Waiter Rant (3 page)

The outfit I worked for operated a swath of psychiatric clinics throughout the region. Like every American company in 1999 with more than five employees, they were dreaming about going public. Drunk on New Economy Kool-Aid, the higher-ups droned catchphrases such as “best practices” and “due diligence” like cultic mantras and were so busy dreaming about stock options and yacht clubs that they forgot to attend to small details like ethics. The last straw came when one of the regional VPs started insisting we admit mentally retarded people into our program, technically a violation of Medicare law. Just like at the seminary and in my previous job, I once again found myself surrounded by well-educated people who looked good, said the right things, and behaved dishonestly. The therapists and I refused to cave in to their demands. The company decided to get rid of me.

Because the company was scared of lawsuits, they didn’t fire me right away. Instead, they took their sweet time, drafting warning letters for my personnel file and waging a rather cynical
campaign to prove that I was incompetent. At that point I probably was incompetent. I had tried being a good corporate soldier, but the office politics wore down my enthusiasm. Like my old seminary overlords I think everyone was hoping I’d have the good grace to leave on my own.

That meant I had plenty of time to jump ship and look for another job. But instead of hitting the bricks, I hid out in a small park for two months, smoking cigars, reading books, feeding the ducks, and trying to figure out what do to with my life. I was like a Wall Street guy who’d been downsized but was afraid to tell his wife he’s been fired. The only difference was I wasted time smoking in a park instead of pantomiming a daily commute. I knew I was going to be canned, so I figured I might as well get paid for goofing off right up until the last minute. Bleed the suckers dry. That was my motto.

But I had bills to pay, and I didn’t want to languish in unemployment hell again while looking for another job. Some part of me understood that if I didn’t get a job and keep moving, I’d get depressed again. But what could I do? I couldn’t get a health care job. Everyone in my close-knit industry knew I was a screwup.

My brother was working at a busy restaurant while going to school part time. When I told him how bad things were at my job, he said he could get me a brief gig at his place until I got back on my feet. When he initially proposed the idea, I laughed at him. Me? A waiter? I always thought that was a gig for bad actors, cokeheads, and teenagers.

But I had to face a hard, cold reality. I was a college-educated thirty-year-old with no real marketable skills. I’d never had a job lasting longer than two years. I knew nothing about working in a restaurant. But it was better than nothing, and what did I have to lose? So I called my brother and asked him if the job offer was still good. It was.

And that, my friends, is how the whole waiter thing started.

S
ince Sammy screwed me over by calling me in for an un-scheduled brunch shift, I’ve got to haul myself in early and prep Amici’s dining room for the Sunday morning crowd. Brunch is, without a doubt, the worst shift a waiter can work. The after-church crowds are the worst tippers. Sometimes they like giving the servers religious tracts in lieu of a tip. Often the pamphlets are full of descriptions of eternal hellfire. Trust me, on Sunday morning, most waiters are hungover and wiped out from doing the things that are supposed to get you into hell in the first place. Giving a waiter a religious tract is like giving Mephistopheles a parking ticket. We just rip it up and throw it in the street.

On very little sleep, I start dragging the large Pellegrino shade umbrellas out of the storage room and onto the outdoor patio. As I’m struggling to unfurl one of the rusty umbrellas, I notice a tired-looking man smoking a cigarette by the front door. He doesn’t look like he wants to come in and eat.

“Can I help you, sir?” I ask.

“I’m looking for job,” the man replies. He has a thick Russian accent.

I look at the man. He looks like a laborer. His hands are calloused, and his shoes are caked with grime. He smells like fish.

“The owner will be here soon,” I reply. “You can ask him if he’s hiring.”

“Thanks.”

The man cups his cigarette inside his palm to protect it from the wind. I’ve seen my Eastern European relatives do the same thing a thousand times.

“You want some coffee?” I ask.

The Russian man looks surprised. “Yes,” he murmurs. “Thank you.”

“Come inside. I’ll get you a cup.”

The Russian guy takes a seat near the entrance. I bring him a cup of coffee, sugar, and cream. I even put a piece of biscotti on the plate.

“Thanks,” the man says.

“No problem,” I say. “Caesar’ll be here in a minute.”

The Russian man settles into his seat and sips his coffee. A sad smile plays out on his face. I feel bad for the man. I can tell he’s hurting for money.

I go back to setting up my station. Caesar walks in, nattily dressed as always, holding an Italian newspaper under his arm.

“Who’s that?” he asks me, pointing to the Russian man.

“Some guy looking for a job.”

Caesar puts down his paper and walks up to the man.

“Are you a Jew?” Caesar asks.

“Huh?” the Russian replies.

“Are you a Jew?”

The Russian man puts down his coffee. He looks confused. “I looking for job,” he says.

“I knew it,” Caesar says. “I can hear it in your voice. You’re a Jew. A filthy fucking Russian Jew.”

I stand rooted to the floor in shock.

“Get out of my restaurant!” Caesar yells. “Get out before I call the cops and tell them you’re stealing.”

The Russian man makes a quick exit. Caesar watches him go, then walks up to me.

“Who gave that guy a cup of coffee?” he demands.

“I did,” I reply.

“Why’d you let him in here?”

“He was looking for a job, Caesar.”

“I DECIDE WHO WORKS HERE!” Caesar screams. “NOT YOU! YOU FUCKING LOSER!”

“R-relax, Caesar,” I stammer. “You’re gonna give yourself a coronary.”

“YOU THINK YOU’RE FUNNY?” Caesar shouts. “I’LL FIRE YOU
AND
YOUR BROTHER.”

It’s then I realize the gleam in his eyes isn’t the remnants of youthful vigor—it’s hatred. My brother’s in school and needs this job. He can’t afford my telling Caesar to shove it. Come to think of it, I can’t afford it either.

“Sorry, Caesar,” I mumble.

“Fucking Jews,” Caesar growls, storming off.

I stare at the floor. Why am I taking shit from a guy like Caesar?
Because I need money, that’s why.
I wonder how many people are like me, trapped in jobs they don’t like, afraid to risk their paycheck by confronting a depraved boss.

When Rizzo comes in, I tell him about the entire exchange.

“Good old Caesar,” Rizzo sighs. “He won’t be B’nai B’rith’s Man of the Year anytime soon.”

“How can he run a restaurant and be like that?”

“Oh, Caesar’s all smiles taking your money. Jew, black, gay, he doesn’t care, just as long as your money’s green.”

“Jesus,” I mutter.

“Haven’t you noticed there’re no black or gay waiters here?” Rizzo says. “And if you’re Jewish, don’t advertise.”

“Why is he like that?”

“Caesar was born in Italy, but he grew up in Paraguay after
the war,” Rizzo says. “I think his dad was probably some kind of Mussolini dude.”

“No way.”

“Didn’t you see
The Boys from Brazil
?” Rizzo snorts. “A lot of those fascist shits moved down there.”

“If you’re right,” I say, “that’d explain a lot.”

“Welcome to the restaurant business.”

Somehow I survive working that crazy sleep-deprived day. As the week progresses another waiter refusing to be shook down by Sammy quits in disgust. I catch a lucky break. The pool of available labor has tightened up. Sammy has no choice but to put me back on the primo dinner shifts. Since I have a good work ethic and show up on time, Sammy has to depend on me now. That keeps his predatory instincts at bay—for a while.

My first weeks as a waiter go by slowly. Physically and mentally I manage to tough it out. It’s amazing how the threat of poverty helps you acclimate to anything. My feet stop hurting, and I graduate out of the special-ed section Rizzo had me training in. By my sixth Saturday night I beat Rizzo in tips.

I’m proud of myself. I’m already working Saturday night shifts, and, to my amazement, I’m making more money than I earned at the hospital. Not having medical or vacation is incidental; I dove into a new job and made it work for me. That makes me feel good. As the weeks turn into months my anxiety level dissipates.

I credit Rizzo for keeping me sane as I learned the waiter ropes. He’s a very strange man who’s led a very interesting life, and I quickly learn he’s never set foot in Vietnam. “The ’Nam?” he confessed to me. “Dude, I smoked so much pot that I don’t remember Nixon’s first term. I was never in the army. I just say that shit to scare the kiddies.”

While Rizzo avoided battling the Vietcong, he couldn’t avoid the long arm of the Internal Revenue Service. Back in the 1970s Rizzo owned a high-end restaurant in Manhattan. “The place was so popular,” he told me, “that high-class models—
Vogue
types,
you know?—they would eat lunch there every day. The waiters’d be sniffing the seats when they left.” With unfettered access to drugs, discothèques, and women, Rizzo claimed he bedded more conquests than Wilt Chamberlain. “I had so many girlfriends that I redecorated my apartment more times then Neiman Marcus!” was a favorite saying of his. (No, I don’t know what that means either.)

Rizzo, however, was not fond of paying taxes. I don’t know the whole story, but at some point he sold his Manhattan eatery and skipped town owing the IRS a huge tax bill. Spiritually desolated, he fled to a remote corner of Montana, bought a .357 Magnum, and began a Ted Kaczynski existence living inside an abandoned railroad car. Growing his own food and hunting his own game, he became interested in Buddhism. After attending a few retreats at a nearby Buddhist monastery Rizzo became a semi-vegetarian, got a dog, and started learning everything he could about karma. He kept the Magnum, though. After a while his mother fell ill, and Rizzo, now sick of his eremitical existence, decided to move back east to care for her. On his day off he would travel into Manhattan and do his mom’s shopping, prepare all her meals for the week, and keep her company. While many people taking care of aging parents might consider that level of effort a burden, Rizzo did it with gladness in his heart. Some of the Buddha must have rubbed off on him.

Because he knew I had studied to be a priest, Rizzo and I had some interesting discussions about religion. For my part, I didn’t know much about karma. I always thought it was about the bad things you did in life coming back to bite you on the ass. The more I talked to Rizzo, however, the more I learned that karma’s not about retribution, it simply deals with what
is
. To grossly simplify the concept, the effects of all our deeds impact all our past, present, and future experiences. We are, in the end, responsible for all our actions and the pain and joy it brings to others. The older I get, the more sense that belief system makes to me.

Rizzo was a pistol-packing Buddhist, mind you, so he was attracted to the stranger and contradictory stories about his faith.
He loved telling me the story about the two Tibetan lamas who were such bitter enemies that, when they died, they tried using their considerable powers to kill each other in the womb as they attempted to reincarnate into new bodies. “Baby ninja karmic assassins!” was how Rizzo described them.

While one part of Rizzo was very spiritual, another part of him was tough as nails. Rizzo didn’t take shit from anyone, and he didn’t suffer fools lightly. He’d verbally pimp slap chefs, owners, customers, and especially other waiters. The best example of this was how he brought it to Wahdi, the worst waiter I ever had the displeasure to work with.

Wahdi, a hulking, sweaty brute from Syria who was in the country on a student visa, got hired by Sammy a few months after I started at Amici’s. Devoid of social skills, knowledge of American culture, or patience, Wahdi was ill suited for the job of waiting tables. Worst of all, he was a greedy son of a bitch. New waiters normally start off with the worst shifts and lowest-earning sections. Not Wahdi. Because he was tight with Sammy, he thought he was entitled to the best sections and yelled at the hostess whenever he fell behind in the customer count. If he discovered that he made a dollar less than any other server, he started shouting that we were discriminating against him because he was from the Middle East. After being a pain in the ass for several weeks, Wahdi decided to start a turf war with Rizzo. Big mistake.

“Hey, Rizzo,” Wahdi says at the start of a Friday night, “I’m working your section tonight.”

“The hell you are,” Rizzo replies.

“I talk to Sammy,” Wahdi continues. “I tell him it not fair you always have the best section. He agreed and give it to me.”

Rizzo looks over the top of his glasses and gives Wahdi a look that zips right through his eyeballs, punches a hole out the back of his skull, and continues traveling through windows, masonry, pedestrians, and several parked cars before its energy dissipates somewhere over the Hudson River. I’ve seen Rizzo reduce cus
tomers to quivering lumps of gelatin with that look before. Rizzo calls it his “thousand-yard waiter stare.” It’s devastatingly effective. I’ve got to develop my own one day.

“If you fuck with me, Wahdi,” Rizzo growls, “I am going to call the Syrian consulate in New York and tell them you’re a Mossad agent.”

We all hear Wahdi’s sphincter pop. The Syrian intelligence services are not known for their subtlety. After Wahdi cries in Arabic to the manager, Sammy sticks him in Rizzo’s section just to shut him up.

Chagrined, Rizzo turns to me and says, “Time to dance a little jihad on Wahdi’s head.”

Rizzo runs off to the kitchen. He returns with Fluvio in tow, ostensibly to tell us the evening’s specials. After reviewing the night’s offerings the chef tells us he’s prepared a special dish.

“Tonight we have freshwater ostrich in a Dijon mustard sauce,” Fluvio says. “Make sure you tell the customers it’s freshwater ostrich—not saltwater—the taste is entirely different.”

All the waiters stare at their dupe pads and pretend like they’ve heard nothing out of the ordinary. Wahdi writes down the specials furiously.

“You got that, Wahdi?” Fluvio asks.
“Freshwater ostrich.”

“Yes, I got it,” Wahdi says.

Rizzo and the chef smile at each other. This is going to be fun.

The restaurant fills up immediately, and Wahdi’s in trouble from the start. Greedy for sales, he pitches freshwater ostrich to his tables and can’t understand why everyone’s laughing at him. Embarrassed, but not knowing why, Wahdi’s social ineptitude takes over, and he starts arguing with the customers. “Of course ostrich is a fish!” he yells. As he gets angrier and angrier he moves slower and slower. His tables wait half an hour just to get sodas.

Finally a customer walks up to Sammy and starts complaining. “That waiter is a complete asshole,” he yelps. “I want another one. He thinks ostrich is a fish!”

Sammy knows what’s up. He pulls Wahdi off to one side and tries to calm him down. Before long the two of them are screaming at each other in Arabic. Seeing this, Rizzo and I swoop in to snap up the unattended tables and, before you can say
baba ganoush
, Wahdi loses his section.

Sammy’s pissed, but there is nothing he can do. Wahdi’s temper has gotten the better of him. One of the Egyptian busboys starts taunting Wahdi mercilessly. “Freshwater ostrich? You asshole! Go back to Syria!”

Wahdi, in turn, starts screaming at the busboy. In the background I can hear Rizzo crowing, “Hello? Damascus information? Could I have the number for the secret police?”

Realizing he’s been set up, Wahdi runs up to Rizzo, screaming. “YOU HAVE DONE THIS TO ME!”

Rizzo smiles and yells back. “WELCOME TO AMERICA, MOTHERFUCKER!”

Wahdi breaks down, crying in rage.

He was fired several weeks later.

A short time after Wahdi’s departure Caesar decided to have a massive heart attack. I know, you’re not surprised, but let me tell you the story anyway. Earlier that fateful day the industrial-strength dishwasher went on the fritz. That’s stressful for any restaurant owner since the dishwasher is one of the most expensive and complex machines in the kitchen. Ironically, it’s always run by the lowest-paid guy in the place. Because the machines are so expensive, most establishments lease the machine and/or have service contracts.

Ralph, the rep from the company that leases the machine to us, comes over to examine the washer’s innards. After he finishes his examination he informs Caesar that a $500 part will have to be ordered to get the thing up and running. Caesar’s response is to start screaming profanities in the middle of the lunch rush and chase Ralph out of the restaurant. Horrified, several customers flee the restaurant without paying their bills. Later that day, Caesar is rushed to the hospital suffering chest pains. Go figure.