Changing of the Gaurd

I didn't survive my first regime change.

My big break into restaurants was getting hired at Pacific Desserts during Nutcracker season. It was a three week crash course in espresso, sections, busy rushes and the joy of walking home with a pocket full of cash. Then I learned the business was closing. They had tried to sell, and I'd like to think if the sale had gone through I might still work there, but it didn't. I was back looking for a job, but suddenly, magically, I had "restaurant experience."

My next restaurant job lasted a little longer, serving ramen and gyoza at this little noodle cafe on Capitol Hill. It was a good college job, a good stepping stone up the restaurant food chain, but it also went under and closed with very little notice. I was beginning to feel I might be cursed.

From there I spent more time than I care to admit running the register and stabbing frozen meet with tongs at the Mongolian Grill. The job had very little to do with the kind of restaurant work I was interested in, the hours were long and sporadic, the management difficult, and I got hit on more than I have in any job before or since. When I was finally able to quit, I immediately went out and bought myself a drink.

I quit because I'd managed to find a real restaurant job, with tips, at a little Japanese place in Wallingford. It suited me, with its twelve small tables, and opportunities to practice my fast decaying grasp of the Japanese language. Not long after I'd started, though, I learned that the place was going to be sold. My heart sank, but I was luckier this time. They found a buyer, the new owner wanted to keep the restaurant going, even keep the name, and any staff that chose to stay. I stayed. I stayed four years, through a few different sushi chefs, many different servers, menus and decor changes. I finally left for a job where I could work days, freeing up my nights to reenter the theater arena.

I've already said a few choice things about the establishment that followed. (Turnover.) While it did allow me to pursue theater, it in no way changed the patterns of unease and people coming and going all around me.

In fact I'm beginning to think that there is no escaping those patterns. When I landed my current job  a year ago it had just undergone a change of ownership.  A few months after I started the new owner fired the manager, and never hired new one, simply taking on a few of her duties himself and delegating the rest among the servers. Currently the kitchen employs only two of the chefs who were there when I started, and both of them have quit and been rehired during the course of the year.

Its shaky ground. I suppose I shouldn't expect less working in an industry with no contracts and no benefits. The plethora of available jobs and the ability to come and go as you please is one of the few perks available to restaurant workers. That and the tips. Perhaps the only reason I insist on bucking the trend, staying with the same job for years at a time is that there is a significantly smaller subset of restaurants that work with my scheduling needs. Or perhaps it's the memory of those first couple jobs, where staying for years wasn't ever an option. 

Let there be Light

I press a small round black button on the board. Light goes out on stage. I press it again, the stage brightens. I smile.

I always had a great appreciation for stage managers, but I never really understood the job. They were around at rehearsal, not saying much, ready with a line when you needed one, then come tech weekend and they tended to disappear into the booth emerging only to call places and clean up the actors messes.

I press the light board button in unison with the space bar that starts the next sound cue, a snippet of "The Lord is Good to Me" plays over the speakers, while the light on stage narrows to a single spot. 

When Maggie asked me if I'd be interested in stage managing this production, she put it this way; "I don't know if you have any experience, but I know you like 'Penguins', and you're not an idiot." These were, in fact, the total sum of my qualifications. The last show that had my name in the program under stage manager was back in college, and that is because every Cornish Sophomore is required to stage manage. But, I'd had a wonderful time attending 'Penguins' Episodes 3 and 4, and I'd like to think my brain hasn't completely atrophied, so I pulled out a notebook and accepted the challenge.

Doing my best not to be distracted by the very funny scene happening onstage, I prepare the shows only film cue. I press play on the VCR, take out the lights, bring in the projector. 

During the rehearsal process I found my niche easily. When I talked to my friend Opal prior to starting rehearsals, she said "when in doubt, write everything down." So I did. I wrote down what time people arrived, when we took breaks, what scenes we worked on. I wrote down blocking, and dance and fight choreography, and when lines were cut, rewritten, or reassigned.  Some of my notes I typed up into rehearsal reports, some I referred back to when questions arose, and many more were never given a second thought.

I bring up the house lights for intermission. Then head backstage to strike the concealed microphone and wheel out the shrouded nuclear bomb. 

Moving from the rehearsals into tech week, I traded my notebook for cue lists, and the show traded the director and I yelling out "Slam!" "Blackout." "Screech" for actual effects. Under the care of the designers and technical director, I was introduced to two very important buttons: the space bar on the computer that played the sound cues, and that little black button that turns the lights on, off, and all the pretty colors.


As an actor mimes picking up a tray of glasses, I press the space bar, filling the stage with sound of tinkling glass. As another actor lifts his arms and mimes smashing the tray at his feet, I bring the moment to life with another click of my finger, and a cacophony of sound.

Pressing buttons is one thing, but I'm not a techie, never have been, and its hard to know what to do if the button doesn't perform properly when pressed. I've been given a few tools by the marvelous Annex crew; I can hit the escape button on the sound board, stopping all offending cues in their tracks. I know to check that the "master" sliders are in place on both boards before freaking out over unresponsive cues.   But I still feel out of my league, dwarfed by the shows technical demands, and my own lack of experience. As with any job, I want to be good. I want to be perfect, and, like any beginner, I'm far from that.

As the plays final scene begins building to a crescendo, I quickly un-mute the booth's microphone, and position myself between the two boards, a finger on the sound cue, a finger on the light cue, my face directly in front of the microphone, ready for my big moment.  

One of the things I am loving about stage managing is the feeling of power. I'm used to being on stage, at the mercy of other actors, or sitting in the audience, watching something I've written brought to life. Both are exhilarating experiences, but both are oddly powerless. Here in the booth, with light and darkness literally at my fingertips, I possess an almost giddying amount of power. This mostly terrifies me, but its fun too, especially when things go well. 

I hit the space bar, cutting off Madonna mid sentence with 'Spirit in the Sky'. I bring up the lights, the applause intensifies, the cast bows, then raises their arms to acknowledge me. I smile.

The Two Sides of Summer

Despite the current state of the sky, the Solstice has come and gone, so has Pride, and the 4th of July is just around the corner. Summer is here. I've switched from Makers Manhattans to dirty gin Martinis. I've spent a couple afternoons lying in the backyard in a sunburn temping outfit with a book. I can't find a good apple anywhere and have instead been buying stone fruit from farmers markets and roadside stands.

In my divided world, Summer means two very different things: life in the restaurant heats up, while the theater shifts in to a sort of slow motion dream scape.

Anyone in the restaurant industry knows that these hot summer months are when you make your money. Summer brings tourists, vacationers, and locals who are no longer too depressed to leave their houses, out in droves. In hotel properties, the effects of Summer on business are magnified, hotels fill up with tour groups, people who are departing or returning form cruises to Alaska, and prospective University students and their families. After the lean winter months, fueled only by the occasional holiday, or convention, Summer is a time when those in the hospitality business can once again start paying down their credit cards, or buying shoes and concert tickets, depending on your priorities.

Summer is also the time when theaters following a conventional season schedule go on break. In Seattle and its surrounding area that means the Seattle Rep, the 5th Ave, Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Seattle Shakespeare Company, Book-It, Village Theater, Renton Civic Theater, Driftwood Players, Second Story Rep, Seattle Children's Theater, Seattle Public Theater, and a whole host of others I'm forgetting, either go dark, rent their space to smaller companies, produce educational productions, or produce park shows.

Which is not to say that there isn't any theater in the Summer, there's still plenty of it out there, and lots to look forward too. Some theaters, like Annex, bring us new plays right through the hot summer months, 14/48 is coming up, and soon the park shows will open, offering four different excuses to pack a picnic and drink wine from plastic cups. But right now, on my two week break between closing Run For Your Wife in Renton, and its upcoming run at Bellevue Civic Theater, my two free weekends when I can actually go see shows, there isn't much out there.

The one notable theater in Seattle that doesn't run a traditional season is ACT. Their season starts in Spring and closes with the holiday show in early January. So last week I went to see the play they were opening Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World. There is a lot to like in Pilgrims; lovely, dedicated performances from the entire cast, design elements that made the most of the Allen theater's unique offerings, moments of poetry, and a story that stays with you, knocks around in your head for the few days following the performance. But, all in all, something seemed to be missing.

Perhaps it was the connection between its two central characters, while the chemistry cackled, we never got to see what kept them together, beyond the physical attraction, and the novelty of cultural difference. We heard them talk to other characters about how much they liked each other, how special and unexpected the relationship was, but we didn't really see this when they were together, we just felt the heat.

Perhaps it was that the play never grew into its own promises. Reading the program and directors notes before the play began, I got the impression it was going to say something new, add a fresh perspective to the debate about immigration, about cross cultural relationships, about Muslims in America. After the curtain call, I had the distinct impression that the play had fallen short of this promise, had settled for merely telling a good story.

Or perhaps it was as simple a problem as the neat little bow the story tied itself up with, or its overly long title.

None of these things should detract from the notable accomplishments of the production, nor did they seriously affect my enjoyment of it. Pilgrims is still a very good play, and I appreciate ACT making it available for me to attend on my off weekend.

Summer is an odd time, and not just because its the only time of year in Seattle where you'll see the sun more than one day in five. I suppose the balance is a good thing. That I'm not trying to fit in three plays in one weekend the same season I'm having to tell the fifteenth tourist in a row that I cannot get them hot milk for their coffee. I do wish that I had a few more options, not sure what I'll do once I make it through this work week and all little annoying requests and sudden rushes that add up to my deciding that people as a race are overrated and I don't like them anymore.

Perhaps I'll go see a movie.

Looking for Laughter

I seem to have an affinity for comedy.

Which is odd, because I'm not a funny person. I was never the class clown or the life of the party, I was always the girl in the corner, reading a book and eating her hair. I suppose I'm not unfunny. I can tell a decent joke. Not very often, but it has been known to happen. My comedy is usually a sneaking sort of thing, most times I won't realize I've made a joke until the words have left my mouth and somebody laughs.

It also affects my writing. I once set out to write a moody dramatic play, with an undertone of cruel sexual politics. By the fifth draft I had a full blown romantic comedy complete with gossipy supporting characters and a happy ending. My admiration for cleverness is partly to blame, even when my characters are in dire situations, I want them to express their anguish with a clever turns of phrase.

It affects my casting, too. Like many little girls, I went from wanting to be a ballerina, to wanting to be a leading lady. I was convinced my Juliet would someday bring audiences to tears. I now realize that if I am ever cast in that play, it will most likely be as the Nurse. I don't really mind being a character actress, not anymore, its a lot more fun to make faces and have hysterics than to smile and look pretty.

It's something I have had to come to terms with, though. When I was a Junior in high school the big play was Pride and Prejudice. I wanted to play Elizabeth, everyone did. Instead I was cast as Mrs. Bennet. I was bitterly disappointed, but in the end I think I had more fun, and got more audience attention than Linnea Eby did. I was especially gratified to hear one of the teachers say to my mother, "Isn't Caitlin normally a quiet girl?"

My Senior year they were doing The Miracle Worker, and I wanted to play Annie Sullivan, I felt I deserved her, too. When they gave the part to a Sophomore and cast me as the Aunt, I was so insulted that I quit the show and went out and got myself cast in a community production of Noel Coward's Private Lives. As Sybil, I got to do two of my favorite things to do on stage: wear period clothes, and have hysterics.

Currently I am acting in a classic farce, called Run for Your Wife.  I don't get to have hysterics, but I do get to wear some lovely period clothes. Rehearsing for this play has got me thinking a lot about how to be funny: deliberately funny, not my usual sneaks up and hits you over the head when you're looking the other way funny. Its a farce, so a lot of the humor comes from misunderstandings. Mistaken identity, and double meanings provide a lot of humor. So does physical pain. I've lost count of the number of times we fall over, fall into things and hit each other. But these things still read, apparently there is no expiration date on the humor of a pie in the face.

Like the double power of pain to make us alternately cringe or cackle, the themes of classic comedy would also be perfectly at home in high drama. Sex, Death, Cheating, Secrets and Lies, Strained Friendships, Ruined Marriages, Homosexual Activity, and Police Investigations. Where is the switch between tears and laughter? Of course much of it is the presentation, but then, the key to making something funny is to play it serious, so, there we are.

If I have made no progress in breaking down the science of humor while rehearsing this play, I have at least remembered how to illicit it. There was ample laughter during the performances opening weekend, and much of it at things we'd actually rehearsed, and not the unaccounted for happenings that make live theater so much fun. One of my biggest laugh lines is a inocent reference to produce. I'm off stage when I deliver it, so I can smile along with the audiances laughter.

I may be not understand comedy, but I do have an affinity for it.

Bite into a Trend

Some food trends are seasonal. At the moment every restaurant special is likely to feature salmon, asparagus, or strawberries. In the fall months we will be treated to 101 ways to cook butternut squash.

Some food trends are cyclical. Are carbs good or bad at the moment? How about dairy? Coffee? Is red wine actually better than grapes or do we just all want to feel justified in pouring that third glass? Food studies come and go and contradict each other and new diet fads rise up to meet each new study, and there's a sort of rhythm to it, if you care to pay attention.

Some food trends are personal. The thing about working at hotel restaurants, is that you deal with a lot of groups. Hotels play host to tour groups, and expos and conventions. My previous restaurant was located across the street from the Convention Center, which amplified things. And its amazing the way certain groups of people eat certain things. When the Penny Arcade was in town we ran out of hamburger buns. Burgers are always a popular order, and any restaurant that serves them keeps a good supply on hand. But when you are overrun with groups of twenty something vintage gamers who apparently survive on an exclusive diet of hamburgers and coke, even a well stocked kitchen will find itself taxed beyond capacity. Any convention that caters to middle aged women will find you serving salads with dressing on the side, and bringing separate checks. Always separate checks, a table of fifteen women dining together will all want separate checks and will all pay with $20's. Men don't seem to have this problem, at least not with the same frequency. Male colleagues who regularly dine together have developed a system of alternating treating each other, rather than most women's the need to split the check down the middle every single time.

And some food tends defy explanation. I have no logic for why I won't sell a single order of french toast all week, and then serve fifteen of them on a random Wednesday. Or the equation for a sudden run on fish and chips. I do know that there is almost a trend to these trends, chances are at any given meal period, something will be in favor, you just never know what it will be.

Crazy Things that Actors Do

Last Saturday was closing night of my play, The Cat's Meow. Its been a fun run, for the most part. We had a great cast, and lovely costumes, and normally at the end of the run of a show I indulge in a little time feeling listless and bittersweet before hunting down the next cast to bond with. This time, however, I do not have that luxury, because my next show opens in two weeks, and I have to get off book.

This is one of the crazy things that actors do. They overlap productions. You can manage to start rehearsals for one production, while still in performance for the next one. You can manage this because most plays rehearse during the week, and perform on the weekends. So it is completely possible, but it is also, I have discovered, completely insane. And in honor of my own insanity, I have decided to take a little time away from memorizing, and explore some of the other crazy things that actors do.


They commute twice as far for a show as they would for a paying job.

I have a cut off for theaters I will even audition for: Renton is as far South as I will travel, and Edmonds is as far North. Both of these destinations are about half an hour from my home in Seattle, at least in good traffic. I have done two shows in Tacoma, but both had limited rehearsal and performance commitments, and even so, that is not an experience I care to repeat. There are actors, however, who will travel from much, much farther. Actors who live in Seattle and do shows in Olympia, for instance. Or actors who live in Olympia and do shows in Renton, I have known actors who will drive from Everett to Tacoma, or take a ferry out to Bambridge, or in from Vashon Island.

And forget about the commuting time commitment once you land a job, I know actors who will fly to other cities, on their own dime, just to attend an audition.


They will compromise their personal appearance

A frequent question on audition forms is: are you willing to cut/color your hair? I always say yes to cut, no to color. I have never, in my almost thirty years, colored my hair, and it it would take more than being cast in a show to make me start now, that's what wigs are for. But I will cut it, I will also spend an hour and a half every night curling or straightening my hair, securing the look with massive amounts of hairspray and bobby pins, only to wash it all out when I get home, and repeat the process the next night. Also, every time I do a show, my skin freaks out, because it is unused to being subjected to massive amounts of makeup. Small price to pay for a little applause. And oddly enough this is one area where men actually have it worse. While their prep time to get is costume is usually a fraction of the womens, when men change their look for a part, they have to wear it around in the real world, not just on stage. I know actors that have grown mutton chops, or spent months apologizing to their bar patrons for a porn star mustache.  They also shave, I know an actor who shaved a mustache he'd had for nearly forty years for the sake of supporting role.


They will adhere to superstitions they don't believe in

Everyone knows not to say Macbeth in a theater. Doesn't matter if you believe in the curse, you just don't do it. If you slip up for any reason, you must immediately go outside the theater, turn in a circle three times and spit. There are variations on the antidote, some say you have to run around the theater three times, and I've never had the logic of the antidote explained to me, but I have done it. Actors are, as a group, very superstitious. They love their rituals. The whole experience of being in a play is full of little rituals and traditions, and most actors have individual ones they layer on top of the group ones. Lucky underwear is a common one. Actors, unlike musicians, will never drink before a performance, they will get completely shitfaced afterwords, opening and closing night parties are legendary, sometimes they will begin drinking backstage once their big scene is over, but never before a show, not even a glass of wine with dinner. They give cards and presents to the entire cast on either opening or closing night, but never on both, and never on any intermediate performance. They have warm up routines. When I was in the Vagina Monologues, we did Kegels as part of our group warm up. At Redwood Theater, every performance, regardless of the director, or who's involved, starts with a back stage cheer of "Doooon't Suck!"


They will stay in contact with people they hate

Theater, like so many things in life, is all about who you know. And, as I have already detailed, actors will do almost anything to get on stage. There are a couple people I've sworn I'll never work with again, but we are still friends on Facebook, and if they dangled the right part of front of me, I'd probably bite.  And I'm not alone, in an industry they relies so heavily on networking, personal issues often take a back seat. A person's value is measured by how likely they are to be able to get you a job, anything else is gravy.


I'm sure their are quite a few actor quirks missing form my list, but I've tried to keep it limited to the farthest reaching insanities, also, I have lines to learn.

How to pick up your Server

All right, everybody, hands up if you've ever found your server attractive. Good. Everyone put their hands down. Now, for those of you that have waited tables, hands up if you've ever wanted to get with a customer. Good, that's everyone again.

Now, who has actually made it happen?

Its a tricky equation. The balance of power is off, and not too many people dine alone, so you've got friends, family and co-workers complicating things. I've been on both sides of the table, and I'm sorry to say that I don't have a magic formula. There really is no surefire way to make this work.

There are a few things that I know don't work, though. First thing that is guaranteed not to get you that server's number: asking if you can take them "to go". This has happened to me. I was working in an Indian Restaurant, during my college years, and an elderly gentlemen, who was hooked up to an oxygen tank was dining with us. I wasn't waiting on him, but it was a small restaurant, so I was present, and very capable of overhearing, when his server asked him if there was anything else he could bring him, and he pointed at me and said, "put her in a box, I want to take her home."

Another thing that doesn't work: little hand written notes. This is a weird one, you'd think that written communication would be subtle and solve the whole 'other people dining with me' dilemma. But I have never seen note passing go well.  For one thing, its not subtle. I know this because, while I have never received one of these notes personally, I have read a couple that were given to other servers at restaurants where I worked. For another, they seem to be the method of people who haven't taken the time to lay a little ground work, do a little flirting, ascertain if the server they have their eye on is even available. Both the notes that I read were given to servers who were in serious relationships.

If you simply must communicate your interest in writing, use the check. This doesn't work very often, but, unlike the handwritten notes, which are just creepy, writing your number on the check is kind of cute. I don't know why. It also has the advantage of working both ways. Once when I was visiting a friend in North Carolina, we had our server write his name and number in our check. We were both eighteen, and only in town for the night, and had no idea which one of us the number was intended for, but it was thrilling non the less. Writing your number on the check is not likely to get you results, but it probably won't get you laughed at. So, if you have a good base of flirting, and your not a regular at the establishment, its worth a shot. Servers sometimes flirt because they find you attractive, then again, sometimes it's just to get your money.

The best way to secure a date with a server, is the same as the best way to secure a date with anyone. Just Ask. Be polite, be direct, be a little bit charming if you're any good at it, and ask them out already. I have only been on one date with a customer, and it was because he asked me directly, and I like to reward that kind of thing, provided I'm single, and don't find the person asking repulsive.

Of course I made a mistake with accepting that date, so here's a follow up tip: If you manage to secure a date with a server, don't go to the restaurant where they work the next day and leave a two page handwritten letter for them detailing your hopes and dreams for your future together. Just text them and say you had a nice time. The boy I went on the date with was British, and in town for a convention, and staying in the hotel where my restaurant was located. He may also have been mentally unbalanced.

The date was just fine. We walked around, had dinner, talked about the usual first date stuff. I let him kiss me, then I went home. Then next day at work, the hostess gives me this letter. It is filled with lines like;

"I was the happiest I have been in ages when I was with you tonight, I never wanted it to end!"

"The way you made me feel tonight has made me even think about different things like maybe staying here for longer so I could see you again, or even staying here completely."

"I would do anything to see you again, absolutely anything in the world!"

"Do you believe in things like being attracted to and wanting to be with someone after just one time?"

He signed off "I love you and will never forget you!!" and included his email, phone, and room number.

I did not take advantage of any of them, instead I returned to the restaurant where we'd had dinner, and left a tip for the server, something I'd noticed he'd failed to do the night before.

Which brings me to my final point. If you manage to secure a date with a server, make sure you treat any restaurant staff you encounter on this date, very, very well.

Samuel French

Samuel French is one treacherous little guy. I know he looks innocent, in his striped stockings, sitting on his pile of manuscripts, but he is devious, out to get you, beware!

The plays he publishes may seem innocent too, they are small volumes bound in solid paper covers with muted tones, their titles and authors stamped to the cover in the official Samuel French font.

And the plays are fine, an assortment of genres and titles are available, the character names, dialogue and stage directions crammed in so as to take up as little space as possible, available for purchase in bulk for theaters to distribute among the cast and crew of their production. I happen to own a few Samuel French plays, they have have lines highlighted, and blocking notes scribbled in corners, then crossed out and re-scribbled from when the blocking was changed. He's a fine little helper in the theater, a useful tool.

Here's the problem: In the beginning of the book, there is a cast and crew list for the premier production of the play. In the back of the book is a set diagram, and a costume and properties list. The missing piece of information is that the set, costumes, and props, reflect what was designed for the original production. The one credited at the beginning of the book. They are not written by the playwright, they are not set in stone, and they may be informative to designers, but unless the goal is to do a carbon copy remount of the original production, they are not to be followed to the letter.

I once had a costume designer give me a series of really ugly coats to try on, because the costume plot described my character as wearing a "pea coat and school scarf". Never mind the rack of beautiful fake fur's  that hung directly beside her, and the fact that the rest of the characters in the scene I was entering in to were in evening wear. I finally brought in an appropriate period evening dress from home, got the director to approve it, and received a fake fur coat to match.

Thankfully, attempting to literally match the costumes listed at the back of a Samuel French script is a relatively rare problem, if only because most small theaters can't afford it. A more common problem is attempting to literally match the stage directions.

Stage directions can be an important part of a script. Playwrights can be very particular about their staging, and if you try to do a production of say, a Becket play, and get a little too creative, you may find your production closed down courtesy of his estate. Other playwrights follow Shakespeare's lead, and give little direction other than noting when a character enters and exits the stage, and other minor directives (they kiss. they fight.)

And it is in the realm of stage directions that Samuel Frenches devious nature really comes out. Because you never know, if the lines printed in italics are actual stage directions form the playwright, or merely blocking notes taken by the stage manager at that all consuming original production.

I have had directors trip over themselves, trying to fit in every cross and wave and bit of business, that, for all we know was cut between the publication and final curtain. Worse still, I've had directors who relied on Samuel French to do their blocking for them. In high school, I was a in a production of Pride and Prejudice, where I showed up, very excited to the first blocking rehearsal, only to have the director say "So, we're just going to follow the stage directions." And we did. Samuel French was actual rather reserved in that particular version of Pride and Prejudice, so the blocking was really dull. People sat, stood, bowed, curtseid, entered and exited. Every so often, my character, Mrs. Bennet, would get particularly excited and be directed by Mr. French to kiss people. When my parents came to see the show they said the the blocking created some pretty extreme sight-line problems, problems neither the director not Samuel French had seen fit to address.

Of course, that was High School. I have never had a director give over a show that entirely to the striped stockinged fiend since then, but I have had quite a few give him a lot more say then I think he rightly deserves. I think those of us in the theater would do well, when we receive our pastel paper volumes, to judge each italicized line on whether or not it is necessary to tell the story. If the answer is no, we would be wise to take a large black marker, and cross it out.

Turnover

My former restaurant has one of the highest turnover rates in the history of restaurants. Most hosts had a shelf life of two weeks, max. Often it was more like two days, one day there’d be some fresh young thing all dressed up in her tight skirt and her little blazer earnestly rushing about trying to learn the table numbers, and the next day she’d be gone. Poof, I didn’t even bother to learn their names until I was sure I’d get a chance to use them.

I didn’t host, I served, and trained, which is worse. The new servers usually lasted more than a day, but training took eight days, and there were plenty who didn’t make it through that. Or who shouldn’t have.

Part of the reason for the turnover was that the restaurant was an evil corporate establishment in which logic was nonexistent and the management’s egos reigned supreme. The other was that it seemed to be a magnate for crazy people.

Most of the crazy people were night crew so my personal run ins with them were limited. Here is the fundamental difference between day crew and night crew.  Day crew people are in the restaurant business because they like the restaurant business. They are often older, have families, or are on a break between degrees. They bring in homemade baked goods to share, gossip a little, serve the food, pour the coffee and go home to their cats. Night crew, on the other hand, are in the restaurant business because they like to drink. They come in for their one lunch shift a week nursing a hang over and complaining bitterly about how early it is. They like the business because it allows them to sleep in, work a four hour shift, leave with a fistful of cash and immediately pour in down their throats at the bar next door. They bring store bought candy to share, gossip, and go out together. They also inter date.

There was a night bartender who was dating one of the hostesses. He was in his thirties; tall, lanky, creepy, the kind of guy who feels the need to rate every female customer who walks in the door, and ask if he can run your food or refill your waters if a girl at your table is particularly attractive. She was seventeen.  Rumor has it he took a naked picture of her and emailed it to a number of other guys at the restaurant without her knowledge or consent. Word reached management but he wasn’t fired for it. That happened the following month, when he pulled a no call no show after being late for an earlier shift.

People got fired a lot at this restaurant. Sometimes it was for legitimate reasons, like being perpetually late, or drinking behind the bar. More often it seemed to happen to people certain managers decided they just didn't like. You could sense these firings coming, the employee complaining about the managers, and the managers complaining about the employee, nit picking at them over little details in the sidework and service, scheduling them for shifts they couldn't work. In the end they would have some pretext for firing them, usually a "customer complaint", but no one was fooled. 

One disgruntled server spent a week protesting the restaurant after getting fired. He carried a large sign with slogans like “LIES! Courtesy of the Lizard King and the Dragon Lady” and, “you thought the orange juice was fresh squeezed!”. On the last day of his protest, he took one of the logo baseball caps cooks wore and set it on fire. 

There were a few other ways to leave. A lot of people just quit, especially the new hires. One day a new kid would be there, tagging along behind the host or busser, they next day they’d be gone. Just wouldn’t show for their shift. Scared or overslept, never to be heard from again.

The more dramatic method of quitting is, of course, mid shift. When the pressure builds up, and the rush is relentless, and we’ve run out of pint glasses AGAIN, and god help you if you serve that diet coke is a water glass, which is UNECEPTABLE! And you’re running around looking in every corner of the restaurant for an available pint glass when the hostess comes over sheepishly and says she’s double sat you, she’s sorry, management made her do it, and that’s when you look at the door, with its inviting entry out into a world where you don’t have to deal with this shit, and you walk through it. 

I had many fantasies of taking that mid shift door to freedom, but in the end, I went the boring traditional rout with my exit. I found a new job, put in my two weeks notice, accepted my parting gifts and well wishes and went on my way. I also lasted three years at that job, which is something of a record. While I was still there, a coworker asked me how I had survived so long, “I make myself indispensable,” I replied, “and I stay try and stay off the radar”. Staying off the radar is critical. At the time of that conversation I was the only day trainer, an important and exhausting position to hold given our astonishingly high turnover. I was important, and good at my job; In my three years I never once got written up, but I never made employee of the month either. I slid by, trying to bring each new generation up to speed, hoping a few would survive long enough to give me a break from spewing the company propaganda so I could just wait tables, damn it. We finally got another highly competent trainer and my life got easier. Still I left when I could, quietly, safely, you never know when you might have to return.

Ensemble

Sophomore year at Cornish College of the Arts, was all about the ensemble. We did endless exercises, such as "auto-core" to help develop our ensemble building skills. We came to dread the very word ensemble. It had grown and mutated during the course of the year from an innocent little term describing a group of people working together, to a significance laden label that threatened all of our egos and individuality. To be fair the journey through Cornish was full of vocab transformations. words like Action, Risk, Emoting, and Presence, became dark and foreboding and overused.

Out in the real world, several years removed from the Cornish bubble, many of these words have lost their ominous edge. A work of theater employing an ensemble does not have be a balancing act of egos or a white washing of individual talents. It will likely have a few standout performances, but at its heart, a good ensemble is a group of talented people working together to make interesting theater happen.

I had the privilege of seeing this in action last weekend. Two very different plays, two very good representations of ensemble, and both made up almost exclusively of local talent.

On Friday night I went to the Seattle Rep and saw Of Mice and Men. I'd been looking forward to this production, especially since I got wind of a few of the actors involved, and I was not disappointed. While a couple of the performances walked a fine line between truth and caricature, the production was full of beautiful, surprising, moments and images. From Charles Legget's Lenny trying to sneak his new pup into his bunk, to William A. William's melodic whistling and he walked across stage with a guitar, to the many breathtaking sunsets that lighting designer Robert Aguilar played out on Jennifer Zeyl's set. Of Mice and Men is, at its heart, a story of lonely people searching for human connection. Every character is an outsider, every character is lonely, this lends a charge to all the scenes, but a special tension to when a large part of the group is together. They talk about cards, and work, and whiskey, but their dreams are always hovering, waiting to be acknowledged. 

On Saturday night I switched gears and headed to Open Circle Theater's production of  The Rocky Horror Show. Far away from Of Mice and Men's Sweeping Sunsets, and the Seattle Rep's spacious seating, I was given instead the dark interior of a mad man's castle, carved from the dark interior of a small black box theater.  Rocky Horror also dealt a bit with longing, with the search for connection, with feeling uprooted, displaced, wanting to belong, but really, the show is about two things: Music, and Sex, and both are screamingly present in Open Circle's production. The music was loud and heartfelt. The band had a tendency to overpower the singers, despite the use of hand held microphones which were pulled out of handbags, or handed from off stage to whoever needed one. The balance improved, however, as the show progressed. I'm no musical expert, but to my untrained ear, there were a few lovely singing voices, and all the performers filled any gaps in technique with enough attitude to bowl over a charging, cross-dressing, rhinoceros. As for sex, the show was dripping with it, from the fishnets and collars, to the moments of surprising, equal opportunity, nudity. But this was a dark, twisty, ominous sex that permeated the production,  rarely lapsing in to Camp. By keeping things gritty and truthful they stayed, well, sexy, despite the number of men in thongs.

In many ways the two productions couldn't be more different, but they had something more than their strong ensemble casts linking them together: the fact that those casts were made up almost exclusively of local actors. In a small fringe company like Open Circle, that is pretty much par for the course, but that a Big House like Seattle Rep, doing a well known script on their main stage, would cast local is more of a statement. A statement the Rep has been making with increasing frequency in recent seasons. And making to their benefit.

This is not a buffet!

Buffets are very straightforward. Some restaurants have them as an option, if this is the case, you can bet your server will point out this option and try to sell it to you. My previous restaurant ran a breakfast buffet; we severs loved it, because it cost $20 and all we had to do was pour endless cups of coffee and drop a check.

Sometimes a restaurant will only have a buffet. This is the case at 67 in the Edgewater Hotel, after you are seated the server will tell you that the buffet is all they are serving. He will bring you a mimosa and direct you to help yourself to the piles of fruit and shellfish and eggs benedict.

Sometimes you have to be given a plate before you can go to the buffet, but even if the plates are part of the layout, if you are in a restaurant, you always have to be given permission.

Hotels are ruining this concept.

So many of them offer "complimentary" breakfast these days. Often it is a "continental" breakfast, i.e. muffins and mushy apples, but the practice runs so rampant that many people seem to think "continental" and "complimentary" are synonyms. These strange little affairs are laid out in the lobby, or in a dining room, at a particular time, and you don't need a plate to go help yourself to donuts and coffee, you don't need permission, you only need to be staying in the hotel.

This puts hotel restaurants in an awkward position. I've worked in two of them now, my first in a big downtown hotel, my current one in a smaller neighborhood location, but they are both independently owned. Guests can charge meals to their rooms, but that's about it. Many guest's don't understand this, especially before their first cup of coffee."

"What is included with my room?" was a question I got asked frequently, when I worked downtown. The answer was "nothing". There is no way to phrase this so it sounds less like nothing. When people asked my other favorite question; "What comes with the pancakes?" I could at least smile sweetly and say "butter and syrup". Then I would encourage them to order a side of bacon, which is what they were hoping to get for free.

They would try to get the buffet for free too. The restaurant didn't help matters by having two different price levels for the buffet; the all inclusive "All American", and the, yes, "Continental" option, for those who only wanted to graze among the fruit, pastries, and cold cereal. Many people did just fine with this concept, but there were others to whom the phrase "continental buffet" meant one of two things.

1. It's free with my room!

2. I can order the lower priced buffet and then sneak a bunch of bacon and no one will notice!

I doubt you'll find it surprising that I do not miss working in a hotel restaurant with a buffet. My current location serves food only if ordered off the menu, which is wonderful, because most people, when ordering food off a menu, realize they are expected to pay for it. We do, however, have a beverage station set up in view of the guests. There is no food on this station, it is only a collection of different kinds of cups and glasses, coffee pots, hot water for tea, and an ice bucket filled with juices and coffee creamer. It is right next to the computer, and a pile of menus, but still, every day someone will make for it saying "how does this work?" or, "Do we just help ourselves?"

We added a sign to the wall above the beverage station, the sign says "employees only". It is on blue paper and it taped to an orange wall, so its very hard to miss, but people still got confused.

A few days ago we added a folding screen that partially blocked the view of the station. Things seem to have gotten better, but then today I came back from collecting silverware to find a Couple happily pouring themselves orange juice and taking napkins from the loose pile I was in the middle of folding. Even after I'd directed them to a table, taken their order and brought the lady a cup of coffee, she got up and went back to the station saying, "I help myself to the juice, right?"