Prick with a Fork

by Larissa Dubecki

  Stealing the till roll

  I’ve seen this happen only once. Even before the days of digital technology (which really has taken a lot of the elegance from the game), nicking this paper roll was an occurrence of great rarity, like an albino whale, or a comet that blazes through the sky once every ninety-nine years. You can only steal the till roll once because it’s a one-way proposition. A waiter named Jason had decided he was jack of the Star and he was going out in a blaze of glory that would have his co-workers talking in wonderment for years to come. The signs are obvious when someone’s going rogue. They’ll start turning up to work five, ten, fifteen minutes late. They’ll disappear during staff meals to ‘get cigarettes’, which means placing a bet or grabbing a quick pint at the pub. If this person was your partner you’d be checking their mobile phone records, looking for lipstick stains on their collars. Anyway, Jason swiped the entire till roll from a hectic night’s service, so there was no way of accounting for the money. Where’s the till roll, Jason? Beats me, says he with a shrug and a grin. Clearly the till roll wasn’t the only thing he swiped. This is the moment in the film where Tom Cruise pulls the pin from the grenade and leaps from an explosion big enough to take out most of the San Francisco Bay area. Will you survive similarly unscathed? Depends on the size of your cajones.

  Work the suppliers

  Do deals. Buy stuff at inflated prices. Plenty of chefs are familiar with the kickback, where they get commission or gifts for accepting lower quality produce than they (that’s the owner) paid for. There was a rumour Damien decked out his whole house with whitegoods from the companies he was running deals with. It’s a common trick among the wine guys, too. The sommelier’s job is to get the price of wine down and pass the savings onto the business. However, if a somm goes off the grid and makes a sweetheart deal with a wine rep, she might officially buy the wine at $20 a bottle when it’s really $15. Let’s say she decides to make it her favourite drop, extolled to all the customers in fluent wine-speak, all grassy minerality and excellent mid-palate weight. When it’s purchased in ten dozen lots, it starts becoming significant. What’s the grateful wine company going to do? Send an extra case to her house? Fly her to New Zealand for a week? Or simply hand over an envelope stuffed with money? What a pleasant quandary . . .

  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are as many ways to rip off the boss as there are bosses. It’s important to note that while cold hard cash is nice, it’s also dangerous. Maybe your sensibilities don’t thrill to the possibility that your shift is going to finish under unflattering lighting at the local cop shop. It’s far safer to go underground. The way owners really get screwed, little by little, every day, is the cashless economy. In other words: free stuff.

  Scratch the industry’s underbelly and you’ll uncover a whole lovely bunch of free stuff. Everyone loves free stuff. Free stuff makes the world go round. It’s not really free, of course. Not in the classic definition. Someone is paying for this stuff, and that someone is the owner. Better to see it as the spoils of war. An unofficial tax on all the shit you have to put up with, day in, day out.

  There have been incidents where a restaurant’s stock of vintage Champagne is found to be no more than water when a particularly thirsty sommelier departs. And how about those delivery drivers? Not only are they a specially cultivated virus that transmits the gossip of the restaurant world, they’re the guys who make the stuff fall off the back of a truck. A free coffee and a smile go a long way when signing the invoice for the beer kegs.

  What about the customers? You know some of these folk quite well. You’ve workshopped their divorces, their kids, their plans for real estate world domination. Say they have a beach house down the Peninsula they don’t use very much these days, what with work being so busy and all. A few odd drinks, the odd free meal, isn’t going to go astray. At the very least they might tip better.

  Staff from other restaurants have come in? Throw them a bone! Comp their drinks, comp the whole meal if you can get away with it. It’ll be paid back in kind when you make a return visit to their fine establishment. And if they don’t honour their side of the deal, you can blacken their name all over town, the dirty hounds.

  In the clandestine world of free stuff, all roads lead to the bar. Make no mistake: the bartender is the power behind the throne. The kingpin. He takes the money and distributes the drinks. Enough said. Due to his elevated position, the bartender sees himself as a breed apart from the garden-variety losers of the floor staff. He is indeed the very centre of a complex neurological system. He is the nerve that runs from the floor to the kitchen.

  He wants to be fed. There is every chance he and the chef will have negotiated a free trade agreement. The unhindered movement of goods between kitchen and bar. This is the worst nightmare of an owner, whose interests are best served by keeping a constant, low-level warfare between the two arms of the workforce.

  At the very least, the chef and the barman are looking after each other on the company dime. It’s unfailingly civilised. While the waiters are sitting down to overcooked pasta and wilted salad for lunch, the barperson is being treated to a smorgasbord of delight. Here, try these oysters, fresh in today. Would you prefer them with a little red wine vinaigrette or au naturel? How about a rib-eye steak—I’m assuming medium-rare?—and would you like some extra pepper sauce? Why thank you, my good man.

  If the chef and bartender team up and go to the dark side, they can bleed the place dry. Say the owner questions a bill for $300 that was voided. The bartender claims the table walked out. All the glossy timber was making them sneeze. The owner charges off to the kitchen to check the story for leaks. The chef dutifully denies having cooked the food. Ring-a-ding-ding.

  As for the kitchen—is this not self-evident? A kitchen without a compliant barman is like a car without tyres. I’ve never met a kitchen that wasn’t thirsty, and there are only so many times a chef can send to the bar for cooking brandy before it starts looking a little suspicious. The industrious bartender, in return for all that lovely free food, will do well to keep a constant drip-drip-drip of sneaky beverages heading in the chef’s direction. It can be good to be chosen as the barman’s envoy, anointed from the motley floor crew to be the glad purveyor of fine wines and top-shelf spirits. The grown-up version of the milk monitor, and the only time you’re going to walk through those swing doors and be greeted with something other than hostility. It’s only reflected glory, of course, but in these matters reflected glory is better than no glory at all.

  ______________________

  1 It probably needs to be stated here that I never had anything to do with the illegal procurement of financial advancement from my places of employment. I am an honest person who pays her taxes, stands up for old people on public transport, and diligently separates rubbish from recycling. Working in hospitality is like being in juvie. You see stuff. You hear stuff. Doesn’t mean you do stuff. Thank you.

  — 12 —

  SECOND STAR TO THE RIGHT, AND STRAIGHT ON ’TIL MORNING

  There is a rather famous restaurant in Sydney that could have been tailor-made for the beautiful people. You know the beautiful people? Yes, them. Horrible phrase, really, but it does have a certain agency for describing the intersection of glossy good looks and a smug air of satisfaction. Basically it’s a restaurant where people very pleased with themselves go to feel pleased in company. It does accept bookings from the non-beautiful as well—it will even deign to seat them when they turn up wearing last year’s shoes—but there’s just a certain tone to the place.

  Of this rather famous restaurant, a reviewer wrote with impressive perspicacity: ‘Everything seems glitzier, sharper and sexier here. Especially you.’ Perspicacity? Well, the bartender was dealing cocaine, and it ended quite badly. Actually, I’m not sure if ‘badly’ is strong enough a word for a police raid in the thick of a lunchtime service. Whatever you call it, it was quite the scandal. Diners sucking down oysters while admiring each other’s dental wor
k were startled to see the bartender being led off in handcuffs by officers with a flair for drama. (Like they couldn’t have waited until after 3 p.m.?) Chances are some customers were left kicking themselves because they hadn’t already secured their weekly supply. Reading between the lines, the reviewer was, too.

  Anyway, hats off to the bartender, who was carrying on quite the profitable boutique dealership until the drug squad decided to stomp on everyone’s fun. It must have required sober application to carry on an underground business enterprise while remaining up to date in all the latest trends in mixology. Thrillingly, it later emerged that he had a special codeword. Those in the know would ask the waiter, who was also in on the scheme, for the ‘special seasoning’ or some such and a discreet little bag-o’-fun would materialise at the table.

  Drugs with a valet service. It’s the upwardly mobile version of the urban myth about the takeaway pizza joint that deals drugs on the side. Every adolescent’s dream. I’ll have the capricciosa with extra onion, a can of 7-Up and a special number 23, thanks. Delivered to your door on the back of a motorcycle. It’s the very model of the convenience economy—AND you get pizza.

  I suspect not a lot has changed at this rather famous restaurant despite the drug bust. Last time I was there, thoroughly depressed about the state of my hair, my shoes and my bank account, a very fashionable young woman wandered out of a toilet cubicle and stood transfixed by the hand-dryer. I went back in five minutes later, just to see if there had been any developments, and there she still was, staring at the Dyson like it contained the secrets of the universe.

  There’s satisfaction in knowing the beautiful people at this restaurant availing themselves of the extra service had more money than sense. Cocaine in Australia is of criminally poor quality. It has so little in common with the good stuff it doesn’t even deserve the name cocaine. It’s faux-caine. Buying cocaine in Australia is like buying tomatoes out of season: incredibly expensive and invariably disappointing. Plus it’s usually so cut down with so much baby laxative you can easily spend your entire high sitting on the toilet. And what waiter can afford to flush away their earnings so irresponsibly?

  Let’s consider our alternatives. Pot? Forget it. Everyone’s worked with the pothead waiter, a complete loser everyone hates because she can’t hold her section together so others have to pick up the slack. Plus she’s mightily stoned most of the time, so she’s all like ‘Just chill out about it . . . it’s cool’. The only thing worse than a pothead waiter is a pothead chef. That spells doom. There was a head chef at the Duke who really liked his weed—liked it so much that he decided he couldn’t get through one screamingly busy lunchtime without a whomping fat spliff smoked at the back door. Unfortunately the wind was blowing a mean westerly that day, pushing all the smoke back inside and making the restaurant smell like an Amsterdam coffee house. Diners were giving each other meaningful looks that said, ‘Weren’t the 60s a blast, darling, but I’m a little worried our food is going to take a very long time.’ The waiters hastily cobbled together an explanation. Clearly a ruse, but something had to be done. ‘The chef . . . he’s grilling rosemary.’

  Ecstasy? Very nice and all—not to boast or anything, but I did come of age when there was a particularly potent batch on the market known as the Mitsubishi Magna. Certainly not to be associated in any way with the Japanese car manufacturer. The Mitsubishi vehicle is a sensible, rational and fuel-economic choice. The Mitsubishi-E will blow your head off. But for work—no. It’s just not a good look to be stroking a customer’s hair saying, ‘I love you—I really love you,’ when they’re just trying to order an extra bowl of fries.

  Which brings me to my thesis about speed. Speed, I firmly believe, is the perfect drug for hospitality workers. Yes, I hear you. It’s not exactly glamorous. Speed gets a bad rap. It keeps bad company. It’s a known associate of bikies. Speed’s main image problem, however, is simply that it’s a working-class drug. It’s for truckies and army grunts and nightshift workers. But that sums it up. It’s a hard-working drug, with good value for money, and high accessibility. Any honest, non-judgemental consumer watchdog would have to give it an official tick of approval.

  Speed was king at the Rising Damp. Speed kept the place humming. Speed was in the plasterwork and the floors, speed kept the dishwasher door slamming and the steaks sizzling and the shiny, happy people well-fed and watered. Sometimes it felt like you only need cut a little nick into the timber of the glossy curving bar and a fine white powder would trickle out. But maybe that was because we were doing so much of it.

  The first time I did speed and experienced the unique sensation that my eyeballs were about to liquefy and leak out through my nose, the reaction was both immediate and straightforward: Why, hello there! Where have you been all my life?

  Speed appeals to vanity. It slings a friendly arm around your neck, chucks you under the chin and bellows an endless stream of compliments. ‘You’re fabulous. You’re witty and funny and that story about the man with the briefcase and the guide dog never gets old. And did I mention your hair looks FABULOUS in a side ponytail?’ It’s a good drug for any waiter who lives in a fantasyland of the future—you’re waiting tables now but one day you’re going to write that novel, oh yes you will . . . It also eliminates the need for food. Any employer would do well to sanction it on a time-management basis alone.

  Speed doesn’t have that bone-melting dopamine release of MDMA but it does give you boundless energy. It makes the most mundane, onerous task a joy to complete. Done drug-free, pack-down at the Star was a pain in the arse. Just imagine: you’ve pulled an eight-hour shift and finally booted out the last customers, your feet are so sore it’s as if each metatarsal is a separate and distinct source of pain, and the bar still has to be soaped down, the fridges restocked, the chairs stacked and a dozen other skuzzy jobs completed before you can sit at the bar and talk crap with your colleagues.

  But what’s that? Warren has just had a special delivery.

  Let me tell you about Warren. Barman Waz. Wazza to his friends. A head like a Pez dispenser, a nose designed for the snorting of illicit powders, a voice like a drill. Whippet-thin, with a soft spot for the popular culture of the 1980s and—in unrelated yet pertinent information—rotting teeth. A common waiter affliction. All that syrupy-sweet Post Mix is the mortal enemy of dental work.

  Wazza’s the one who dubbed the congealing pizza we always got for staff meals ‘shit on toast’. Wazza’s the one with the trademark clap-and-spin dance move. Wazza’s the one who nostalgically championed the lesser-known Australian bands of the new-wave movement: Kids in the Kitchen and Pseudo Echo over The Church and Divinyls. A true fan of the underdog.

  Wazza was a fashion savant. He could tell you what he wore on any occasion in the previous twenty years. ‘1992. I’m at Livid festival. I’ve got on my red and blue flannie, my desert boots and a really cool dragon T-shirt I found at the tram stop.’ Or: ‘1988. House night at Warehouse. I’ve just gotten my new black Levis and a Champion sweatshirt. It was green. God I loved that sweatshirt.’

  Waz wasn’t so much the Star’s drug dealer as its drug facilitator. It was more of a support and advice role than hardcore pushing. Sure, he could get the gear, pretty reliably, but he didn’t have some big enterprise going behind the bar. Waz was the difference between being a large, publicly listed company and a small, mom-and-pop corner shop operation. He was the friendly face of the drug trade. A dealer you could trust. His product was of a decent quality and his mark-ups were fair.

  Pretty much anywhere you go in the world, Thursday night is hospitality party night. So is Monday. Monday is the hospo equivalent of a Sunday. But Thursday for some reason is THE night, when everyone piles out after work to other venues where other workers are grinding through a shift until they, too, can join the fray.

  Supply could get erratic on other nights but everyone made sure to keep some stash for Thursdays. Waz, too. He enjoyed the glory. He loved being Da Man. He’d give the signal s
ometime around the last customers dribbling out into the night and we’d take it in turns to sneak out back to the fat caterpillar lines he’d chopped up on the ice machine. Taking a burning snozzful of speed was like being whacked over the head with a magic wand. It’s the moment when things shift from the grey bleakness of a Kansas tornado season to a fantasy of Oz technicolour. All of a sudden you’ve got five self-motivated workers having a whale of a time, blasting Wazza’s cherished Absolutely ’80s collection. Dirty bar? Bring it on! It’s like we’ve gone inside the ad for the amazing new household cleaning product where a happy housewife gets her jollies fighting kitchen bacteria. Blam! Bam! Pow! Take that, germs. My turn for the Windex. No, mine! It’s so much fun you’re actively looking for things to clean. Even Waz, normally the laziest guy in the world, was once found out the back madly soaping down the door to the coolroom. That was a particularly potent batch, though.

  Wazza’s girlfriend Cara was getting legally prescribed speed for her weight problem. What better excuse to rail against society’s hypocritical attitude towards things that make you feel good? He was so thin he’d disappear if he stood sideways and Cara could have had the initials HMS before her name. If she’d accidentally sat on him he could have been lost in her butt crack for weeks. There was every chance that one day she’d deliberately sit on him, too. They fought a lot. Hated each other, really, but stayed together for the kids. But he loved it when she was back on the diet pills. It didn’t make her any less angry but it meant they got to fight in a house that sparkled.

  I don’t exactly regret the time I spent doing drugs. I’m not exactly proud of it either, but being embarrassed about it would be like being embarrassed about the whole summer I spent fanatically watching re-runs of The Sullivans, or that weird sexual fantasy thing about Mr Humphries from Are You Being Served when I was in Year 2, or the time I tried to teach the dog to talk. It’s just something that happened.