GM

I’m not scared to be seen, I make no apologies, this is me

/ fightmasterwrites / Leave a comment

I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

Gay Pride Edition!

A friend posted my favorite clip from the TV show True Blood today.

You can view it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7l-VVxCLo8

Whenever I see things like this, it reminds me of the decades of my life spent in the service industry.

This one brought back a very specific memory.

In the mid 90’s, I worked at an Italian restaurant, and I use the word Italian loosely, called The Italian Oven. My ex-boyfriend, Jim got me the job there, after I may or may not have walked out of a job at O’Charley’s, after a substitute manager, filling in for a pregnant manager I loved, yelled at me.

I find myself at The Italian Oven. It has black and white checkered plastic table cloths. The table cloths are covered with white craft paper. When you approach the table, you introduce yourself by name and write your name upside down in crayon on the table cloth. It never ceased to WOW the audience.

Fun fact. It takes about 22 seconds to learn to do this when your name only has 3 different letters.

It was a wood fired restaurant, that served mostly pizzas, calzones, and pastas. The food was remarkably not bad, and it’s where I learned to love tiramisu. We had a beer and liquor license and were very busy most nights. I made a comfortable living there, and had a good time most nights.

It’s funny, that I only remember a couple of people from there, so it didn’t make a huge impact on me, and I remember no one’s name but Jim’s.

What I do remember, is that one Saturday afternoon, toward the end of the lunch rush, a table of five arrives, and are seated in the far back right corner of the restaurant.

The server approaches the table.

I don’t remember his name. I can see his face. I can hear his voice. And he was fun to work with.

The one thing that I do remember is that he was gay. Undeniably gay.

The kind of gay, that when he opened his mouth, a purse fell out.

(We said these things back in the 80’s and 90’s).

He was also kind, and lovely, and the best server in the restaurant.

If I remember correctly, he was the person who trained me.

He approaches the table, introduces himself, writes his name on the table, and is responded to with the following:

You gay?

What?

Are you gay?

What?

We don’t want no gay person waiting on us, get us a new server!!!

I’m in the kitchen with a couple of other servers, and the very straight, very redneck, very religious manager who was on duty. We’ll pretend his name is Robert, which I think it was.

He says, Hey Robert, table 43 has told me they need a new server, because and I quote, they don’t want no gay server waiting on them.

They may have used the “f” word. I don’t remember.

Robert wants to know if he heard them correctly.

He is assured that he heard them loud and clear.

Robert says, I’ll be right back.

He might as well have said, hold my beer.

He goes to the table and says, excuse me, I hear that you have a problem with your server?

They reply, yeah we don’t want no gay person waiting on us.

Robert says, well I don’t know what to tell you all my servers are gay.

They question him.

He says, yes, we only hire gay servers here.

They then ask, if he can wait on them.

He replies, well yes, I can wait on you. I do wait tables from time to time, but I’m gay too, so I don’t know what to tell you.

They hem and haw and eventually realize what is happening.

He says, if you don’t mind a queer manager waiting on you, I’ll be glad to get you some food.

Instead, they gather their belongings and leave.

And I’ve never been happier to work for a redneck, conservative, Christian manager.

One Day More!!!

/ fightmasterwrites / Leave a comment

I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

It’s been 15 weeks since my knee surgery.  

If I had it to do over again, it would be 52 weeks since my knee surgery.  

My biggest regret of the last year was putting off the surgery for someone else.  

Lesson learned.  

15 weeks.  

105 days.  

When I started my job in December, it was ever apparent that I’d just had a knee replacement.  

After a few hours on my feet, my knee would be the size of Nebraska, bending it was far from easy, and I never went back downstairs at the end of the night.

Never.  

I realized this week, that none of that was true anymore.

I hadn’t really realized it.

My knee is hardly swollen at all at the end of the day anymore.  

I’ve started doing the stairs like a normal person, as opposed to one at a time.  

I don’t skip going upstairs for a coffee refill in the morning, because it hurts.  

Every day it gets a little better.  

Even in NYC this past weekend, there was no pain or swelling after walking around the city all day.   

In NYC, the worst thing, is that 6’0” people doesn’t fit in theater seats.  They were designed in 1904 for humans that were 5’5”.  For me to cram my body, into a theater seat, and sit with my knee at a weird angle, or slammed against the seat in front of me, causes real discomfort.    

But we sacrifice for our pleasures, and so I suppose Adam and I will continue to try and squeeze into the seats.  

Except at the Emerson Colonial in Boston.  Those seats were designed for 3 year old children.  Just say no.  

Which brings me to tonight’s story.  

I was starting down the stairs to the office, as a woman appeared coming up from the restroom.  I was farther along than she was, so she gestured to come on down.  

Even though, I take the stairs regular style these days, it’s a slow process.  

I apologized my pace and explained that I’d just gotten a new knee.  

She laughed and said, no need to apologize, and I bet you feel a million times better.

I assured her that I did, and she went on to explain that her mom had just gotten a new hip and was so much happier.  

I told her that I was much happier with the new knee and that my only regret was not doing it sooner. 

She said her mom had said the same thing.

I then replied, so in 20 years when you are told you need a new knee, doing it then.  Schedule the appointment and get it done.  And you’ll think back to the strange man on the stairs of a restaurant, telling you to book the appointment and get it done.  

And you will.  

She laughed, and said, you don’t seem that strange.  

I thought to myself, if you only knew.

Let’s start at the very beginning.

/ fightmasterwrites / Leave a comment

Fun fact: This is the fourth blog that I’ve started. The first lasted almost six years. At the end I had a little over 250 regular readers and it was about my move from San Diego to NYC after finishing grad school. It followed my trials and tribulations of trying to jump start a theater career, landing in a restaurant serving job that took up too much of my time, and eventually meeting and falling in love with my partner Adam.

I loved the process and ritual of writing, and was sad when I moved to Maine, started a new journey and found that I didn’t have the time or the interest anymore to write nightly.

Social media was a big part of why I stopped writing, because suddenly I found myself reading and posting on Facebook and no longer sitting down at my computer to write a blog post. Facebook was fast and furious Writing took time.

And this continued to be true until about three months ago when I started my most recent position at a restaurant in a tourist town and I began to document my experiences as a General Manager and all the stress and extremes that came with the job. These posts were on Facebook and were really traditional blog posts.

So here I am.

These are my stories.

Over the next few weeks I’ll repost my posts from the past few weeks as well as adding to my stories as regularly as I can.

Please enjoy and know that these are my experiences, my reality, and my opinions. There are LOTS of other people out there doing what I do better. I hope they find as much joy in it as I do.