Graffiato by Mike Isabella

Working in the food service industry (read: indentured servitude), is a crazy combination of the best and worst of humanity. Many stories have been told. Waiter Rant by Steve Dublanica, and Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress by Debra Ginsberg, are just two of the interesting and informative, true accounts of the restaurant world from the side of the server.  Waiting (2005), starring Ryan Reynolds, is an amusing, caricature of servers lives. And thousands upon of blogs tell of servers triumphs and woes.

     Well, my lifelong friend and co-conspirator, Dan and I have worked in the Restaurant world for a while. Dan is the best server I've ever seen. The worst things you can say about him are that he wants it all to be perfect, and that he's a little brisk. Nevertheless, he is engaging with all of his tables or bar guests without being intrusive. This may sound a little like hero worship but...it's not. When I've served, I have seriously thought "How would Dan do this?" in response to a challenging situation. He really is that good. Don't believe me? Go visit him at Graffiato in Chinatown DC...OH WAIT!!!

   You can't. Because Dan became a scapegoat. A reality of dining out is not being a part of the preparation of your own food. For some people this is only inconvenient as a matter of personal preference. For others, it's a bit more than that. Anyone in the service industry is no stranger to food intolerances and allergies. We mechanically recite notices about nuts in desserts, etc. much like Liverpool hospitals note "the usual rubbish about equal opportunities employer etc." And Dan gave the standard "nuts in the crust" notification to the people at the bar, upon whom he was waiting, at dear old GraffiatoDC. However, those present at the ordering of the dessert, should communicate warnings to the bathroom dwellers. 

   In his own words: 

        woman with a nut allergy sat at my bar with friends. she left, friends ordered a dessert that had nuts. woman came back, ate her friends dessert, and i got fired for it, even though i told the friends it had a nut crust.  The lady popped an allergy pill and drove herself to be checked out. 

"Dan the man", however, became "Dan the unemployed." 

~~~~~~

This also won't have a punchy takeaway either. What it will have is a "To Be Continued" And a chance to stick it to the man. 

Tune in next time. When we recount the tale of servers forced to pay a manager's salary, and other sordid horrors at Graffiato in: DAN the Man VS. Just the man. 

Oh yeah, and if you want to stick it to the man for me let your  DC peeps know that Graffiato by Mike Isabella is kinda messed up just wait 'til my next Dan vs. The Man.

Who?

We’re students. We’re dancers. We’re actors. We’re writers. We’re slackers. We’re friends. We’re enemies. We’re lovers. We’re working parents. We’re kids. We’re alcoholics. We’re potheads. We’re Christians. We’re Muslims. We’re Atheists. We’re agnostics. We’re hard workers. We’re rarely surprised. We know you. We do anything you demand of us and more with a smile plastered on our face. We get shit on everyday time after time. We smoke like chimneys to calm the stress. We drink to forget. We take the blame for your mistakes and have five seconds to shake it off and engage the next client. We aren’t satisfied unless you are. We balance and pace. We stage and clean. We reap the rewards on the good days. We just hope to make it through the really bad days. We cry. We laugh. We can fix it. We got a good customer. We really blew it. We made a friend. We need to party. We need to work. We need the money. We are bored. We are totally swamped. We’re weeded. We’re out. We ARE right, but no one cares. We aim to please. We will see what we can do. We didn’t hear that. We don’t understand. We didn’t need that. We can’t believe it. We appreciate that, really. We take your order, and remember your tiny idiosyncrasies. We abide the no tips and the bad tips on the off chance of a great table. We don’t forget how rude you were. We’re easy to get along with…if you are. We love the drinkers and hate water. We don’t do this for free. We definitely don’t do this for fun. We love the irony of Diet Coke. We like cute kids. We could do without the bad ones. We laugh at ketchup-steak people, extra well done people, extra extra dressing people, and forget their to-go food people. We hate it when you can’t make up your mind but won’t let us leave. We have stuff to do…always. We want twenty percent. We accept fifteen plus. We bristle at ten, remembering anything less with a righteous fury. We told you the center would be red, you still wanted medium. We’ll take that back for you. We can’t read minds, say virgin daiquiri. We will get that. We’re cut, finally. We’re done cleaning. We’re checked out. We’re out. We’re spent.

We are servers who just want to make a lot of coin with a little stress and not a lot of mistakes but mostly… We just don’t give a shit.

Tune in Next Week

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