PG13 and The Philosophical Waiter—UNMASKED!
The Grey Witch is Gone. Maestro leaves the Stage. Edward takes up the baton. And other tales from the front lines of not-fine dining.
A few weeks ago something happened with the Grey Witch—nobody knows exactly what (and those who know aren’t telling). But the area manager was at the restaurant and so was the Grey Witch and it wasn’t her night to work. She left and we were given the word that she no longer worked at PG13 and the (reliable rumor) was that she wasn’t even allowed on the premises. Harley had told me that it was nearly impossible to fire a manager and technically she wasn’t—she put in her notice and then they let her go that day.
NOT A STORYBOOK TALE
The Grey Witch, AKA Lady Greymane, was not Cinderella. She lived in a trailer which was often parked in the lot at PG13. Her husband (according to reliable rumours) was a derelict drug-user who often hung around PG13 like a lost dog. Dressed like a homeless beach bum, he was genial, not loud, but definitely not the first person you invite over for dinner—more like someone you would struggle to get away from. No one knew why she didn’t.
Rumor has it that Lady Greymane suffered from Lupus. And so, while I am not sorry that she is no longer a manger at PG13, I am less disposed to criticize her grumpy laziness. What is that saying—to know all is to forgive all? It seems that the more informed and more decent we become as human beings the less we are able to indulge in the satisfaction of gloating over the suffering of the (supposedly) wicked. I’ll content myself to end this with an obscure quote from Schopenhauer. Obit anus, abit onus.
THE MAESTRO DEPARTS
Our area manager (I’ll call him Alessandro) was in the restaurant the day after our latest inspection. I saw Maestro sitting with him the same way Lady Greymane had the day she left. The next day we had our 360 meeting and it was announced, without additional information, that Maestro was gone and no longer employed by PG13.
Maestro had been the GM and also the man who hired and initially trained me. Now that he has left, there has been a complete management turnover, and a new, more professional staff has taken shape, which is all to the good. Still, Maestro had style. That doesn’t make up for poor management, and I know I will enjoy working at PG13 more now than before. But I liked him, and I will miss him.
A CHANGE OF BLOG POLICY
So what is PG13? And where is it? As many of my friends know, PG13 is a Denny’s restaurant on the corner of El Camino Real and Vista Way in Oceanside. Part of the reason I haven’t been updating my blog is the challenge of coming up with new aliases for people I want to write about. And part of it is a personal discomfort with wearing the cumbersome cloak of anonymity.
Now that Maestro and Lady Greymane are gone, I feel that I might end up staying longer as a waiter at Denny’s and at this Denny’s. I keep getting better and better at my job and enjoying it more. And I have some hope that the major irritants that I have been experiencing have a good chance of changing.
The number one problem cited in the software management readings I did during the dark-ages of my computer programming career was failing to get rid of problem employees. Any company that doesn’t do that can’t maintain the loyalty of those who work best at their jobs. When Alessandro (that’s an alias, but let me get used to this slowly, OK?) recently gave us a whole lot of talk about wanting to make the restaurant successful, I frankly didn’t believe it was anything more than talk. Now that he has done the hard things he really needed to do—removing two ineffective (at best) managers and installing competent and personable replacements—I have reason to think that results and hard work can matter.
So I will be dropping the aliases for the various individuals, or not, as it seems appropriate. I plan to use only first names, and I will respect the customers’ privacy and avoid mentioning personal details that could be used to identify them. Not that there is all that much to tell, but it only seems fair to the people who walk into the restaurant expecting to be served food—and not to become bit-players in this true-to-life blogdrama.
Now that I’ve said all that, come on down! The food at PG13 is exceptionally low-priced and can be surprisingly good. I provide professional service, and (time permitting) engaging and humorous conversation as well as recitations of poetry and song at your request. I work afternoons and evenings Wednesday through Sunday.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL WAITER UNMASKED
Yes, the author of this blog is none other than Timothy Badonsky. A former computer programmer who turned his back on a 20-year professional career as a computer programmer (and sometime database administrator) to write during the day and wait tables at night.
EDWARD TAKES UP THE BATON
Edward (that’s his real name), our new general manager, is an attractively avuncular man, and easy to work with. A few days ago the restaurant got very busy and we only had two servers on the floor. At the end of the night, Edward (I can’t shorten his name because we have another manager we call Ed!) shook my hand and passed on a compliment from a couple that I had waited on who said I had given them excellent service under very difficult circumstances. He then took our meals and comped them with a thank-you for doing such a good job.
Previously, under Lady Greymane or Maestro, as likely as not we would have been criticised for being slow or making mistakes. This was the first time I had gotten this kind of substantial positive feedback since Harley had left.
BABIES EVERYWHERE
I am currently renting a room in a house in Oceanside where one of my roommates has just given birth. Previously, I had lived with Harley and his wife-to-be and newborn. And there is a waitress at PG13 who is 5-and-a-half months pregnant. This is all very new to me. None of my siblings had children and I was never all that close to my cousins who did and so all of this baby stuff is oddly novel to me. Of course it is the most natural thing in the world. I just didn’t expect to ever know what a “diaper-genie” was.
CLOCKING OUT
Last night I forgot to clock-out at the end of my shift. Which is a problem because the system automatically shuts down after any employee is on for five hours without a break. This is really bad because I have no social life to speak of and mostly keep my cell phone turned off. So, I didn’t find out about this until about 9:30 this morning.
I can only assume that the PIC managed to call someone in the hierarchy to get the authority to kick me off of the system.
Oh well. We all make mistakes. My bad.
GOING FORWARD
I will continue to use “PG13” to reference the particular Denny’s I work at—both because it describes a particular Denny’s and it’s easier to type PG13 than “D-e-n-n-y” apostrophe ”s”. I expect to begin to use first names for the mangers and the other employees as they come up, and by so doing I will choose to limit what I write about them. If someone is having some personal issue that I hear about that really doesn’t have anything to do with the restaurant, I will either exclude it entirely or take steps to obfuscate the information.
Plus, I intend to incorporate the details of my philosophical efforts into coming posts. I am the philosophical waiter, after all.
Tim (AKA The Philosophical Waiter)
The Grey Witch is Gone. Maestro leaves the Stage. Edward takes up the baton. And other tales from the front lines of not-fine dining.
A few weeks ago something happened with the Grey Witch—nobody knows exactly what (and those who know aren’t telling). But the area manager was at the restaurant and so was the Grey Witch and it wasn’t her night to work. She left and we were given the word that she no longer worked at PG13 and the (reliable rumor) was that she wasn’t even allowed on the premises. Harley had told me that it was nearly impossible to fire a manager and technically she wasn’t—she put in her notice and then they let her go that day.
NOT A STORYBOOK TALE
The Grey Witch, AKA Lady Greymane, was not Cinderella. She lived in a trailer which was often parked in the lot at PG13. Her husband (according to reliable rumours) was a derelict drug-user who often hung around PG13 like a lost dog. Dressed like a homeless beach bum, he was genial, not loud, but definitely not the first person you invite over for dinner—more like someone you would struggle to get away from. No one knew why she didn’t.
Rumor has it that Lady Greymane suffered from Lupus. And so, while I am not sorry that she is no longer a manger at PG13, I am less disposed to criticize her grumpy laziness. What is that saying—to know all is to forgive all? It seems that the more informed and more decent we become as human beings the less we are able to indulge in the satisfaction of gloating over the suffering of the (supposedly) wicked. I’ll content myself to end this with an obscure quote from Schopenhauer. Obit anus, abit onus.
THE MAESTRO DEPARTS
Our area manager (I’ll call him Alessandro) was in the restaurant the day after our latest inspection. I saw Maestro sitting with him the same way Lady Greymane had the day she left. The next day we had our 360 meeting and it was announced, without additional information, that Maestro was gone and no longer employed by PG13.
Maestro had been the GM and also the man who hired and initially trained me. Now that he has left, there has been a complete management turnover, and a new, more professional staff has taken shape, which is all to the good. Still, Maestro had style. That doesn’t make up for poor management, and I know I will enjoy working at PG13 more now than before. But I liked him, and I will miss him.
A CHANGE OF BLOG POLICY
So what is PG13? And where is it? As many of my friends know, PG13 is a Denny’s restaurant on the corner of El Camino Real and Vista Way in Oceanside. Part of the reason I haven’t been updating my blog is the challenge of coming up with new aliases for people I want to write about. And part of it is a personal discomfort with wearing the cumbersome cloak of anonymity.
Now that Maestro and Lady Greymane are gone, I feel that I might end up staying longer as a waiter at Denny’s and at this Denny’s. I keep getting better and better at my job and enjoying it more. And I have some hope that the major irritants that I have been experiencing have a good chance of changing.
The number one problem cited in the software management readings I did during the dark-ages of my computer programming career was failing to get rid of problem employees. Any company that doesn’t do that can’t maintain the loyalty of those who work best at their jobs. When Alessandro (that’s an alias, but let me get used to this slowly, OK?) recently gave us a whole lot of talk about wanting to make the restaurant successful, I frankly didn’t believe it was anything more than talk. Now that he has done the hard things he really needed to do—removing two ineffective (at best) managers and installing competent and personable replacements—I have reason to think that results and hard work can matter.
So I will be dropping the aliases for the various individuals, or not, as it seems appropriate. I plan to use only first names, and I will respect the customers’ privacy and avoid mentioning personal details that could be used to identify them. Not that there is all that much to tell, but it only seems fair to the people who walk into the restaurant expecting to be served food—and not to become bit-players in this true-to-life blogdrama.
Now that I’ve said all that, come on down! The food at PG13 is exceptionally low-priced and can be surprisingly good. I provide professional service, and (time permitting) engaging and humorous conversation as well as recitations of poetry and song at your request. I work afternoons and evenings Wednesday through Sunday.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL WAITER UNMASKED
Yes, the author of this blog is none other than Timothy Badonsky. A former computer programmer who turned his back on a 20-year professional career as a computer programmer (and sometime database administrator) to write during the day and wait tables at night.
EDWARD TAKES UP THE BATON
Edward (that’s his real name), our new general manager, is an attractively avuncular man, and easy to work with. A few days ago the restaurant got very busy and we only had two servers on the floor. At the end of the night, Edward (I can’t shorten his name because we have another manager we call Ed!) shook my hand and passed on a compliment from a couple that I had waited on who said I had given them excellent service under very difficult circumstances. He then took our meals and comped them with a thank-you for doing such a good job.
Previously, under Lady Greymane or Maestro, as likely as not we would have been criticised for being slow or making mistakes. This was the first time I had gotten this kind of substantial positive feedback since Harley had left.
BABIES EVERYWHERE
I am currently renting a room in a house in Oceanside where one of my roommates has just given birth. Previously, I had lived with Harley and his wife-to-be and newborn. And there is a waitress at PG13 who is 5-and-a-half months pregnant. This is all very new to me. None of my siblings had children and I was never all that close to my cousins who did and so all of this baby stuff is oddly novel to me. Of course it is the most natural thing in the world. I just didn’t expect to ever know what a “diaper-genie” was.
CLOCKING OUT
Last night I forgot to clock-out at the end of my shift. Which is a problem because the system automatically shuts down after any employee is on for five hours without a break. This is really bad because I have no social life to speak of and mostly keep my cell phone turned off. So, I didn’t find out about this until about 9:30 this morning.
I can only assume that the PIC managed to call someone in the hierarchy to get the authority to kick me off of the system.
Oh well. We all make mistakes. My bad.
GOING FORWARD
I will continue to use “PG13” to reference the particular Denny’s I work at—both because it describes a particular Denny’s and it’s easier to type PG13 than “D-e-n-n-y” apostrophe ”s”. I expect to begin to use first names for the mangers and the other employees as they come up, and by so doing I will choose to limit what I write about them. If someone is having some personal issue that I hear about that really doesn’t have anything to do with the restaurant, I will either exclude it entirely or take steps to obfuscate the information.
Plus, I intend to incorporate the details of my philosophical efforts into coming posts. I am the philosophical waiter, after all.
Tim (AKA The Philosophical Waiter)
posted by PhilosophicalWaiter | 2:36 PM
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