Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Adventures in Table Waiting

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.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Top Gun

When I was a kid, I refused to see Top Gun when it first came out. My brother wanted to see it, you see, and I was a little pain in the ass so I said "Uh-uh! I don't wanna see that!" I did this also with Untouchables the next year. Hell, I even did that with the movie Sexy Beast in 2001. I can be quite aggravating, as many no doubt have noticed.

When I finally did get around to seeing the movie, oh boy! Fighter planes! Missiles! I saw it 14 times in the movie theater. 14 times. I made everyone take me. I don't mean family even. I mean I'd go spend the night at people's houses who hadn't seen the movie (and many of whom I didn't even like) just to make their parents take us. I loved, loved, loved Top Gun.

I just watched it again for the first time in possibly 2 decades and boy did I miss a lot. First of all, and most obviously, there're a hell of a lot of scenes of sweating men in little or no clothing. As a seven year old, I only remember closing my eyes when the screen went blue for the love scene between maverick and "charlie." Speaking of which, "Charlie"? Oh jeez, how 'bout subtlety on the innuendo?

Homosexual subtext or supertext aside, the main thing that struck me was that the whole point of the film was that the Navy sent its best pilots to this school to get better at dogfighting. The lead instructor makes a big speech at the introduction to the school about how pilots had gotten too reliant on missiles and not used their guns enough.

After graduating from, supposedly, the world's best dogfighting school, what happens? The Americans get into it with the Russians...and it's the Russians who use their guns and outmaneuver the lame-o Americans, even shooting one of the Americans down (Hollywood to be specific). How do the Americans win? By shooting down the Russians with missiles. Great, thanks for wasting my time by making me watch an hour and a half of pointless training. What? Let me get this straight...you are going to send Maverick, who apparently didn't learn a damn thing at the school, back to be an instructor? Brilliant. And the US taxpayers get to pay for an ultimately pointless school where, apparently, the real training is in giving lusty glances at your fellow pilots and navigators while you're sweating in your tidy-whities. Oh, and playing sweaty volley-ball while flexing your muscles. Sweet!

If they do a remake, I say they let the Village People do the Kenny Loggins songs.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

From Russia with Stink (and other Anchorage tales)

Tonight I've had to cross a boundary I'd hoped never to cross. I finally had to step up and ask a roommate to please shower. The gentleman checked into the room a few days ago. I pay very little attention to whom I share a room with as they change so often. Currently, I have a gregarious Ohioan, up to battle his ex-wife for custody of his children, with whom he claims she absconded ("claimed" being the operative word). At any rate, aside from the gregarious Ohioan there is this gentleman, this man from Russia/Ukraine.

When not working or walking around, I typically am in the cave that I have constructed out of my bunk. I reside in the lower bunk which is in a corner so two sides are blocked and the other two sides I have blocked, from this infernal 19 hours of daylight, with a sleeping bag at the end and a poncho along the side. Here in my little cocoon I do my emailing, web-surfing, and general dawdling. Two days ago, in the midst of my dawdling I was overwhelmed and thought to myself, "Dear God! I reek!" I flipped out of my bunk to get myself to the shower post haste. Emerging from my womb, I was hit full- blast with a snootful of stench that nearly brought tears to my eyes. Sitting in the chair at the foot of the bunk sat the gentleman. I scurried off to take a shower, though no longer from fear that the stench emanated from me, but rather to ensure that it gained no hold or contaminated me. When I came back in the room, I was hit by the wall of funk, but I scurried over and, as delicately as I could, I thrust open the window nearest me. Fortunately I departed for work soon thereafter. Though it has been in the low fifties each night I have prefered to keep the window open and wake up with blue feet rather than risk a warm contagion.

This evening, after coming back from a movie, I took a deep breath before entering the room, praying that the gentleman would not be there. He was not, but his sleeping bag was in its customary place. I died a little on the inside, and changed into my hostel costume of basketball shorts and a long sleeve t-shirt. The Ohioan entered and, as he is wont to do, started in on the details of everything that had happened to him. Though I have never shown much interest other than courtesy required and even had to go about deliberately ignoring him, he has been sure to give me the blow by blow of his custody case and all manner of unnecessary detail of his daily whatever. He did stop, mid-sentence though, after I had done my usual scurrying into my cave in the hopes of my dissappearance giving him the hint to be quiet, to comment on our gentleman. "I tried to give him the hint and pointed him where the showers are. I don't see his bags. Maybe he's gone for the night?"

"No dice," I told him, "His sleeping bag's still here."

The Ohioan went off to catch a movie (on my suggestion as I wanted quiet), and I stepped out of the room for a moment. When I returned, I smelled the gentleman's presence before I had opened the door enough to see that he was there. Enough was enough.

"Sir, I don't mean to give offense...and I don't really know how to say this politely...but could you please take a shower?"

"What do you mean? I take a shower every day," he said in thickly Slavic-Something accented English.

"Um...yes...well...again...I don't really know how to say this properly but there's a smell..."

"It is the room that smells." He was getting angry.

"Um...well...yes...but...it's you."

"I don't smell it."

At that point I didn't really know what to say. I really didn't want to say, "The reason you can't smell anything is because you've gotten used to smelling like a deer and it's so powerful that it's blocked out everything else that doesn't smell like decay and bacteria."

I decided that evacuating the room was the best course of action as he fumed, both in mood and odor, and took a book to the lobby for a while. When I returned, he left and I ratcheted the windows back up. He stopped in momentarily to ask me when I would be leaving the hostel. I don't think he liked my answer of August 6th. If he's going to be here with me, I don't think I liked my answer either
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It's only taken until now for people at work to finally gather that I really, truly am not staying in Alaska. I have told nearly everyone that I'm a law student and just up here for the summer, but so many of them have said that they only ever intended to come up for a summer and then ended up staying that they couldn't fathom that I'd really go through with my plan of leaving. I don't know if it's from the fact that they're somehow going to miss the goofy guy with the ridiculous facial hair or, like crabs in the pot, they don't want to see anyone escape, but they are not happy and are trying to convince me to stay. The general manager has already tried to intice me with a managership and repeatedly says, "by the time you're ready to leave you'll be able to run this place." The other managers merely say, "well, you'll be good to go when you come back next year." When I mention that I'll be studying for the bar the joke has become "you can study for the bar at the bar."
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I saw my first moose the other night as I walked home from the grocery store. There, in the athletic field complex along my route, was a she-moose idly stumbling along in a little- league outfield. A moose is a damn big creature and looks, as nearly as I can tell, like a retarded horse. It has a large, misshapen head and spindly legs with knobby knees. It stumbles rather than walks. It is not a gracious animal. For some reason, I'm under the impression that they're not the friendliest of creatures either, so I was pleased to be on the other side of the fence and I scurried back to my Room of Funk. If I'm going to deal with a smell like that, I'd rather it come from an animal that couldn't trample me to death.

And All This Without Upper Sinuses...