April 15th, 2018

The parking lot looked a bit empty as I drove in. I put it down to a combination of unseasonally snowy nonsense on the ground and the threat of more to come. Nonetheless, I clocked in on time, picked up my Sunday money, walked over to the Lounge and found our day bartender getting packed up, and … Morgan behind the bar.

Erm. Huh?

I put my cash in a safe place and go consult the schedule. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been yanked from a day without being told, but I’m going to find out before I decide if I’m going to blow my stack about it. Nope. I’m scheduled. Morgan however, is not. … the hell is this happy horseshit?

I walk back to the bar, and greet Morgan, and politely inquire as to her confuzzling presence. Her turn to look blankly and go off to check the schedule. While she’s doing that, I get my cash secured into the register so I can wait on a few people while things get ironed out. She comes back and gathers her money up out of the register (allowing me to shift mine up into the drawer she was using, which is far superior) and then goes ott to talk to our supervisor.

While she’s off doing that, I encounter our day time bar back ~~Doofus~~ Dougie. I have at this point, largely lost hope that he’s ever going to rise beyond a bare minimum level of prending to be vaguely qualified to do his job. He’s one of those people that you just kinda instinctively wanna slap when he opens his mouth to speak. It’s nothing but excuses and nonsense. Having to interact with Dougie is an excercise in self-control. I largely ignore him and succeed in not maiming the poor incompetent sod.

It’s one of Charon’s nights off so we’re currently being managed by Rickie, who traditionally has her home over in the food court type thing we have. The plus side to this is she usually leaves us be, knowing that we generally have our shit together. The downside is she usually doesn’t think about anything extra we might particularly be in need of. Plus she’s also 11 weeks away maternity leave and is understandably a little tetchy from time to time.

The long and the short of the result is that Morgan is going to hang around at least give me my dinner break (unnecessary, as Lydia could have done that, honestly) and go home somewhere after that. I sigh about this inwardly because it means she’s going to be in place for a few hours, draining a share out of my tip jar, which doesn’t fill up as fast on Sunday night, and I already had to do a shared training day on Thursday night. No point pissing on the pyramid, though. I just smile and make the best of it as we wait on our slow trickle of guests and chat, and I give her a few pointers here and there. I get my dinner taken care of as soon as I can and after that, Morgan goes and takes a 15 and then calls to go the hell home. Of course, Rickie at that point is tangled up in Bingo, getting all of its employees shut down for the night, so it takes a while.

By the time Morgan is finally shuffled out the door, the $60 or so in the tip jar gets slashed in half to give her the customary cut, and I’m working the rest of the night to meet my weekend goal against a $30 drain. I know that doesn’t seem like much, but it’s an important quantity, especially when the night’s as slow as it was.

At this point, Mack, one of our two evening bar backs, comes in and starts to do the floor mat cleaning. These are a bone of contention for me. You may recall last week I just fixed them myself because I was so sick of them being stupid looking. Mack, having been aware of this, takes the time to remove them four at a time, clean underneath them, and then puts them basically back like he found them. I was so damned impressed. You have no idea how long it’s been since I’ve seen one of our bar backs give a fuck about this particular job. Mack works his ass off, though, and listens as I point out the peculiarities of getting the mats to link up together properly and go around the corners at the same time. It’s a little tricky, but we work it out.

The slow parade of guests continues. One of our poker dealers shows up to drink, along with one of our steakhouse waiters. Mary, our senior cocktail girl comes along. Eventually Julio, one of our former chefs who’s left for greener pastures comes along and joines them. They hang out for the remainder of the night and I take a little socializing time there. The topic of Jerry the Older comes up again, and the prevailing wisdom is he’d probably be well served to do a couple of weeks back in the less intense environment of our flagging sports bar. We’ll see. He’s hanging in there, but between survivor’s remorse, injury pain, and a little touch of stir-crazy, he’s having a rough time.

Also, one of our buffet cooks/supervisors comes along for his customary couple of beers before going home. This guy (Dan) has been buying beers from me for probably close to the full 9 years that I’ve been doing this. He has traditionally never tipped. Like, ever. I know it’s just how he is but he’s predictable and easy to wait on, so I just do what I need to do and maintain friendliness. The past couple nights at the bar he’s actually left a couple of quarters or a dollar behind. I’d figured it was just a mistake. He did it again tonight. Holyfuck. He’s tipping me. Not a king’s ransom, but hell – he’s actually tipping me. Three points is a line. I resist the urge to call one of our EMTs over to check him for head trauma, say thanks! and continue my evening.

Around Midnight, Rickie is off duty and goes home. Norma, our graveyard food court supervisor rolls into her place. Charon had actually been showing her bar shutdown procedures for the last couple of nights, and I’d been wondering what was up with that. Apparently just some handy cross-training. I don’t know a lot about her, but she’s got some sharp edges under her casual exterior, and was quite happy to go stalk off to deal with a guest who purposefully bodychecked Haley (and then blamed her for it) as she was doing her rounds. Haley’s really just too quick to let that stuff go and I think people pick on her for it. Legally though, the security/police we have in house could happily book the guest for assault, for the physical contact. I personally think she needs to do it once, just to give the ‘don’t fuck with me’ message.

Last call comes and goes, Norma consults with me about the minutae of bar closing, and we get out basically on time with no real further incident. I managed to just get over the hump on my target tips goal for the weekend, sighing again about the lost money from earlier, but we got there, and I have a little extra spending money too. So I suppose that’s that.

Closing observations :

It’s amazing how quickly I can get a call of “Hey Ref!” to stop, if I interpret any drink order given to me as a request for a bottle of water.
Mary was interestingly made up tonight. Usually she just comes to the bar au natural (facially, she’s dressed, thank you) if she’s not working or hadn’t worked earlier in the day. Beats me why, though. Nor is it realy a concern.. Just something I noticed that struck me.
While the money from a 4-day run is nice, I”m definitely looking forward to getting back to a 2 or 3 day instead. I’ve got stuff to do.

Next up : Thursday