Sunday, July 09, 2006 by Ospite.


Even restaurant employees have the need to visit a different establishment besides their own. It was about 930pm and I received a call from one of my fellow waitresses informing me that most of the wait staff would be ending up at a particular bar after work. My wife is working on her grad degree at present and thus I was banned from my home. Well, it was expressed that my distracting presence could best be used elsewhere as she was behind on her work. So out I went.

After utterly destroying the aforementioned waitress in a game of darts, we congregated outside because most of my fellow workers wanted to chill with a cig in one hand and a brew in the other. Our state has a strict no smoking law, so they are banished to the out of doors, spilling into the parking lot slightly. We sat around sharing stories of the evenings, narrating our guests down to the size of peas and squashing their heads under our heels. It had been a bad night on the floor.

We are an animated bunch and our war stories took quite some time. As I gestured with my right hand, I realized I had yet to get a beverage from the bar. A colleague was kind enough to toss some cash my way and I wandered in, waded through the crowd up to the bar, and shouted out for a Johnny Black on the rocks over top of the overly loud, off-pitch live music. As I was praying to retreat to the smoker's haven of the parking lot I watched as something unfolded in front of me.

A girl entered the bar, showed the doorman her ID and proceeded to procure a beer from the bartender who was ignoring me and choosing the hot patrons instead. She went outside with her beer. As the barkeep finally poured the Johnny over the refreshing ice, clinking ever so nicely in the glass, the doorman walks over, showing the ID to the bartender.

"Did you just get this girl a drink?"
"Yeah, she's drinking a Blue."
"Is that her?" he points to a different, and clearly younger girl in the doorway.
"No. Looks like her, but that's not her. Sister maybe trying to use the same ID. Bag her."

The the bouncer goes over to the girl, escorting her outside. I retrieve my drink and head back outside as well. The older sister had a beer in hand, her boyfriend also drinking, the youngest one complaining loud enough for the county to hear. At this point in time, the crowd of people escaping the music had grown to about 25 or so. Her companions finished their drinks and all 3 prepared to leave. The youngest girl had parked reasonably close to the gaggle of cancerstickers. She mounted her RAV4 and pulled out of her space. Rather than turning the wheel right and angling out of the spot, she deliberately backed straight towards the crowd, dramatically slammed on her brakes, and screamed at the top of her lungs, "CAN'T YOU SEE I'M BACKING UP HERE, PEOPLE?!"

2 seconds of silence passed as she remained motionless with more than enough room to leave without killing bystanders. Those seconds were followed by an uproarious laughter from all watching. Her wheels squealed neerly as loud as she had.

Back in the trattoria yesterday, I found myself staring off into space as I walked passed the line, bumping into the co-worker who had bought my drink. I bumped her shoulder and she nearly dropped her pasta bowl. She wailed at full volume: "CAN'T YOU SEE I'M BACKING UP HERE, PEOPLE?!" ..and followed it up with a wink and a smile.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

All hail Italians!

That girl sounded like an idiot. I had one of them at my bar last week. Young girl walked in past the bouncer with an ID, then ordered a cosmo. She walked back out the door outside, and then in came her older sister with the same ID. C'mon, am I stupid? I just saw that ID. Turns out they were both under 18 and they were using fake ideas with the picture of the older one on it. How dumb can you get?

Love the blog. It's a lot of fun to read, and easy to sympathize with.

6:47 PM  

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At your service, Ospite

I am not in the restaurant business, I am in the people business. I use every opportunity to people watch, because to me, even the most mundane is fascinating.

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