unctuous and transparently duplicitous cheerleader who was always
urging his terrorized waiters to "smile" and "have fun"—while he calmly
planned their imminent termination. This was a guy who would daily
invite me over to the Whiskey Bar, supposedly to discuss strategy, buy
me a drink, and then make repeated overtures about how we were a great
"team" and how "we" were going to "work together" against "the
others"—while all along he was doubtless dishing me as an alcoholic
rube. I suspect that I was providing a valuable service to him on these
trips—by providing official cover for his own need of a strong drink.
I soon found myself paralyzed by it all. I was just too tired and too
confused and too spiritually empty to move this way or that. There was
always something that needed doing, and none of it pleasant. Then
sudden austerity measures required that I begin laying off crew and
working line shifts in addition to my other duties (which I was having a
hard time with already). Poor Steven and I were firing people whom,
only a few weeks earlier, we had lured away from good-paying jobs—so
many of them that often Steven would be letting somebody go in one
room while I demolished someone's life in another. Each firing, each
incident, each accident then had to be recorded on an appropriate form
for the truly vapid director of human resources, who rambled on
earnestly in New Agey patter about self-actualization and job
satisfaction and fairness in hiring and appropriate down time—when she
knew that the whole business rested firmly on the backs of a mob of
underpaid, overworked and underfed (ten minutes for chicken leg, penne
and salad, every single day, lunch and dinner) Ecuadorians of dubious
legal status. Listening to this witless, hypocrite ramble on as if we all
worked for Ben and Jerry rather than the realpolitik Kissingeresque Pino
was to dream of smacking her stupid face with a pepper-mill, give her
something to write about.
At one point, near the end, Steven and Alfredo, both reaching the end of
their ropes as well, summoned me for a quiet word at a nearby bar,
Scruffy Duffy's.