Napa Valley’s Worst Waiter Chapter 2:

Yesterday I was still the kinda sorta manager at the restaurant. The person replacing me doesn’t start until Friday.

When I walked into the restaurant last night, Mr. Poopyhead  says hello. Then he immediately asks to talk to me. That can only mean one thing – impending:

Doom.
Dooom
Dooooooom
DOOOOOOOOM
DOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Horrible 2012-Mayan-esq DooOOOoooOOoooOOOoooOOOoooOOooM!

Mr. PH’s request to chat with me is similar to the feeling that comes over a teenage boy caught throwing a rotten tomato against the blackboard in U.S. History I Class and being sent down to the pot-marked ashen-faced Ichabod Crane look-a-like mean as sin Vice Principal of Discipline’s office.

Doom. I am doomed.

As Mr. PH begins his chat with me, something about a schedule and how I did it all wrong, I have trouble concentrating on his words. I only see lips flapping in the air while I listen to Frank Sinatra crooning in the background on the restaurant’s music system. My brain is apparently in defense mechanism mode, as it wafts in and out of reality trying to prevent me from experiencing my reoccurring hallucination of seeing a giant fork stuck in Mr. PH’s foot. Thinking of a giant fork stuck in his foot for some reason has a Zen-like calming effect on me. I don’t know why.

Mr. PH is continuing to talk, and my giant fork in foot vision is fading, so I need to focus – focus – FOCUS on what he is trying to tell me! Pay attention Dave, this could be serious, after all you could get demoted again – if is possible to get any lower in the restaurant’s food chain – pun intended. As my head starts to clear, I realize Mr. PH is discussing something we did together last Sunday.

Ah, I remember now. Last Sunday Mr. PH told me to make out a next weeks waiter and buser schedule. He told me to do this right before he marched off to fire one of our waiters for violating waiter rule #6,253 from section 14 found on paragraph three in our bi-weekly updated employee handbook.

As he goose-stepped away to fire the waiter, he looked at me and pointed to a piece of paper on the bar. This paper, written in his chicken scratch, (which would make any prescription writing Doctor proud) is apparently next weeks waiter schedule and I am to enter it into the computer. I can’t read most of his writing but lo and behold – one item does catch my attention:

Amanda: Restaurant Manager -works Monday Tuesday Friday Saturday and Sunday

My name no longer says “Manager.” It says waiter.

Hmmmm. I’m not a rocket scientist but this does raise an eyebrow considering this is news to me!!!!!!!!!.

The restaurant gets busy and a few hours go by before we can continue with translating his Rosetta Stone of waiter schedules. So for two hours I am wondering what is going on. Who is Amanda and … oh please God please make her nice and cute and skinny (they don’t call me Shallow Dave for nothing you know). Finally Mr. PH and I work on the schedule again and when we finish he nonchalantly says:

“… oh by the way, I hired a new manager and you are now the waiter – except for Wednesday and Thursday on her nights off.”

Let’s look up in the dictionary the word “insensitive”
Whoa it says: See Mr. Poopyhead!

That was how Sunday night ended up. Mr. PH finally went home and I stayed to close the restaurant wondering aloud if I’m crazy or what.

You may be asking (or not) what did Mr. PH want to talk to me about immediately last night? Apparently there was a mistake made on the schedule I printed up. You know, the schedule he wrote and I copied into the computer and then printed it. But this error was not Mr. PH’s fault.

No waaaaaaaaay! Of course not!

It was my fault, he tells me, for not catching the (his) error because that is what a good manager would have done.

Oye vey es mere.

Friday will be my 1st first night as a full time waiter. I have never taken a party with more then four people at a table. I have never waited on more then two tables at time. Saturday we are busy and I already have a party of eight and two parties of six and my section has ten tables in it.

This weekend could get …. oh who am I kidding …. this weekend will get ugly. Stay tuned.

Dave the Waiter

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