09.15.09
Posted in Fluffy Musings, Politics at 11:41 am by Mina
I know it’s trendy to be all “omg those dirty greedy capitalists” these days, but I gotta say, I love it. Not that I’ve ever particularly been in doubt, but this was just brought home to me last night as I looked for sheet music for a piece I’m considering for this semester’s recital. Since there are apparently no sheet music stores in this half of the state, the intarweb is my sheet music resource, and that’s been kind of rough in the past: not very many years ago, my best hope of finding music on the intarweb was if by some chance someone had scanned in the pages in image format. They would be terrible quality, large files, really hard to find, and even harder to legitimately purchase if I wanted to be all legal and stuff. If I *could* manage to find it to purchase, it meant paying a shipping fee and waiting some two weeks before I actually had the music in my hands.
Now, a 2-minute search gets me professionally-prepared sheet music, instantly transposed into whatever key I want, downloaded to my computer so I can print it right away, for a couple bucks. Oh, and if I want an accompaniment track to go with it?I can burn that onto a CD in minutes for only a few dollars more.
I can think of about eighteen billion ways in which capitalism makes my life better, and not a single way in which I or anybody else is worse off for it. Why exactly do we need the government getting in the way of it again?
Permalink
07.20.08
Posted in Fluffy Musings at 3:34 pm by Mina
I’ve been thinking over this post for nearly two weeks now, wondering how it should go. It’s important, and I know it needs to be written, but I don’t really grasp exactly what it is I should say. So I’ll probably ramble on for a bit and attempt not to let myself start crying and that will be that.
The Ground Round closed its doors for good last night. It wasn’t exactly an issue of not being profitable — we were doing okay in that regard — but a new chain offered the mall several thousand dollars per month more in rent and the owner couldn’t afford to match that, so he basically got kicked out. Maybe I’m being a little biased against the mall office here, but they’ve basically been a bunch of dicks for as long as he owned the place. But of course they’re running a business too, not doing charity work, so they have a right not to renew his lease and rent to someone else instead. I don’t think the someone else in this instance is going to be nearly as profitable as they seem to expect, but they have a huge corporation behind them that can put up the cash regardless, so we’re basically out of luck.
It sucks. It doesn’t so much suck for me, as I’d been phasing myself out of there anyhow and don’t really need the extra money from that one shift a week. But for the few adult employees who’d worked there full time, all of them for longer than I’d been there at all, it sucks. For the owner, who’d put everything he had these last fifteen years into that restaurant, keeping it afloat and regrowing the franchise chain after the corporate office went bankrupt, it sucks. For our tons of regular customers who’ve disclosed in the last week that they really don’t like to go anywhere else to eat out, it sucks.
The working environment there was definitely… different. At times it got extremely stressful. But for the most part, and especially the past few months, it was fun and sexy and playful and everyone was getting along with everyone else pretty darned well. One had, of course, to be the type of person who wasn’t offended by lewd comments and dirty jokes and people yelling “Shut the fuck up!” at each other. But provided you could give some friendly abuse as well as take it, you could have a really good time. And I did, in fact, have a really good time.
The few close friends I made there, I’m sure I’ll be seeing again. One of them is a fellow WoW-addict so I’ll be chatting with him online for sure. The owner and his wife will be coming to my concert at Tanglewood in a couple weeks, and I imagine I’ll continue to stay in touch with him somewhat as well. But everyone else — well, I imagine last night’s party was the last I’ll see of them, except maybe in passing.
It’s the end of an era, indeed. I worked there for longer than I’ve worked at any other job in my adult life thus far. And while I was intending to be done for good at the end of the summer anyway, it’s just not the same, knowing I can’t ever pop in to say hi and see how everyone’s doing. Not to mention the habit the husband and I had of stopping there for smoothies and wings when we’re doing some mall shopping, which we’d been doing since before we were married.
A lot of memories at that silly little restaurant. It will take a while indeed to say goodbye to them.
Permalink
07.05.08
Posted in Fluffy Musings at 7:08 pm by Mina
Like lightning bugs. When was the last time you sat outside and watched a lightning bug? Do you even know what a lightning bug is? I had just about forgotten about them until I saw one tonight. It’s been- hmm, maybe 8 years? maybe more?- since the last time I saw a lightning bug.
Makes me wonder. Are lightning bugs less common in Massachusetts than they were down in PA? Or is it just that I’m never outside at that right time of evening, due to work or games or just the fact that I don’t go outside as much as I did when I was younger? Sometime before the summer is over I think I shall have to sit in the backyard and see if there are bunches of them flashing out there.
Permalink
Posted in Fluffy Musings at 7:00 pm by Mina
And it’s neat how they work, or fail to, isn’t it? We sell this really yummy coffee at my little brewpub, and because we’re all hippified and pretentious we have it in the computer as “French Roast” rather than just plain old “Coffee.” Lately we’ve started doing breakfasts one day a week, and I’ve started seeing people complain that their check isn’t right. They see “Brunch_FrenchRoast” and think I’ve charged them for french *toast.* No one makes that mistake at dinner, of course- who’s thinking about french toast then?
Of course, more interesting to me is the fact that not one of these people, all of whom have obviously gone over their check quite thoroughly, notices that this french toast I’ve charged them for is only two buck a pop. Nor do they mention I neglected to charge them for their coffee. :-}
Permalink
12.29.07
Posted in Fluffy Musings at 6:31 pm by Mina
I stop at the grocery store on my way home from work today to pick up some dinner, and my total comes to $14.18. “Have you seen the movie ’23′?” the cashier asks me.
“No,” I tell him, “but I’ve read The Illuminatus! Trilogy, which I understand is basically the same thing in book form.”
“Fourteen plus one plus eight equals twenty-three,” he informs me solemnly.
“Yes, I find there are a lot of numbers of which that is true” is my (not-at-all-snarky) reply.
He excitedly writes down the name of the book. I hope he gets it.
I don’t bother to mention that 1 + 4 + 18 = 23 too.
Permalink
10.29.07
Posted in Fluffy Musings at 6:36 pm by Mina
…but if you’re a cook, it’s quite alright to take some fries right off a dish that’s already plated up for the customer, or heck, cook yourself a couple extra of whatever just got ordered. While you’re at it go ahead and scream at the waitstaff when you have to remake something because you fucked up, and oh yeah, have your shift meal for free, too. We’ll just charge the servers three or four times the food cost for their shift meals to make up for it.
I do not get why there is this pervasive double standard in restaurants. Every restaurant I’ve worked in, save one, allows the servers to be treated like shit by the kitchen staff. Aren’t we all here for the same reason? Don’t we all deserve to be treated with respect by our fellow workers? Shouldn’t doing the right thing for the customer be the priority of both the cooks and the servers, regardless of who made the mistake? And for heaven’s sake, if we can afford to feed the people we pay $10 an hour, why can’t we afford to feed the ones who are only getting $2.63?
I’m getting tired of working with people who will do things like be as stingy as possible with french fry portions for paying guests, but when called on their own fry-snacking habit will rationalize that it doesn’t matter because fries are so cheap. Thinking it’s time to find a new place of employment, I am.
Permalink
10.22.07
Posted in Fluffy Musings at 5:33 pm by Mina
After spending much of my day off reading stories over at waiterrant.net, I went into work today really determined to be a good waitress. I wasn’t gonna get pissed off at the people who couldn’t read; I was going to do my damnedest to be tolerant of the troublesome tables and maybe make their day a bit brighter; I was going to try actually selling things to my guests instead of apathetically taking whatever order they wanted to give. It was kind of like starting all over, being new at the job instead of a cynical veteran. And it was actually fun!
I sure did get tested. Three tables into my day people started breezing right past the hostess to seat themselves. I had to explain to a particularly crabby lady why we couldn’t put a highchair for her kid directly in front of the fire exit, and she went on to complain about the prices and the portion sizes and the fact that it didn’t look like the menu picture (you didn’t order an item on the menu, genuis) and be a general epitomized example of the table from hell. But I smiled, apologized, sent my manager over to make nice, and ended up getting one of the best tips of the day from that table. Strange.
One guy asked me to confirm to his daughter that most men don’t really care if you look like a super-skinny model; “Real women have some meat on their bones,” I believe is what he said. I was able to tell her that my husband has always made it known that he appreciates my curves, and besides, we real women tend to be a lot cooler to hang out with anyway. :-} That table didn’t tip me very well, but I was honestly able to tell them it was a pleasure to have waited on them.
Another pleasure was one of my last tables of the night- two cocktails each, full dinners, nice chatty people. Taught me that bitters are supposed to go in a Manhattan, which I’ve never seen one of our bartenders do. Left me a very nice tip, those folks did. A very pleasant end to my evening.
For the first time in a long while I felt as if I was actually connecting with people, doing a job I enjoy, rather than slogging through something I do because it pays the bills. Sure, the money is important. Rent and food and all that ain’t cheap. And somebody’s gotta keep paying to host this domain. But it’s really not all about the money. That was definitely a lesson I needed to relearn.
Permalink