When I was originally hired it was with the idea that I would start off as a "service bartender" (fill all the beer and wine orders in the downstairs restaurant for the waiters) and then work on the upper deck as a bartender and also wait tables. Having André luck, this summer has been one of the worst in years insofar as weather, so it's been rainy and cold for the majority of the time. The few days that I worked up on the top deck I managed to make very good money (one night even pocketing $300), but I've only been able to do it a total of 4 times all summer. Al Gore should have to give back his Nobel Prize. Global warming isn't taking place, at least not in Alaska.
At any rate, I've sorta felt the pinch because I've basically been working the minimum wage "service bar" for the majority of the summer. The only decent part was that because I was getting killed by the weather, they let me work a lot of overtime. Still, I wanted to wait tables because that's where the good money has been. I got trained up and then they just wouldn't give me shifts. Finally a week ago, they finally said, "You're leaving in three weeks???!!!" and started giving me shifts. The money has been fantastic and they've gone over themselves trying to give me extra shifts. It's been nice, if exhausting because I'm still doing the service bar shifts too.
Waiting tables has been interesting, to say the least.
1. It's an education in raising children. My second day serving, a family of six came in and took two tables. It was a mother, father and older daughter at one table and an aunt, uncle, and the younger daughter at the other. The older daughter, about eight years old, was obviously in a tiff when they arrived. As I handed out the menus and told them about the specials she glared at her mother and then when I asked their drink orders and the mother asked her what she wanted, the older daughter said, "I'm not talking to her!", got up, and sat over at another table of mine nearby. The mom smiled embarrassedly and got the girl a sprite, because petulant children need sugar. I was thrilled that one of my tables was being taken by a brat during our lunch rush
This older daughter wore a hooded sweatshirt and kept the hood over her head the entire time. She glared out from under it at her mother during the times the child wasn't purposely ignoring her. As I was walking by from another table, I heard the child tell her mom, "you might want a million dollars too, but that's not going to happen." I resisted the urge to snap the kid's neck.
The mother simply looked like she'd given up. The father was in a wheelchair and oblivious to the situation. The food came out. The brat decided to spread mustard and ranch dressing across the table before getting up in the middle of her meal to go over to her parents' table and eat sugar packets, five at a time, and then grab lemon wedges and jam them in her mouth. Again, the mother just smiled at me as if to say "oh, that little rascal."
After that, the child went out on our deck, which was closed because of weather at the time, and proceeded to play with the soda gun out there, shooting syrupy soft-drinks all over the deck and drinking directly from it. I imagined what would have happened to me as a child if I'd tried anything like that and I'm relatively sure the James Carpenter Parenting Technique would have resulted in a shallow grave within tossing distance of the restaurant. Say what you will about my behavior nowadays; back then, I knew to step in line.
2. One of my customers, a mountain man from Tennessee with a long, bushy, white beard, paid with a credit card. The signature block on the card said "see ID". I asked for his ID. He said, "You're gonna card Santa Claus? You're getting coal for Christmas." I responded, "Thanks, that should cut my energy bills down. With an incentive like that I'll stick to being bad." He laughed, but then tipped me 9%. Lesson learned: Hope the laugh you get is worth more to you than the money you lose by being a smart---.
3. So far I've gotten to speak four other languages. My first night an Italian couple who didn't speak a word of English came in. I took three semesters of Italian 10 years ago so I offered to wait on them. I barely remembered any of it and what I did remember was from the customers' perspective when ordering food and not from the waiter (Vorrei un bicchieri di vino rosso "I would like a glass of red wine") so I was sorta useless. I mentioned I spoke some French so we switched to that and it was a little better, but still about as frustrating as brushing my teeth with my left hand. Later I got to attempt Quebecois French with Montrealers. They speak mush mouth French. Yesterday, I had two Germans. They only wanted beer. If there's one thing I learned how to speak German about it was beer. "Zwei Biere. Dunkle biere," the husband said, and made the motion of pulling the tap for draught beer. I responded, "Ah so. Ich habe Anglisch biere (Porter). Ist gut?" "Genau!" Today I got Argentinians. I described our Golden Ale as "Cerveza de Oro" (Beer of Gold) which worked for the father and we figured out the rest of the family's order. I do wonder if perhaps the mother and daughter only got lemonade and water because one's a virtual cognate and the other is just universally well known (limonada y agua). I've been picking up bits and pieces of Bulgarian from the cooks, but I don't think I'm ready to use that on customers, unless they want to be subjected to all manner of profanity.
As it stands, I will make enough money in the next couple of weeks to make this trip much more profitable than if I'd stayed in Columbia. Somehow, working at a restaurant/bar, I've been drinking much less and, combined with all the walking I do, I've dropped a few inches off my waist. The only downside has been that it's been so cloudy and rainy up here that I've started getting Seasonal Affective Disorder (mopey because not enough sunlight) like I used to in Germany. Even one of the local waitresses mentioned that friends of hers had been plugging in their winter SAD lights this summer because it's been so bad. I've been dreading going from the comfortable high50s that I've grown accustomed to here to the hell of the South in August, but I'll trade the clouds for Sun. I miss home.
