Life Behind Bars Chapter 11
- Ray DeGraw
- May 25
- 10 min read
Chapter 11
All Good Things Must Come To an End
Life can certainly be a funny thing sometimes. Just when you’re up, something will come along and humble the fuck out of you. It had been three years since my triumphant moment with douchebag Doc and life had certainly changed monumentally in that short time. I had officially gotten married (no more living in sin!), had a wonderful little baby boy, and somehow found myself owning three houses. I was starting to think I had this thing called life figured out.
Of course, when you reach the very top, there is only one way to go from there…and down I went. It wasn’t my fault though, as the George W. Bush economy finally caught up with itself. On top of that, my mother who had been watching my boy, had been officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Combine all that with the wife hating her job and my tenants destroying my old home, and you can see where the shit literally starting hitting the fan.
With all this going on, the money pit my wife and I had purchased was bleeding us dry. Anything that cost a 1000 dollars in a normal house cost 10,000 in our house. Chock that up with a to-do list that was so long it resembled something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon; rolling down a flight of stairs with no end in sight. Then, thinking it couldn’t get any worse, my wife’s job decided to take advantage of the economy collapsing in on itself. Not only did they decide to take away her bonus and raise, but they chopped 30,000 dollars off of her salary.
Uncle Ray's Tricks of the Trade
Not busy? Have no customers? Tip jar empty? Just start a major cleaning project you've put off for weeks. Or failing that, order yourself some lunch...your favorite thing on the menu, just for good measure.
Yes, times were tough in the old DeGraw house…but we were still scratching out just enough of a living to get the bills paid and our mouths fed. Things could have certainly been worse off, as many during the great recession didn’t have jobs at all, so the fact both of us were still gainfully employed we decided not to bitch and moan about it and weather the storm.
The real problem began when things started to go south at the Irish Pub. As the economy got worse, so did business. As profit margins started to shrink, so did the size of the corned beef sandwiches. Corners started to be cut everywhere and our overall product was quite frankly awful. Dishes got smaller and prices got larger.
When that didn’t work, they would change distributors. Instead of buying cured and fresh meats from the butcher in Newark that had been their supplier for over 30 years, they were buying from some place that had their corporate headquarters 2000 miles away. Instead of getting fresh New Jersey tomatoes from the farm five miles down the road, they were getting green tomatoes from Argentina. You get the idea.
Then came the penny pinching with the booze. No longer would Smirnoff be our well vodka, now it was something with a Russian sounding name distilled in Bayonne. Two dollar well drinks and domestic drafts at happy hour were now four dollars. Ten cent wings were now 50 cent wings. Free crackers and cheese at the bar were replaced with week old goldfish crackers.
With each day that passed, the brother’s grim would come up with more and more ridiculous schemes to get people through the door…continually scratching their heads that what was once a 100 lunches a day, was now a mere 20 if we were lucky. Happy hours of three deep at the bar were replaced with a spattering of folks here and there and empty stools. Instead of easing up on prices during hard times, they did their best to rape the very people who had made their success possible.
It’s a hard thing to realize that your heroes aren’t who you thought they were. I had yearned to work with the Brother’s Grim and admired their success for years. They were students of the older Irish clan the likes of Arthur the Great, I never thought they would fail so easily. Turns out, like any self-made men, there was an extraordinary amount of pure stupid luck that had helped them reach success. A mix of great location, great economies and friends in high places. The minute they finally faced adversity, they had no clue how to tackle it.
When they failed, it was never their fault, it was the people around them who were to blame. After all, they had never failed, no matter how hairbrained or ridiculous their ideas were. They crapped golden Irish rainbows for decades, and now, their time was up. Everything we did as employees was put under the microscope and scrutinized to the hilt. We were now the enemies, and if we weren’t to blame it was the distributors, and then amazingly enough even the customers. This is what it must feel like to work for an ass wipe like Donald Trump.
Fights began to ensue between the servers and the kitchen staff as the orders to cut down portions reached ridiculous levels. Customers of 20 plus years were used to getting a burger heaping with toppings and crisp golden steak fries piled so high on the plate they would often fall off on the table when delivering the dish. Now if they got a half a dozen fries with a wilting piece of brown lettuce, stale bread and a green tomato they were lucky. We would beg the guys in the kitchen for a few more fries and they would get angry with us, undoubtedly because they too knew this was wrong but were under strict orders from the Brother’s Grim.
Things You Never Wanted to Know
The five second rule does indeed exist in the restaurant industry. So does the 10 second, 15 second, 20 second...do I have to go on? Just pray the cook had the decency to run whatever it was that he dropped or stepped on under the faucet for at least a few seconds. Pray. Pray to whatever God you think will hear you first.
Every week a new mantra would be delivered from head office. Lettuce is through the roof, don’t give it unless they ask. Why are you going through so many pickles? Only give pickles if the customer asks. If the customer doesn’t eat the Irish soda bread, use it for another table. Free drinks? Don’t you dare give out any more drinks! If we have to give shit away to get them through the door, we’re not doing our jobs!
We began having weekly meetings to discuss ideas and new rules and each week, our ideas and concerns fell on deaf ears. Employees of 30 plus years were being told if they didn’t like it there were a 100 people in line waiting for their job and don’t let the door hit you in the ass. We begged and pleaded for them to advertise in the papers, print out coupons…anything! We were greeted with lines like, “I haven’t had to advertise in 30 years, I’m not starting now.” Or my favorite, “I’m not advertising, they know where we are.”
What used to be a 1000 dollars a week cash was now 500 a week. And because of an awful loan I got on my rental house, we were also losing 600 dollars a month as the rent checks didn’t cover the mortgage payment. My wife, already hating work and feeling the pressures of being a new mother was getting tired of me getting home at 7:30 every night with my shift drink and daily cigarette stink on my breath. All this as she tackled cooking dinner and taking care of a one-year-old all by herself. After working all day and trying to handle all of this on her own, something had to give…and it wasn’t going to be her six figure salary with full benefits.
Then there was the whole dilemma of my mother watching our son and being in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s disease. My mother-in-law, who was now living over our garage at the money pit had relieved some of the burden by picking up a couple of days to watch the boy. Still though, it was time to put my son in a proper day care, and that would mean I needed a steady job with a steady paycheck. I had begun to ask the beer and liquor distributors but there was nothing available. Nonetheless, I began filling out applications in the hope that something would open up. I figured why not try selling booze from the other side of the bar. It seemed to me like the natural progression of things.
In the meantime, the Brother’s Grim continued their daily assault on blaming the staff for everything. When they couldn’t pinpoint anything themselves, they had decided to resume the practice of hiring secret shoppers. There is nothing like having somebody who doesn’t even hang out at bars or has ever had any experience in the restaurant industry watching your every move and writing out detailed reports…and that’s exactly what had happened.
I had this customer that went by the name of Blow Job Bob, at least that’s what we called him, I can’t even remember his real name any more. He came about this name because the Irish joint is where he met his mistress every day for a quick couple of Tanqueray on the rocks and a blowjob in his car. A super nice guy, don’t get me wrong, but still a dirt bag for cheating on his wife with another woman who was also married. They were both lawyers, and apparently there was a quid pro quo going on where he would throw her work in exchange for a little road head in the car. Hey, whatever, it was none of my business.
He would always have two quick ones before she arrived, and then have a half, or “halfer” as we called it, before he went out for some parking lot fun. Being that a regular Tanqueray on the rocks was eight bucks, I would do what’s called an “open bar” on the register and charge him four bucks. Simple math right? Not only that, but taking care of somebody who spent a lot of money at the bar and who took care of me at the same time seemed like the proper thing to do. The customer is always right as they say, and I took care of him while still being fair to the house and not giving the liquor away.
At the same time I had a customer we called Lyle Lovett since he was a spot on image of the country music star. I could never remember his real name so eventually it just stuck. Lyle liked Grey Goose martinis up, but hated having them in a martini glass, he wanted them drained into one of our rocks glasses. Either way, it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, as both our rocks and martini glasses were eight ounces. Again, no problem, the customer is always right, so I always obliged and never thought anything of it.
Well, this is when all hell broke loose and a meeting of the minds was called in the basement. Meetings of the mind were never held in the basement, always upstairs in a booth and during off hours. The last time such a meeting took place, the bartender of 25 plus years was shit canned. The head waitress was thrown behind the bar during an unusually busy happy hour and I figured I was done for. But I just couldn’t figure out what for. I was a company man, I didn’t give shit away and even though I hated half the shit these two nitwits came up with, I followed their rules.
As it turns out, the spotter who had been hired was watching me on a day when Blow Job Bob and Lyle Lovett were not only at the bar at the same time, but ordered their drinks at the same time. I gave Bob his “halfer” and I gave Lyle his Grey Goose Martini up in a rocks glass. I didn’t ring the drinks immediately since I was super busy, so when I eventually got over to the register, the spotter assumed that I only charged four dollars for a full glass of Grey Goose and didn’t charge anything for the Tanqueray.
It’s a simple mistake of observation if you’ve never worked in a fucking restaurant! The Brother’s Grim were grilling me in the dimly lit basement with the hanging lamp over my little table. It was like being held in a Russian Gulag and interrogated by the KGB, seriously, you couldn’t make it up. It was at this point that I had finally had enough and I laced into them, calling them out for being lucky Irish Micks and horrible know-nothing business owners. Ten years I had worked for these bozos. Ten years of following their ridiculous rules and stinginess and this was how it was going to end? Well, I wasn’t going without a fight, that’s for damned sure.
You can call me whatever you want. You can call me an asshole, a douchebag, a lowdown dirty scum…you can even call me a lousy bartender. But one thing you never call me is a thief. All my career I prided myself on building a clientele without stealing booze or skimming or failing to share my tips when working with others. I prided myself on my drawers being bigger and better than people who worked busier shifts. I always went above and beyond the call of duty when cleaning, stocking and staying late during busy shift changes. And now these mother fuckers were calling me a thief?
I spent the next 30 minutes laying it all on the line. I let the Brother’s Grim know just how awful they were as people and as business owners. I laced into them for not bothering to even learn customer names after 30 fucking years of serving them. I must have called them cheap dirty micks a 100 times in a profanity laced tirade. I was fully expecting to be fired…but funny thing is, after all that, the assholes simply said, “don’t do it again.”
Things after that seemed to settle down. Neither brother wanted to go near me or talk to me. It was months before I even heard from “The Thief”, and the staff thanked me a thousand times for my courage. I had said what they had wanted to say for years but didn’t have the gumption to do it. After that there were no price increases, no KGB interrogations about birthday drinks and no white glove inspections. We were left alone to run the restaurant ourselves, and for a brief time things were back to normal.
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