BY BRITTANIE STERNER Appropriately, I drink a beer while probing whether or not I’m afflicted with minute alcoholism because of my job. Of course, I’m drinking the beer in a pub by my apartment because the pub offers free (or beer-priced) wi-fi, and despite the astronomical amount of money I might make this season from toasty, merry customers (see: last week’s article), it probably won’t be enough to pay for my own internet services. But this way, I get to drink. Already we see a pattern, wherein the money made is spent on libations instead of domestic wants.
I am not an alcoholic. Alcoholism does not a cheeky laugh make for many people, except for servers, who are not people. Kidding! But a lot of servers have a great sense of humor about their high-volume sauce intake which is, in a lot of cases, somewhat necessary, and therefore necessary to stride along with in a few sardonic punches.
By “necessary” I raise last Saturday night as example. With a full board of tickets in the kitchen around 9:30 at night and a thicketed house, I’m quizzed by the head chef about a menu item. After answering wrong (though still standing by the belief that my answer was interpretively correct), I buffer it with a little dry extension and receive, from the head chef: “Get out of my fucking kitchen right the fuck now. How long have you worked here? (9 months, but don’t answer that). I don’t want to fucking see you, fuck.” Truly a nice guy, not a lot of fun during busy shifts.
So out I go, beleaguered, into a little ocean of screaming winos. Saturday is the day of get-drunk-enough-to-actually-somehow-erase-Sunday, which is a fairly difficult attitude to approach as a server, sober.
The manager is lashing out at me about something but that’s not really new.
Some other miscellaneous chaos abounds.
I’m doing roll-ups in the kitchen, where it is very, very hot; steamy. I’m all sweaty. Sarah pokes her head through the swinging door: “I’ve got a present for you.”
A beautiful bartender on the other side of the door is man-handling an upside down bottle of Jameson from which whisky pours into a line of glasses. Tall ones.
For a brief moment I think about the morning’s hangover from last night’s over-enthusiastic time at London. I’m in no mood for drinking. I am also, obviously, in no mood for drunk customers who I can’t help but handle with transparent impatience, fed by my foul mood via management encounters. I take the shot. I feel immediately better, as if I’ve crossed over a line of weight-bearing responsibility into a territory of less acute responsibility. My throat burns a little and I relax.
From this pattern, we can see how environmental substance addiction might unfold in a place where substance is readily available and usually pretty acceptable to take. Like I said, I’m not an alcoholic in denial. That’s not a thesis. It’s a warning.
