Addition by Subtraction

You know how they say the customer's always right? Well I'm here to tell you that sometimes your "best customer" can be the kiss of death for your business. So it's not an absolute truth that the best policy in business is pander to the customer's every whim. Sometimes, in fact, you have to discourage a little business to make a little money.
Back in the mid-nineties, down in the Times Square area of Manhattan I worked a bar in a French Bistro on 43rd Street. Prosperous business district teaming with office workers, tourists and theater goers. Every bar in the neighborhood was packed every night, but not Le Mark. Now that's not to say the bar at Le Mark was empty, no most of the seats were full, full of regulars; freaky regulars, cheap regulars, special regulars, loud regulars, creepy regulars. They all knew each other and felt that they somehow, collectively owned the place; They decided the music, the menu, the drink prices, how much alcohol went into which kind of glass and the buy back policy. They were special creatures, God's special creatures, and because they were there every night, they dictated how much money the bar would make and by extension the bartender. Oh, and here's the other thing, the thing I'm driving at; you see, they were creating the scene and because they were creating the scene, if you didn't fit in, you didn't stay long and you didn't come back. Come on, let me introduce you to some of them, the special creatures of God in Times Square as Shakedown Street approached the New Millennium.
I'm changing the names but I'm going to be as accurate as I can in my descriptions. This first one I'm going to call Brenda; Brenda was a big woman, I'd say she must have been in her early forties, but it's hard to be sure, she worked for the ACLU which had their headquarters near by, and she had very particular purchasing habits. Let me explain; these days I live in Florida and work in the corporate world where the customs are different from the free booting ways of Old New York back in the day. In the here and now I see Happy Hour chips, two for one drink specials, Ladies night and this and that, all very explicitly stated, all very official, incontrovertible. In my opinion it takes the art out of bartending, but whatever. Back then, in jolly old Manhattan we didn't have much of that bull shit, what we had was the custom of buy backs, unofficial and up to the bartender's discretion, within reason. These buy backs would generally occur on the third or fourth round, you'd just drop the drink on the bar and knock on the wood and the customer would know it was on the house. Now like I said, these buy backs were optional, to be used as a sales building tool, but this woman, this Brenda, she had the annoying habit of keeping a most careful track of what she called, in her annoying voice; her "freebies" as if they were her God given right and if she thought you were holding out; God help you! Of course this wasn't the real reason she had to go, this was just an annoying habit and sense of entitlement, and would become the mechanism of her leaving. Brenda would come in at 5:30 every afternoon and take the same spot near the service bar and there she would sit till closing consuming six to nine drinks, of which she expected 2-3 for free, torturing me and the waitstaff and pair bonding with another over weight, middle aged woman I'll call Gladys, and Gladys would drink even more and tip even less. Still none of this would justify the 86, but here's the thing; at 5:30 when they arrived they would start out at a reasonable volume but by the time 8pm rolled around and straight through to closing they would be howling at the moon, cackling and shouting at the top of their lungs and some of the stuff that would come out of their mouths for the whole Bistro to hear were offensive, for example, Brenda would erupt from her seat and shout out; "Who do ya gotta blow around here to get a drink?" every time she needed a round. And the whole carnival freak show playing out for couples and families sitting down to pre-theater, prix-fixe $45 menus.
Then there was George Lockhart the 3rd, who was the publisher of a group of trade journals and was the nicest guy in the world until the precise moment that he finished his third scotch and water at which point he would turn into an obnoxious, uninhibited pervert who would zero in on any vaguely attractive woman in the joint and pursue her in the most offensively inappropriate mean at his disposal. Needless to say, these women would leave and never return.
Steve DiAngelo would show up just about every other night, always impeccable in a tailor made suit and Italian made silk tie with a matching pocket square. He'd pay for his Tom Collins with a crisp, new C-note laying down a fresh one for each round. Then he'd start in on his conversation much to the merriment of Gladys and Brenda. It was what a psychologist would call word salad, a classic symptom of schizophrenia. It was okay, annoying but okay. That is until he began to pound the bar and exhibit other violent behaviour patterns. And so I would have to escort him out and he would always turn to me at the front door and admonish me, placing one thick finger to a blubbery lip; "Don't tell nobody!"
Well there were a lot of other pathetic creeps and freaks infesting the place than these, but this should give you an idea as to why the bar, and indeed the restaurant were not as busy as they should have been. You see, the customer isn't always right, sometimes the customer is killing your business. So after a meeting with the manager and the owner, a decision was made; It was time to cut off the freaks.
11:30 and Brenda was blind drunk, loud but only drooling a little bit and still functional.  She lifted her tab off the wood, her reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose. She stared at it for just a bit longer than normal before calling me over a look of friendly confusion on her boozy face.
"I think you made a mistake here, J.R.," she said, handing the tab over for my inspection.
I glanced at it very quickly and pushed it back towards her, "No mistake," I replied.
She pushed her glasses up the ridge of her nose, squinting myopically at me from behind the lenses, "No, you forgot two freebies, plus my freebie carryover from yesterday."
"No," I said, flinging my rag over my shoulder and focusing on her, "it's just that there are no freebies today."
She slammed her hand, palm down on the bar, "We'll see about that," she shouted, "I want to talk to Jean!" (Jean was the owner).
"He went home two hours ago."
"Give me his number!"
"I'm not giving you the guys home number, you can call him during business hours tomorrow."
"Well I'm not paying that bill until I speak with him."
"That's fine with me."
10 Pm the following night and George Lockhart the 3rd finished his third scotch and fixed his bleary eye on a fourtyishJuno sipping a kir royale down the end of the bar. I watched as he stood and stumbled down to her, stuck his hand rudely into the bowl of nuts just inside of her personal space and whispered something in her ear. Immediately she pulled away like she'd been stung, picked up her purse and stormed out. George Lockhart the 3rd snapped his fingers at me and pointed arrogantly at his empty glass. I dropped my bar rag and walked down to where he was seated. I placed my hands, palm down on the bar top and leaned in to his personal space.
George leaned back, surprised, "Can I get another drink?" He asked.
I shook my head, "George, you're cut off."
He looked at me as if I'd farted, "The money I spend here-" he began.
"Sorry," I said, "that's just the way it is."
"You do this," he said, "I'm not coming back."
"That's fine with me."
Steve DiAngelo I just intercepted at the front door on the way in. He seemed to know the drill because he didn't give me a hard time at all. And by the end of the month sales had doubled. Addition by subtraction or the customer's not always right.

The Tambourine Man

The joint was all Bermuda shorts and surfboards, margaritas and cold brew, cheeseburger in paradise, even though it was really suburban Florida and the customers weren't coming in in flip flops off the sand, but after work or when the kids were in school or on their lunch break or on the weekends. But we did try hard to maintain the illusion and it was a busy place where we'd have a character lunch for toddlers during the day, a busy office happy hour party during cocktail hour, all the best Westonites waiting for up to an hour for a table at dinner only to top it all off with a live band starting at mid-night and rocking till 4am. You get the point, it was a rowdy place and we worked hard at being all things to all people. But the Tambourine Man? That's where I drew the line.
The first time I met the Tambourine Man it was on a busy Friday night, I was working by myself and we were on track to sell 18K and without a back up in the middle of rush, I was more or less pinned to the expo line hollering my way through the night, working like an animal to get the food out of the window and onto the tables. Of course any night can throw a curve and in my business they usually come when some angry customer feels they have to yell at the manager; "RIGHT NOW" and there's nothing to be done for it but heave a heavy sigh, realize while you're off getting screamed at by some ass hole for some petty reason, four or five other tables are going to get fucked up because you're not where you're supposed to be which means four or five other ass holes are going to want a piece out of you. You might as well kiss the night up to heaven cause its all turned to shit because some guy wants to lecture you about the fact that the eighteen year old waitress trying her best to wait on twenty five people at once hasn't had the chance to take away his appetizer plates yet and for some reason he deserves finer things out of life. But I digress, we were going to talk about the Tambourine Man, well he was sitting on table 33 a tall, thin well dressed, middle aged guy with a white pony tail and an educated accent sitting with two matronly ladies and a silver fox guy in a blazer with gold chains. Very good, he wanted to compliment the waiter so in this instance I have to take back what I said in the above paragraph, even though the guy was still a pretentious waste of time which needed to be spent cajoling cooks and bullying waiters in the kitchen to; "GET THE FOOD OUT"
Anyway, this was my first contact with the Tambourine Man which, had it ended there, would have been unremarkable. Now remember I told you that we had live music starting at mid-night with a big bar and a small dance floor? Well I was in the kitchen supervising the deconstruction of the grill for a deep cleaning when the bar-back came and advised me of a disturbance at the bar. I washed some of the grease off my hands and followed him up to where one of my bartenders was following The Tambourine man around the lounge. Let me explain; up on the small stage a lone guitar player was singing Cecilia by Simon & Garfunkel, wailing his heart out on an acoustic guitar while the Tambourine Man slammed a tambourine high in the air in a chaotic manner. The guitar player continued to sing while casting mute appeals with his eyes at the bartender who was unsuccessfully attempting to get the Tambourine Man's attention and other customers looked on like they were witnessing a car wreck, rubber necking on the highway.
Well I looked around for the people he'd been with at the table earlier in the evening but they were no where in sight so next I assessed the man himself from a little distance, he had that thick, glazed and determined look of the truly nuts, probably a lot of booze on board too, but also the type with whom booze serves to focus minor insanity, not sloppy drunk, just intense, nuts.....Only one thing to be done, I walked quickly up to the Tambourine Man and after a single, unsuccessful attempt to get his attention politely, I ripped the Tambourine from his hand and tossed it to the floor, he reacted in the manner of an intense drunk and went for me, but I'm a big guy and I know about these things so I sort of let him fly by me and when he was off balance I grabbed him from one side and my bartender, taking his cue from me, grabbed his other and together we gave him a gentle Bum's Rush out the front door. He didn't come back and I thought I'd seen the last of him, but it was not to be.
The Tambourine Man returned the very next afternoon and in the sober light of day explained himself, he was sorry and there was something about medication. The long and the short of it was; he promised to be good and could he return? What can I say? He seemed like a great guy, prosperous free spending well behaved, he even had a great fund of interesting stories from his life (He was a retired Airline Pilot). It went on this way for a while, a few weeks, everything was fine, then he started to act up, just a little bit at first then it became the whole Jeckle & Hyde thing and always with the Tambourine. He'd come in and be normal, by the time he left he'd be a raving lunatic and we'd have to throw him out then he'd come back the next day to make amends and he'd be so sorry and I'd feel bad and let him back in until one day I'd just had enough and I threw him out and told him 86, never again and he seemed to understand and months went by and I didn't see the guy and thought I was rid of him.
Now at this place the managers always wore khaki pants and a polo shirt with a logo of the place over the left breast and these we also had for sale along with a lot of other stuff at our little gift counter by the host stand. We also, like most restaurants had a secret shopper program where people would come in and eat and then write a report about their experience. Well about a month after we threw the Tambourine man out for the last time I got one of these reports which described the odd behaviour of the manager during table visits and it named the manager as me, as I didn't recognize the events described I denied them and upon researching the report found that it referenced events which occurred on one of my days off, so I kind of wrote it off in my mind and moved on that is until one night I was working, cooking behind the line because I was short staffed and one of the waitresses came to me.
"J.R.," she said, "You better come up front right away."
I looked up from the seafood stew I was cooking, "Why?"
"You just better come up front." She said.
Well I got up front and right away I saw a man in khaki pants, wearing one of our company manager polo's leaning in close, talking to a table, as approached I overheard him say; "If you don't like our hamburgers you can go someplace fucking else." He was saying it in an easy, conversational tone.
I spun the guy around and it was the Tambourine Man, dressed exactly like me, he even had his hair cut like mine. Creepy.......

If you can't beat em, join em

I've worked for many different types of restaurants in many different places but it's only over the past several years that I've found myself working for a large corporate chain and they certainly have a distinctive managerial culture. It is a culture of smoke and mirrors, of sucking up and covering your own ass at the expense of anyone and anything including the welfare of the business with which you are entrusted. Of course this infrastructure exists for a reason and that is to sell unhealthy products at the highest volume possible while delivering a minimum of service and doing it at the lowest cost possible. If you become an expert at this and are able to hide the unpleasant by products of this process successfully from those above you (They know all about it anyway)  then you will do well managing a chain restaurant. Of course I'm sugar coating it.
The food, in order to make it deliberately addictive, is processed with so much fat, grease and sodium that its going to make you unhealthy, contribute to childhood obesity and keep you coming back for more. The alcohol, well we are very careful to train our team members in responsible alcohol service and then we run happy hour specials and signature drink sales contests intended to increase the bottom line and make our staff forget all about responsible alcohol service. So, who do we pump full of our cheap booze before casting them out on the high ways? Parents with small children, office workers, unemployed workers drowning the sorrows on the day the government check comes in, habitual alcoholics who we call regulars and just about anyone else who bellies up to the bar and calls for a 2 for 1 drink. We have ladies night where the ladies are enticed to drink all night long and shot specials and dollar beers which no amount of 25c chicken wings are going to absorb on time to make you safe driving home and every twenty minutes we're checking sales. So there's a lot fundamentally wrong with what we sell and how we sell it, that's one thing and it's endemic so if you can't beat em join em.
Then there's the shocking way we treat our workers. I remember in college reading about time and motion studies which management did on workers in the manufacturing process during the industrial revolution prior to the rise of trade unionism and labor law, back when workers had no rights. I read about the terrible ways in which the migrant farm workers are treated. No days off, 18 hour shifts, not being payed fair wages, cutting workers when they're not needed as dictated by business and the quest for higher profits regardless of the workers own need to pay their bills and receive a living wage. Well all of these practices are alive and well in the restaurant industry and not just for the workers for management as too, at least on the store level. It's pretty standard for a restaurant management recruiter to gush to a candidate; 'The company has a great quality of life; no more than 60-65 hours a week and a weekend day off every month, they might even schedule you two consecutive days off every once in a while!'
Well I'm here to tell you, we hire em when its busy, lay em off when its slow, fire em on a whim and exploit every dumb kid who's willing to buy in to our bull shit and volunteer for anything. We fatten em up, get em drunk and spit em back into the world fat drunk and in trouble. But hey, 'it is what it is.' If you can't beat em, join em.
I wonder if all industries are this bad and I wonder how I live with myself.

That Hideous Responsibility

She must of come in drunk, or at least that's what I was told. It was almost 3am, last call, and I was sitting in my typically under-sized manager's office in a big restaurant on a lake in the back of a quaint mall in Weston Florida when my bartender Brian, a clean cut kid who was studying to be a landscape architect, stuck his nose in to interrupt my number crunching.
"Coach," he said, he always called me coach, "A woman just came in with Deirdre and Travis and they must have come from a party or something cause they're pretty stewed and I don't want to serve them."
I looked up at him over my reading glasses, "Good, then don't." I replied.
"Yeah," he said, "I'm not gonna. Thing is they're making a big deal out of it and demanding to see you....You know Travis...."
I took a deep sigh, it was the end of a fifteen hour shift and what I needed was sleep not ball breaking from a an affluent red neck dirt bag with a loud mouth and a sense of entitlement (Travis was a regular). I heaved myself off the small desk chair and followed Brian out into the empty kitchen and through the dark dining room up to the dimly lit lounge. The bar sat inside but with big patio doors wide open to treat the guests to a view of the big lake out back and the breezes blowing off the water. There were only a half dozen or so customers left and three of them were the drunken and unwelcome trio; they were perched on stools by the service bar Deirdre and the unknown woman engaged in close tipsy conversation and even sitting down I could tell they would be unsteady on their feet. Travis sat a little off from them seemingly engaged in an enamored stare down with a bottle of whisky just beyond his reach.
Brian was a few feet ahead of me and when he stepped behind the counter Travis glared at him like a spoiled baby and demanded; "Well?"
Brian turned his back deliberately on the guy and jerked his thumb over his shoulder back at me before moving off down the bar to cash out the other three customers.
Travis turned the full heat of his wrathful stare onto me, "Well?" He spluttered.
"Well, what?" I responded tersely having long before reached the age where I'd lost my tolerance for people like Travis.
"Well, what about a round here for last call?"
"Last call was ten minutes before you walked in." I answered.
"Bull shit!"
"Really?" I said, "Do we have to go through this dance, Travis?"
Travis looked at his watch, "It's two forty five, last call is at three am."
"I'm the general manager and last call is when I say it is, at least last I checked."
"Yeah, buddy we'll see if you're still the general manager when you check tomorrow after I talk to Tim. The money I spend in here...." Tim was the owner and he would stop in for a drink about once a month and when ever he did Travis, who was at the bar every day would chat him up. Travis was one of your typical regulars one of God's special creatures. The type who thinks he deserves everything for free and an ass kissing with his peanuts.
I gave him a sour look, "What ever you gotta do, buddy," I replied, "What ever you gotta do."
Brian handed me his drawer which I took it in the back to count, then I returned to lock up. When I got there the place was empty except for Brian and the un-known woman.
Bian was sitting at the bar talking to her, sipping on his shift beer while she toyed moodily with a glass of water, he gave me one of those; 'What are we going to do?' looks as I approached. I sat on the stool on the other side of the woman, the one where Travis had been sitting a half hour before. I looked at her close up, I'd never seen her before, she was very pretty with a South Florida tan and an expensive hair style piled high on top of her head. She reeked of alcohol, but even stoned as she was she exuded a vibrancy.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Clarissa, and your's?" She slurred.
"J.R."
"J.R.," she repeated softly, "what's that stand for?"
"Jimmy Ray. How you getting home, didn't you come in with Travis and Deirdre?"
Brian drained his glass and stood up, "I gotta be up early. You got this, Coach?"
I nodded at him philosophically, "I'll make sure she gets home okay."
Brian left and I turned back to Clarissa, "So," I said, "is there somebody I can call to pick you up?"
She didn't answer me but grabbed my right hand in both of hers, "I tell fortunes," she declared in a boozy drawl.
I smiled, humoring her as she turned my palm over and examined it in the dim light. "You're unlucky in love," she said, "You're a good man but you'll die of a broken heart."
"I'll try to keep that in mind," I said, "but you haven't answered my question-"
"I'm sorry about Travis," she interrupted, "I know he can be an asshole, but he's my cousin."
"He's your cousin and he left you here?"
She hopped off her stool, "I have to pee," she said.
I nodded and watched as she staggered off in the direction of the ladies room, while she was gone I locked up. I was struggling with one of the big sliding doors when she returned.
"Don't worry about me," she said, picking up her purse from the bar top, "my cars parked outside."
"Whoa," I said rushing over, "You're not in any condition to drive. Let me call you a cab."
She looked at her watch, "It's too late and I wouldn't trust a cab driver at this hour."
"You can't drive home. I mean you are drunk."
She stared meaningfully at me for a long minute, "Well," she said at last, "I suppose you could drive me home."
I nodded, "Okay, just stay here for ten minutes I have to shut down the computers and check the equipment in the kitchen, I'll be right back."
She smiled knowingly at me, "I'll be here."
When I came back ten minutes later she was gone. I scoured the restaurant but she was no where to be found and when I got out to the parking lot the only car there was mine. I drove around the mall but to no avail and there was really nothing else I could do so I went home and hoped for the best.
The next day was my day off. It was a mild, sunny South Florida day and I was on the patio cooking steaks for my wife and son and drinking a cold beer when my wife joined me, the cordless phone in her hand, "J.R. honey, its Tim."
I answered with trepidation wondering what could have gone wrong at the restaurant that the owner, who oddly, unusually enough was good about leaving me alone on my own time, was calling me. "Hey boss," I said.
"How are you doing, J.R." he asked, not in the ordinary way one might but with a lot of concern.
"I'm fine," I replied. "Is everything okay?"
I heard him sigh on his end, "I just spoke to the police, there was a woman at the bar last night, well Brian told me what happened, turns out she got on the I75 last night and...well, she's dead."

An Excerpt from Possible 20

The Rusty Pelican was nice, out on Biscayne Bay with a view of the Miami skyline, kind of lush and tropical on the way in and all wood and masculine once in its heart sipping on a cold beer and watching the sun go down on a hot city. Ricky and Alfredo were already there and though they’d met Liam before I’m sure Noonan was a surprise, all hard and spooky in his wrinkled seersucker with the sweat soaking through at the arm pits. We sat next to them and while the dining room was almost full, the bar had only two other customers, a middle aged couple having martinis before dinner seated at the further end, well out of earshot. The bartender was an older guy who, one way or another knew the score. He served our drinks and politely drifted down to the other end to make conversation with the geriatrics.

Ricky seemed nervous, sweating a lot and a little flush, "Man," he said, "if Blanco knew I was here, what I was doing, I’d be fucking dead."

I nodded toward his briefcase on the floor next to us, "It’s all there?"

He shook his head up and down quickly and dismissively, "Of course, I don’t break fucking deals. It’s just, you know I wouldn’t be making a deal on the outside at all, but I got a lot of demand for this shit and the guy can’t get it no more. I mean, I still get the other shit off him."

Noonan tipped his whisky glass back and snorted derisively, "Guy sounds like an ass hole. You know, America’s the land of opportunity, opportunity’s free for all, but it’s fucked up to get in the way of the next guys opportunity, especially if you ain’t American yourself."

I could tell Ricky didn’t know how to respond and I could tell he was annoyed, but also too nervous around Noonan to show it. His ears got flushed and he smiled a kind of awkward agreement. He had a pile of money on the wood in front of him and he pointed at it, "Anyway, have a drink on us, we got to go, I got this stuff promised to customers tonight so I gotta work the sled like Santa." There were handshakes all around and Ricky and Alfredo grabbed their end of the deal and tipped out.

"Wow, that guy was really wound up." Said Liam, motioning to the bartender for another round, "Are you sure he’s stable enough to do business with?"

I plopped a twenty onto the pile on the wood and the bartender dropped the round and moved away. Noonan snickered and said, "Guy was nervous, that Blanco guy must be pretty scary."

"LoneTree told me he’s known for cutting guys up while they’re still alive," I replied.

A quick look passed over Noonan’s face and it wasn’t one of disgust, "Sooner that guy checks out the better. I’m gonna talk to Johnny Angel about it tomorrow, first things first though, you say LoneTree knows the guy?"

"Yeah."

Noonan knocked back his drink and stood up from his stool.

"Where are you off to?" Liam asked, staring morosely at his frozen Pina Colada.

"It’s where we are off to Brother, Bro."

"Okay where’s that?"

"Where gonna go have a chat with the Indian, I wanna find out as much about Blanco as I can sounds like he’s all that stands between us and the quiet enjoyment of our little market segment."

The Skim

They say that all bartenders end up dis-honest no matter how they start out and I would have to say I agree with the statement to a degree. It's not that they're bad people and I don't judge them. Much. But I do fire them, I have to it's business, if you don't rip it out root and branch every once in a while it festers and grows and can burn down your house. How do I know? I've been on the wrong side of the skim.
If you've looked at some of my earlier posts you'll see the one where I worked a place called Pasta Brokers; Well right after the Federal Marshals came in and put the padlocks and chains on those doors I got a job with my cousin doing construction labor on the renovation of an old Theater on West Forty-Seventh Street in Manhattan. A French restaurant playboy named XXXX. had teamed up with a billionaire German banker named XXXX to plow millions of dollars into this old Broadway Theater and turn it into a 1940's style Supper Club.
Problem with the Club though, it was really expensive to run, hell it was really expensive just to turn on the lights and to operate it the way it was designed to work; with a fifteen piece big band on stage, house performers, waiters with white dinner jackets, a four star chef in the kitchen and a quality jazz act in the Cabaret or VIP room well that was expensive beyond your imagination. The bottom line? You just couldn't break even on it even if you did fill it up with New York's glitterati every night. But then the guys who owned it, well they were a little out of touch with reality. XXXX. the boss had a side kick, a fabulous Frenchman named XXXX who was in charge of entertainment and had some very odd ideas about what was good for business. For example, a couple of months into the venture he decided it would be a great idea to get a celebrity. Nothing really wrong with that in and of itself, but the celebrity he picked out was X. XXXX, the long forgotten star of a 60's musical. Even then, no big deal, except he took the name of the Club off the marquee, laid off all the rest of the entertainment and gave Miss XXXX a three month contract to play the club exclusively five nights a week. When they couldn't more than half fill the house for opening night I knew we were in trouble. Then, inevitably, they began to lay people off. A few more weeks went by and somebody had to pay the price, it couldn't be XXXX, he was the bosses pet, so the management team took a fall and they brought in a new group of guys, a group of guys more realistic, more cynical and in the case of one of them, more corruptible. About a week into the new regime Miss XXXXX's contract was bought out and a new format was instituted, Dinner and Swing music from 5pm till 11pm with the big band and and the jazz singers then, at 11pm as the diners finished the furniture would be swept away the house lights would dim and the house music would begin to pump and we would become a night club, a pretty hot, swinging night club. Other nights we would do some pretty top notch, high level, expensive catering, the kind where they would bring in magnums of Dom Perignon and high end, vintage wine, by the case. Now remember I started this out by telling you that all bartenders were corruptible and so was one significant member of the new management team. Now at this place, from the beginning and all through the X. XXXX fiasco, myself, my cousin and two other guys had formed a pretty hard core, tight knit group and once we connected with the corruptible new manager, who happened to be the beverage manager, we formed a veritable skim machine. It went on for almost two years, aided by an organized group and abundant chaos and all through the parties, disco's, dinners and hip hop parties 10% went to the boys and we were all over town flashing cash and living large until one day it all came, for me any way, to a screeching halt. I went away on vacation and came back to discover I was fired. It happened in the office with the new GM and the beverage manager who was as guilty as I was in attendance. Of course I denied it and didn't rat on any one else but I was a bit puzzled when I left the room because the Beverage manager who was a conspirator didn't stick up for me and no one else in the crew took the ax. It was explained to me later that the new management team was close to uncovering the whole thing and some one had to be sacrificed for the greater good, somebody had to you see, and since I was on vacation that someone was me. Well, I learned my lesson that day; there is no honor among thieves and I made a personal decision then to never skim again, but I can still close my eyes and taste the fast cash of the skim twenty years later and remember the sweet taste of restaurant piracy.

An excerpt from Down & Out in Manhattan

I walked downtown along the riverside, past the handball courts and old freight yard tracks. There were people picking through the debris along the tracks, some exiting and entering the yawning mouth of the tunnel. I veered away from them, to where there were these old, dilapidated piers sticking out into the water like old gnarled fingers. I walked out on these, picking my careful, tipsy way over the holes and stepping gingerly where the rickety, fire scarred boards creaked underfoot.

I sat on the very top of that pier, oblivious to the cold and damp, my Botticelli shod feet dangling just above the surface of the river. It was almost dark by the time I finished my bottle. It was almost dark and I was so drunk I felt like I was floating at sea within my own body. Somehow I made it back across the pier without falling in. I left the park and walked for a long way and at some point I entered a subway. A train roared into the station and I was grateful to sit down. I must have passed out because I woke as the doors were closing on an unfamiliar station. I looked across at the old Puerto Rican man sitting across from me.

“Excuse me,” I said through a mouthful of marbles, “where is this train going?”

He laughed, his face appeared to be reeling, and there was a vile taste in my mouth.

“Brooklyn,” he said.

I was going in the wrong direction. When the train arrived in the next station, I stumbled to my feet and got off. The station was green, dirty and dimly lit. The platform was empty. The train pulled out and I realized my hands were empty, I’d lost my briefcase, and I didn’t care.

The sign at the end of the platform read; transfer to Uptown and Manhattan. I walked towards it, swaying as I went, there a staircase led into darkness and I was afraid to go, but I couldn’t stay and down I went. Gripping the hand rail, I descended, the tunnel at the bottom was just as dark, but at the far end was a light and I moved towards it. Something crashed against my skull, I fell and the whole world slipped away.

When I woke it was freezing cold and I could feel my bare skin against the cold, dirty stones. The back of my head was sticky and wet, but for my underpants and sox, I was naked. I was on the floor of the tunnel and somewhere water was running. I rose shakily to my feet, weak and dizzy and sat back down. I was scared, I was still drunk, and all I wanted was to go home. To get home I had to make it to the light at the end of the tunnel, but I couldn’t find my feet and I started to crawl. It was a long way along a cold, clammy, grimy floor, but when I reached the other side I was able to stand, just barely. I dragged myself up the stairs, my socks soaking wet, I reached the top and held on to the rail till a dizzy spell passed. The platform on the north bound side was empty save for an elderly black man sitting on a bench in a dirty coat. He had a shopping cart parked next to him filled with rags and he stared at me, shivering and naked before him.

A train plowed into the station, I couldn’t bring myself to get on, and it came and went without departures. The old man was still there. He came wordlessly to me and helped me to the bench.

“Why didn’t you get on the train,” I asked.

The man rummaged around in his cart and, by way of answer, handed me some old, dirty clothes. I put them on, and as he handed me two left shoes he said, “Got no place to go. Leastways, no place that train is gonna take me to.”

I nodded, understanding.

“I don’t have but one coat,” he said, “but you can have this,” he handed me a thin blanket. “You shouldn’t go down those tunnels. Not when they’re dark. You’re lucky those boys didn’t kill you.”

He didn’t have anything else to say and I sat quietly with him till the next train rocketed in. When it did, I thanked him and boarded.

There were a few people on the train, and they moved to the other end when I arrived. I heard one woman say to the man she was with; “That white bum stinks!”

I must have been pretty deep in Brooklyn, because the train seemed to roar on forever. After a while I passed out again. It must have been the crack I took on the head, because I wasn’t feeling all that drunk anymore, no matter how I smelled.

I came to when I felt something being poked into my chest, I opened my eyes, and there was a young, blonde cop jabbing at me with a night stick. The train was just leaving the Fifty-Ninth Street Station, I was almost home.

“Get up you fucking stink ass bum!” the cop shouted.

I was still unsteady, and not thinking clearly, I tried to push the stick away. The cop didn’t like this and he grabbed me by the collar and hauled me out of my seat, slamming me against the car doors.

“Hey!” I said, as the train pulled into the Sixty-Eight Street Station.

“Shut the fuck up!” He screamed.

The doors opened and he shoved me out of the train, leaving me sprawled on the platform.

It was a long walk home, light headed as I was, from the alcohol and rough treatment. I moved slowly, keeping to the shadows, embarrassed, terrified, lest I saw someone I knew, wondering what the doorman would think. I desperately wanted a shower, clean clothes, and a warm bed.

Without a watch, and with all I’d been through, I had no sense of time. It must have been pretty late when I arrived at the Water Tower, though, because the vestibule was locked and I had to ring the bell for the night doorman. When, he, being Harry, appeared, he gave me a hard stare through the thick glass of the front door, and made no move to grant entry, instead he made shooing motions at me.

I stood my ground though, gesturing for Harry to open up and a neat little standoff ensued, until I began to pound on the glass, at which point Harry grabbed a black jack from behind the counter and opened the door quickly.

“What the fuck do you want?” he roared, brandishing his stick.

“Harry,” I said crisply, “don’t you recognize me? It’s Jack Cole, I live here.”

He let the hand with the stick fall to his side. “What happened to you?”

I sighed, letting some of the tension pass from my body, “I was mugged, beaten, they stole my clothes.”

“Jesus,” Harry said, but still he made no move to let me inside.

“Can you let me in, please? I need a shower and rest. It’s been a tough day.”

He stiffened, “It’s about to get tougher. I’m sorry, Mr. Cole. The Marshal was here this afternoon. You’ve been evicted.”

My stomach fell into the ground, “You mean I can’t come in?”

“Instructions from management are I can’t let you in.”

“Harry, I just need to get some clothes, take a shower. I’ll leave after that, no one will know.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Cole, I’d like to help, but I can’t afford to lose my job,” he looked down at his shoes.

I turned away, began walking slowly up the block.

“Hold on,” Harry called out, “wait right there.” He locked the door and disappeared while I stood shivering. After a moment he came back out with a heavy, doorman’s coat slung over one arm. He unlocked the door and handed me the coat.

“Take this,” he said, “it’s better than that blanket.” He also handed me a ten dollar bill, “that’s all I got on me, and here,” he produced a business card and handed that over as well. “They told me to give you this, call the number on this card tomorrow and they’ll tell you how you can reclaim your stuff.” He studied me for a minute, “Do you have any place to go?”

He looked concerned, but I knew there was nothing he could do for me and I didn’t want the guy to feel bad, so I said yes, thanked him, and walked off into the darkness of the New York night.