CHALK ONE UP FOR OUR SIDE

Sunday Brunch, and I'm running around like a crazy person. Ever since our publicity in NY magazine for having the best brunch, business has been booming. The usual clientele is scores of twenty- somethings hung-over from a night out after a long week of office work. Bloody Mary's and Mimosa adorn each table and water is being chugged faster then the shots went down the night before. (and came back up for that matter). After all the one night stands and close encounters with the porcelain god, they come in and feast before spending the remainder of the day on the couch watching the DVD collection of Dave Chappell or Sex and the City.

Besides this crowd, there's the tourists. One table in particular is just screaming dysfunctional family. The son is around 18-19 and sitting on one side of the table, his parents on the other. No words are exchanged except what they would like to order, and the cracked out looking mother complains about her iced tea.
"It tastes stale."
"It was made this morning. We have hot tea if you'd like something fresher."
"No, water is fine." (of course) The son looks like he wants to kill her. She looks like this is a last ditch effort to try and spend some quality time with her family before he goes back to college. The father stopped caring a long time ago and just wants some French toast. Now.

Fourteen awkward minutes later the mother who had been trying to have a meaningless conversation with her son, was running out of things to talk about. Now, it's become my fault.
"Excuse me, will it be much longer? Can you find out if it's almost done?" she asked.

Right lady, let me hop on the phone and ask the kitchen to cook your med-well burger a little faster. They love that. I didn't even have to come up with some bullshit "yes let me go check for you". The son, silent until now, couldn't stand it. He was totally on my side.

"Mom! Calm the fuck down! Look around, do you see how busy they are?"

AWESOME.
Their food arrived one minute later.

BOM CHICA WAH WAH

This pretty much speaks for itself. Oh, how I love adventures on the N train. I took this video at 6:30 pm. coming home from a day at Coney Island. Familes and children were all present on the subway, but this couple didn't seem to mind. Right after the clip ends, her head disapears into his lap. bom chica wah wah.

check it out...fucking hilarious.



Notice his hand down the back of her skirt....followed by her reach around in the front....



at the end.. she's reaching again..and he's about to straddle her....


Hand check!!!!!!!

PARTIAL APOLOGY

There's one thing I took for granted when I wasn't working in the city. At the end of my shift I could just get in my car, and go home. I didn't have to worry about getting on the same subway car as my manager and having to talk, even though I know it's going to be a long and awkward trip home.

Tonight however, despite an awkward run in, I think I may have a new -found respect for my manager, (as much as I hate to admit it). The GM who hired me was fired the day after doing so. This is never a good sign when you're the new kid.The day after that, Mark, my new manager started working and he disliked me from the start. He was tried to get me to quit by giving me shit shifts, and bullshit excuses. I knew it, he knew it, everyone knew it. I wouldn't quit for three reasons. One, because I'm stubborn, two because I knew I was right, and three because I thought he was an asshole and I wanted to spite him.( All of which are very mature reasons, of course). When my favorite assistant manager was recently fired for no good reason, it simply added fuel to the fire.

Lately however, I've noticed a change. He's been cracking jokes with us, lightening up, and actually acknowledging that I do a good job. I realize that the owners who are higher up on the food chain then he is have been getting rid of managers left and right for years now. Maybe he was just worried about his job. Talking to him on the subway made me see that he's in the same boat as all of us. Not that I want to be best friends, but perhaps we both understand that there is an unspoken
"I'm sorry, I was wrong about you."

TRAVEL TIPS

Just as a quick announcement.... I've been working on a website for a while now which should be up and running by then end of next month if all goes well. I'm looking to add some travel advice from other people who have a really great tip to share. The general idea is somewhere that you went while on vacation that you wouldn't want to miss if you visited again. If anyone has any great stories, please e-mail me. I'll link the website to this blog once it's complete.
ambernola@gmail.com just title it travel tips.

THE REGULATORS

This is a random entry, but I feel like it's quite necessary. This has been bottling up inside me for a while now, and I've kept quiet but I cannot be silenced any longer. I truly feel like the only way to make changes happen, is if people acknowledge that something is not right. I pray that by writing this, the common folk will ban together and try and rid the US of this injustice.

I have had enough of bathroom attendants.

I first noticed them a few years ago at ballparks and special events in order to maintain the cleanliness of the bathrooms. Now they are everywhere, clubs, airports, parks, bars. It wont be long before they invade the easy-does it porto johns. Or even worse, Thai restaurants.

Using the restroom should be a private time, and in today's hectic society there isn't much of this personal time left. Therefore when given the opportunity, we should take full advantage. Let it flow. Having someone ready with a paper towel in their hand and listening to your every shit dropping is (there's no other way to say this) it's just not cool.

When did we, as a country become so lazy that we cannot tear the paper towels or pump the soap dispenser for ourselves? Have we de-evolved so much that we can no longer use the restroom without assistance? Public restrooms are no pleasure to begin with. Now, we can no longer piss without being judged. If only we can learn to clean up after ourselves, there would be no longer a need for the restroom regulation.

I wonder what really goes on in the mind of a bathroom attendant, as they fake smile and hope for a tip, all the while hating that they spend 8 hours a day surrounded by human waste. Anytime I'm really hating my tables, I will try hard to remember that at least I am only handling people's food.

SERVER HELL

Saturday night, post July 4th. In New York, everyone is still in the Hampton’s and I am sitting in an empty restaurant writing blog entries on receipt paper. I pick up the receiver and call down to the office to where my GM sits with the door shut and does God knows what.

"Hey, there's no one in here. What are you thinking?" He pauses. I'm praying. Please say we can close early. Instead, he responds with, " tell Sam he can leave early." Sam is the new kid. Of course, I must stay in case we get a rush, and for the one and only reservation in the book, a 5 top at 9pm. I've tried calling them to confirm, but no one answers.

8:3o. Still nothing.

8:31, and I realize I've got to stop checking the clock. Instead, I track down the manager card, and use it to open up solitaire on the micros screen. I'm getting paid 5 dollars an hour to beat my old score. My manager finally appears upstairs, with some good news. "If they're not here by 9, we're closed." Those sweet sweet words rang through my ears, and I immediately went into "let's get the hell out of here mode." I changed the trash, changed the menus, filled the ketchups.

9:10 rolls around, and still no sign of them. GM confirms, "OK, that’s it, we're closed." I go into the back area where our music is and put on my IPOD. I'll be out in 15 minutes, easy. I round the corner with a new found energy and respect for my GM and that’s when I see them.

The 5 top is seated at the table. They are the only people in the restaurant and my manager is wearing a look that says I've got to let them eat, they had a reservation.

The anger starts bubbling in side me. Why didn't he lock the fucking doors?

He tells me he explained the situation to them, that we were closing early due to the holiday weekend. They didn't care. They made a reservation, (ok, in all fairness, they did) but they were late. It didn’t seem to bother them that the entire staff now had to stay and extra 2 hours to serve their every need. To top it off, they were tourist and there was the one designated speaker of the group who spoke broken English, and we only add gratuity for 6 or more.

I had just found myself in server hell. It was my worst nightmare. Worse then the unavoidable server dreams I have from time to time where I dream am at work, and have 100 tables to take care of and everyone is yelling at me. This was really happening. For every moment I stayed, trying to fake smile all though I wanted to murder them, I was begging for someone to wake me up.

GROUNDS OF RIDICULOUSNESS

I try to look at the subway as a positive thing. It's tough sometimes. Trying to think of public transportation as better for the environment only goes so far when your sitting at a hot sticky underground station waiting 20 minutes for your train in the summer. It's harder during the winter when your waiting at an outside station, the bitter cold wind whipping through your entire body an numbing your face. At times like this, I could give a shit less about the environment.

So, I try and think of how else the subway is beneficial to me. It certainly isn't the time I save going to work. What is beneificial is the money I save by not owning a car. With gas prices as high as they are, and rookie police officers hiding in the bushes off expressways anxious to give you a speeding ticket, the subway does save me quite a bit of money. Plus, you can't get tickets on the subway, right?


How wrong I was. Within the past 2 weeks I've managed to get not one, but two tickets on the subway. The first, I must say was my own fault. It was late at night, I was going out and I had a beer at the empty station in Brooklyn. Out of nowhere, two young undercovers appeared and were more than happy to give me an open container ticket. At the time I was with two travelers from London, who thought the idea of getting a ticket for a beer was ludicrous. I had to agree. Open containers really aren't a big deal in England. The police have better things to worry about like oh, say, terrorism.

The second ticket I received was when I was rudely awakened at 3am by a police officer. He shook me and asked me to get off the train. I didn't know what I had done and thought perhaps something was seriously wrong with the train.

This was not the case. The two officers informed me that they were writing me a ticket for occupying more than one space on the subway. I thought it was a joke. There were several other people getting this ticket as well. The way I was sitting I was facing the other seats so that I could have my knees bent, but this forces my toes to be taking up more than one seat. Mind you, it's not like the subway was jammed with passengers, it was 3 am and there was more than enough seats available for an army. I didn't think my toes would be an issue. After talking back to the police officers and ridiculing them by asking if they had nothing better to do in NYC (which I probably shouldn't have done) I went on my way, ticket in hand.

I plan on taking it to court and arguing that if a larger person's fat spilled over into the next seat could they get a ticket? It's only a 50$ charge from what I hear, but it's the principle of the matter.

I'll appeal on the grounds of ridiculousness, because this word is about as absurd as the ticket.