Ruminatrix
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Saturday, May 10, 2003
Diving for dollars
So early last night I serve two groups at the bar. They're asking for wines-by-the-glass suggestions and it goes really well. I'm batting 100% -- in both cases they love the wines I'm steering them towards. They're not connoisseurs, but not total novices either. The labels aren't what's important here -- it's just fun when you see the "I really like this glass" light go on in someone's eyes. Or when they write down the name so they can look for it at the store.
Anyway, both parties ask for their checks at the same time, we do the credit card thing and I hand off the slips to the other bartender at the service station to ring in the charge tips. It's getting busy, so maybe ten or fifteen minutes go by before I think to look at those charge slips. There's only one slip -- we can't find the other. Without the slip we won't get the tip -- we don't know how much they left, but I'm guessing it was pretty decent.
I know I can't stop the show to hunt down a piece of paper. Patience is required -- several hours' worth. But for about five hours I'm pissed off at myself for not putting the slip in a safe place. (One of us probably threw it away the slip, figuring it was a duplicate copy of the other check). Still, eventually we isolate the trash can at his station and set it aside.
Five hours later, well after midnight, I take the can back to the kitchen, take off my dress shirt -- no sense in getting that dirty -- and start trash-diving in my undershirt. The Senegalese dishwasher, gives me some rubber gloves to wear, bless him. Now it's good old-fashioned up-to-the-forearms diving for a couple of three-inch slips among a midden of coffee-grounds and lemon wedges and other food-industry sludge, bulked up with maybe a hundred time-printed of paper slips -- drink and coffee orders and all the rest. Watch out for broken glass on the way down. It's like an archaeological dig: in each stratum the printout times get earlier. Look, here are some handwritten notes on the chef's cheese selections of the day, there are the little cans of juice we opened near the start of the shift. We're back in the right epoch, circa 7pm, let's see what we've got.
After ten minutes I retrieve two scrunched bits of espresso-tanned and wine-stained paper and yes, I feel like Schliemann at Troy. As I wave them in triumph, the sommelier walks into the kitchen --impeccably dressed as usual -- and looks at me like I've lost my mind. Here's $28 more for the tip pool. I'll get about three of those dolllars, but it's the finding the damn thing that makes my day -- because I knew those people had had a good time...Another day, another dollar.