Word on the street is that my post from last night was less than stellar. The lack of comments and likes proved the point. Two weeks in and the critics are harsh.

Truth be told I knew it was lame. It was late. The only thing annoying that happened was the late table. It was a good night. Will people read posts about the nice people I deal with on a daily basis?

Let’s see.

At 7:45 a woman comes through the front door and says please, please, please tell me you can take six people.

I ask when.

Trust me. Tonight is never assumed. Sometimes they mean next Thursday.

She says tonight!

I say let me take a look!

Two points to be made here.

First: Who the fuck waits till 7:45 on Saturday night of Labor Day weekend to figure out their dining plan?

Two: If the host says let me take a look it means there’s a chance. If they don’t look it means they already know there’s not a chance in hell of getting you seated.

I look. What I assume to be true appears to in fact be true.

I ask her to wait there while I confirm my suspicion.

I walk to the dining room and discover table G2 is in fact empty. Just waiting to be wiped and reset. There is no second turn on the table.

I go back to the door, tell her yes to give us five minutes and we’ll have it ready.

She then explains that I’ve saved her life as she has her two kids, her husband and her very elderly parents with her. She’s very happy.

I say great and then also tell her she can come in the secret back door after they park as it will be closer to the table.

She leaves. I grab menus. Find their server, explain to her that they’ll be coming through the back door and go back to my post.

End of story.

But wait.

There’s more.

At the end of the evening when more than 50% of our guests are gone I grab a soda water (400 days still no Diet Coke) and sit at the chef’s table. I’m available for questions and comps and voids from the staff. Often the chef joins me and we debrief from the night. Or we shoot the shit about our lives. Tonight was no different.

I’m sitting there, when a woman walks up to me and says thanks again for saving my life. It takes a full 30 seconds of looking at her to remember who she is. At the same time the server says, we were almost neighbors twenty years ago in NYC.

I LOVE NYC PEOPLE!

(As I say this I can hear Adam Beckworth grunt as he hates it when I do this when we’re out).

It’s fun to share stories, tell how I got to Maine etc. Tonight was no different. I say where did you live in NYC? I lived there years ago. And we begin to chat. Which leads me to saying I used to live in Fort Green, near BAM. And she gets excited and says her theater company used to be right there. This leads to further conversation about her company, that I was a lighting designer and, and then we stumble onto grad school. I mention that I went to UCSD. She gets excited and mentions a few people she knows from there.

This goes on and she explains she’d love to talk more but they have to go.

As she starts to leave her husband appears to also thank me. She says to him don’t talk to him (me) or you’ll be here forever. She explains why and ten minutes later her husband is still there.

She tells about the UCSD connection and he mentions that a friend of his teaches there. Woman named Lisa. I get super excited because I love, love, love Lisa. We talk another five or six or 40 minutes.

This continues and finally the wife looks at me and says, you look my age. I bet your on Facebook. She says she’s going to go home and look me up.

We all shake hands and they leave.

And it was a great meeting. I helped someone out. They appreciated it. I might have made a new friend.

Only one person was rude to me tonight. I was going to write about him. But I decided I didn’t want to give him any more energy. At least tonight. He is on my list at work though to write about later.