We were given only two days’ notice for an all-staff meeting at 10 a.m. on New Year’s Day. On the busy Eve, in waiters’ stations and at pass-windows, everyone had their take on this mysterious and heartlessly-timed gathering.
Ten hours into the new year we walked into the restaurant–to tables devoid of place-settings, to stacks of packing boxes, to grim managers.
Insurmountable problems with renewing the lease, we were told; a landlord unwilling to pony up any money for a much-needed renovation. Almost thirty years at its prime downtown Seattle location had taken a toll on the art-deco fixtures and all that mahogany, never mind the moose-head that had never been cleaned. The waiter who moonlighted as a tattoo artist and had stuffed animals’ heads on the walls of his apartment asked, unsuccessfully, if he could have it. Maybe our corporate bosses wanted it for the lobby of their headquarters in Texas; who knows.
Call it a requiem or wake–we had one a few days later at an Irish tavern a block away from the darkened restaurant. Ex-employees–foxhole buddies from long ago–showed up in surprising numbers to commiserate about what happened, why, and who’s going do what next. I even sold a book to a cocktail hostess who loves George R. R. Martin’s. A sympathy-sale? I’ll take it. Maybe she’ll love my latest and spread the word, and I might never again have to tie a bistro apron around my waist.
For over two decades I wrote by day and worked as a waiter by night–that ‘other’ job most writers need to pay bills. Undoubtedly, I’m the only graduate of Wesleyan University who’s ever worked at a restaurant for longer than six months, and that includes everyone who majored, like me, in English.
Waiting tables is a social gig, an effective antidote to the literary one, where you’re stuck in a room all by yourself, your only companion being what’s in your head. The restaurant also allowed me to prioritize what I REALLY wanted to do and had since I was a kid. Many writers teach, of course, for their other job. But that’s one you can’t fake; too much at stake in the classroom. In the restaurant, well, if you serve the wrong dessert, or mistakenly tell a guest her meal comes with orzo instead of mashed potatoes, that’s unfortunate–sorry about that–but you’re not going to lose much sleep over it.
Some writers can rise at 5 a.m. to get in a couple hours at the keyboard before moving on to their nine-to-fiver, but I’m not one of them. It’s even worse if your other job is similar to writing. I’m privy to only so many words in any single day, and after that I’m squozed out (like the bar rag). I discovered this when I was a newspaper reporter. After a day of writing stories about others I had little left over for mine.
Still, I doubt many people have understood my reasons for spurning a ‘real’ job, the demands of which can suck the life out of any dream if you’re not careful (unless, of course, a ‘real’ job IS your dream). But I don’t lose any sleep over this, either.
See, I’ve been saving up a lot of words to write about all those years thinking the halibut came with orzo instead of mashed potatoes; and marveling how the salads looked better when the pantry guy was high; and marveling, too, at the restraint one waiter showed when he was head-butted by a drunken Seahawks fan; and trying unsuccessfully to imagine Mr. and Mrs. Clark–regulars who seemed to believe menus were irrelevant–having sex in any position.
It may or may not be a novel, but if it is, consider it served with a side of The Caine Mutiny, garnished with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There are any number of candidates for equivalent starring roles such as Captain Queeg’s (he of the missing strawberries), and Nurse Ratched’s. My own? I’m leaning toward reprising McMurphy, Nurse Ratched’s bête-noir from Cuckoo’s Nest. Only this time I get to walk out of the asylum with the Chief.
And now that I’m off the U.S.S. Caine–which never was renovated either–I can safely say I know who stole the strawberries.
Hint: he was at the restaurant’s wake, and he was a waiter for a longer time than I.
