To pee or not to pee

As you can tell from my recent posts, after months of active searching, I finally secured a position. Finally. Don’t get too excited –I’m not—it’s as a fucking server. What I haven’t told you is how I ended up at this joint.

Le restaurant (not so cleverly) is really Le Meritage. After several interviews (see Another One Bites the Dust I & II) the chef offers me a spot on the team much to the chagrin of the cunt-faced manager who clearly disliked me. Come to think of it, I wasn’t so much offered the job but welcomed aboard as if there weren’t options (or a choice) on my part. In kind of a whirl wind I was shuffled to a terminal in a hallway to fill out an online application then into the HR manager’s office to sign away my life in the way of a background check and drug screening.

Although I’m a pretty good girl all considering, I find both a background checks (and some check your credit too – WTF!) and drug tests extremely intrusive. As a former manager I don’t frankly care what people do off the clock. On the clock is a different story but do you think, for example, the occasional marijuana consumption would actually impact someone’s ability to wait tables, cook a steak, or wash a dish? That’s right folks, all this hoop-jumping is for the great pleasure of severing food on a plate. Give me a fucking break. During my 2-hour stint at the clinic there were a handful of actually druggies and problem consumers parading in and out of the place. Here was one conversation:

Random 20-something black dude, "Hey, can I ask you a question."

Me, "Sure, shoot."

"Uh, I had a couple of drinks before work will they be able to tell?"

Me, "depends on what they're testing for."

him, "awe, shit."

Me, "awe shit maybe."

(Background conversation: breathalyzer test)

Me, "Dude, you're having a breath test?"

"Fuck, I dunno. What's that mean?"

Me, "Did you have an accident?"

"Fuck no!" "Well, it wasn't my fault."

There were a few other actual druggies that came in for regular screenings, a cold frigin’ nurse who practically ignored everyone and then there was the dude who nearly mislabeled the “tamper proof” containers that contained my blessed pee. So if the question is to pee or not to pee well I guess my answer was to pee cuz’ hey, I needed the job.

During my stay waiting to pee it was sunny our while I was trapped in one of a dozen of versions of hell. This one: a boring room with intermittently retards and druggies coming by to also piss in a cup and a blaring television parked on Fox news (more retards). I’d like to ad the folks that worked there weren’t all that bright either (hence the whole labeling near-snafu)). 2 hours and 2 liters of water the sun went behind dark clouds, I peed and I spent the next 30 minutes riding my bike home in the pouring rain. Totally fitting. In the meantime I was offered a position where I am currently at.

Having already gone to the trouble of peeing in the cup and all – and I actually preferred Meritage as the surroundings, food and wine were -hell, I might have actually learned something- I told my current employer I had another offer and needed a few days to consider. What I also needed was what kind of hours I’d be scheduled and at what pay; thus far they had been extremely elusive. And then I waited for 5 days.

At 4:45 on the 5th day the HR gal from Le Meritage left a message that declared I had passed on all counts and to give her a call by 5 or during business hours the next day. As it was 5:15 by the time I got the message I called the following day, and the next, and the next. I also tried to call the manager. No message was returned. As a last attempt I e-mailed the chef. He was, after all, my first point of contact and he is the man in charge of the entire food & beverage program. Here’s what I wrote:


Chef Farrell:

Good afternoon. I read your review last week; congratulations to you and your staff.

I trust you are very busy so I'll get to the point: I have been unable to touch base with Ms. Smith regarding orientation, training and scheduling. Cindy has received confirmation on my background check and screening but I do not yet have a start date nor have my scheduling inquiries been addressed.

While I understand the protocol of the training regimen and that shifts may change due to the demands of business, the number of "scheduled shifts" for a typical work week has not been clearly outlined. I am certainly eager to join your team; however, for my own financial stability it is necessary that I have some comprehension of the base hourly commitment. Since last we spoke, I have been offered a position that guarantees 7-8 shifts per week and, while it is my preference to be a part of your organization, I need to move forward in my decision for employment.

Thank you for your time.



Again, there was no response. After waiting one more day I contacted the GM from the other place and accepted the position. It took several months and more than a dozen interviews to land this gig so I figured, despite my apprehension (rightly deserved by the way), I oughtta get back to work and finally start making some money.

P.S. In case you were wondering, I hate my job.

The Job, Day 2:

So I punch in for my 6:15 shift and my trainer is nowhere to be found. Sometime after the scheduled in-time she’s on the floor but not yet changed into uniform. She’s busy venting about the boyfriend. She proceeds to tell me it’s an awful day for me to be working with her because she’s not in a good mood, not in the mood for it, and they have a party so I won’t even learn anything. Well she was right about me not learning anything.

In retrospect maybe I did learn something. Let’s review:
• My trainer speaks Italian (because she lived there), some French and a little German so she likes to talk to foreigners to practice.
• My trainer is an awesome beverage sales person, if she says so herself.
• My trainer doesn’t follow most of the rules – but I should. Whatever those rules happen to be; I wouldn’t know because she and her partner actually exhibited very few of the standard protocols.
• My trainer used to manage there.
• My trainer can eat bread all night there but apparently eating butter with that bread is a fire-able offense.
• The chef is a yeller.
• The manager is a greasy haired slovenly dressed woman who also likes to yell.
• We’re not supposed to leave a tray on the tray jack; that’s one of the MOD’s pet peeves. I learned that when she snapped at me, otherwise known as the first time she talked to me.
• My co-workers are nice but are both LAZY and sloppy.
• Latin dishwashers are all the same – everywhere.
• I hate my job.

Truthfully, it took everything in me to not walk out. It was simply the most unprofessional rag-tag bullshit I’ve experienced in decades. It is the worst training program I’ve ever gone through. The “team” does whatever they want whenever they want to and unless you are un-liked it’s mostly tolerated. I will likely be un-liked by the cool kids because I didn’t hit it off with my trainer. She’s nice but if she put even as much energy into actually training me as she put into telling me how badly she did train me (“but I swear, I’m usually a really good trainer; I used to be the training manager here.”) I might have actually learned something. The bad experience was not reserved just for today; it was not just a fluke.

Yesterday, I personally witnessed 14 customers walk out the door because of the hosts’ attitude. They couldn’t be bothered to invite them in to the bar for a drink while they waited for the table. The standard response was “it’ll be 30 minutes for a table,” when really it was more like 10 – tables just needed to be reset. I haven’t seen one real professional there in any capacity. Every pork chop was burned (the chime was totally blackened presumably because it was too much work to cover the bone with a little foil), every plate had slop and finger prints all over it. The asparagus was sprayed with baking spray and what the menu merchandised as “wood fire grilled” is totally gas; the sauces were squiggled from a squeeze bottle, and every single plate presentation was circa 1980 – at best. Menus were dirty, the staff was greasy, decorative shit on the wall were broken, and the kitchen was filthy.

Today I almost . . .

Today I almost became a bartender. After heavy consideration I thought it a bad idea - a really bad idea. For a grand sum of $8-8.50/hr the responsibility of supervising far more experienced and tenured high-volume bartenders seemed a joke. Why bother humiliating myself? I should mention my man works at the same place so why risk humiliating him too? To be kind, I wouldn’t make for a good high-volume bartender and this place does 500 – 1000 covers a day in season. I really hope I don't close the door for good by passing on the position (they were "just trying" to get me into the organization to see how we jived and maybe –just maybe—it would turn into something else) but I think I would have only made myself look like a fool. I haven’t bartended for like a decade and I was only OK at it then. (My motto was if you didn’t know what went in your drink than you shouldn’t be drinking it; aka: I wore a tight t-shirt and sold a lot of beer, vodka tonics, etc.) I can't remember what goes into cocktails and I don't even like making my own drinks - I like having them made for me. I sucked it up though and made one pre-work drink while I wrote a draft of my refusal e-mail. This sucks.


My life sucks.


I hope your life is going better.

Cheers to that.

Well my orientation and first training shift are officially over. I’ll have to pause a moment because I need a drink. A big tall double-strong drink before I go any further.

OK, much better.

It was neither my worst nor best experience but let’s just say train wreck bears a striking resemblance to their training program and their whole way of doing things. For down south I presume its status quo. Well that’s what happens when the owner promotes his little girl to AGM. You know like, she’s like worked practically like every position and, ya know, like worked her way up…she’s been managing 1 year now ( of her whole 25 years of life) and she couldn’t even tell you what the training wage (aka minimum wage) is. She’s like, ya know, dumb.

It sucks to be treated like a subordinate (Oh, that’s right, I AM a subordinate) when you know you are more talented, more qualified than your superiors. But that’s neither here nor there. I am what I am. For now.

The staff was really pretty nice a great deal of them are new and barely knew more than us (there’s Tommy, the 21 one year old dudette from Florida that I’m training with). I can see why they’re at a loss from their training program. As a training specialist it was silently killing me. That said, I should totally know everything, right? Well, I have no retention for liquor and wine info. We’ll see how that goes. Then there’s the computer system; 9 times out of ten they’re programmed in some dumb way so that’s always a struggle too. I’ll just have to work through it. That’s what servers do. UHG!

I have an interview of sorts tomorrow. We’ll see what comes of that. Maybe I’ll get a chance to be something else. Cheers to that.

What am I?

So I got a damn job and let me tell you I ain’t all that happy about it. I found out yesterday. About 2 hours before Walmart closed (yes, they close here – not the 24 hour gig they got up north) which is where I ran to buy my work pants. Let’s just say it’s where the big girls shop and I ain’t all too happy about that either. I was writing about how I ended up at this job when I got bored with it and decided to rant about the last few days. The new gig starts today at 3. I’m ever so NOT happy about it but that story is for another day.

Let’s see, hmmm… I’ve been reading this book “Everything I want to do is Illegal” by Joel Salatin which has really been making my head spin. Farm policy, what a mess.. I thought I was a libertarian for a few days. The author presents things so logically, so passionately that you can’t help but find yourself taking his point of view on for yourself, but the last few chapters (I’m on like chapter 24 for now - I’m finally nearing the end, thank Joel’s god!) he’s been on this anti-pro-choice pro- god kick that is really irritating me. The whole fucking book is really interesting (as nutty as he can be) and highlights the profoundly ridiculous legislation on farming policy not to mention how fucked up the USDA is but his penchant for the Lincoln-Douglas debate style has him leaning on one radical example after another to prove his point. In hind sight, I realized it’s easy to use the periphery the skew the view but it’s the totality of the situation that OUGHT to be considered but I digress. While I’ll concede to wanting less government I can’t say what the fuck I am. But I thought I might be a libertarian for a few days there, I really thought I might be; he was making so much sense; it seemed logical to jump to some radical conclusions. Not that he is a libertarian, I don’t know what the fuck he is, but I just thought maybe I was leaning in that direction. Sleep deprivation has its way with you sometimes; it made for a few interesting conversations on facebook so there you go. The libertarian bullshit aside, I became more committed to our food ideas but somehow ended up buying a rib-eye and some bakers at Walmart last night. Poverty and convenience has its way with you too.

We both knew better but 2 gut aches and 1 flavorless meal later we were reminded about how important it is to know where your food source is, how it is cared for and where/how it is processed. Despite some fucking dumb-ass article I read about New Orleans being the most “local” in its food (WHAT A FUCKING JOKE – with Sysco calling the shots in a majority of the restaurants, shit like Chinese crawfish, and hit restaurants like Stella sourcing nothing but the shrimp from the area – GIVE ME A BREAK) sourcing clean and local is a real struggle we’ve been having here. The New Orlineans have good propaganda though, I’ll give them that.

Anyway, we’ve really been having a hard time sourcing but we keep trying. Yesterday’s effort landed us at a “butcher” that was smack dab in the middle of a ghetto convenient store that sold more Mad Dog 20/20 than anyone should (it was kind of prettily displayed in all its colorful glory right alongside the pickled hogs feet and car oil). There was actually a sizeable meat counter tucked in the back corner right behind a Crispy Crunch fried chicken chain and they had decent prices but all of the meat was frozen and clearly poorly handled. My favorite family value pack included pickled parts and 2 gallons of fruit punch among the other offerings – hilarious and sad all in one. It was frightening. Boy do I miss our Clancy’s meat market. We really took for granted our nice little local food scene. J had a good blog title idea yesterday: My Blog, A Tale of Two Cities. ‘Cuz folks, I’m here to tell you Minneapolis and New Orleans could not be more different.


What else? Well, our new friend/neighbor is a closeted gay man with a real (and by real I mean HUGE) penchant for the drink. Now, don’t get me wrong there’s nothing wrong with that in my book unless your life starts interfering with my life but it also turns out he’s a raging racist. How one persecuted minority group can talk such hate about another is beyond me but I’ve really had it with his use of “darkies.” If he keeps this up I might just have to steal all his booze and show up on his door step with every person of color I know just to making him palpably nervous. Jesus Christ, he’s been living in Chicago for the last 17 years didn’t he acclimate at all?

Other highlights of my week include: hanging out with my homeless friend who was gonna play me ‘cuz he thought I was some tourist from New York, being asked out for drinks by an old man who was so drunk he could barely keep his eyes open (note: he was wearing overalls, was missing most of his teeth, and had those icky white chalky spiddles in the corner of his mouth.), an entire day of non-adventure while trying to “make something happen,” mysteriously losing the first job offer that was made to me, making shitty-ass ravioli and making a proclamation to attach everything I own to the walls because it isn’t gonna fit anywhere else.

When I first wrote this it was 3 am. I was wide awake and dreading tomorrow (today) with every ounce of my being ‘cuz I am for damn sure not happy about where things are headed. I have a Walmart steak in my gut, I share a wall with a racist and while not a libertarian I am not one step further in defining who I really am and how I’m gonna live the life I want to be living. But I guess, starting today, I am a server and a 36 year old one at that.

Desperate Times call for Desperate Measures

Desperate times call for desperate measures, sure, but I seem to lack the momentum to really push – push hard to open all doors. Currently I’ve only managed to nudge open a few windows –actually little doggie doors seems more like it-- to wait tables and those prospects seem luke-warm at best (hey it could be worse, I could be working at Bubba Gumps. Mr. Mister, on the other hand, has had a full-fledge resurgence of renewed strength and has done a few courageous things that are worth noting. To be honest, my man has approached this whole employment fiasco with much more aplomb than myself but that, however, may not land him a job either. Regardless, his gusto should be applauded and a few of his braver recent moments are shared here.

#1: Putting aside all ego the Mr. decided to discover for himself why he had not been called back by Bacco restaurant. He’d applied on more than one occasion (there had been a few Craigslist posts) but had not heard from anyone. This being a common occurrence I was quick to write it off; The Mr., on the other hand, got a burr up his bum and marched in there between services and requested to speak to the chef. As it turned out, the chef had not seen his resume (instead the HR gal had riffled through them and decided for herself which ones the chef should review). He interviewed very well and was asked to perform a stage the next day (working interview). Again, he performed another non-paying 13 hour shift. He also staged at a sister restaurant—providing 2 more 12 hour free shifts for which he was offered a poorly paid non-management position—but has not since heard back from either establishment. In fact, unlike any other stage, he was rushed out the door by the chef de cuisine at Bacco with a forced 20 in his hand. OK, so I guess I lied about the not being paid part but, seriously, he’s never seen a dime before and the twenty , he said, felt more like a bribe to never, ever come back.

#2: When we first moved here we met this guy from the Chicago area who was a chef (is a “chef” actually, but more of a paper pusher short as of current). Anyway, this guy was very nice and suggested he and the Mr. go for a drink one of these days . . . the Mr. staged there for two nights a few months back (yup, 2 more of those non-paying gigs) but wasn’t even so much as offered a job because: 1. He was over qualified, 2. “a different caliber of cook” and 3. too expensive; not that money was even discussed. Anyway, following the outing a few weeks back an interesting, albeit vague, proposition emerged. A nice hourly compensation was finally negotiated but no real impetus as to what either party would be getting out of it nor any time-line for assessment, promotion, etc. Hmmmm, it was a bold ego humbling move and a strong negotiation, but for what? That is still to be determined but the Mr. made one courageous move that will remain an infamous story in our collective history.

#3: My BFF graciously purchased the new John Besh cookbook for my birthday. It’s a pretty sexy little number but what I hadn’t realized (besides the fact that the delivery dudes here are morons and chuck all packages over the 12 foot gateway into the alley) was that we were in receipt of an early addition.
Since we had recently begun the tradition of collecting autographs in our cook and food-related books my man suggested that I have Besh autograph my book. Although I love the idea of a signature I HATE succumbing to the “celebrity chefs” of the world and participating in the fodder that swells their already massive egos. Since I had just read about Besh’s appearance-to-be at the coming weekend’s seafood festival I was quick to throw the ball back in my man’s court.

“You,” I asserted, “should go down and solicit the autograph and use it as an excuse to present your resume to him directly.”

Wait. Let me back up. The Mr. staged for August way back in like August. Yeah, that was it, I remember thinking it was cute or ironic that he was interviewing for August in August. Anyway, it all went well until his 26 year-old chef de cuisine and/or his 22 year-old sous chefs cock-blocked him (or whatever who can really tell what happened because nothing, thus far, has made any sense to me in our employment pursuits down here). My Mr. really wanted to work there so, initially, he was crushed. He went from being warmly received to being coldly dismissed. No explanation, no follow up just a “don’t call us we’ll call you” blasé blasé e-mail after following up with the director of operations; whom he’d met and had had many correspondence with prior. He went from being cherry-plucked from 300 applicants to not so much as even being considered for ANY of the dozens of positions open in the quickly proliferating Besh group—mind you my man has 23 years experience. Restaurant politics can suck it.

Any hoo, Mr was able to set that aside (don’t know if I could) and decided without so much as a flinch that he would do it; he would present his resume to the man himself. He’d heard, after all, that Chef Besh liked dynamic people. That was dynamic, right?

“What time is he on?” the Mr. asked. (We both thought it was sometime on Saturday, the following day.)

“Oh, I don’t remember. Let me look.” And I did, kind of lackadaisically. “Oh, hell, he was on like 15 minutes ago.” Without skipping a beat, the man grabbed his helmet, his resume, a kiss and headed out the door.

While I didn’t attend (I was still in my jammies), this is what was reported:

The Mr. scooted down to the festival sight not knowing exactly where the festival nor where the demonstration sight was. He headed toward Harrah’s casino knowing it was in that general area. Since he was on the Vespa –and this is the beauty of the thing—he just started darting in and out of the place looking for some sign of where the big-shot chef might be. Lo and behold chef Besh wasn’t even on yet; in fact, he saw him outside drinking a beer with one of his subordinates. Excited, he forgot to even turn off the damn Vespa before heading over (and then he realized and went and grabbed the damn keys).

He approached, introduced himself and asked if he (Besh) might do him a favor.

“I’m a big fan and I wondered if you might sign this for me.”

A look of shock came over Besh’s face, “Where’d you get this . . . it’s not been released yet.”

“Where there’s a will there’s a way. Actually, a friend sent it to me in the mail.”

“Huh, you must have good friends.”

“Yes, I do.”

Besh went to open the book to where an author might typically autograph it (one of his first autographs we later thought). “Awwe, what’s that?” My man playfully asked, “Oh my, my resume. Hmmm, how’d that get there? What blatant self promotion. Tisk, tisk; shame on me. (A few smiles, a little chuckle.) Well, since it’s already in your hand you might aas well keep that copy for yourself.”

“So, where’d you come from?”

“Minneapolis.”

“Yeah? Who’d you work for?”

“Jean Georges.”

A tiny bell of familiarity appeared to strike him. “Didn’t you interview or…”

“Yeah, I did …” My man gave a brief yeah I did, not sure what happened, would really like to work for you, heard you like out-going individuals, etc, etc. And then he shook his hand, tossed the book in his backpack and left almost as quickly as he’d arrived. He didn’t want to appear as if he were stalking the guy or anything but he’d done what he’d set out to do and I was proud of him for having done it.

My Northern Order

When I lived up north we were always hankering for some fried chicken. Now that we have it whenever the mood strikes us there are plenty of things we wish we had while down here. I've been thinking about this for awhile now.

Here is my northern order which includes all the things I can't get and am desperately missing (in no particular order):

• 1 case of Gazella – OK, 6 cases just to tide me over for a bit. In my opinion, the wine selection here kind of sucks with but a few (if any) vino verde offerings. Like many things, the shit they have is outdated.

• Dorthy Lynch – made in Nebraska this sweet western-style dressing is nowhere to be found.

• That f#@!n’ lavosh sandwich from Holly Land – the special ones that white people have to convince them that it is in fact the actual sandwich they want!

• Lu’s sour pork bahn mi. Make that a dozen to go.

• The Hmong market – especially the delightfully spicy papaya salad with purple sticky rice and their ribs. I really miss those. They’ve never heard of Hmong people down here let alone their distinctive cuisine. Hell, they think the Vietnamese here are Chinese and the Hondurans are Mexican.

• King and I’s #34 – Cashew Chicken in hot pepper sauce (and their calamari with extra dipping sauce!) I seriously have loved this dish for like a decade and I’m super fond of the coconut, tomato, shrimp soup too. Mmmmm, it is so delicious and perfect for cold weather. Not that we have any cold weather here thus far – HAHAHAHAHAH

• Lamb bacon BLT. That mo fo Sameh ought to f#@%! Over night us some – or the damn recipe at least! For that matter his peeps oughtta friggin inundate the market here with their hummus and stuff cuz the ready-made shit here is crap-olla! And there’s like only one Middle-Eastern grocery retailer and it’s half-ass at best. Can we import a Holy Land for the southern market, please?

• Uh, how about a friggin’ co-op. Seriously, they don’t exist here and I’d take even MN’s crappiest. But the Wedge or that shiny fancy one you worked out would do nicely.

• A REAL farmer’s market. You have no idea what you’re missing once you’re missing it. OK, I knew it was great but I actually (naively) thought it would be better here. NOT!!!

• Just one will do but I did oh so love that croquet madame at Vincent.

• 5$ Pho. The stuff exists here but it over priced and not quite as good.

• The Chef Shack should certainly do a tour of the south too. I’m just saying.

• Minnesota sweet corn. That 1$ an ear, Texas bi-color corn is nothing compared to our sweet, sweet Mn.

• Lenny Russo should so come down here and kick some sense(I was gonna say kick some teeth out but many a folk here are already without) into these peeps about local, seasonal, sustainable. Really. Are you fucking kidding me with the canned Sycso shit? OK, Brenda or Lucia would do nicely too but I always appreciate Lenny’s totally articulate bereavement.

OK, I quit now. I’m sure there is more so consider this part one of my order.

Welcome to my life, a quick recap

Since my last posting there have been a few incident of note but I’ve been too busy to share them here. Although I will certainly recant those experiences (some good some not so good) let me just give you a quick recap of my month so far:

• We’ve received 2 tickets and the car was towed; one ticket was rescinded (after 2 visits to the court house, a video, a letter, and pictures) saving us 40$ we didn’t have.

• We’ve been audited; now owing an additional 200 bucks in one month’s time.

• I’ve had 2 serious financial meltdowns after performing minor clerical errors with our multiple checking and credit card accounts.

• We have walked out of no fewer than 5 restaurants because of the service.

• I’ve applied to 23 more jobs and have had 6 interviews; Mr. Man has serendipitously donated another 36 + hours of free labor for jobs he’ll likely never get and/or accept due to poor wage compensation.

• I was offered one serving position at le restaurant. I have already submitted to the background check and will comply with the mandatory drug test this afternoon. For the record: I consider both huge invasions of privacy. Let’s remember folks, this is a serving position. * At the age of 30 I quit what I would have referred to as my last serving job because I “didn’t want to be a 30-year-old server.” Maybe at 40 I can revisit that notion.

• I’ve been hit on by a late forty-something goober on the street (invited me to breakfast some day), a toothless half-in-the-bag “professional painter” at the Laundromat, and a 66 year old gypsy who’s just returned to the states after 2 heart attacks. Although he still had his teeth, they were grayed by a 3 pack, bottle of whisky a day habit (which is, according to him, his medicine). Let’s not forget the giant, greasy red neck who stopped his car to ogle and proclaim “you look good” (infer hillbilly dipshit accent and gapping mouth) and the twenty-something boy I thought had been flirting with me. He, I might add, turned out to be gay and is more likely to hit on my man than on myself.

• I visited a convent.

These, my friends, are the moments of my life in the few weeks following my 36th birthday. Happy fucking birthday to me indeed.

Another One Bites the Dust - Part Two

After two reschedules I make it back into –let’s call it le restaurant—to meet with the chef (who is the man in charge there) and little miss sweater set.

I opted to play down the interview attire (like my resume) knowing full well that if I show up in a suit I would be far better dressed than le manager who already doesn’t like me. A simple purple wrap dress will do.

I check in with the front desk and I have to wait 20 minutes before she arrives. I am escorted back to the private dining room where I had my first two interviews. She informs me we’ll have to reschedule again. She already rescheduled twice over the phone but was apparently too important to do me the courtesy of calling me that day. I’m told the chef is out with the flu and, per Doctor’s orders, is not permitted to return to work for a week. But then states she’d like me to meet with him and herself on Thursday – not of next week but 2 days from now (today). Huh? How’s that work? She further notes that they would like me to start ASAP but that I have to meet with them again and then with the GM and then a drug test.

Time out. I have already met with her and the chef. I could have totally met with GM Tuesday, the day she had me come in for the non-interview. I can take the stupid drug test when ever. I’ll pee in her hand right now if that would suffice. But why the fuck is she wasting my time?

Before I leave she adds that there are a few ”snarky” (or something like that) college kids that work there. Would I be OK working with them she asks. I try to make light of it; I add that I like to think I'm mature enough to be above it. What I really think is that if they’re “difficult” or “miss behaved” shouldn’t she, as the manager, take action? I don’t know, shouldn’t she manage her people? Damn, I wish I could remember exactly how she put it. It was ridiculous and just like I didn’t know why I was there I didn’t know what her point was.

Now it’s Thursday, the day we were to have met. She still hasn’t called. I haven’t heard a word from le restaurant.