Harried Manager came flying to the bar the other night, a rack of fancy wine glasses in hand. He sent Too Loud Trixie, the Inappropriate Bartender, to get the expensive wine that had been ordered from the wine closet.
He chose to send TLT because he knew that she had been getting on my nerves for a couple of hours and he was tying to give me a moment's peace. Unfortunately, being the diplomat that he is, what Harried Manager actually said was
"I want Trixie to go. She needs practice finding the wines back there. You- (he pointed at me) stay and help me polish these. We have to be really careful with these so they don't break."
He was right, of course. Trixie has worked mostly day shifts and doesn't know the wine closet as well as I do because she doesn't use it as often, and she would have agreed with him had he found a better way to say it and had she not already been working for nine hours. But he didn't, and she had, so she threw a fit and cursed a blue streak right there behind the bar, in full view of all of the bar patrons and likely within earshot of almost everybody in the dining room upstairs.
Welcome to my Saturday night, everybody. These days it seems like I work with Trixie more often than not, and despite the fact that she clearly cannot handle a double shift without losing it and shooting her mouth off, she seems to volunteer for them on a regular basis.

So, Too Loud Trixie goes off in a huff, and then HM polishes exactly one and a half of the ten glasses before shattering one into a million pieces. This throws him completely off of his game, and as he scrambles to pick up the broken shards, he nearly knocks the entire rack (containing the rest of the unpolished glasses) to the floor. A trainee approaches, and is thrust into the middle of the task as Harried Manager finds havoc to wreak elsewhere. Trixie returns, smiling and cheerful as if nothing has happened, and sees the broken glass in the trash.

"What happened?" she asks, as if it isn't obvious.
"Harried Manager broke a glass," I respond with total ambivalence.
"You see? What an asshole. Good. I'm glad he broke one." (You can assume exclamation points after anything uttered by Trixie. Were I to type them, this post would be twice as long.)
"Well, you should be glad that it was him and not you," I say calmly and quietly. "He's just freaking out, and now he isn't freaking out at you."
I find it frustrating that this woman is ten years older than me and still such a child. She also has a habit of accusing everyone else of lacking professionalism, the irony of which will surely not escape the more astute among you. (Minutes later she dropped an entire rack full of glasses in the back hall, and then she came back behind the bar and cussed out loud about that, too.)

Through all of this, an off duty cook named Ed has been observing, drink in hand, from the other side of the bar. He occasionally looks at me as if to say, "Dude- I am so sorry." I occasionally respond by noting out loud the number of minutes there are before I am able to have a beer. About twenty minutes after the glasses are finished and the wine is whisked away, Harried Manager returns, stepping back to pour himself a caffeinated beverage behind the bar just opposite Ed.
"Well, the shit show's almost over," he sighs, looking at his watch.
Ed immediately shoots back "Why- are you out of here?"
I think ed and I are going to get along just fine. I knew my people had to be up here somewhere.

Yesterday when I got to work at the Local Restaurant, My Harried Manager came up and handed me an envelope.
"What's this?"
"It's your bonus," he said, smiling uncomfortably and rushing off once it was in my hands.
I ripped it open and read the letter. It was from the Head of the Culinary School. You will remember that the Local Restaurant is run by the Culinary School, which the b.h. attends as a student. (Of course you will remember, because the minutiae of my life is ever so enthralling.) Anyway, the letter is about the school and how it relates to the community and my job, and it encourages me to think about donating some money to the scholarship fund. "It's easy," reads the letter, which I am reading with the voice of Idiot School Head in my mind, though I have never met Idiot School Head) to donate. Money can be taken directly from your paycheck, by filling out this simple form."

This is all well and good, but my whole bloody paycheck is already going to the school, you asshole. Also, this is a particularly bad time of year, what with business having just dropped off abruptly and probably until the end of the year, to be asking already strapped, no-insurance-having service industry professionals for their hard-earned money. This is beyond bad taste. I felt awful for Harried Manager, because I realized that he was embarrassed to have to hand this to me. We joked about it later. If I weren't so desperately in need of the money I make from my two weekly shifts at Local Restaurant, I would write a letter to Idiot School Head telling him where he can stick his donation request. Honestly.

On a lighter note, I socialized with co-workers for the second time last night. It was only nicking over to the tap room for a quick beer after my shift, but it did involve adult conversation with people, as opposed to my Digital Friends (not that there's anything wrong with them), so it was pleasant. I text-messaged Nick Bielli in the middle of a story because I couldn't remember the name of a band. I would tell you who it was, but I don't even want to type their name in the ether one more time because I think they suck (er, sucked, may be more appropo, since I doubt they have played in a decade) and I don't want to give them any more mentions. Anyway, Nick bailed me out and I felt like I was still in Athens, behind the bar at Local Rock Club, and I was briefly comforted.

Tomorrow we will be paid a visit my the boys from Modern Skirts. Our schedules won't allow us to see them play, but we'll put them up for a night and feed them a nice home-cooked meal in mid-tour. I'm looking forward to it.

Off to work at the Local Grocery. Then home to clean for company. TTFN.

Last night the Harried Manager came to the bar and asked
"Are we all clear on menus?" By which he meant was everyone done ordering food and could he now tell the kitchen that they were through cooking for the night?
The answer was yes.
About fifteen minutes later, a student came down and asked if we were all clear on desserts. Yes again.
Five minutes after that, Sleeper Chef came and asked me yet again if desserts were clear. Still yes. A regular customer of mine, who also happens to be a student, marveled at Sleeper Chef's attitude, as well as his lack of trust in the student.
"Yes, well... that's Sleeper Chef for you."

About twenty minutes later, a female student arrived with desserts in her hands. I went directly over to see where they had come from and why.
"Oh, Manager ordered them for us," said my bartender-in-training, referring to himself and his girlfriend, who is a pastry student.
"But my name is on the ticket," I said, my voice rising a bit in panic. "Great! It's not like Sleeper Chef doesn't hate me enough already, now Manager is ordering desserts in my name after I have already given the all clear."
I said this in front of the Pastry Student who had delivered said desserts, in hopes that when she returned to the Pastry Kitchen she might convey what happened to Sleeper Chef. Which is probably wishful thinking. Ugh. At least I only work there two nights a week now.

This week has been extremely busy. I've lost count of both the number of shifts I have worked and the number of hours I have slept due to illness from co-workers who can't seem to stay home when they are sick. Not that I blame them. You don't get paid for staying home, and the power company doesn't take "I had a really bad cold" as payment.

Anyway. The b.h. and I celebrated another wedding anniversary on Friday night. I had the night off, but since I was feeling like crap I slept the whole day until it was time to go to dinner. We had dinner at The Local Restaurant (where I work), which was good but took forever (which happens often when there are students in the kitchen, and there are always students in the kitchen- it's part of the deal). Anyway, they bought us dessert (pumpkin profiteroles and some kind of brownie thing), and we rushed out the door to a play. The play was The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). It featured a total of three actors and was really entertaining, with lots of Monty Pythonesque speaking in not-terribly-feminine women's voices. I started to feel really crappy about halfway through, and by the time we got home I knew I was not going to make it to work on Saturday night. So I called my Harried Manager and he promised to work on it in the morning.
I slept the entire day on Saturday, getting up only to move from the bed to the couch and call Harried Manager (whom I have taken to calling "Hurricane (His Name)" to him and all of my co-workers). He covered my shift, and I settled in for more quality couch time. Watched three episodes of Dexter (Season Three now on DVD!), and promptly fell back to sleep for twelve or thirteen more hours.
I did manage to work last night with minimal coughing (until the very end). Today I'm feeling loads better and I hope to see a friend from down South in Burlington for dinner. Still waiting to see.