Training and development

            Last Thursday I started training for night shifts at "The Restaurant." The more I get to know the service industry in New York the more I've come to learn that the world is a very small place, especially when you work in the Times Square area. Someone you work next to everyday could very easily know someone who you've known for years, worked with at another restaurant, shared an apartment with, or even dated at some point. We're in such close proximity to one another that it would actually be hard to avoid running into someone you know, even by acquaintance. Also, most of the waiters in this area are involved in the musical theater industry and may have worked on a show together her or met at an audition...or twenty. So it was no surprise to learn that my trainer for the night, Dean, a tall forty-something who has also worked in musical theater and once worked at the Olive Garden just three blocks away, also knew a good chunk of my co-workers at my other job and has dated a mutual friend. This should be good. Maybe he'll take it easy on me IF he still has a thing for my friend. Like I said, small world. But, not only does the world seem closet sized in New York City but so is the square footage around here. The restaurant is so small for the number of tables it has squeezed in every corner and the staff running the show, that if you don't outwardly narrate your every move before you do anything, then no one will know how to get around or out of your way before a collision puts everyone at a heated standstill. For the diners who are in the vicinity of waiters narrating their intentions who are not familiar with the ways of the staff, then we likely all look like a bunch of lunatics with displaced dual personalities, talking to each other in the third person. "Filling a pint with ice." "Ordering coffee." "Bussing in." "Grabbing a pencil." "Reaching for a check." "Blowing my nose." The way I've always made my way around a restaurant, going in and out of the kitchen, grabbed dishes, silverware and glasses, has always been done with quiet, stealth-like precision, the way most of us are trained. Everything is done quickly and quietly and first come first served. I suppose I like to look a little mysterious when I do things too. "Where did my waitress go? Here she is...with another refill for me and I never had to ask. How did she do that? Brilliant woman! Let's give her a big tip." Quickly and quietly, that's the way I know how to work. Talking in general is like pulling teeth for me some days but constantly talking, like breathing in and out, like you have to do at this place, is something totally out of my realm.

            Not only do I have to talk to myself constantly but I also have to get used to working with pencils again. I haven't had to write with number two pencils since grade school, but that is the only thing the staff is allowed to use in this place. We're not allowed to erase anything, but we have to use pencil anyway. Putting them in my apron they only sit awkwardly in the pocket, stabbing me whenever I bend down, often breaking the point when I try to grab them from where they've wedged themselves at the bottom of the pocket. So, I've reverted to sticking them in my hair, like most of the staff, but then forget where I put them. At the end of the night I found three protruding from my disheveled ponytail as if I were a samurai, like the ones I used to watch on old martial arts films from the seventies, hiding weapons of destruction in my hair.

          After pre-theater, when the restaurant empties out and theater patrons rush to their Broadway shows, the restaurant's lights dim to a near darkness to set an enchanting evening mood. However, the only way of finding your table at this point is to keep along the path of candles centered on the tables that run down the length of the restaurant, like a runway at an airport. Later in the evening, as the post theater rush began to make its way in for a late night snack, to my great surprise I nearly smashed into Ed Asner making his way through the restaurant to a table. He was wearing a dark suit and it was just after I had left the bright lights of the kitchen so my eyes were still adjusting to the darkness of the dining room when this happened. I think I almost gave the poor man a heart attack when I stopped short about three inches from his nose. It was only after I backed out of his way and he wobbled past me that I realized who he was. Ed Asner! Holy cow. He's still alive? That was Ed Asner! Not long after Ed had arrived did the restaurant start to pick up the pace again and I found myself running back and forth from the dining room to the kitchen in a rush to get tables greeted and orders placed. In my haste while coming from the kitchen, I accidentally tripped over Jeremy, one of the more veteran servers who have been there for years and someone who one might put in the same category as a "mean girl." Thankfully, I had nothing in my hands at the time, but in that moment, Jeremy was waiting on Christian Borle from Smash, who I only noticed at the same time that I was falling over Jeremy's extended foot and I nearly landed on ol' Ed Asner's lap again, sitting at the table next to Christian. He must have thought I was the biggest klutz. I nearly gave him cardiac arrest coming in, and then I nearly landed on his frail little body just moments later. The poor man is in his eighties! I could have killed him! If he makes it out of this restaurant alive it will be a miracle.

            At the end of the night I was exhausted and beginning to get sick of hearing my own story. Nearly every other table I had to watch Dean wait on asked me the same obvious question, if I was in training, because I looked like Peter Pan's shadow following Dean around all night. But, then they would follow with asking to know what my story was. "What do you do during the day when I'm not waiting tables?" "Where are you from?" "Where did you go to college?" I found that the only reason some of these people even asked me these questions in the first place was so that they could eventually talk about what it was that they did and who they are. If I was going to be waiting on them, then apparently, I should know these things. Great, it's so nice to meet you. So glad you're somebody and I'm nobody. Wonderful, you have a platinum business card or a black American Express and you can afford to pay for everyone at your table and a pent house suite on Park Avenue. It must be just fabulous to be you. Now would you like fries with that or mashed potatoes? I think I'm bitter. This is not good. I'm beginning to think that the less I know about this world, the better. I just wish I had the choice. I always thought the rich and famous liked to keep their lives private. It seems I was wrong. They're just as self-conscious as I am about myself. Who would have thought?