i’d like to speak to the manager!!!

Picture this!

Perhaps it’s time to rename my blog since I very rarely talk to the manager anymore.

Anyway!

Picture this!

Lexington, Kentucky. 1994.

I’m working at an Italian restaurant called The Italian Oven.

It’s a fun concept, in a strip mall off Richmond Road.

It features a wood fired oven, used to make pizzas, calzones and pastas.

I would often get the pasta carbonara until I discovered it was the dish with the most calories on the menu.

The owner’s name was Wayne. He was a bit crazy as all restaurant owners are.

He had an assistant, who’s named Nina, who was a host, then became assistant manager. She scared everyone but me.

For some reason she liked me, which I appreciated.

Turns out the concept, a franchise operation has gone kind of bust except for one location in Georgia.

Same idea, except we only served beer and wine.

My ex-boyfriend Jim got me the job there, after I walked out of O’Charley’s when my manager was on maternity leave, and the replacement manager was a dick.

The concept included, black and white checked table cloths, with white craft paper on top. When you approached the table, you introduced yourself and wrote you name upside down in crayon. There was a small glass with crayons on the table for people to draw while they waited.

Fun fact, when someone who was artistically inclined we kept the drawings in the back on the walk-in.

We also were way ahead of our time, as we used pasta as straws, long before cities were banning plastic.

I worked there for two years, until I moved to Cincinnati to teach at the School for Creative and Performing Arts.

That was a long introduction to the meat of the story.

On a summer day, in 1994, I was at the restaurant for lunch.

Lunches were busy. Business was starting to wind down, when a table of four was seated in the back of the restaurant.

The server approached the table, we’ll call him Scott.

It’s funny. I can see his face, but for the life of me I can’t remember his name. He was an older gay man who didn’t even try to hide his gayness.

He walked up to the table, wrote his name upside down on the table, and before he could say more, a man at the table stopped him and asked for another server.

He responded, “Did I do something wrong?”

The man responded, “You are gay. We don’t want no gay server waiting on us.”

Scott said, “Of course, I’ll be right back.”

We were all hanging around in the front when Scott approached us, and told the three or four servers as well as Jay the manager what was said.

Jay said, “I’ve got this.”

He walked through the dining room and approached the table and said, “I’m sorry, is there a problem?”

The man at the table spoke up and said, “We don’t want no gay waiter. Give us somebody who ain’t gay.”

“Well sir, that’s going to be a problem. See that woman over there. She’s gay. See that man standing beside her, pointing at me, he’s gay too. See the guy with the beard making pizzas in the kitchen, he’s gay. In fact, I’m the manager, and I’d offer to wait on you, but I’m gay too. So if you don’t want no gay person waiting on you, then I guess you’ll have to just eat some place else.”

With that he walked away.

To be honest, I think they stayed, but I don’t remember.

The thing about Jay was, that if you’d asked me when I started, fuck if you’d asked me 24 hours earlier, I’d have sworn he was a little homophobic. But that day, he did the right thing. I’d never loved a manager more.

This was 1994, conservative, Lexington, KY.

The times they were a changin’.