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xiphiasLast night, I was scheduled to work as a barback, which is basically a general go-fer, factotum, man-of-all-work for a bar or beverage department. Barbacks make sure that bartenders don't run out of anything they need (that's the main job), take out the trash, polish the carts, recieve deliveries, stuff like that.
If there's ANYTHING going on that the beverage department is involved with, they try to have a manager on duty, to resolve any significant problems, and a barback, to handle, well, all the simple things. So they had me on duty. Even though nothing, really, was happening.
The Grill bar had a couple members in it; Louis was tending bar, and Alex and Sarah were waitstaff, and Monique, the manager, was there, so, for most of the evening, there were more people working there than eating there. So they really didn't need anything from me.
The Boston Room is the formal dining room. They had two cocktail servers working there, as well as four waitstaff. I was available to jump in and help out if it got busy.
The cocktail servers have Kevin make them drinks over at the Commenwealth Lounge, then bring them to the tables. They also serve wine.
Over the course of the night, they had one table of five, and one table of two.
Then there was the event for which they needed to have a barback on duty. Off of the Boston Room, there are a couple of private dining rooms, which can be used for functions. There was a party of ten people in the Presidents' Room. They were ordering off of the menu, though, so they were mainly taken care of by the Boston Room staff. They set up a function bar in the room, which Tess was using, but that was overkill. Really, if they'd just sent one of the cocktail servers in there two or three times in the evening, that would have been plenty. But it gave Tess a couple hours of work. He hates being underworked, though. He prefers being busy, which he wasn't.
I offered to watch his bar a couple times for him to go grab a smoke, but he didn't even need that.
So what did I do? Well, I read a good chunk of an Honor Harrington book I'd read a few times before, and I talked to people.
I chatted with one of the chefs for about fifteen minutes about knives. I talked with Bob Parsons, who is both a fitness center trainer and a bartender, about plasma televisions and about the new cardio machine they just bought for the club, and about hot water heaters.
And I had a really interesting conversation with the lute player in the Boston room.
The Boston Room tends to have live music for the dinner hour, and they've got two or three musicians they tend to cycle through. One of them plays guitar, and lute, and he brought his lute today. But there was nobody IN the Boston room for several hours, so I felt free to chat with him.
He had a suggestion for a place to go to replace the friction pegs on my lute so that it might really be tunable, and we talked about the origins of the song Greensleeves -- he doesn't believe that it was written by Henry VIII; he thinks it was an Itallian melody that you were supposed to use as a baseline to play variations over.
He also had a really interesting observation about the Spanish economic collapse in the sixteenth century. I've always heard that attributed to the vast amount of gold imported from the New World, but he points out that, when they expelled the Moors and the Jews in 1492, they gutted their entire merchant class, and, basically, the entire middle class. So they were left with peasants and nobles, more or less, with nobody to actually handle economic development. He thinks that's at least as big a factor, if not bigger, than the simple influx of gold.
Neat stuff.
I had fun, even if I had no work to do.
If there's ANYTHING going on that the beverage department is involved with, they try to have a manager on duty, to resolve any significant problems, and a barback, to handle, well, all the simple things. So they had me on duty. Even though nothing, really, was happening.
The Grill bar had a couple members in it; Louis was tending bar, and Alex and Sarah were waitstaff, and Monique, the manager, was there, so, for most of the evening, there were more people working there than eating there. So they really didn't need anything from me.
The Boston Room is the formal dining room. They had two cocktail servers working there, as well as four waitstaff. I was available to jump in and help out if it got busy.
The cocktail servers have Kevin make them drinks over at the Commenwealth Lounge, then bring them to the tables. They also serve wine.
Over the course of the night, they had one table of five, and one table of two.
Then there was the event for which they needed to have a barback on duty. Off of the Boston Room, there are a couple of private dining rooms, which can be used for functions. There was a party of ten people in the Presidents' Room. They were ordering off of the menu, though, so they were mainly taken care of by the Boston Room staff. They set up a function bar in the room, which Tess was using, but that was overkill. Really, if they'd just sent one of the cocktail servers in there two or three times in the evening, that would have been plenty. But it gave Tess a couple hours of work. He hates being underworked, though. He prefers being busy, which he wasn't.
I offered to watch his bar a couple times for him to go grab a smoke, but he didn't even need that.
So what did I do? Well, I read a good chunk of an Honor Harrington book I'd read a few times before, and I talked to people.
I chatted with one of the chefs for about fifteen minutes about knives. I talked with Bob Parsons, who is both a fitness center trainer and a bartender, about plasma televisions and about the new cardio machine they just bought for the club, and about hot water heaters.
And I had a really interesting conversation with the lute player in the Boston room.
The Boston Room tends to have live music for the dinner hour, and they've got two or three musicians they tend to cycle through. One of them plays guitar, and lute, and he brought his lute today. But there was nobody IN the Boston room for several hours, so I felt free to chat with him.
He had a suggestion for a place to go to replace the friction pegs on my lute so that it might really be tunable, and we talked about the origins of the song Greensleeves -- he doesn't believe that it was written by Henry VIII; he thinks it was an Itallian melody that you were supposed to use as a baseline to play variations over.
He also had a really interesting observation about the Spanish economic collapse in the sixteenth century. I've always heard that attributed to the vast amount of gold imported from the New World, but he points out that, when they expelled the Moors and the Jews in 1492, they gutted their entire merchant class, and, basically, the entire middle class. So they were left with peasants and nobles, more or less, with nobody to actually handle economic development. He thinks that's at least as big a factor, if not bigger, than the simple influx of gold.
Neat stuff.
I had fun, even if I had no work to do.
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-31 10:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-31 10:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-31 01:12 pm (UTC)SHAME
SHAME ON YOU!
^___^
(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-31 01:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-31 01:22 pm (UTC)Yepyepyep.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-31 01:32 pm (UTC)Fanatics
Date: 2003-12-31 01:34 pm (UTC)(And Yes this is the same annonymous poster)
Re: Fanatics
Date: 2003-12-31 08:52 pm (UTC)I mean, just saying. . .
(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-31 08:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-31 09:27 pm (UTC)Oh, I suppose, in Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy, when Ford and Arthur are interrogated on the B-Ark, they're asked whether they want their gin and tonic with ice, but that's the ONLY thing I can think of in which the possibility of gin without ice is mentioned, and I wouldn't take the B-Ark security staff as necessarily authoritative.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-31 10:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-01 08:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-01 10:40 am (UTC)Bwahahah!!!!