April 22nd, 2018
It was weird night.
That’s not to say it was a bad one, particularly, but it had a weird taste to it. The parking lot looked reasonably busy for a Sunday night, but not much bus traffic. The casino felt rather ‘loud’ when I went in to get my money for the evening, yet still didn’t have that hum to the air that I associate with a crowd.
Strange.
At any rate, I got myself installed and let our day barkeep work on getting herself out the door. Our day side barback (and the worst of the three) Dougie, was ambling by here and there. I just tried to avoid him, and succeeded. His general level of don’t-give-a-fuck and parade of acompanying excuses has hit critical mass with me, really. I try to interact with him as little as is humanly possible.
We had a few people in the Lounge watching the NBA finals (and possibly the hockey, which I put on as many ancillary smaller TVs as was humanly possible), but foot traffic was really just a slow trickle. I did get a nice $5 tip from a lady early on, which was cool, but I realy wasn’t expecting a lot given the limited crowd.
Due to a scheduling snafu, Haley is the only cocktail girl we have booked to cover the entire floor, which is both good and bad. She understandably is annoyed when a guest basically accuses her of stealing a dollar, but didn’t really play the cards right when she stalked back over later and told the guest off for the accusation. It wasn’t anything that escalated to world-ending status, but our supervisor for the night, Rickie, did shake her head over it a few times.
That’s another point of oddity. No Charon. I had not been expecting Rickie to be in the house. That’s not a bad thing, mind you, because while Rickie is based over in the food court, she knows the supervisory gig for beverage honestly better than most do. Folks are gonna be suckin’ in 10 weeks when she goes on maternity. (That will, I’m sure, cause our payroll no end of trouble, but I’m trying not to pre-emptively sress about that, and remain cautiously hopeful that Charon’ll learn the ins and outs of it by then.) At any rate, with Charon not in play, I mentally shelve the scheduling conversation I’d been intending to have. I’ll talk to her on Thursday. What I will -not- do is work myself into a flurry of distraction and tension without a means to alleviate it. No winning move on that game.
Around about 7, Jerry the Older comes (slowly) sauntering over. The man’s in pain still, but was going stir crazy at home, and thus chose to instead don the zebra suit and show up to work. I give him enough stubborn to keep it going, honestly, but it’s not gonna be fun, particularly once the weekend gets here. I talk with him for a bit, welcome him back, etc. It’s a little odd, talking to someone who by all rights should be dead and cold in the ground. More weirdness for the evening, I suppose.
Anyway, he’s come by to give me my Sunday dinner break, as tradition would dictate. Given that Charon isn’t on duty, and Haley’s our only cocktail girl, I know already that I’m not even gonna have a shot at my second break, so I go and enjoy the one half hour I’m gonna get. I game a bit, do the restroom, all that. 7:35pm, and I’m back in the bar and let Jerry the Older pack up and bugger off to the time clock to punch out.
Basketball comes and goes. People occasionally come and go. A little after 9pm, as I’m wondering around the bar looking for something new to clean, restock, or arrange, I find a newspaper puzzle section, largely undone, so I glom onto that and amuse myself as time permits. Mary, our senior girl, comes around with her date for the evening, a decent (though highly enthusiastic. I mean -highly- enthusiastic) basketball fan. Some of the steakhouse staff come down as well, and chat and drink, though Jerry is drinking nothing but soda. Maybe he’s learned something after all from his near-death experience.
They disperse a lot faster than expected, however. One of the servers, Ken, hangs out at the bar for maybe 15 minutes longer, but takes off himself before too long.
I kill the crossword puzzle in fairly short order. I kill the word search in similar speed. The cryptoquiz takes me some thinking, but I finally manage to crack the code on it (once I figure out the word ‘error’). I give Haley a brief set of pointers for killing a Sudoku puzzle.
Rickie at this point has run out of other venues to manage and is hanging out with us. Charon actually appears! For a bout 9 seconds. She paced rapidly through the bar, on the way to something or other, nodded hello, and that was the last I saw of her all night. Mary’s guy friend was actually pretty cool. They came and sat at the bar for the last hour or so.
Nothing else to note, really. Eventually we shut down, packed up stuff, cleaned, and took home a decent little pile of tip money, thanks in part to two nights of cocktail tipout I hadn’t banked yet. Honestly, no complaints. The 4 day run is exhausting and I was ready to be done with it.
Closing observations :
- The Sudoku puzzle above referenced? I killed it in about 10 minutes while Rickie was counting my tips.
- Hopefully Charon will be around to chat with on Thursday.
- Four days of bartending is murder on the knees. Just saying. I’m honestly kinda looking forward to going back to 2 or 3 days instead, even though it’s less dollars.
Next up : Thursday