Saturday, August 21, 2004
And now, your rainy Saturday levity.
Yea, for Berkeley Breathed IS missed, and his return to the funny pages IS devoutly to be wished for: 
I have felt terribly guilty about not having filled you in
Back from Chicago. Great city. Love it. My father's restaurant rocks (BoKa, if ever you're out there). But it is time I related to you the aftermath of my firing.
I remain pretty bummed about being fired. I know I didn't deserve it, and so does the rest of the staff, the owner and the head chef. But still, it actually hurts. There's this vacancy. I think I am the first one we know to be fired? Well, it
sucks. At least I went out with a bang: there were some good fireworks on my last day, for which Ben and Nathalie Wolfram were present, with two memorable moments: I was more or less yelling, in the middle of the restaurant, "You're trying to screw me out of my last shift!" when he refused to tell me why he'd taken my final shift away, and then I told him that he was the worst employer I had ever had (and given the bosses Mike and I had at CityCrepe, that's high praise), and then, when he called me back the next day to explain to me the reason he had screwed me out of my last shift (it turned out to be a good reason, and I don't understand why he didn't tell me so at the beginning: you never let a departing/fired bartender close up, because he's the last server there, and between the money in the drawer, the liquor in the cabinet, and so on, well, it's just bad policy. I wouldn't have taken money, I wouldn't have done a shitty job of cleaning up, but I would definitely have drunk my head off around the end of the night. That bottle of Bushmill's would have been GONE), we got into a pretty big fight. It's what happens when you piss off someone naturally combative, verbal and with nothing to lose.
You have to understand, there still, at this point, remained a faint possibility I might be hired back. The owner was perplexed, having the night before my firing told me what an excellent job I was doing, and how much he liked the
speciality drinks I'd cooked up for him. He wanted me to work the next week. Unfortunately, the owner shouldn't second-guess his manager, and I understood this, and since hiring and firing is the province of the manager, I was pretty
well fucked. So Eli explained the reason why I couldn't work my last night shift. I was like, Okay, fine, I understand, but why did you fire me? Why do you think I suck at my job? Why didn't you tell me what I was doing
wrong when I was doing it? (I asked Tim, the head bartender, the same question, "What am I doing wrong, honestly?" and he replied that he really couldn't think of anything, and that so far as he was concerned, I was doing very well) I demanded a litany of my offenses, and what followed--and it took a lot of dragging to get this out of him--was ridiculous. He accused me of being slow (Bullshit. I can make 20 cocktails in 4:44. Besides, I'm not slow), sputtered a little, and announced what he thought to be the real reason: I give off a bad vibe. He said he'd brought some friends in and they'd decided against me. Of course, Eli and his friends like to go clubbing in the meatpacking district. Is the Upper West Side the meatpacking district? Fuck you, Eli. Completely different things. A bad vibe in the meatpacking district is a good vibe on the Upper West Side. Go fuck yourself with a toothpick.
But then it got weird. He launched into a rambling, repetitive speech about how he didn't owe me anything, how it was bullshit (what was bullshit was never made altogether clear), and then how he wasn't really in this business, because he was a lawyer.
He started saying, "I'm a lawyer, I meet with judges, I've written legal documents--"at which point I cut him off angrily, saying "Great, and I've written English papers. I really don't see how this concerns me in any way." He looked stunned for a second, then he started to repeat himself. I cut him off again, saying, "Look, don't flog your credentials at me." He said, "I'm not flagging [he changed the word flog to flag because he doesn't know the meaning of the verb to flog] my credentials," and I replied, "Eli, yes you are!" He started to say something, don't care what, and I just stopped. I said, "I'm done." I got up and said, "I hope at some point in the future you have a chance to work for a staff that doesn't uniformly despise you," and went inside to say my goodbyes. I recounted the entire story to Tim, Billy and Erica, well within Eli's earshot, and left.
I'm not through there. Here's a life lesson: don't give your enemies nothing left to lose. I'm going back to talk to the owner, not to try to get my job back, but to bring that fucker down with me. Keep you posted.
I remain pretty bummed about being fired. I know I didn't deserve it, and so does the rest of the staff, the owner and the head chef. But still, it actually hurts. There's this vacancy. I think I am the first one we know to be fired? Well, it
sucks. At least I went out with a bang: there were some good fireworks on my last day, for which Ben and Nathalie Wolfram were present, with two memorable moments: I was more or less yelling, in the middle of the restaurant, "You're trying to screw me out of my last shift!" when he refused to tell me why he'd taken my final shift away, and then I told him that he was the worst employer I had ever had (and given the bosses Mike and I had at CityCrepe, that's high praise), and then, when he called me back the next day to explain to me the reason he had screwed me out of my last shift (it turned out to be a good reason, and I don't understand why he didn't tell me so at the beginning: you never let a departing/fired bartender close up, because he's the last server there, and between the money in the drawer, the liquor in the cabinet, and so on, well, it's just bad policy. I wouldn't have taken money, I wouldn't have done a shitty job of cleaning up, but I would definitely have drunk my head off around the end of the night. That bottle of Bushmill's would have been GONE), we got into a pretty big fight. It's what happens when you piss off someone naturally combative, verbal and with nothing to lose.
You have to understand, there still, at this point, remained a faint possibility I might be hired back. The owner was perplexed, having the night before my firing told me what an excellent job I was doing, and how much he liked the
speciality drinks I'd cooked up for him. He wanted me to work the next week. Unfortunately, the owner shouldn't second-guess his manager, and I understood this, and since hiring and firing is the province of the manager, I was pretty
well fucked. So Eli explained the reason why I couldn't work my last night shift. I was like, Okay, fine, I understand, but why did you fire me? Why do you think I suck at my job? Why didn't you tell me what I was doing
wrong when I was doing it? (I asked Tim, the head bartender, the same question, "What am I doing wrong, honestly?" and he replied that he really couldn't think of anything, and that so far as he was concerned, I was doing very well) I demanded a litany of my offenses, and what followed--and it took a lot of dragging to get this out of him--was ridiculous. He accused me of being slow (Bullshit. I can make 20 cocktails in 4:44. Besides, I'm not slow), sputtered a little, and announced what he thought to be the real reason: I give off a bad vibe. He said he'd brought some friends in and they'd decided against me. Of course, Eli and his friends like to go clubbing in the meatpacking district. Is the Upper West Side the meatpacking district? Fuck you, Eli. Completely different things. A bad vibe in the meatpacking district is a good vibe on the Upper West Side. Go fuck yourself with a toothpick.
But then it got weird. He launched into a rambling, repetitive speech about how he didn't owe me anything, how it was bullshit (what was bullshit was never made altogether clear), and then how he wasn't really in this business, because he was a lawyer.
He started saying, "I'm a lawyer, I meet with judges, I've written legal documents--"at which point I cut him off angrily, saying "Great, and I've written English papers. I really don't see how this concerns me in any way." He looked stunned for a second, then he started to repeat himself. I cut him off again, saying, "Look, don't flog your credentials at me." He said, "I'm not flagging [he changed the word flog to flag because he doesn't know the meaning of the verb to flog] my credentials," and I replied, "Eli, yes you are!" He started to say something, don't care what, and I just stopped. I said, "I'm done." I got up and said, "I hope at some point in the future you have a chance to work for a staff that doesn't uniformly despise you," and went inside to say my goodbyes. I recounted the entire story to Tim, Billy and Erica, well within Eli's earshot, and left.
I'm not through there. Here's a life lesson: don't give your enemies nothing left to lose. I'm going back to talk to the owner, not to try to get my job back, but to bring that fucker down with me. Keep you posted.
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Left to your own devices
 |  |
 | |
 | |
 | |
| Graphic Design Job |
