The Bitter Bistro

They say that a great personality makes a great server.  Somehow I've managed making it 15 years in the service industry, making a living, while continuing to build my comedy career, and still not have a personality. I take customer's orders correctly.  Recommend wines, alcohol.  Make tables laugh.  I have settled arguments, and helped with celebrations.  I've waited on people who were visiting from all over this great country, and interpreted hand signals from international guests from places like Asia, all with decorum and best of all--without killing anybody! I work at two establishments right now.  One has been my "bread and butter" for a couple of years, and the other place is newer and that means it's an opportunity to make better money.  Well, just because it's new doesn't always make it better.  I recently discovered that my lack of shifts at the newer place was not a matter of my work ethic, or experience, but rather because the two owne

It's truly is the little things about this job that really bring an innocent smile to my face.  Like crop dusting (farting) at work.  The best happened one night, during my last shift, while managing a small bar called Cafe Muse. Cafe Muse was a beer and wine bar located on the corner of Olympic Blvd. and Sawtelle Ave. in West Los Angeles.  The place was owned by a Persian family, and the clientele was primarily Asian.  So you can see that I fit right in with the place. When I first started working there, I noticed that there was a lot of underage drinking going on.  I told all the servers and my boss, Alan, to card people no matter how old they looked.  It's better to risk feeling embarrassed about asking for an I.D., then to get caught by the Alcoholic Beverage Control, get fined, and jeopardize the business losing their beer and wine license.  Sure enough, on a night I was gone, ABC sent in some undercover agents, one of the servers didn't ask for an I.D., and he e

I write a lot of posts about my disdain for Yelp, but I have never really given a full explanation of why I feel compelled to call out these people who write these dissertations and have the nerve to call them reviews.  In short, Yelp represents everything that is wrong with society, and has given people the opportunity to be mean while hiding behind a keyboard.  I hate Yelp. I believe that Yelp actually started out as a useful resource.  It gave people the address and number of businesses, with a quick explanation of what they are about, and a casual review by patrons who either liked or disliked their experience at the place.  But that quickly dissolved as Yelp welcomed people to create profiles and openly bash and berate businesses, and rewarded these so-called "reviewers" with an "elite" status on the their Yelp profile.  Which is basically nothing more than a fancy badge to put on your profile page, and you're invited to the "Elite Yelp Squad"

I swear by everything holy that the following is the truth.  This story is from when I managed a beer and wine bar called, Cafe Muse. I know that I'm probably going to take some heat from people thinking that I'm being mean, or not compassionate, and to those people I say, "get bent!"  I say it now and I will say it again, I WAS THE VICTIM! It was at Cafe Muse that I had my very first stalker.  It was too hard to pronounce her Persian name, so everybody told me to call her Donna.  Donna was a very nice woman who had a mental handicap.  Now, I’m probably am going to offend some of you with this, but just so you can get a clear picture of what I was dealing with during these shifts, she had a very hard time talking, and back in the day before it got confusing with all this political correctness, she would have been called retarded. Donna came in one afternoon and ate with one of her relatives.  I don’t have a problem with anybody with any kind of condition.  As

As I write this I shudder to think that I have worked in the service industry for 15 years.  (Maybe more.)  But you would never ask a woman her age, and the same goes for anyone who works in the service industry.  There's no promotion.  There's rarely any benefits.  So there sure as hell is no way that I have made a living for as long as I have waiting on people.  Have I?  UHG!  What can I say... time flies when you are wishing people would go eat somewhere else. But alas, here I am.  Sure of myself as an excellent host of whatever section I might be assigned to for the evening.  Confident behind any bar.  And able to describe any varietal of wine even though I probably have never tasted it before. "How would you compare the Artesia Pinot Noir with the Opus Cab Sauv?" asked a lady one evening. Me, having absolutely no clue.  "Well, the Artesia Pinot has a hint of pepper, with a finish of dark berries and vanilla.  The Opus is a full-bodied Cabernet, sligh