Life Behind Bars Chapter 13
- Ray DeGraw
- Jun 15
- 15 min read
Chapter 13
Millennial Madness
The walls were slowly closing in on me. Madness and depression were taking their grips on my once confident façade. I found it hard to communicate with adults, being I spent most of my time with a three-year-old boy. I’ll say it now, I don’t know how stay-at-home moms and dads do it. The days were long and pointless and I felt as if life was slowly slipping away from me.
The normal reprieve that comes with spring was not lifting my spirits as it normally would have done. Even my beloved New York Rangers had made it to the cup finals and the promise that Lord Stanley’s cup may finally be in our hands still wasn’t enough to get me out of the doldrums. I had even ended my retirement in organized sports by joining a beer league softball team in the hopes that congregating with other adults would help me out of my lull.
My wife Kathy had left the job that she hated and found one she hated even more, at a much lower salary. We now found ourselves short on money and we were starting to get at each other’s throats. At one point I had broken down in tears, sobbing like a child, pleading forgiveness for putting us in this hole. As much as she tried to put on a good face about the whole situation, I knew I was failing as a husband and as a father.
It was at this moment the bartending gods decided to smile and my guardian angel, the Witch of Spring Street gave me a random call. Her two nephews who had inherited her sister’s very successful diner, had expanded the restaurant and opened up a high end eatery right next door to their parent’s palace. Selling liquor for the first time, they were in over their heads. Their bartenders were ill trained, and thieves of the highest order. In desperate need for a savior and a fixer they called the Witch and pleaded for help. They needed a bartender who could come in and fix the mess before mommy and daddy’s money ran dry.
Based on nothing more than a recommendation of the highest pedigree, and a five minute telephone interview, I was hired on the spot. My mother-in-law over the garage agreed to watch the boy so I could work a couple of days a week. I was back, but it wasn’t without its challenges. Once again I would be thrust into dealing with two nitwit brothers who had no idea how to run a restaurant. And this time, I had more than Prodigal Sons to deal with, I had a new foe…Millennials.
Uncle Ray's Tricks of the Trade
Always use a serrated knife when cutting fruit. The filet knives in the kitchen are used for cutting meats and meats only! They are sharpened on a weekly basis and if you're not paying attention you can slice open your hand or cut off the tops of your fingers. How do I know this? I've done it! Let the chefs, cooks and butchers handle those knives! They are not for the bartenders!!
In my final days at the Irish pub, I had a brief encounter with this special group of self-righteous morons which was one of the last straws that broke the camel’s back and pushed me out. I had seen the restaurant business going in this direction with the economy improving under the tutelage of then president Barack Obama. As better jobs opened up, most of the highly overqualified employees who didn’t belong in the business had moved on to bigger and brighter things, leaving job openings to be filled with underqualified dipshits of the highest degree.
After spending about five or six months cleaning up the mess at this new joint, establishing protocols and procedures and teaching the art of stocking, preparing and proper pours, it was now my duty to keep it all going. It was a tooth and nail fight, as these kids just didn’t give a damn. What do you mean I have to clean? What do you mean I have to restock? What do you mean I have to do side work?
The mere idea that they had to do anything other than pour drinks and throw a party every night was blasphemy to these kids. All their lives they had been taught they could do no wrong. All their lives they had their parents doing all their hard work. They moaned and groaned when asked to do the simplest of tasks, like just showing up to work on time. They would be caught stealing and giving away drinks, they would pull disappearing acts without calling or getting coverage. And the worst part of it is, they would not be reprimanded for it! Little slaps on the wrist, or a quick blowjob in the office and all was forgiven.
As I pushed on, and trained dozens of bartenders, we were lucky if one of them lasted more than a month or two. The minute they discovered they actually had to do work, they never showed up again. I became a hated villain, an old-timer past his prime…somebody to not be trusted. I had become what I hated the most, a new generation Doc.
I begged and pleaded with The Prodigal Sons to hire bartenders in their 30’s who had talent and prior experience, but it fell on deaf ears. They felt the customers wanted 20-year-olds with big tits and tight asses who could flirt with the customers. They thought having 25 craft beers on draft and 60 craft beers in bottles was the answer. Every shift I came in there were a dozen new beers on tap, it was impossible to keep track of. Customers would ask about certain beers and I couldn’t tell them a damned thing…how it tasted, where it was brewed, what was the alcohol content…it was all a fucking mystery!
The staff on the floor was no different. Every shift there was always a new kid training, each one worse than the other. Nobody had a license to drive, either taken away by drunk driving, or because being a Millennial, it was too much work to bother. Why get a car? Mommy and Daddy can drive me, and failing that, I’ll call an Uber! The revolving door was an absolute nightmare.
When time permitted, these kids didn’t get their side work out of the way, they played on their cellphones, twitting and tweeting about how awful it is to work and how unfair and horrible I was for telling them what to do! Listen, I get it, I was bullheaded and arrogant as a youngster too. Yes, I was an idiot, but I was a functioning idiot. When I was in the wrong I admitted it, and when told what to do I did it on the first try and not the 50th! Nothing gets through to them, but the challenge of dealing with nitwits on every level kept my brain busy. And before you know it, once again, my drawer was heftier than everybody else’s drawer, and I was working Monday lunches.
While the older more responsible brother appreciated my work and begged and pleaded with me to pick up more shifts, it was brother number two I began butting heads with on a daily basis. After being promoted to bar manager, despite only working two days a week, I was finally given the authority to reprimand bar employees who were not doing their jobs. But skinny young blondes with a talent for giving head and bending over to save their skin was brother number two’s weakness.
Every time I wrote up an employee for misconduct, the office door would close and my writeup would be thrown in the trash. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going on. By undercutting my authority, I had zero power to make these kids do anything. Other than shaming them and pleading with them to do their sidework, I was powerless. It was the Irish pub all over again. Fortunately for me and for the Prodigal Sons, only working two days a week and not being fully invested in the job kept me from walking out the door. It was something to do, and it got me out of the house. The extra money didn’t hurt either.
Uncle Ray's Tricks of the Trade
If you didn't listen to my earlier advice and you have indeed sliced open your hand, or cut off the tops of your fingers, there is a solution that doesn't involve you missing out on your shift. Immediately clean the wound, cover it in antibiotic cream and wrap it with a sliver of brown paper bag. I don't know the science behind it, but there is a chemical in the paper that will immediately stop the bleeding and begin the healing process. Wrap some medical tape around the bag to hold it in place, put on a rubber glove and finish out that shift. Because, hey, you got bills to pay baby!! Now go get a tetanus shot you dummy!
My life now had purpose and meaning again and my confidence began to grow. I lost the weight I had put on, shaved my beard, and much to my wife’s delight, was showering on a consistent basis. I was also able to take on a few of the bills at home and treat my family to dinner out from time to time. My newly found confidence and looks led to the inevitable, a second child.
I can recall putting my son to bed on an early September night thinking to myself that I had finally gotten my life back to exactly where I wanted it to be. My son was growing older and independent and into a fine well behaved young man. My wife looked at me with the same eyes she did when we first met, and the money pit was finally coming along and wasn’t bleeding us dry any more. I was two months away from becoming a daddy again, this time a little girl. I looked at the clock next to my bed, it said 8:56 9-2. I took the time to memorize those numbers in my head, because for the very first time in my life I had achieved perfection.
Seven days later, my wife who had been complaining for days about not feeling quite right, took off work to go to the doctors. I dropped off the boy at Grammy’s and drove off to the pub. Halfway through the shift, my wife called to tell me she was being sent to the emergency room for tests, as something wasn’t right. I arranged coverage by talking the night time bartender into coming in early.
My wife called me letting me know they were admitting her overnight because they had a feeling she was going into labor. They were administering a shot of medicine that would stop this and she would call me in the morning with more details. I picked up the boy and treated him to fast food, and that’s when the call came. While it was my wife’s cell number on my caller id, it was not my wife’s voice on the phone.
“Hello, is this Ray?”
“Yes, who is this?”
“This is one of the nurses at the hospital, you don’t happen to be near here are you?”
My heart immediately sank, and my throat grew tight, those are never words you want to hear coming from an emergency room nurse.
“No, I’m at home with my son! What is it?!”
“We lost the baby’s heartbeat and your wife is having an emergency c-section as we speak. The baby is coming tonight.”
“What do you mean tonight? Is she alive? Did she die? What’s going on?”
“It’s best you get here as soon as possible. Your wife is going to need you here.”
At a loss for words, I brought my son back up to Grammy’s over the garage and sped away to the hospital. It was the loneliest drive I ever had to face. I didn’t know what to expect when I got there. The baby wasn’t due until Thanksgiving, and it was early September. Did the baby die, and they didn’t want to tell me over the phone? If the baby did live, was she going to survive? Would she be disabled, or be deformed? Was I going to have to plan a funeral? Would my wife ever be able to get over the loss of a child? What was I going to tell my son?
Upon arrival at the hospital, there were two nurses waiting to take me into the operating room. Before I knew it, they had me dressed in scrubs and ushered me in. Everything was a complete blur. I could remember at least a dozen people in the room, my wife’s head sticking out of a curtain so as to not expose her torn up body to her or to me. The doctors were putting her guts back together. They told me, I just missed the birth, my daughter was alive…just barely.
I kissed my wife and held her hand as they put her back together, the doctor asked if I wanted to see my baby girl. I was taken into a room where another dozen nurses and doctors were attaching tubes, wires, a breathing machine and sticking the baby with needles as far as the eye could see. Little Miracle Maggie, born 75 days too soon at a whopping 2lbs, 15.4 ounces. Slightly different numbers than 8:56 9-2, my magic number from just a few nights before. At least whenever the lottery gets big, I’ve got numbers to play now.
After a couple of weeks off to settle the dust and figure out what the hell was going on, I returned to work. Brother Brains was happier than a pig in shit because now I needed more shifts and his wish came true. My wife would be out of work until almost March bringing the baby back to health. It would be 75 days until Miracle Maggie came home from the hospital and another 80 days after that before my wife went back to work both physically and mentally.
My little part-time job became a full time job, and just like Han Solo, I was right back in the mess. The glorious state of New Jersey and Uncle Sam could only muster up 600 bucks a week for maternity leave, and not even for the full time my wife was out of work. Great country indeed! I’m still trying to figure out why we’re here…I guess as an optimist, I’m holding out hope. I probably shouldn’t hold my breath.
Once again, my happy balance in life was thwarted by outside forces. But I don’t complain, especially about little Maggie, because we got lucky, and she has grown up with no complications of the early birth…something many of the friends we made in the hospital weren’t lucky enough to experience. We saw parents lose their children, we saw parents dealing with children who were severely deformed, or with neurological issues, eye issues, brain deformities…you name it. So if working a few extra shifts and falling into a bit of debt was our dilemma, then so be it. We were lucky.
The money was good at work, the hours were easy, but spending too much time there started to get to me emotionally. I was starting to get too heavily invested in the bullshit that went on there on a daily basis. I could only tell the Millennials so many times to restock what they used, or follow the par sheets about fruits and juices. At every shift’s end, nothing would ever be done. I would have a meeting to teach this, and the next day I realized I might as well have been talking to the wall. I hate to sound like the old man on the porch screaming at kids to stay off my lawn, but Jesus Christ, this generation is full of fucking morons. I cringe for the future, cringe. And stay the fuck off my lawn!
But it wasn’t just the Millennials who were ruining things, it was where the business was heading. Everything was about how many hops can we jam into this bottle of beer. How small a batch can I make this whiskey? What exotic absurd flavor can I make this vodka? How many televisions can I fit on the wall? After all, there may be some rugby fans that want to watch the match between India and England. I mean, for fuck’s sake! When is enough, enough?
There are three things that make a bar great. The first is location, the second is atmosphere and the third is good grub. If you have those three things you can serve Natty light and Fleichman’s vodka with one 20-inch television hidden away in the corner with a ball game on. You don’t need to have a daily drink special that’s made from some exotic tulip in Holland. You don’t need every televised sporting event on the globe and the planet Mars being available, you don’t need a 75 dollar Kansas City aged steak on the specials with a cheese curd appetizer and bok choy on the side. STOP THE MADNESS!! (Although, now that I think about it, that does sound good!)
The final straw for me was when ownership hired outside “bartending experts” to come in and teach us how to make “craft” cocktails. I walk in to see this hipster doofus wearing suspenders and a bow tie with a derby hat with a beard down to his belly button. I immediately wanted to punch him in the face repeatedly. He epitomized exactly what is wrong, not only with the restaurant industry, but the world. He was every cliché and the definition of the sheep like mentality that has infested our collective as a species.
He began by teaching us that a bartender was defined by his shake! Yes, the way he shook his shaker. No, not his personality, not his speed, not his ability to multitask, not his overall knowledge of drinks, not his ability to deal with drunks, not his ability to improvise and adapt when the shit is hitting the fan. No, it was his little dance he did while shaking his drinks. I immediately needed a cigarette and a shot of 100 proof whiskey.
The next half hour was a tutorial on the drinks the restaurant would soon be serving. Six little ditties that had about 400 ingredients, took at least ten minutes each to make and had things like fresh sage, thyme, raw bacon and bee pollen. That’s right, fucking BEE POLLEN! That is when I had decided, this industry was passing me by and that bartenders would be more like cooks in the future than actual bartenders. I had decided I had enough. Bee Pollen…for fuck’s sake!
Soon enough my wife had gone back to work. My son was in school and my mother-in-law was watching little Maggie when I needed to work. I was back down to two days, so my need to lash out at Millennials, hipsters and idiot brothers running restaurants had diminished to acceptable levels. The specialty drinks also never flew. Nobody ordered them, and after the bee pollen had expired, I gladly threw it in the garbage pail. Life was returning back to normal.
Although we still had 20 plus beers on tap, I was actually able to convince the Prodigal Sons to keep half of them domestic, but good domestic beers, not crap like Budweiser or Coors light. I had them reduce the bottled beer to about a dozen, half of which we kept the swill for the diehards. All the fancy tequilas, whiskies, gins were all run out and paired down. I took the inventory down to respectable and manageable levels.
The kitchen staff, picking up on my idea of simplicity, were catching on as well. So with a slimmed down beer and liquor inventory and a much simpler menu, we actually started doing well. Add that to the staff rounding itself out, and it was actually becoming a fun place to work. It also didn’t hurt that the Millennials who had stuck around were actually starting to see that I wasn’t the crazy old crank on the front porch yelling at kids, I actually knew what I was doing. But still, stay the fuck off my lawn if you know what’s good for you!
My wife, at the same time, had moved jobs again and finally hit pay dirt. For the same money and half the grief of her old place, she had found a home as well. All was well in the DeGraw household, which unfortunately means something bad is about to happen. As we all found our balance, the bartending gods above got one last laugh at me. My mother-in-law developed throat cancer and would no longer be able to watch the kids…once again, an outside force pulled me right back out of the game.
Except this time, I really didn’t care about not tending bar. Although I had cleaned up the joint top to bottom and taught a few kids out there how to bartend with the best of them, and things were fun and calm…I never got over the whole bee pollen thing. I knew that no matter how hard I tried the powers that be would eventually get some hair brained idea and bring down my work with a thundering crash. I knew that no matter how much I made fun of people for ordering beer that tastes like rotten flowers for 12 dollars a half pint, it wouldn’t phase them. I knew that half of the people at the bar would just keep burying their heads in their cell phones, or sheepishly watch one of the many television screens.
Things You Never Wanted to Know
Every restaurant, not matter how immaculately clean it may seem, has cockroaches, fruit flies, mice and God only knows what else! Enjoy your meal!
The time of bartending being fun, at least for me, was over. It was time to go back home and take care of the family and work on the house again. It was time to write this book, and in the words of Yoda, pass on what I have learned. I realized that I had become a perfect mix of both my mother and father. The writing side from dad and the taking care of people side from my mom.
Eventually, my mother-in-law’s cancer had cleared up for the time being. My mom still had Alzheimer's but with modern medicine we sort of slowed it down in its tracks. Now I watch my kids and my mom, and I keep a close eye on my mother-in-law over the garage. Sometimes I watch the kids next door when their parents need me in a pinch, and I coach my son’s floor hockey team. I am now the prototypical stay-at-home dad, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.
In all, I spent 20 years behind bars. Both as a punishment and a reward for good and bad deeds done as a misguided know-it-all punk from New Jersey. Never for a second do I have any regrets, and if I had it all to do over again I wouldn’t change a thing. But if one of my kids says they’re going into the restaurant industry, the shit is going to hit the fan!
It was now time for the Summer of Ray, Part Three! Once again I was back to hunting in the woods for rocks to make more walls. I was digging holes and setting fence posts. The house was painted, the basement was finished and delusions of grandeur about planting an apple orchard were filling my head. I was home, and I had found perfect balance in life. Spinning, every day, the perfect web.
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