Someday, someone will read this.

X X, the regional manager in charge of several Philadelphia-area CHAIN, has been in the service industry for most of his life, just like our general manager, X X X, who is handing us each a small packet. It’s the summer of 2009, and half of the serving staff is gathered in the front of the empty dining room to hear the managers’ “pep talk”. X X’s a busy man and his message is straightforward. In the face of recession economics, food deals and meal specials aren’t going to be enough: customer service will be what makes the difference. Both men have seen the ebb and flow of the economy and the effect it has on restaurants, and both are serious about the changes our staff is going to make. I glance at the few pages of bulleted lists in my hand, which are all things we’re supposed to do anyway. Greet the guest within thirty seconds. Check that the guests’ food is hot and satisfactory within two minutes. Automatically refill any cup that’s half empty. Thank them for coming in and invite them to come back. Of course, on a busy night all of these things are hard to do. But, X X emphasizes that the extra service will go a long way, both for the reputation of the establishment and more importantly for our tips. He goes on to warn us of a zero-tolerance policy that will take effect in favor of guest complaints: if the service is bad, you’re losing your job. I glance at James, a Temple student who lives three blocks up the street, and Nam, who graduated last year but commutes here from Fourth and South five nights a week. We all get a little nervous.
This is at the debut of the chain’s “SUPERDUPER” insert, its first foray into wallet-saving specials that have become staples of every casual-dining ad for the last six months. The draw of a more moderately priced entrée, despite its reduced portion size, attracts some attention from our regular customer base, which is happier with the price than it is with the selection available to it. Business is business. In the summer of ‘09, BIGAZZ COMPANY, which operates CHAIN in addition to ANOTHER CHAIN and ANOTHER CHAIN, began tampering with the hardy but somewhat bland menu to give it more appeal: a new look here, as with the CHICKEN MENU ITEM; a new taste there with the OTHER MENU ITEM, which was just the old MENU ITEM sans A PARTICULAR THING. The serving staff, meanwhile, some twenty strong at our establishment, and the Back-of-House, the fifteen cooks, struggle as one to learn the corporation’s experimental menu changes in a timely fashion. On a busy Friday night the line can get just about any ticket out in twenty minutes or less, but tonight there are quality standards that bog the cooks down as they constantly cite the guidelines for each new setup. And of course, since it’s new, they have a lot of these dishes to make.
Our waiters aren’t faring much better. While we are consciously improving our service the availability of food at a cheaper price makes for smaller checks, and customers certainly aren’t saving money so they can leave bigger tips. It’s disheartening to an individual who already struggles with the ingratiating nature of an otherwise convenient job.
A bartender with one ear constantly tuned to the television, I’m aware of only a few major news pieces that distract the nation’s talking heads from the reality of our economic recession, and Michael Jackson’s death only lasts for a week on CNN before being displaced with morbidly daily updates on massive layoffs and clinching foreclosures. Traffic at our location crawls to a stop; this is common in the summer, when GODDAMNED SCHOOL and the GOSHDARNED SCHOOL shut down and our greater customer base flocks away from the campuses. But X X and X X X are restlessly aware of the fact that, in order to cling to what little business we still claim, we need to step up our efforts. X X is giving this talk to every CHAIN staff he is responsible for: across the nation, in thousands of restaurants, servers just like James and Nam and I are getting the same lecture.
CHAIN is not the only casual dining chain that has felt the pressure of tight personal budgeting take business away from its doors, and is not the only company that struggles internally with the burden of high food and labor costs. An unprecedented wave of uneasy menu specials has descended as the general response to declining customer inclinations. CHAIN, CHAIN, and CHAIN itself have been groveling to television viewers with some variation on a two-or-three meal course for $20, and stoic, higher-end establishments like EXPENSIVE CHAIN, EXPENSIVE CHAIN and EXPENSIVE CHAIN have gotten in on the deals, too.
What these specials represent is the particular restaurant’s capacity to sell its regular fare at a deceivingly low price. CHAIN'S popular (and recently discontinued) SUPERDUPER option made available to the customer a small FOOD, two select FOOD, and a FOOD, for the total cost of $--.-- (includes tax, but not drinks). This same check, sans the special price, averages a minimum of $--, meaning that for each meal deal the restaurant wheels it is not making the additional ten dollars that once barely covered the inherent food and labor costs in the first place.
The situation is lose-win. The irresistibility of familiar food at such a value is a draw to customers, without which it doesn’t really matter how much the restaurant isn’t making. Some chains, EXPENSIVE CHAIN notably among them, figured out early in the recession that compression is key to turning a profit during tough times: at our CHAIN this is already a regular practice, particularly during the dry season. Waiters bus their own tables nightly and take-out is handled at the bar; more often than not the host, which sucks up seven or eight dollars per hour, is asked to go home, her duties covered by the manager in lieu of any available server. An expeditor hasn’t worked the line here in almost a year.
But, for the sake of saving face, how far is going too far? If there is no one to run food when the servers are stretched thin over so many duties, the $-- -deal courses stack up under the heat lamps and reach the table dry or hardened. At this particular CHAIN the waitstaff has experience handling so much at once, where its summer model has laid groundwork for recession-minded politics. In other chains, a cut expo here, or a busser less there, makes a deeper impact in the FOH’s ability to operate smoothly and efficiently. A mid-week visit to a restaurant as confident as EXPENSIVE CHAIN reveals twenty-minute waits on beer and lingering ticket times as the server struggles to manage a few extras duties at once.
This isn’t to say that our own cost-cutting efficiencies are perfected, either. The stress placed on both the serving staff and kitchen to ensure a pleasant experience for all guests is a tough burden to carry, especially on the employees who already carry a lot of weight. James and Nam have both been serving at this CHAIN for over two years apiece, and in lighter times the occasional complaint raised against one or the other was treated strictly, but with a degree of understanding. In the months following X X’s talk, both are going be fired, on separate occasions: James for being named offhand in a letter that reaches the corporate office, and Nam for a difficult customer’s unavoidably bad experience.
CHAIN, and its peers and competitions, are by virtue of their branding seemingly affixed venues of our times and culture. But, each unit is still an individualized part of the whole. You can—and should—expect decent food and good service from any one of these places that becomes your evening’s destination. Bear in mind, however, that the familiar logo and inviting color scheme of your local chain restaurant is not immunized by some respective corporate vaccine. We are trying our best, but this level we are all in this together. Appreciate that your patronage is being goaded with an enticing, if limited meal special; understand that no self-respecting restaurant might be so understaffed for a legitimate reason; enjoy the time you’re spending off your feet while somebody else is working for you. Servers and cooks have bills too, and at $2.85 an hour, any given server is not exactly looking to discourage a tip. Especially in this economy.

the postscript

In what is fast becoming my tradition, I'm going to waste a few more minutes and beef up my post numbers with a postscript.

I've just come from Beatrice's blog, the one I had tagged for a while, if you ever clicked that link, before I decided that he might trace the tag here to something else and learn all kinds of things about himself that I simply can't say to his face. And then, things would get awkward, like last night, when I think he squeezed a nut off when he thought I was asleep. I'm only going off of the sounds I heard, though, so I could be wrong. If he wasn't doing that, I have absolutely no clue as to what was going on. Unless he swallows a lot of spit.

Anyway, Let's Go, Rancid's second album, has just come around again, we're on tracknumberfour, "Salvation". I like this music better than Karfilov's ska stuff, but it's the little punk in me talking, who thinks thinks brass players are pretty much just a great big waste of stage space. Hard to hop around and throw fits when you're squeezing six other guys up there, give me a drum kit over bones any day. If you blow I'm not harping on you, too much, but I think a fundamental of punk music is the ability to be punk, and I'm sorry but certain instrumentation is just too damned inappropriate. Get me started on the Clash, I dare you.

Ska is clean punk, I guess. Accessible. Punk is not about options.

Anyway, Beatrice posted his "Get Psyched Mix." We're suckers for HIMYM here, and Beatrice spent days perfecting his take on Barney Stinson's royalty-pumped menagerie.

I have no idea what's going on my Get Psyched Mix because I don't have that much free time. Off the top of my head, T. Rex's Twentieth Century Boy and something from the a-side of Jane's Addiction's Nothing Shocking. But, I'm thinking a slot titled, "Any Rancid Song" would fit quite nicely onto this list. Except for Salvation. It's simply too damned slow.

another february entry.

I listened to Rancid's first album one and a half times before I realized I was hearing songs I had already heard. I think Tim Armstrong sang along to Bollocks one too many times, but Matt Freeman's fingering is absolutely sick. He's probably using a pick, but this doesn't do much to the reality that a bass string is damned hard to play, and this kid can do it.

I don't know the first thing about Green Day, so I don't know who sounds like who, but it's there somewhere.

Now I'm listening to Rancid's second album, peddling time away. I have a lot to do, of course.

Rain washes away the last of the terminal relaxation of our all-too-brief winter's cap. Water on water, rinsing the tarred filth of Philadelphia's record snowfall back into the drains and sewers that the city is built upon. It's back to tight back muscles and strained eye sockets and I haven't even had a chance to stop yet. This was a lot more poetic two hours ago, as I put it together on the walk home. I write better when I'm not actually writing.

Let's hope it's not a constant affliction, because I have a lot of it to get to, tonight, and I'd like some fluidity for once. Last week's bar binge is over and the Christmas drama of Verde and Rojo is wrapped up neatly into a package that (hopefully) stays nestled under the brown boughs of a dry, discarded tree. What a strange analogy. Needless to say, I find it ironic that, while sitting in mi clase de filosofie de amor I considered with some delightful sick feeling whether or not I would be falling in love, only to have that same wondering unreciprocated. Which is fine, I'm more fortunate for it then Rojo, I think, who's in deep, so to speak. If he goes any deeper they'll be mated for life, I think. Someday, I will never meet the amazing children I'm dreadfully certain he's in for.

So we pass over another life lesson gleaned through the watchful eye of whoever has better things in store for me. Every body explains his existence on this planet differently; every body wants to believe that he is where he is when he is for a reason that would inform a greater purpose, if only he could understand it. This is the aching paradox, of course: if he did understand it, would he then choose to be where he needs to be in the first place?

We are the sum of our experiences. I take away a little piece of this one and tuck it neatly into my Puzzle. The picture isn't much clearer of course, but there is a little more color, or some line is more developed. The funny thing, if you find it funny, is that there's no box to look off of, and I won't know what the damned thing looks like until all the pieces are in place, which is to say, when I quit adding pieces, which is to say, when I'm dead, and can look back on it all, if that kind of afterlife is available to me. Because life stops when there are no more pieces. Are you five, twenty-five, one-hundred, one-thousand? Five-thousand?

Three-dimensional? Etc.,...

I'm getting my bearings back. They were stolen for a little while. So, I need to find some new curious pursuit to get my head back in the clouds.

I have so many dreams I need to post. There was one--a semiotic masterpiece, I'd like to say--about Rojo, and what's he's saved me from, or doomed me to. It woke me up in a way that no dream has quite yet, starting, but not afraid. I'll post that soon.

can you...?

Online, we all have the option of choosing user names to represent us, in email addresses, social networking sites and, more appropriately for this particular stream, places like discussion forums and blogs.

I wonder if any psychological information can be extracted from the particular letters that form any given user name--because there's an aesthetic to, for instance, a name with a 'k' and two 'r's in it, right? And what does that say about the person who chose that name?

I'm not talking about the user name itself, which is usually derivative of some aspect of the user's life. I'm talking about the aesthetic of the combination of letters as a reason for settling on that name--and what that combination means. It's like wearing a shirt, maybe. I chose a red shirt for a particular reason: I like to wear red or I want to stand out in a crowd or I'm wearing red because it's the only clean shirt I have left. But any of these reasons inform an aspect of my character--red triggers some kind of emotional response in my brain, which is why I like it, or I want to be clearly separated from the throng of strangers I am about to throw myself into so that I receive their lingering attention, or I don't have the time or motivation or ability to clean any other laundry. Right, so is a red shirt like having an 'r' in your user name? Can you attach a similar psychological weight to the individual letters that make up any given moniker? And if you can, what are the semiotic implications of one particular letter over another?

Does an 'x' or 'v', for instance, create a more aggressive reaction in users viewing others' names autonomously? I think there's something to this. When I see an 'x' or a 'z' in somebody else's user name I think it's cool, or edgy, or even sexy, or a number of other appropriate adjectives. It's this way for any letter, of course, but the letters I see or use less commonly are immediately more intriguing. I use the letters in a user name, then, to build a little profile of the person those letters represent, which is why I wonder if there isn't some foundation for my proposition. If each letter in a user name somehow reflects a mental or emotional aspect of the user then it is legitimate to analyze each symbol and come up with any number of intriguing/telling conclusions.

Of course, I only wonder this because I was just looking at Beatrice's user name, which he's had since high school. It's a name he made up, an alternate identity he created for himself to use in many places: online, certainly, but for video game profiles and probably table-top games, too. Which is why I think that each of the letters he's chosen reflect an aspect of his aesthetic, what he deems appropriate to represent him, when he steps out of his reality, among friends and strangers alike.

The East Coast is Covered in Snow

Just in case you live under...well, no, if it were a rock you'd probably notice the two-three feet of snow that's just fallen on top of the rock.

I love that our blizzard is news. News! Turn on the television and all they talk about is the blizzard. Just in case, you know, you can't look out your window and see it happening, or something like that. I guess it's nice to know how much snow has fallen, to know that this is record-setting, etc. I don't need the television to know that it is snowing, is my point, I guess.

The coldest winter in fourteen years...

I'm listening to HEAD by the Monkees. For the third time in a row--like, nonstop for the last two hours. I don't really know what my problem is. Actually, I don't know if I have one. I did the same thing when I found Sgt. Pepper, and even Their Satanic Majesties Request...I just can't look away. Can you dig it?

So much has happened in a month and I want to write a huge play-by-play but I don't want to write about any of it at the same time. I need a record somewhere, because in time I won't be able to remember so much. I really like this song, "As We Go Along." It was written by Carole King instead of the Monkees, which is typical, I guess, but it reminds me of Neko Case and Middle Cyclone.

What do snowmen represent? I tried engaging my roommates in a philosophical discussion about the meaning of the snowman and nobody was having it. Why build a man out of snow? Is there some inherent meaning in the construction of a crude representation of ourself out of nature's most tangible damning element? Do we build snowmen out of a mocking defiance of the cold and wet? Or are we fascinated by a reminder of our fragile mortality, represented both in the act of fabrication amidst life-numbing conditions, and nature's subsequently slow, gradual dissolution of the little statue from the face of the earth?

For these reasons, do snowmen deserve the same status as mankind's greatest architectural works? Or does the temporarity of the canvas make instead for a fleeting piece of art? Regardless, I stand by my resolution that the snowman is a declaration of humanity in the face of its own stubborn mortality.

I wonder why neither Karfilov or Beatrice wanted to run with this idea. Beatrice was hungry; Karfilov was playing with Mao.

HEAD is interesting, definitely not the kind of thing you expect the Monkees to be a part of, or Jack Nicholson to be attached to. Unless this is the first time you're hearing the Monkees, in which case, everything else they do will probably disappoint you. Assuming you dig this, of course. Maybe you don't like this but like their polished act, because the head trip isn't your groove. I do feel like they try too hard to sound like the Beatles and the Beach Boys and even the Stones, but there's certainly some talent locked away on this album. I'd like to see the movie. I had something else I was thinking about, but I don't remember what that is.

Verde blogs now, and she doesn't know that I know. I don't know now, I was really starting to like her.