuck me.

There were lots of other little fucked up idiosyncrasies there that reeked of inexperience, and I tried to remedy them.  The bar was small, and the storage space practically nonexistent, so I suggested that we should perhaps not carry every single mass produced domestic light beer, especially since only a few sell anyway.  No one’s drinking the hard cider, either.  Ditch it.  And maybe three different Merlots by the glass was two too many.  But hey, what do I know.  I’ve worked this scene for over half my life.  Too many Mexican beers.  Try recycling.  How about giving the employees a shift drink at the end of the night?  (Cracker boy had no concept of this widely implemented practice, and was content to charge employees full price for their PBR drafts).  How about an employee discount on food?  The most basic shit, shit that’s addressed at every other establishment I’ve ever worked, was never even considered here.  It was truly the blind leading the blind.  I tried to help.  I could tell that I was the only one with any appreciable experience, save for tossing beef and broccoli in a wok.  Cracker boy listened to me.  But I could tell that when he ran it by his Mandarin labor camp, balls in a vice girlfriend, she was not appreciative, because nothing ever happened, and it was becoming more and more clear that she was running the show.

This brings me to my next issue, which is not so much how a guy can let his girlfriend boss him around and run his life, because I know lots of guys that put up with lots of shit, but the deciding factor in those cases is usually that the girls are hot.  Now I know what you’re thinking – China woman is some fine piece of Asian ass that can get away with being a bitch because she’s got that magic China hooker pussy.  But guess what – you’re wrong.  She’s beat ass ugly.  Four foot six.  85 pounds, tops.  Flat as a board.  Short hair.  Glasses.  And a language mangler that would make the Queen cringe.  I understand the Asian allure, I assure you.  I have had my Asian Poon card punched more than once.  I’ve even had lasting relationships with ricers.  But this bitch?  Never.  Not even close to fuckable.  But hey, I guess Cracker boy had to do what he had to do to get HIS card punched.  I don’t suppose he’ll be my direct competition for the mother/daughter card, though, or any of the other high paint cards.

Then China woman started turning into China bitch.  One night, when I was putting some plates in a bus tub in the kitchen, she freaked out and started screaming, “You put-a prate in-a bustub too haaaad!  You chip da prates!  You chip da prates!”  I jumped back, shocked.  I looked at the prates I had just put in the bustub.  No chips.  But apparently China bitch had emerged previously, unbeknownst to me, and unleashed her wrath on some servers for the same perceived crime.  It should be noted here that I put the prates in the bustub in the same manner and with the same force as I always have in my storied restaurant career.  I don’t want to chip the prates.  I consider myself to be a gentle handler of all supplies and equipment in a work environment.  I never broke so much as a single glass during my time there.  I always took very good care of my toys as a child.  Ask my mother.  But 85 pound China bitch felt that the honkys were abusing her fiestaware.  That was freakout number one.

Freakout number two happened at the bar, when business was winding down one night.  My bar was empty, and clean, and I remembered that I had something to do the next morning.  I use the calendar feature on my phone as my day-timer, so I took it out and punched in the next day’s appointment.  China bitch snapped.  “You no text on phone at bar!  No text on phone!  You no text at bar!”  Remember the complete and total lack of training or policy review I had (not) received?  Nowhere was phone usage ever addressed.  Never mind the fact that I wasn’t even texting anyone.  I can understand if, as an employer, you don’t want your employees using their phones at work.  But you have to TELL US THAT, you raging cunt.  There would have been no problem had I merely written the obligation on a bev-nap and stuffed it in my pocket.  But the fact that I put in in my phone made that bitch go richter.

Even with all the fucked up shit going on in this joint, I still enjoyed working there.  I ran a busy bar, and my friends came in to see me, and they spent money.  I took to ignoring China bitch, and dealing only with Cracker boy, who was, despite his overly pussy-fied tendencies at the hands of his wackjob girlfriend, a decent guy who I got along with well enough in a work environment.  I wasn’t going on any epic benders with the guy, but he was ok, and English was his native language.

Then, one Friday, while working on the mountain making tourists happy in my pass job, I got a call from Cracker boy.  It should be noted that this call came approximately one hour after a call from my faggoty-ass roommate, who informed me that he was moving out of my house in two weeks, in the middle of winter, to live with his girlfriend, a girl in whom he claimed to not be interested a few months prior, and with him was going his substantial contribution to my mortgage and utilities.  I wonder if the prospect of free rent had anything to do with that decision.  Needless to say, my stoke level was low.  Then, this:

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s (Cracker boy).”

“What’s up, man?”

“Yeah, um, we’re going to have to let you go.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, um, it’s just not working out, so we’re going to just cut ties and go our separate ways.”

“What?  I’m supposed to be working tonight.  What do you mean it’s not working out?”

“We just think it would be better to go our separate ways.”

“What the hell are you talking about?  What did I do wrong?”

“Well, (China bitch) wants someone that’s going to say ‘Yes Ma’am’ to her and not question what she says.”

“What?  All I’ve done is try to make your restaurant popular, run smoothly, and get people in there.  Have I ever done anything but a good job for you?”

“Yeah, well, job performance isn’t the issue.  I think you’ve done a great job.  We appreciate it.”

“Then why the fuck are you firing me?”

“Because (China bitch) wants someone that will say ‘Yes Ma’am’ to her.”

So there I was, on a cold, snowy Friday in January, having in approximately one hour lost both my roommate and my job, which were my only two sources of income.  Awesome.  And now I had to go be nice to tourists.  Fucking sweet.  I waited for the rest of the day for the third unpleasantry to befall me, taking extreme caution while riding, as I figured it to be something along the lines of a tree branch through the nutsack, or worse, a loss of my pass job.  I was seething.  First I was seething at my soon-to-be ex-roommate, but then Cracker boy just poured a can of gas on that fire.  That motherfucker.  All I ever tried to do was make his place popular, and make it run well, and with some common sense.  I know when I’m doing a shitty job, and I was doing a great job.  I knew that if he made money, I made money, and I wanted us to both succeed.  But then that fucking piece of shit cut me loose because I didn’t say “Yes Ma’am” to the bustub/cellphone police like I was her 1850′s Mississippi slave boy.  I give respect where it’s due, and I don’t care where you’re from, what color you are, or to whom you pray, but I’m a motherfucking American, God damn it, and I don’t take shit, especially from some four foot tall immigrant bitch with a systematically selected white translator boyfriend.  Truth be told, I knew it wasn’t Cracker boy’s fault.  He was a pawn in her game, lured in by the prospect of Asian pussy, albeit ugly Asian pussy.  I knew that he was only the messenger.  He was helpless, and hopeless.  But I wasn’t through with that bitch.  As the rage and hate welled within me, I plotted my next move.