Double Flee A

T.G.I.Friday's

This really happened, all of it.

I got a job at Friday's when nobody else would hire me in 1999, when, let's just say because I was going through a phase with my appearance, it was either Friday's or a life of crime to get by. They made me train for two weeks before I even got to work. To be a waiter, I had to learn and take tests about everything on the menu. I knew all 9 layers of the 9-layer dip. I knew the ingredients to various alcoholic ("we prefer the term "spirited!"") and non-, beverages. I had to learn the procedures, the computer, the dress code. By the end of those two glorious income-free weeks I was down to a delicous package of ramen noodles and no fucking money.

One of the stories my now friend Ben H., who worked there at the time, told me when he was training me in, was about the pins the management gives out for special jobs people do. You know, when they go the extra mile. I was already intimate with the famous american intangible benefits package, but surprisingly, I still had health insurance left over from my last job, and as he spoke it was crossing my mind that that package would cover intravenous nutrition in case I collapsed from malnutrition. I almost didn't notice what he was telling me about the way he got his "sanitation" pin, but as Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers know all too well, sewage is an attention getter. According to Ben, the sewer backed up and it bubbled up out of the floor and spread all over the restaurant one afternoon. They kicked the customers out and all the waitstaff mopped it up and the place was clean in time for dinner. Heartwarming. Just so you know, it's the one in the City Center in Minneapolis. The same one in which a cockroach fell out of the ceiling and onto one of my customers. He didn't eat lunch, but everybody else at the table did. They offered him a free dessert for his trauma, which he declined.

Anyway, the first night I got to work was a Saturday. They put me in crack alley, which is what servers call the smoking section. I worked hard, being nice to people who hated whites, sucking up for a dollar here and a dollar there, and the night, though very busy, was going pretty well. At one point a table of eight people, whose total was a hundred and ten or twenty bucks, got up and left, and when I went back to the table, the money that diners customarily exchange for their meal, was gone. I immediately told my manager about it, and he said we'd deal with it later, and the night went on, until the lights were back on and the place was clean. The servers all grabbed a seat and were doing their checkouts, organizing the money, stamping the checks, and making sure the totals added up right from the credit card receipts, and so did I.

So I went to the manager, and gave him my paperwork. He informed me that there really wasn't anything he could do about it, that he couldn't be sure that I hadn't been the one who had taken the money, so he was taking the total from what I made. After that, despite my slinging over a thousand dollars in fried nastiness, I made nothing. By the way, math scholars, that does come out to something less than fifteen per cent on the night. After I told my incredible story to the bartender, who didn't believe it either, the barback, Jake, came and told me that I should tip the bar staff out of my own pocket, because they worked hard for me all night, and that they weren't going to like it if I didn't. So I shrugged, left, and walked home, because I couldn't afford a cab and it was so late the buses had stopped running. I had to go back to work though, which must have had the effect of convincing the employees that I had stolen the money that night, because who would ever come back to work in a place that screwed you like that? The bartenders and their punk bitch Jake treated me like total shit after that night, which means the whole time I worked there. Assholes.

Let's see, what else? There was the nine millimeter bullet I found in my locker when I went to put on my flair (look it up if you somehow still don't know what flair is) before a shift. The manager later let me know that he had informed the appropriate parties. Whatever.

Once I had a customer (The manager, during training: "some people call them customers, but we call them guests, so we treat them like they're a guest in our own home!") who changed her baby's diaper right there on the table, that was nice. It's a boy! Good for you! Would you like me to dispose of your adorable child's poopy? After all, you are my guest. How else may I serve you?

The hot bacon mustard salad dressing was the worst part of waking up. The day didn't really begin until you smelled that vomit. We had to nucrawave it and then put it where it would stay hot. I think it went on the cajun chicken salad.

This was in '99, so the music that played in the restaurant was on the hottest hits channel of DMX, digital music express, a cable music service. "Blue (da ba dee)" by Eiffel 65, "Take a picture" by Filter, and "It feels so good" by Sonique were especially memorable. When I hear those songs even now, I can smell the bubblin' hot bacony barf. Fuck. Looking back, all this makes me really mad.

Fast forward to last year. I wanted to do a column for a local paper called "Minneapolis's bravest restaurant critic", wherein I would review and write up places that scored the lowest on their sanitation reviews by the health department. How could that NOT cause a sensation? Obviously, not even the health department was anxious to help me out with that one. But I did learn a couple of things trying to get information, one, that it's damn near impossible to get any information to begin with, and two, there are different kinds of violations. The main two kinds are critical and non-critical. These are pretty boring. There's a review process that can be dragged out almost forever; if you want to build a filth-hole and sell food out of it, Minneapolis is the place for you. No, the violations I was interested in were the ones that cause the restaurant to close its doors, not if you don't fix something, but right fucking now, buh-bye. Once Tim Jenkins, the health department guy, told me the first two, I was too lost in thought to continue with the research for this column, which I had determined was an impossibility from a research perspective. Can you guess what those two things were? If you answered raw sewage on the floor and cockroach infestation, you were right. I just chuckled. That place got a little too close to me and I wanted no part of it in any way ever again.

So that's about it for that place except for one thing. I did ten days in jail once and the first day after I got out I thought I was still there when I woke up. After that it stopped, no bad dreams, nothing. Friday's, on the other hand, is still there in my sleep. I frequently dream that I am in the restaurant and when I try to get out, it opens into another one, and then another and another. It's like the twilight zone of perpetual T. G. I. Friday's. In his day, Rod Serling was great. We don't need guys like that any more, because reality has become scary enough.

posted by dale @ 12:56 AM