I guess I could start by saying that today didn’t seem any different from any of the previous days this week. I didn’t feel like working, but managed to drag myself there and clock in on time. I was an opener today, so I went about the usual tasks of slacking off while occasionally filling an iced tea pitcher and brewing coffee, checking lemons, and so on. I chatted with my fellow servers, gave the chefs shit about burning an entree and filling the line up with smoke (which of course they denied), and drank my espresso. By the time I finally got my first table, a very nice family out to celebrate a birthday, I was thoroughly bored and resigned to working an uneventful evening, hopefully home by ten and well on my way to forgetting the shift.
Nice family orders an appetizer, a couple of drinks. Orders another appetizer and gives me their dinner order. I notice that the air still seems smokey, even in the dining room. As my second table of the night sits down I greet them right away and bring over waters. As the lady of the table starts to ask about a glass of wine, I come around to her side of the table and am promptly deafened by the fire alarm, which is an ear piercing shriek, complete with flashing strobes. I smile nicely at my tables and tell them that it’s probably a false alarm (as it has been every other time the alarm has gone off) and to sit tight for a minute while I find out what’s going on. Next thing I know, we’re evacuating the guests to the patio. They were game; bringing along martinis and bread baskets, lounging in the patio chairs and making jokes about their dinner plans being interrupted. It still seemed like a false alarm, and I assured my remaining table (as the second one hadn’t ordered anything, they stood up and left) that we’d be back inside shortly. Then we were told to move all the guests along the side of the building to the front drive; I dashed back through the building to check on the remaining staff, and on my way past the line saw flames flickering on the grill– no, make that above the grill. Flames coming from the wall, through the protective steel wall panels. Interesting…
The chef yelled for the cooks to get off the line and get outside with everyone else. I grabbed my purse from the front desk on the way out the door and shoved it in my trunk. And then the fire trucks showed up. One after another, until there were six full sized fire trucks outside. Police cars showed up, and had us move our cocktailing guests further up the drive. Some of the guests were really getting into the spirit of things, taking pictures with the fire trucks, drinking their wine and martinis. At this point we still thought we might get back inside for dinner; that hope was squashed and I worked hard to keep the frustrated guests smiling, sending them to other restaurants and offering to make reservations for them if I could. Most were very kind and understanding, a few even tipped me for my trouble. Meanwhile the hot August sun is beating down on us all, so I volunteered to go get bottled water for the remaining staff. The manager on duty, Tron, flipped me his credit card and I took off with a coworker to get dozens of cold waters from the gas station down the street.
Rumors, in the meantime, keep trickling out of the building. Somehow the staff starts saying things like “Total loss!” and “The roof is going to collapse!” and “How are we not seeing flames yet, they’re practically gutting the inside!” and “They’re cutting a huge hole in the wall!” and “The second floor is unstable!” So I naturally start to wonder if I’m going to be out of a job for a week? A month? Permanently?
Somehow those that are in charge managed to get everyone to go home, though a few of us stayed; some to help, some to gawk, some to laugh and make jokes about going to the Keys for the night, and some (like me) because our cars were being blocked in by six huge fire trucks. One by one the staff left, until it was Lana, Ronny and me, waiting with Tron, the chefs and the fire fighters. The adrenaline was starting to wear off at this point, so when the fire trucks starting packing up and driving off, I was hoping I’d get to leave at some point soon. Until they asked me to come inside and help assess the damage and clean up; couldn’t pass up that offer, now could I? Damn work ethic.
And the verdict? Waaaay over reacting, guys. Guess people had been making shit up, but there was a small amount of damage to the wall behind the grill, enough to shut the place down for a day or so, but certainly not for a month. No water or smoke damage to the dining rooms. Just a lot of abandoned tables and undone sidework, so we got started on that just before the sun went down, then continued until it was too dark to see. Ronny left soon after it got dark to go play poker, but Lana and I stayed a bit longer. And yes, part of me couldn’t bear to leave her alone with management; if she was “the only one who stayed!” she’d never let them live it down.
At least it had been early; if the alarm had gone off with a restaurant full of people, it would have been a disastrous amount of cleanup in the dining room, but as is it was only a scattering of tables and a few drinks at the bar. The electricity was finally turned on around 9:00, and we got to work on the nitty gritty, and ended up staying to do all the missing sidework. Endless, endless evening breathing smoke and sweating like crazy. Two other employees showed up to “help”, one a ditzy girl who had obviously been either drinking, doing drugs, or both before coming over, as she told me seven times how she “felt like she should really be helping out” and “needed to score brownie points” (which seem a bit mutually exclusive, or maybe I’m in denial about what I was doing there– though I certainly wasn’t saying it out loud in quite that manner). That irritation lasted through the night. Of course she had taken the time to go home and change into a tank top that could be mistaken for a pajama top; showed off everything but the nipples of her gigantic fake breasts. Miss Drugged didn’t bother hiding the fact that she was drinking wine from a Nestea bottle; and later bragged on facebook about the fact that she managed to talk her way out of a speeding ticket on the way home. Sure. By “talk” you mean “pulled the spaghetti straps of my skimpy tank down and gave the cop my phone number”, right? That’s what I thought.
Frustrating evening; attention seekers, suck ups, and management freaking out. One manager had the brilliant idea of giving us all a bottle of wine tomorrow; I wanted to gently suggest to him that they pay us for the hours and hours of physical labor, and pay us cash since we missed a shift, but I guess that would make me a bit insensitive, wouldn’t it? Sigh. At least I have the next two days off from the place, though I do have to go to the dentist tomorrow. Uggh.
How was your night?
I’m sitting at The Abyss enjoying a cup of cappuccino. Unfortunately the wireless access here is locked, so I will have to post this later.
Things have been so crazy busy lately. So much so, I’m not really sure where to start.