Font ResizeA tall man with curly black hair stood behind the crowd and mouthed words at me, making no attempt to move closer or to speak louder, that I couldn't hear.
A woman whom I had never served made the universal circling hand gesture that indicated that she would like another round. She never actually looked at me and I had no idea what the drinks were.
It was that kind of night. I felt like I was moving in slow motion and that my feet were mired in quicksand.
"What's taking my food so long?" said a golf shirt-wearing man who had just ordered.
Beside him, a woman was asking ridiculously intricate questions about the food. "Where is the spinach from?" "Is the butter you use salted or unsalted?" "What is the blend of cooking oils that you use?"
Meanwhile, another golf-shirted man continued talking.
"Can you compare and contrast this brunello with that barbaresco?" "Is the 2003 crianza similar to the 2004 rioja?"
Behind them a short man in a yacht club shirt harrumphed and rolled his eyes, rocking from one foot to the next, tentatively waving his hand like a timid third-grader trying to overcome his nervousness to answer a question. I knew he had no answers, but was reasonably sure that as soon as I approached him he would turn to talk to his neighbor or greet an arriving guest or answer his cell phone, holding up one
The cold, hard stares of dozens of other customer bored through me, the expectant weight of them made the small hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Coldness ran down my spine along with a trickle of nervous sweat. If you have ever worked in customer service, you might know the feeling. Everybody wants something from you and nobody is willing to wait. It is one of the most uncomfortable feelings there is. If you turn your head one way or the other, people will bark out orders or requests unconcerned with whether or not you are in the middle of something.
It was like a bad dream.
Everyone was in emergency mode. They all believed that they were next or that their needs were more important than someone else's. Add in the loss of inhibitions because of alcohol and you have the stress of a very busy bar.
I was attempting to address each situation. I explained the cooking procedures as best that I could. I compared and contrasted the wine. I waited for the yachter to finish greeting his guests before I turned back to the curly-haired customer at the back of the crowd.
He mouthed his words soundlessly again, still keeping his distance and silence. I couldn't make out anything that he said. The dishes were crashing, the music was playing, the crowd din was palpable and he just kept mouthing those words. I was getting frustrated and so was he. I felt like the tragic Greek hero Tantalus who was tortured alongside the stone- rolling Sisyphus in Hades. I, too, felt like I was chained in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree, unable to reach either. There was simply no way that I could move closer, being blocked by 3 feet of wooden bar, and he just stood there, his lips moving soundlessly.
Albert Einstein is purported to have once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I was beginning to feel a little crazy myself.
"I can't hear you," I said.
"I can't hear you," I said again.
"I can't hear you."
"I can't hear you."
Suddenly the whole world started shaking.
"Jeff, Jeff, wake up," my wife said shaking me slightly. "You were having a bad dream."
A bad restaurant dream. If you have worked in the food service business long enough you will have one. The hopelessness, the feeling of slowly sinking. I know friends who have woken up screaming about burritos or muttering about spilled coffee. I once even had a sleeping beauty of cocktail waitress reach out and punch me in her sleep.
After I calmed down and the hairs on the back of my neck returned to their natural position, I realized several things:
- Stress certainly does manifest itself in our dreams.
- My classics classmate in college was wrong when he said, "We'll never use this stuff in real life."
- Busy bars are a lot like self-empowerment seminars. If you want something, sometimes you are going to have step up and ask for it loudly and clearly.
- I might be due for a vacation.
Jeff Burkhart is an award-winning bartender at a Marin bar/restaurant and an author. His columns appear weekly in Here. Contact him at jeffb@thebarflyonline.com.
