Adventures in Clubbing

7/13/06

I used to work as a waiter at a country club. For purposes of not being sued, We’ll call it Fat Harry’s Country Club; FHCC for short. Vocationally-speaking, the years from 16-21 were some of the most frustrating and horrifying of my life. Anyone in food service has a sort of love/hate relationship with the job. If you’ve ever seen the movie Waiting, that’s pretty much dead-on-balls accurate. The job invariably sucks because you’re essentially an indentured servant to people who, by and large, view you as a retarded child who should be grateful for the privilege of fetching them extra bleu cheese dressing. It’s shit work. But, there are some fringe benefits:

Your coworkers are great, for the most part, and even the few that are world-class shits are great because then the rest of you get to bitch and make fun of them behind their back. Never in any job I’ve had have I seen the kind of actual friendship that spawns like that between people in food service. We worked together and hung out together and generally got fucked up with each other. You got free food. Even the places that charge you for your meals allow for ample opportunities for grazing. I, being gross as I am, would slap my greasy palms together with glee whenever a plate came back with an untouched triangle of Club Sandwich, or a big pile of French fries; even an unmolested dill pickle spear was a cause for delight. I wasn’t the only one; that kind of thing wasn’t terribly unusual.

Another delight was just straight-out theft. I’m not proud of it--oh who am I kidding, I am kinda proud--but most of us sort of viewed thievery as owed to us based on the fact that our jobs sucked out loud. It ranged in seriousness from silverware and glasses to candy bars to pouring ourselves drinks when the manager wasn’t around to sometimes just taking an entire bottle of booze right out of the liquor cabinet. It sort of went like this: “I’ve worked ten hours today dealing with the most ass-humans on the planet for shit pay; I think I’ve earned a free 20 oz vodka and lemonade.”

But there was a dark side. A running mantra between the waitstaff was “This job would be great if it weren’t for the fucking members.” Don’t get me wrong; most of them were alright and some were downright delightful, but the few that were awful were really awful. I remember on more than one occasion fanaticizing about sending a cocktail tray sailing across the room directly into the face of that old bitch who made me microwave her coffee every goddamn time until it was the temperature of molten lava.

The Golf Ladies were bad, and yes, they definitely deserve to be a group with capital letters. These vile, demonic succubae would saunter into the restaurant after playing out on the links, smelling not unlike feverish buffalo, and demand service not unlike the Queen of England might expect. They would come in hoards of fifteen or twenty and sit sipping their iced tea or coffee and maybe two of them would order a sandwich while the rest demanded bowls full of free snack mix. I had another fantasy at these moments where I brought them a deceased rodent instead and said, “Oh you wanted snack-ums? I’m sorry, I thought you said a dead rat in a basket.” All told they would monopolize forty minutes of your time and spend a collective $20. I peed in their coffee once.

The General Manager was another moral-crushing aspect of the job. I suppose there must be good food service managers out there, but I have yet to encounter one. The GM for “FHCC” was a short, rotund little despot with a Napoleon complex and rather savage addiction to booze and coke. In this psycho’s view, I was single-handedly responsible for the disobedience of his entire waitstaff, and he let me know this at every lunatic opportunity. He used to have these bizarre analogies for things that would pepper his drunken tirades. If you got caught eating an unauthorized roll, say, he might unleash “You know what? If you want a gallon of milk I’ll give you a gallon of milk, but this behind-the-back shit has got to stop!” I was always tempted to ask for a gallon of milk. Another favorite: “I’m that big, fat umpire behind the plate that’s gonna call you out!” I was probably a good target, though, as I would chronically come in clad in a uniform that looked as if it had been worn in an eating contest, and had the attitude of a disgruntled intern.

It was almost as if the man had some manner of dual-personality disorder because in the same shift he could go off on a 20-minute diatribe about the fact that I left a quarter-inch of daylight in the salt shaker on table C-4 and then turn around and elbow me to impart “Hey, that new girl has some big tits, huh?” as if frightening sexual predation would somehow endear me to him. What a whack-job.

I did get some sense of satisfaction when, while several of us were setting up an outside party to celebrate the end of a big golf tournament, the GM who’d been out drinking vodka and cranberry all day long on the course, came barreling up in a golf cart like a devilish apparition and slammed headlong into the buffet line, sending salads and appetizers skittering in all directions across the pavement.

I can understand a sad little man wishing for his terminally apathetic waitstaff to just do their goddamn jobs, but you can’t put out the intensity of a nuclear reactor when college kids don’t seem to give a shit about a temporary job with slave wages. Also, his wife used to grab my ass on a regular basis.

He eventually fired me, though I should have been sacked long before he did, if only for the one time that I took 5 gallons of margaritas home after an outdoor party. In a nice bit of Universal karma, he was fired by the Board of Directors a year later for being a drunk and all around prick-ass douche-bag.

All in all I’m glad I worked there. Some of my best memories of my early adulthood came out of those times. I just wouldn’t be anxious to repeat them.