Tips To Make Your Server Not Hate You. Five.

Yup. I am at it again. Thought that i totally exhausted my list, but with a new restaurant comes fresh, hideously bad behavior. why is eating and drinking so complicated? If you missed volumes one through four, feel free to dig through my (ha) extensive archives. they are good for a laugh. unless they are about you. in that case...um...

41. get out of my way. seriously. you see me, now move. no? then i push. no again? well, the screw on my wine key draws blood. i know from experience.  accidents happen.  uniform shirts made out of spikes are kind of a server's daydream.

42.  get out of the places you are not suppose to be.  employees only, get it? no hidden door, no secret hallways, no magic carpet rides up to the patio. this is not mario brothers. 

43.  you know the owner? you are with the owner? you are the owner?   good for you. now can i please get back to my job serving all of the tables who are lining the pockets of your good friend/companion/you?  and yeah, i get it. you are a big deal. in japan. here we just talk shit about you behind your back.

44.  stop holding my tables hostage.  i get it. your friends are on the way. stuck in traffic, lost, overdosing on heroin. whatever. they. are.not. here. so why the fuck are you taking up that table for ten and nursing a water?  i will let you stay if you have ten cocktails and three appetizers...

45.  happy hour is in twenty minutes. you want to be the cheap fuck who sits there sipping water until the clock strikes whatever o'clock? well, prepare to wait even longer because when the time does come for you to save a buck a drink, you are the last on my list. and you will be all night long.

46.  tip on the total bill.  your friend puts in twenty bucks cash and you put the difference on your card? tip on the bill, not the seven dollars you are paying for.  you have a buy one get one discount? we still did the work of buy one get none. tip on the total bill. fuck, i wish i did not have to spell this shit out.

47.  do not fight gratuity.  you may be the coolest table ever, and man do we want to take our chances with you. you loved us. we loved you. we are practically facebook friends!!!  but we cannot argue with policy. see, we have to grat parties over blah blah blah and we have to do it consistently. because there may not be a party as cool as you who see it and squawk. we need to know that we can tell them it is policy. if we are awesome, tip more. if we suck, talk to the manager. nothing is written in stone.

48.  please do not be dumb enough to put a tiny child on a bar stool. or to put a booster chair on a slippery, cushy booth.  i know, happy hour is usually in the bar, and it is far more enjoyable to face a whole night with baby jane while shit faced for a few dollars less, or to sit you widening ass on squishy upholstery while you manhandle your chicken alfredo, but please, think of the children.  i have seen not one but several kids get seriously hurt face planting onto the table after rocking their booster forward in a booth.  and i will not even tell you what happened when a two year old fell off a bar stool at a restaurant where i worked. okay i will tell you. she almost died.

49.  you do not want to know all about me.  you do not need to quiz me on things like my marital status, education level, previous employment.  you are not interviewing me. you are not a literary agent or a potential boyfriend. ( because if i found one of those where i work, i would probably drop dead on the spot. not good for anyone.)  all i am saying is, picture a day at your work. now tell me when those kinds of inquiries are appropriate.

ten minutes, black door, ten minutes, red door.

slumped over in a tide of mass descruction,
epic failure, mass confusion.
a night on the brink of stabbing that which sustains me straight through the heart.
can't beat them. join them. beat them. kill them.
no one drinks anymore, we all drunk down here.

the man from the past fades away.
 i stare at the recent with one i cocked.
i have seen him inside his clothes, outside of my body.
but i do not care. to remember is to reflect.
i close all of the red doors.
flames curling up to lick and meet my parted lips.

caught a cold

i was so awake on valentines day. my bones ached as if they had been soaked through with rain water, but i pulled on my new tights. boots. a short skirt. my uniform, as it were, inside of work. outside or work. funny how such a tantalizing ensemble can start to feel plain. i nod along to the prostitutes in sweat pants. they just got tired of fitting in.

we head to the venue where the band has a show. i make half hearted conversation with my companion, neglecting to tell her that it does not matter one two penny damn to me that she plans to leave early. i have a date on the dumbest date night ever created by god and santa claus to get rid of all of that left over chocolate. i think that easter needs a plant so we can kill something green during every holiday.

we are just in time to see some clever over weight hipster screaming into a sausage or something about whiskey. no one has ever done that before. i think maybe he works for the phillips administration, because when i go to the bar, i do order a rail whiskey. i brandish my goods at the stage, hoping to show him what a good salesperson he is. this is the final thought of the evening not sidetracked by some other monkey without a gun.

my date shows just in time for my attention span to fail me. i do what i always do and offer his services as a chauffeur to all of my friends who are not even coming with us to wherever we decide to go. he is a fan of the neighborhood and i am a glutton to punish so so we end up in that bar, my own little swept corner of hell.

i shuffle up to the bar, suddenly shy. i study the floor while my date orders me a drink. he knows the light hearted version of the truth. the side which keeps me dirt and dust free, though i am the wanker who has kept the tension brewing for the past six months. when i am uncomfortable, stick pencils on everyone's chairs. a true artist wants everyone to feel their pain. the lead poisoning is just a bonus.

we sit there most of the night,shouting over the shitty band. or dj. or whatever sans romanica they have keeping people from feeling cheated out of getting laid. he moves to my side of the booth and i want the night to drain away. i daydream about bad tv and orange slices while he prattles on about something that i know i should not know about him yet. i have a sickening sense of what the fuck and that fucking bartender isn't helping his pal here in the booth one bit.

i get tired of giving the wrong impression so we move on to a different bar. i am drunk and have given up cool and given way to being charming. i never flirt unless i am trying to go home. instead of getting into a cab, though, i go home with him.

when i wake up the next day, i am warm, dressed and alone, save for the earring i lost during my thrashing. my darling date opted for the couch, though i would have been able to sleep standing up.

he is chivalry personified, dropping me right at my door. i know we will not see each other again, not in this way, at the end of an evening, as there was no light no spark. i will probably chase that feeling forever. the one you get after leaning up against someone, just talking, all night long.

a few hours later i woke up coughing and jelly-headed. i might not have caught the love bug on valentines day, but i did catch a cold.