On a day that I posted about how in the service industry “there is no such a thing as being human,” I witnessed one of the most tender, least bull shitty acts human understanding I have seen in some time, and I must say, it actually moved me. The act, described below, was performed by a girl around 18-yearsold who is somewhat self-conscious and insecure and seemed to desperately want to make an impression on her new co-workers—which is understandable—but these things have nothing to do with why she did what she did or the act itself. While I don’t know what to make of it, in an act of full disclosure considering what I wrote yesterday in my piece Black Friday, here it is.
Sometime during the dinner rush around 7:30 or so, with every table occupied and on a 25-minute wait and the big screen playing the UNC-Notre Dame contest in a town where everyone either loves UNC or goes to Wake and people are intent and focused on food and football, a kid with severe mental disabilities starts shouting very loudly some general football terms that are audible even from the recesses of the kitchen. And people getting uncomfortable in a really bad way—I have people asking for their checks and holding their temples looking down at their crotch and whispering about the kid and the scene he is making—and this isn’t really good for anyone. Servers begin whining, people are staring, I here someone say “why don’t they just leave.”
But just as people are about to stampede for the door, a hostess who started a week ago to the day, came over to the clearly frightened severely mentally disabled boy and his ancient companion (who I assume was his grandfather[*]) and squeezed her way into a one person booth, taking up very little of the kid’s space but still setting with him and just talking and listening to his pleas of “score!” and “touchdown!” Maybe part of it was the fact that he had a very pretty young girl sitting next to him actually giving him her undivided attention that calmed him down, I know it works for me when I am freaking out and my unbelievable female companion shows me that I am worthy of such lavish and unwarranted attention. But as with the case with my female companion, there was something else that transcended simple circumspection. It is shown in words and tone and body language that all say it is ok and you are a person and you are human and you are worthy without having to actually say it.
So as she sat there talking to the unlikely pair, she provided comfort for everyone around her. Obviously for the kid, but also for the grandpa in listening to their story, which she barely mentioned afterwards to the inquiring minds, and then the paying customers who were annoyed with the outbursts and the servers who were having to damage-control their tables and on down the line of employees and customers all with a single act of kindness. It visually illustrated the fact that we all are connected and that can be a good thing. When it was over and the two were gone, I told her something along the lines of “nice job” but it was insufficient sounding like some work related issue which it was not, not really. It went beyond that and I hope she realizes this and retains this quality.
After I had some time to reflect on this event, this lone instance of actual, really deep caring, I started to think that maybe this actually shows how most of us are broken by such places. In this line of thinking, I figured it would take someone who has only been working at it for only a week to do something like this. Later, a newer server who has worked at other branches of the company who is one of the most negative people I work with and bitches a lot and calls people “redneck” or “ghetto” depending on race and is pissed off about something virtually every night though he is a nice enough guy for the most part and has been doing this far longer than I have and is also “educated” apparently had some sort of talking to with the hostess because it was late and she was forced to set people in his section around the bar (though she tried to sit at least two of these tables in my section but the TVs aren’t over there and who wouldn’t rather sit in a table around the bar anyway) and it didn’t look like these folks really gave a shit about when we close (20 and then 15-minutes from when they moseyed on in) and were only drinking water (often times a sign of how cheap the table is comes from the drink order which tells you a lot about the way they are going to tip you[†]) and never even acted like they wanted to be there and have you prepare their drinks and dinners for them.
Afterwards, she was pretty upset and said that she is now “thinking about leaving.” Here is a young female who did an unbelievably kind thing that greatly benefited the restaurant in a way that pretty much went unacknowledged by anyone but me because everyone in there was so self-absorbed. I mean, this was a place where two weeks ago a severely mentally disabled employee (who is so handicapped he is actually appears happy) was coming out of the back when he not only slipped and fell on the hard tile but after landing awkwardly, he like sort of slid, sort of bounced, and racked himself on a pole of the platform where the guys in the back wash dishes. It was incredible as far as falls go. It was the worst one I had ever personally seen in that it was a double edged sword of wounded pride with the initial fall and then the skid into pole resulting in genital anguish. It was also, I hate to say, slapstick comedy. When it happened I couldn’t believe he had actually went down the way that he did, the odds had to be astronomical, and I was frozen for a second, everyone was. But, being right there only a couple of feet away dropping off dirty plates, I went over and helped the poor guy up. Once on his feet, he simultaneously grabbed his elbow with his uninjured arm and his crotch with the arm being held. That is when some people began laughing. It made me sick to my stomach but I can’t say that I blame them. Maybe in the future she will be one of those that laugh and say things like “he really shouldn’t be here” but today she is not. She is human. It is the staying human that I pray she keeps and pray that we all keep.
[*] Something that a lot of times will happen in cases like this is the severely mentally disabled will go unwanted by their biological parents and instead of institutionalizing this person, a family member will take the person in and care for them. My grandpa did this with a second cousin or something who was maybe ten years older than my dad who remembers my grandpa telling him to stick up for him and not let anyone give the guy any shit. So my grandpa and my dad took on a lot of the responsibility with this guy whose story was a very sad one indeed—he was dropped as an infant not once but twice by nurses and went unloved and uncared for by his own parents who wanted nothing to do with the burden of caring for a child with special needs (though it was a different time then, I suspect things like this still happen as they did back 40-years ago). When this guy died in 2003, my grandpa and my dad were the only attendees of his funeral, marking the sad end to a excruciatingly sad life. The point is, I suspect this was a situation similar with a relative stepping in to raise a child with special needs.
[†] For example, it has happened on occasion that a family will come in and when you prepare to ask about maybe bringing them a Samuel Adams Oktoberfest, which really are delicious btw, they cut you off mid-sentence and act offended like you are one of the many salesmen in their lives trying to dictate your purchasing/spending, which technically you are, or like you are stupid for not like knowing that they would never drink ever or at a restaurant that overcharges or in front of children or late on a Saturday night or while operating a motor vehicle or whatever. These people do not tip well. You are extremely lucky to get 10% out of them. The most telltale sign thoughthat your tip is going to be lousy, in my experience, is when the adults in this situation order “water with lemon” and then order the drink for the kids however diminutive such an action appears to everyone involved and makes a point of stating that their offspring would like whatever beverage of their choosing “in a kids cup” as in “he’ll have a kid’s coke” which is free and they typically know is free and involves extra work for you because they are tiny and have lids that make refilling and knowing when to refill a pain because they want to make sure you don’t charge them the buck fifty for a regular sized glass, which I never do anyway, and is yet another way of telling you you are too stupid to see this person is a child and thus gets a free beverage all before the adult themselves try and order a ½ order of ribs or steak off the kids menu to save a couple of duckets because it is the same quality of food at a slightly cheaper price and the whole thing just makes you want to quit and tell them they need to get with the fucking program here and acknowledge what they already know in that servers get paid like shit for an hourly wage and depend on your gratuity to make rent and we are working hard to get a paid just like you are and so on and so forth.
Showing posts with label Waiting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Waiting. Show all posts
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Black Friday
The economy is something I cannot begin to understand. I read reports, ask knowledgeable friends questions, listen to debates, but most of all, I get my feel for the economy by how much money I have left over (or rather how much more I owe) after the necessary expenses are taken care of. According to this system, the only system I can pretend to comprehend, after the bare essentials and one bi-monthly luxury item, my first since May came this past Wednesday so now that is becoming more of a biannual thing it would appear, I can afford to spend about $90 a month. I am someone who has reached a 5-digit salary only once in my life (and even then I literally just broke it) yet I have amassed a 6-digit almost entirely from my absurdly expensive education. While outstanding, my education has made me, I am estimating, about $15,000 in its totality. That is $12,500 for teaching and $2,500 for various writing jobs. That number, as depressing as it is, is about the same as the jobs I have had that require no education or even frown upon it. For example, the summers or 1999 through 2001, when I worked as a lifeguard, I made about $2,500 each year. The summers I was in college I made even less at J.C. Penney’s and landscaping, which was more accurately described as getting high and smashing things with a shovel, that goes for both of those jobs. In those summers I made around $1,500 and then did not work one of those years instead taking summer school. Out of college, post-academia, I did some internet database updating for some company, worked with my mom for a while, had a few sales jobs which I was terrible at and technically lost money, spent two weeks in advertising, and did a brief stint with FedEx. In sum with those odd jobs, I made something like $3,000. Now working in the service industry, don’t get me started on how badly I hate this job, I have probably made about $3,500 in the last three months.
I am not going to add all this up, it is too depressing, but I bet they are even keel. Plus if you count the year I was technically unemployed, a year I spent working for a bookie and gambling, I guess my main source of income that year would be picking NFL winners, filling out March Madness tournament brackets, and getting unbelievably lucky in basically blind draws with the sport of kings (horse racing), I would be better off, financially speaking, if I didn’t even go to school. Because starting in 1999, my schooling has cost me[1] an intimidating six-digit-number that overwhelms me just thinking about. And I have yet to even dent it. Two years at Park Tudor at $12,000 a year, plus four years at Kenyon totaling among the nation’s highest (#2 when I went there which is boasted as though it were something to be really proud of)[2] [3] with a whopping $38,000 price tag (that I consider well worth every penny [it at least in the time I was a student there] and upon my deathbed will probably consider the four happiest years of my life), though no one, save for Colin and Joe F. who are very well off but compared to some of the families there are practically beggars, and in full disclosure, I paid less and than half of that number, and then Wake Forest, in a program I am not even going to finish, I took out over $20,000 in student loans. I am actually starving here, I have lost over 50 pounds in the last year, where am I gonna get that kind of money?
I probably won’t. There are friends of mine here in a similar predicament as mine but are more responsible and these people actually know something about economics. They are basically saying the crisis will probably help us out because with all of this student debt that is going unpaid yet must be paid, the gov. will likely devise a new plan/strategy to deal with it. Our prosperity literally depends on it. Or so they say. Maybe that is one of the reasons the crisis doesn’t seem to scare me all that much, I am a survivor, I live simply and will continue to do so. Even if someone were to say, “Yo, AB! You the bomb! Here is a MacArthur fellowship for your bitchin ass! Have at it,” I would probably give most of money away and with what is left over start some sort of literary journal. I don’t own any big ticket items. The most expensive things I own, my car (which I inherited from my grandpa when he died, worth around $6,000 dollars though I take shit care of it and currently rock a donut as one of my tires) and my watch (my parents’ gift for graduating college which is an unbelievably beautiful and tasteful Swiss made Tissot worth about $600)[4] are things that were given to me and not things I would have spent money on myself to own. Its all just stuff and I pride myself on having virtually nothing.
So the point of this little musing, I guess, is to say that I see people freaking out all the time about this damn “Depression” and it doesn’t really scare me. The big-wigs macking it hard will still mack it hard and the poor are still gonna be desperately poor. Can’t people see that the system is incredibly fucked and one-sided and always going to end with inequality and oppression?
This “Black Friday” stuff I heard all over the radio today—from NPR to local rock-block to ESPN—has got people obsessing. My female companion talks about how scared she is about what all this is going to do to her credit score. Sometimes she gets pretty freaked out about it, especially when she starts inquiring about my debt and my credit, which I know nothing about other than it just has to be terrible.
Yesterday, before I heard any of this business, I went to the bank in order to cash my pay checks from work and found a line that practically went out the door. Wha? It turned out people were freaking out about this whole crisis and running to the bank to pull out their savings—ah la It's a Wonderful Life—or so I believe though it was late in the afternoon on a Friday so who knows. The line, dominated by old people, which makes me suspect that the line did in fact result from the quote unquote “Black Friday” thing, was so decrepit that at multiple times when the teller would call out “may I help you” the hard of hearing senior citizens would stand there staring strait ahead until someone with a better hearing aid finally tapped them and pointed them in the direction they needed to go.
When my turn finally came, I lucked out and came to the same woman I dealt with the last time I was in this particular branch. The first time I had went in there, this woman, young, somewhat attractive, huge rack, tried to set me up with a checking account with them. I went through the motions but I had recently been turned down with another bank because I joined an account with my mom in my name that she had overdrawn. Lacking $400, neither I nor my mom can pay it off, thus I am to remain bankless, at least for the time being. But I was going through this then because the woman said she would waive the check cashing fees on all my checks and maybe it would like go through or something as she said. Then, in late July or sometime around there, she was flirty and accommodating and said that whenever I got a valid ID, don’t ask, I could come in there and she would waive the fees, anytime.
So yesterday, hoping to make good on that proposition, I went to her and reminded her of this exchange. The look she gave me was not the flirty, playful look I witnessed back in July but one of annoyance seeing me now as something of a burden, or so I interpreted. “I personally said that?” she kept demanding to know, also asking a rhetorical “Why would I say that?” that seemed to imply I was either lying or had greatly misunderstood our conversation. She then informed me that the checks would cost $6 each to cash, although that bank did not charge some businesses to cash their checks there. This is what happened to be the case with my employer and this bank. It certainly did clear things up for me then, what I assumed was this attractive and flirty young woman doing something nice for me person-to-person was in fact just doing her job, caring out a function that was as part of her routine as bringing a to-go side of dressing is to mine.
When money is involved it is hard to stay human and when money is tight it is harder still. On nights when I am in no mood to ask my tables what they want to stuff themselves with, as tonight I am sure will prove to be which I am already dreading, when a table of seven, one less than the number of people required to get an automatic 18% tacked on to the bill, spends $150 on food and drinks which constantly need refilling and leaves a $10 tip if I am lucky or a $1 tip on $80 and then say something like “you are an excellent server” and ask me “is that alright?” my job requires me to say “oh yes, thank you very much” instead of the obvious “no everything is not alright, you just gave me a shitty tip and I am working my ass off here” I certainly don’t feel like myself. On these nights, at that job, at any service job, there is no such a thing as being human. There is only the customer is always right and you have to live by it. To hell with you.
[1] My parents, barely making ends meet themselves, have not contributed a penny to my education unlike most people at the three wonderful and expensive schools I attended. Most of my peers were of families in the top 5% of yearly income, at worst, whereas my parents are more like at or below the national median making a combined $40,000ish annually. I tried to use the U.S. Census Bureau as my source here, then some other reputable agencies, but without any economic knowledge or skill, except buying things that are cheap, I couldn’t make heads or tales out of it. But hey, Wikipedia makes it easy, there I get the information I seek with minimal trouble, get class and money involved and information just disappears especially in an economic crisis. So anyway, here is my God damned source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Household_income_in_the_US. Thus I have borrowed and worked, but mostly borrowed, seeing this education thing as an investment that right now is not paying out in dollars like I was told it would. But to be fair its not like I really motivated by moneys, I have never had and don’t really know what I am missing. Nor do I really care to know.
[2] http://www.forbes.com/2008/01/21/education-university-globalization-biz-cx_bw_lh_0121colleges.html
[3] http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/stories/2008/03/24/story11.html
[4] Mom and Dad saved up for a year and half to buy me something special for I am the first one in my family to finish college—a family that is so large and reeks with so much Irish Catholic descent that to go through the names of aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins and so on and so forth would be incredibly involved. So anyway, this is an item I love and I don’t really love stuff. I am in constant panic that I own such a beautiful thing and I am always thinking I will or have lost and I get complimented on about once a month, the most recent one being from a co-worker whose name is Jordan who I think is the type of chick it is probably good to have on your side and reminds you of every cheerleader you ever met, I am sure you get the idea, who said while I was pouring tea out of a bucket into a dispenser “Oh my God, you have a really, really nice watch…It is seriously beautiful,” which, you know, doesn’t suck to hear, but nonetheless, I love it but I could never justify spending that much on myself.
See Also:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2008/10/if-ever-there-w.html
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/882789?UserKey=
I am not going to add all this up, it is too depressing, but I bet they are even keel. Plus if you count the year I was technically unemployed, a year I spent working for a bookie and gambling, I guess my main source of income that year would be picking NFL winners, filling out March Madness tournament brackets, and getting unbelievably lucky in basically blind draws with the sport of kings (horse racing), I would be better off, financially speaking, if I didn’t even go to school. Because starting in 1999, my schooling has cost me[1] an intimidating six-digit-number that overwhelms me just thinking about. And I have yet to even dent it. Two years at Park Tudor at $12,000 a year, plus four years at Kenyon totaling among the nation’s highest (#2 when I went there which is boasted as though it were something to be really proud of)[2] [3] with a whopping $38,000 price tag (that I consider well worth every penny [it at least in the time I was a student there] and upon my deathbed will probably consider the four happiest years of my life), though no one, save for Colin and Joe F. who are very well off but compared to some of the families there are practically beggars, and in full disclosure, I paid less and than half of that number, and then Wake Forest, in a program I am not even going to finish, I took out over $20,000 in student loans. I am actually starving here, I have lost over 50 pounds in the last year, where am I gonna get that kind of money?
I probably won’t. There are friends of mine here in a similar predicament as mine but are more responsible and these people actually know something about economics. They are basically saying the crisis will probably help us out because with all of this student debt that is going unpaid yet must be paid, the gov. will likely devise a new plan/strategy to deal with it. Our prosperity literally depends on it. Or so they say. Maybe that is one of the reasons the crisis doesn’t seem to scare me all that much, I am a survivor, I live simply and will continue to do so. Even if someone were to say, “Yo, AB! You the bomb! Here is a MacArthur fellowship for your bitchin ass! Have at it,” I would probably give most of money away and with what is left over start some sort of literary journal. I don’t own any big ticket items. The most expensive things I own, my car (which I inherited from my grandpa when he died, worth around $6,000 dollars though I take shit care of it and currently rock a donut as one of my tires) and my watch (my parents’ gift for graduating college which is an unbelievably beautiful and tasteful Swiss made Tissot worth about $600)[4] are things that were given to me and not things I would have spent money on myself to own. Its all just stuff and I pride myself on having virtually nothing.
So the point of this little musing, I guess, is to say that I see people freaking out all the time about this damn “Depression” and it doesn’t really scare me. The big-wigs macking it hard will still mack it hard and the poor are still gonna be desperately poor. Can’t people see that the system is incredibly fucked and one-sided and always going to end with inequality and oppression?
This “Black Friday” stuff I heard all over the radio today—from NPR to local rock-block to ESPN—has got people obsessing. My female companion talks about how scared she is about what all this is going to do to her credit score. Sometimes she gets pretty freaked out about it, especially when she starts inquiring about my debt and my credit, which I know nothing about other than it just has to be terrible.
Yesterday, before I heard any of this business, I went to the bank in order to cash my pay checks from work and found a line that practically went out the door. Wha? It turned out people were freaking out about this whole crisis and running to the bank to pull out their savings—ah la It's a Wonderful Life—or so I believe though it was late in the afternoon on a Friday so who knows. The line, dominated by old people, which makes me suspect that the line did in fact result from the quote unquote “Black Friday” thing, was so decrepit that at multiple times when the teller would call out “may I help you” the hard of hearing senior citizens would stand there staring strait ahead until someone with a better hearing aid finally tapped them and pointed them in the direction they needed to go.
When my turn finally came, I lucked out and came to the same woman I dealt with the last time I was in this particular branch. The first time I had went in there, this woman, young, somewhat attractive, huge rack, tried to set me up with a checking account with them. I went through the motions but I had recently been turned down with another bank because I joined an account with my mom in my name that she had overdrawn. Lacking $400, neither I nor my mom can pay it off, thus I am to remain bankless, at least for the time being. But I was going through this then because the woman said she would waive the check cashing fees on all my checks and maybe it would like go through or something as she said. Then, in late July or sometime around there, she was flirty and accommodating and said that whenever I got a valid ID, don’t ask, I could come in there and she would waive the fees, anytime.
So yesterday, hoping to make good on that proposition, I went to her and reminded her of this exchange. The look she gave me was not the flirty, playful look I witnessed back in July but one of annoyance seeing me now as something of a burden, or so I interpreted. “I personally said that?” she kept demanding to know, also asking a rhetorical “Why would I say that?” that seemed to imply I was either lying or had greatly misunderstood our conversation. She then informed me that the checks would cost $6 each to cash, although that bank did not charge some businesses to cash their checks there. This is what happened to be the case with my employer and this bank. It certainly did clear things up for me then, what I assumed was this attractive and flirty young woman doing something nice for me person-to-person was in fact just doing her job, caring out a function that was as part of her routine as bringing a to-go side of dressing is to mine.
When money is involved it is hard to stay human and when money is tight it is harder still. On nights when I am in no mood to ask my tables what they want to stuff themselves with, as tonight I am sure will prove to be which I am already dreading, when a table of seven, one less than the number of people required to get an automatic 18% tacked on to the bill, spends $150 on food and drinks which constantly need refilling and leaves a $10 tip if I am lucky or a $1 tip on $80 and then say something like “you are an excellent server” and ask me “is that alright?” my job requires me to say “oh yes, thank you very much” instead of the obvious “no everything is not alright, you just gave me a shitty tip and I am working my ass off here” I certainly don’t feel like myself. On these nights, at that job, at any service job, there is no such a thing as being human. There is only the customer is always right and you have to live by it. To hell with you.
[1] My parents, barely making ends meet themselves, have not contributed a penny to my education unlike most people at the three wonderful and expensive schools I attended. Most of my peers were of families in the top 5% of yearly income, at worst, whereas my parents are more like at or below the national median making a combined $40,000ish annually. I tried to use the U.S. Census Bureau as my source here, then some other reputable agencies, but without any economic knowledge or skill, except buying things that are cheap, I couldn’t make heads or tales out of it. But hey, Wikipedia makes it easy, there I get the information I seek with minimal trouble, get class and money involved and information just disappears especially in an economic crisis. So anyway, here is my God damned source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Household_income_in_the_US. Thus I have borrowed and worked, but mostly borrowed, seeing this education thing as an investment that right now is not paying out in dollars like I was told it would. But to be fair its not like I really motivated by moneys, I have never had and don’t really know what I am missing. Nor do I really care to know.
[2] http://www.forbes.com/2008/01/21/education-university-globalization-biz-cx_bw_lh_0121colleges.html
[3] http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/stories/2008/03/24/story11.html
[4] Mom and Dad saved up for a year and half to buy me something special for I am the first one in my family to finish college—a family that is so large and reeks with so much Irish Catholic descent that to go through the names of aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins and so on and so forth would be incredibly involved. So anyway, this is an item I love and I don’t really love stuff. I am in constant panic that I own such a beautiful thing and I am always thinking I will or have lost and I get complimented on about once a month, the most recent one being from a co-worker whose name is Jordan who I think is the type of chick it is probably good to have on your side and reminds you of every cheerleader you ever met, I am sure you get the idea, who said while I was pouring tea out of a bucket into a dispenser “Oh my God, you have a really, really nice watch…It is seriously beautiful,” which, you know, doesn’t suck to hear, but nonetheless, I love it but I could never justify spending that much on myself.
See Also:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2008/10/if-ever-there-w.html
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/882789?UserKey=
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