I\u2019ve been doing an inventory of my life over this last year. Looking back on the sins, successes, excesses, and all those things we carry with us.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve concluded that the world is insane and I\u2019m living in some sort of unending horror movie. At any moment, a man wearing a flash mask is going to leap out, run me down, and brutally murder me.
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I\u2019ve also been thinking about all my jobs. I have six jobs, currently. Too many. Something I plan to remedy over the next year. What really hollows the soul is the realization that I\u2019ve been working multiple jobs at a breakneck pace since 1991. On the weekends, I\u2019m a manager at a major rental venue and oversee a rotating staff of 15 catering firms. This past Labor Day was the first time in 20 years where I had two days off in a row, and that was only allowed because I took the nasty, 15 hour Monday shift that nobody would touch. Every other Labor Day, I\u2019ve worked 50 hours or more in back to back shifts.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve come to hate working more than normal people, I think. After 20 years in various tiers of the service industry at the majority of my multiple jobs, I really just want to die. It\u2019s been a life of insane, abusive customers, and co-workers who make the Thuggees from Temple of Doom<\/em> look pleasant, and supervisors who scream at the walls of a dry manic-depressive well.<\/p>\n All old complaints, really. I was sitting on the train, on my way to my day job, cooking up the bones of this article, and I found myself thinking about one of my early jobs \u2013 working for a tiny catering firm in West Virginia during my time there in college. I think it was 1993-1994, but, to be honest, the early and mid-90\u2019s are kind of a blur. Maybe it\u2019s leftover resonance from Party Down<\/em>, but my 20 years involved in the catering industry (in one way or another) is almost crystallized in that very short year working as a waiter for a troubled catering firm.<\/p>\n I had exiled myself from DC to a tiny school in the mountains of central West Virginia. A place that, then, was kind of hard to get to. Yet I still drove home most weekends to work multiple shifts and destroy myself. Getting tired of that, I decided to parlay my experience into a job with a new little catering firm run by a 50-something woman who believed herself to be some sort of civilizing culinary force. She catered exclusively to the highbrow elite. The central West Virginia highbrow elite, whose idea of dressing up for a formal party was to look like they just walked off the set of Dallas<\/em> in 1982.<\/p>\n \u201cCulinary civilization\u201d and these folks didn\u2019t quite jive, and the owner would spend most events holed up in the kitchen, openly weeping.<\/p>\n The problem was all the usual stuff I\u2019ve since seen a thousand times \u2013 inexperienced caterers trying to be fancy despite their customer\u2019s ignorance. The insistence that catering is on par with some great restaurant experience and not, you know, warmed over food made a week ago for a bunch of drunken rubes, a good portion of whom \u2013 whether here in DC or in the hills of West Virginia \u2013 have never really been to a formal sit-down event before.<\/p>\n My heart went out to her. But I was in my early 20s and much more taken by the camaraderie of being a regular old floor server and all the insanity, drugs, sex, and alcoholism that involved. I loved that world. Though I should be grateful for that job, because it also taught me that I should stay far away from that world. I never returned to proper catering, but I try to live it vicariously through my weekend job, which I\u2019ve maintained since 91. When you\u2019re the supervisor of the venue, there\u2019s a soft, comfortable barrier between you and whatever inhumanity is playing out in the kitchens. Yet you can still cheat, steal, drink, and sleep with bridesmaids. Best of both worlds, really. Fill the trunk of your car with stolen beer but, when Hector loses his mind at the dishwashing station, you can fade back to the offices and barricade yourself behind glassy eyes, dull-witted responses, and multiple computer monitors with simultaneous solitaire games.<\/p>\n Which is, by the way, how all supervisors should behave. No normal human being should know what happens in the kitchen. My favorite extreme kitchen story from that West Virginia job involves this guy named Martin. We\u2019re cleaning up, it\u2019s 2am, we all want to die after about 12 hours hustling around, and he turns around and screams, \u201cWhat up, motherfuckers!\u201d then throws a gallon-sized freezer bag full of cocaine into the air. He\u2019d put a cherry bomb in the bag and it went off like a stun grenade. What followed was the real life reenactment of the plutonian nyborg scene in Heavy Metal<\/em>.<\/p>\n I went back to my dorm room and sat in the dark, haunted by visions of depravity.<\/p>\n At the time, I wondered how someone could be so wasteful with what, I presumed, was a very expensive bag of drugs. But, now, so many years later, I\u2019ve seen waiters and bartenders tipped with cocaine and other drugs so many times it doesn\u2019t even register. I see that more often than I see a tip paid in cash. It\u2019s also strangely above board. Like, here ya go! Bag of drugs on the bar in a crowded restaurant, or at the head table with the bride and groom, or at the lawn bar surrounded by waiting customers. I guess the rules are different at private parties? I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t fucking ask.<\/p>\n In the overall \u201cinventory of my life\u201d theme, my weekend job (and the occasional jobs related to it) isn\u2019t really objectionable. My friends think it\u2019s the worst of my six jobs, because it steals my weekends and exhausts me for eight months each year. I agree on those points, but I have a hard time divorcing myself from the job. The sense of belonging that comes with such a long tenure is only the tip of the emotional iceberg. The fact is, deep down, despite my enraged complaints about the people I\u2019m forced to deal with, the weekend job is a secret joy. I peer through the looking glass at the insanity of food service, I collect an endless supply of insane and horrifying stories that nobody actually wants to hear, and I steal at least $150 worth of alcohol from every event, as well as toilet paper, paper towels, dental floss, dishwasher detergent, soap, medical supplies, articles of clothing, and the few personal items that actually survive their journey to the lost and found. And I\u2019m a saint compared to the caterers.<\/p>\n I\u2019m also constantly trying to figure out how to fuck the bride. I\u2019ve not managed that yet. 1,480 weddings later. At this point, I sort of feel like that\u2019s when it\u2019s okay to leave the job. The day I have sex with one of the brides. The pinnacle of my service career.<\/p>\n Not a joke, either. It happens. A lot. I\u2019ve been in the position Bourdain describes in No Reservations<\/em> where you look out the window and the head chef is fucking the bride over a trash can out back. Except the brides I service aren\u2019t quite so highbrow. They\u2019ve done waiters, photographers, best men, random guests, and, once, the guy who brought the white horse that she rode down to their fancy outdoor ceremony. That one was amazing. Everyone\u2019s down there at the ceremony spot, we\u2019re ten minutes from show time, and I head to my car because I have to drive down and physically block traffic during the ceremony, and I find the best solution is to simply barricade the street. The car is parked behind the horse truck and, right there in the parking lot, with the horse clomping around impatiently, the horse handler is giving it to the bride. Yee-ha!<\/p>\n Frankly, I\u2019m afraid to leave the weekend job. I\u2019m afraid I\u2019ll miss the show. Every time I think I\u2019ve witnessed the absolute limit of evil and insanity, I\u2019m proven wrong. Twenty years later, it\u2019s moved from sick fascination to a sort of reality show-style game. How much can I take?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve been doing an inventory of my life over this last year. Looking back on the sins, successes, excesses, and all those things we carry with us. I\u2019ve concluded that the world is insane and I\u2019m living in some sort …<\/p>\n