During another recession, almost 20 years ago, the company I worked for went belly-up. After a long, futile job search I took what is commonly called a “survival job” and that is how I became the oldest waiter at Bennigan’s. Twenty years ago I was certainly not “old”, but I was definitely older than the 19-year old servers I was working with, and somewhat older than the restaurant manager.
The restaurant manager was short, plump and high-strung, with chubby little cheeks. She had tragically protruding front teeth, bright, beady little eyes and an unfortunately high, squeaky voice. Her resemblance to a hamster was both immediate and unmistakable, and this is how I began referring to her to my co-workers. The name, as they say, stuck: The cooks began calling her “Hamster” to her face and the dining room staff soon picked it up. By the time the headwaiter, who was her spy, ratted me out as the source of her nickname she hated me, pure and simple.
As a manager, the Hamster’s shortcomings were plentiful, but her worst quality was that she was a screamer. Please note: if you have a high, squeaky voice, do not make a habit of screaming at people, you will sound like an enraged hamster, as she indeed did. Alternately profane and cruel, she publicly yelled at cooks and waiters, hostesses and dishwashers in a management style never taught at Cornell.
I became her victim one busy Friday night when she overheard me tell a customer that the chicken Marsala, cooked in the microwave, was vile; revealing this secret was a mortal sin at Bennigan’s, where virtually everything was cooked in the microwave. Personally, my attitude has always been that if you go to a restaurant like Bennigan’s and you order chicken Marsala you deserve what you get, but I found that warning customers about the swill they were about to consume resulted in better tips.
The Hamster thought differently. Right at the table she loudly told me exactly what she thought of me as a server and as a person. Angry beyond words, volume rising, she actually shook her finger in my face, but because she was very short and I am very tall she had to stand on tiptoe to do this. Seeing this I did the worst possible thing I could have done under the circumstances: I laughed.
She turned bright red and, impossibly, got shriller. For a moment I actually thought she might slap me, but when the customers began to laugh, she stormed away. Later, she walked into the kitchen at the exact moment I was entertaining the dishwashers with my deathless impersonation of “The Angry Hamster.” My fate was sealed.
The only thing more pathetic than being the oldest waiter at Bennigan’s was being the oldest lunchtime waiter at Bennigan’s. The Hamster did not have enough ammunition to fire me but she knew that forcing me to serve lunch to the kind of guy who thought an Express Lunch at Bennigan’s would be enough to get his secretary into bed, (and the kind of secretary on whom it worked,) would be hell. It was.
The pressure of working these Express Lunches was extreme. The rule was that the customer’s food had to be on the table within 15 minutes of ordering or their lunch was free. Manager’s careers, and their bonuses, were made and broken by the ability of their staff to get lunch out in 15 minutes. Some managers helped their staff by running food out to the tables. The Hamster screamed louder.
And then one Friday morning, as I was about to leave for my lunch shift, I got The Call. I had gone on several interviews for my Dream Job and the Human Resource Manager called to tell me the position was mine if I wanted it and could I start Monday? Euphoric, I agreed and dazed, I went to Bennigan’s and walked right into what I now called one of the manager’s Hamster Rants: 2 servers had not showed and consequently I was working a double station: 12 tables.
It was a busy lunch and I had 12 tables checking their watches, each hoping their lunches would be free. The Hamster was hovering over my shoulder and generally annoying me, so I seized the moment and told an extremely porcine individual that he should really consider a salad instead of a burger and fries. Goaded, she took the bait, letting fly with a profanity-laced stream of invective they could hear in the kitchen. Laughing aloud, I handed her my apron and my receipts and, mid-shift, walked out of a restaurant in which even the Hamster was momentarily silent.