YOU'RE FIRED

Tip pools are the best of times and the worst of times. They are wonderful because if you get the awful table that sits all night drinking tea and coffee, your co worker with the 8top and 400$ tab makes up for it. On top of that, everyone works together and people have no problem telling each other when they need to step up. For the most part, things are less stressful because we are all on the same team.

At the same time, there’s always the one person that everyone wants to vote off the island. You're forced to share your money that you earned and they slacked off for. It’s like when your teacher used to grade on a curve, and there was always the one person who fucked it up for everyone. You hate them.

That person is one of our bussers who on top of not doing a damn thing, drives everyone crazy by simply being himself. Harsh, I know but literally no one at the restaurant likes him. So when our assistant manager Lori passed the word on to a few of us, “not to say anything, but, today will probably be his last day,” we breathed a sigh of relief. Naturally, ten minutes later the entire staff knew about his up and coming farewell, and decided to migrate to our bar while we waited to find out if the news was to good to be true.

We drank at the bar while he spent over an hour in the office. No signs of life yet. And then, he got his belongings together and brushed by us as we looked on, wide eyed and trying to pretend like we had no idea what was happening. The hush falls over the group, like when you know someone was just talking about you. He didn’t say good bye and we knew it didn't go well.

So this morning, I was ready for a relaxing day, stress free and the start of a brand new era at the restaurant. I rounded the corner coming out of the back area and I almost fell over. There he was coming through the front door. I prayed he was just picking up his paycheck, but he marched over to the computer and clocked in for his shift.

My manager didn’t have the balls to do it.