Tuesday, June 3, 2008

A day at work with my drunk bosses.

When I went in to open the restaurant on Sunday morning for brunch, I saw both of my bosses crusty eyed, disheveled and hungover, still slurring their words.

Usually, I only see one of them like that, but as I learned from the chef, they'd both passed out on the bar the night before, and spent the night. When the porter came in that morning, he cleaned around them. I found out that finding them in the morning, either still drinking, or just waking up hungover, is a normal occurrence.

As soon as I set up the bar, they started making themselves double mimosas with vodka in them, and sat outside. They proceeded to talk about how great they were for the next 9 hours. They spoke very loudly on the patio and chain smoked. I prayed that they wouldn't talk to my customers, but they did anyway.

One of them went on for almost a half an hour to a table on a date about how we brew our own iced tea. I've never worked at a restaurant that didn't brew its own iced tea, and it's only Lipton, but she seems to think very highly of this, and wouldn't shut up. "Bark! Bark! Grumble! Bark!" is what she sounds like when she talks.

They drank up all the champagne and juice that I'd stocked for brunch within an hour or two of opening. I refused to restock it for them, so they had to do it themselves. I think we got through almost an entire case of champagne that day. I hope they left some for the paying customers.

When I was behind the bar, making drinks for customers, and the owner wanted one, he would come behind the bar, make me stop what I was doing, and sloppily make his own drinks, spending three times as long as he should, while his paying customers got bad service.

When the boss that was supposed to be managing fell asleep on the patio in front of the customers, I was glad that the night manager had come in early, and told him about it. We both tried our hardest to call cabs for them and get them home, but they thwarted every attempt and continued to sabotage their own business for the next 4 hours or so.

I thought he'd stopped drinking because we'd run out of champagne. But after the foam that I'd poured from the taps into the pitchers went missing, and I saw a glass of a strangely colored and textured brew, I knew that he'd stolen the garbage beer.

They finally left around 7 pm. Throughout the entire 9 hours, calling themselves workaholics because they'd just spent 24 hours straight in the bar, which they own, "managing," they never ordered any food. Just liquid breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

2 comments:

croft said...

omg melissa, that was insane

croft said...
This comment has been removed by the author.