Life Behind Bars Chapter 4

Chapter Four

The Great Escape

The first couple of shifts weren’t the easiest, which is always the case when you start working a new bar.  Learning the bottle placements, glassware, menu and register (not to mention all the little quirks of a new restaurant).  It also took time to learn the dos and do-nots with the new staff and ownership. Then there was dealing with the special treatment of certain everyday regulars.  But it was also tough on my legs.  Sitting and vegetating in an office chair for two years had turned my body into mush. There is nothing natural or good about sitting in a chair for eight plus hours a day. Nothing!

I started off getting the Friday and Saturday night shifts helping out Angry Dave, a lifetime bartender who had slowed a bit with age and was often ill tempered when it came to dealing with some of the younger customers.  Getting through that Friday night shift also provided some challenges.  I had been up since six in the morning and had worked all day staring at a computer screen, getting yelled at by strangers on the phone because their paychecks had been off by 50 cents.

As the weeks wore on, I began to feel more and more at home at the pub and less and less interested in my day job.  I found myself every week counting down the days until the weekend when I could be home again.  Not sitting in my mom’s dank basement watching her friend living in my old bedroom slowly move in on her.  And it certainly wasn’t in the office, that dimly lit cave with humming florescent lightbulbs that seemed to be designed to suck the life out of you…or whatever was left of it.

I passed my little bar every day on the way to work and on the way home.  Slowly inching along the highway in and endless stream of bumper to bumper traffic.  How and why people choose to do this every day seemed to perplex me more and more as the weeks went on.  Every day we sat in pointless meetings trying to figure out how we could have more time to devote to our customers.  Meetings about meetings, pointless mission statements and teamwork activities to boost morale.  

I sat next to the time clock and watched the endless stream of miserable office stiffs slowly dragging themselves to swipe into another day.  Two minutes late, whoops let me get the manager to clock you in, how dare you not be at your desk by 8am sharp!

“Why were you late?”

“There was a really bad accident, I think somebody died.”

“Well maybe you should have left five minutes earlier and you would have been here on time.”

“I think somebody died!”

“What does that have to do with you not being at your desk by 8am like I asked?”

“Nothing sir, it won’t happen again.”

“From now on I want you in your seat by 7:50 sharp, but don’t punch in until 8, got it?”

“But that’s almost an extra hour of my time per week!”

“You should have thought about that when you walked through the door two minutes late, shouldn’t you have?”

This was my life.  I wasn’t even scratching out 13 dollars an hour!  I was a fucking college graduate, I had spent five years working at a newspaper in the 10th richest county in the United States, and now this?  What the hell did I do to deserve the honor of bringing in my own birthday cake on my birthday?  Yes, the company couldn’t even spring for that.  That always cracked me up.  Ten bucks a person to make somebody feel appreciated and they couldn’t even do that.  Maybe, perhaps, just maybe, that would go a long way to boost office morale!  Fucking idiots.

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Uncle Ray's Bar Joke of the Day

What's the difference between a castrated bull and a married man?

Nothing!

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But what kept me going was the idea that on Friday and Saturday I could escape from it all, and make a nice buck at that.  After a while, the customer base started improving as I helped Angry Dave tone it down a bit and start having fun again.  He had become so grumpy with the string of nitwits and halfwits he had been working with that bartending was no longer fun for him.  My enthusiasm for the job lifted the old man’s spirits.  For the first time in my life I was actually enjoying my work, and quite frankly, felt like I had just won the lottery.  Certainly a far cry from my yellow pages days, that’s for sure!

My confidence began to grow exponentially from this point on.  Life, which had become almost intolerable for a time, was getting fun again.  I was surrounded by my peers, and for once I wasn’t the most miserable person in the room.  The lonely singles and introverts and divorcees thrived on my exuberance.  Soon enough, I was making so much money in tips that my two days at the bar were exceeding my weekly paychecks from my day job.  Which of course made me a little more defiant with the authority types at the ye olde office.

I began staring out the windows in the meeting room and whenever called out for dazing off, I would simply shrug it off like I didn’t care.  Losing this leverage of terror over me infuriated the brass and I would constantly get dragged into closed door meetings.  Not caring can be a beautiful thing, it takes the wind right out of a supervisor’s sails and puts the ball in your court!  (notice my use of office jargon there?!)

“We’re going to have to write you up for insubordination.”

“Why?”

“You’re not paying attention during meetings and you’re not respecting authority.”

“Fair enough, go ahead.”

“Don’t you care about your career?”

“You mean here?

“Yes, here.”

“Oh, god no!  I could care less about this place.”

“I think we may have to take some more drastic measures here, perhaps a demotion.”

“That’s fine, but let me ask you this…”

“Okay…”

“Am I here at my desk on time every day? 7:50am, like you asked?”

“Yes.”

“Do I ever call out sick?”

“No.”

“How many vacation days in a year do I have?”

“Five.”

“Who has the highest customer service ratings in the office?”

“You.”

“Who makes the fewest mistakes?”

“You.”

“Who has the lowest pay in the entire office?”

“You.”

“Can I go back to my desk now?”

“Yes.”

And that’s how it went from that point on.  When they would ask in meetings how we could improve the efficiency in the office, I would simply reply, “Stop having these pointless meetings.”  How can we boost morale around here?  “Maybe pony up the lousy 10 dollars and buy somebody a cake on their frigging birthday?  Maybe not bust our balls if we’re two minutes late?  Maybe let us do the unthinkable and wear jeans on a Friday?  Maybe start paying us what we’re worth?  Maybe give us more than five lousy vacation days a year?"  Real simple stuff people, really fucking simple. A happy worker is a productive worker. It's that simple. Treat your workers like human beings and they will work their balls off for you.

Everybody thought I was out of my mind and couldn’t believe the things that were coming out of my mouth.  I was having a blast, because quite frankly, I just didn’t give a shit.  I pulled a Peter Gibbons and basically just tried to get fired.  I even started paling around with customers on the phones, getting into long conversations with them about their lives and families…the same sort of thing I would do trying to work up a tip at the bar.  Best part was, it kept me out of the phone loop, so for once my co-workers were getting the angry calls about incorrect paychecks and not me.

Then came the day of reckoning…our office was being moved.  Yes, my hour commute in bumper to bumper traffic was about to become an hour and a half commute in bumper to bumper traffic.  And I wouldn't be passing my beloved pub everyday...something that made me smile and forget about the eight hours of nonsense I had to deal with five days a week. The news hit me like a ton of bricks, there was no way on God’s green earth I was going to endure that daily drudge with the rest of the sheep.  I was done.  

I can remember when moving day was upon us.  They brought us into the meeting room at 3pm on a Friday and told us they wanted us all to come in the next day on a Saturday to the new building to unpack our things and set up our new desks.  I immediately raised my hand in protest and blasted them for not giving us more notice.  The rest of the mindless sheep gave their yes sirs and yes ma’am’s, but I wasn’t going to have it.  Bullshit to that!  I wasn’t going to miss my half a day off, or the beginning of my Saturday shift at the Irish joint.  No fucking way.

“Excuse me?  What about the people who have second jobs?  I have to work tomorrow, I can’t call in on short notice.”

“Well, Raymond, you have to ask yourself this question… “What’s more important to you, your silly little part time job on the weekends, or your career?”

“Well, I make more money at my silly little part time job in two days than I make here all week.  So, yes, my other job is more important to me at this point.”

“Okay, have it your way, because whoever doesn’t come will be written up.”

“Well, go ahead and write me up.  I have to work tomorrow at the job I actually enjoy. Besides, I have bills to pay, and this job ain't paying them!”

And that was it, really.  It was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back.  I was the only one that had the stones to not show up. The first foot was out the door and I let it be known I wasn’t going to be around much longer.  I lasted a few weeks in the new building.  Can you believe they actually built the cubicle walls in front of the windows?  And on top of that they put a dark tint on them that barely let any sunlight in.  They separated me from my co-conspirators and put me with the old hens which I couldn’t stand.  They all had five weeks of vacation, constantly made mistakes and made five times my salary.  They had been leftovers from the old company that was bought out when I had first arrived.

I consistently brought up their errors and my lack of pay and I was vilified for it…so much so that they used to call me the office communist.  And now I was forced to sit with them in an attempt to keep me at bay, and to stop me from infiltrating the other young folk who worked in the office.  I had become cubicle poison, and my complete lack of respect was affecting the entire establishment. They wanted me out and much as I wanted out.

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Rules of Old

It is unacceptable to wear hat on your head behind the bar. It doesn't matter who it is. It could be the bartender, a server, a delivery guy, or even the owner (especially the owner!). This is an absolute no-no, and if it happened back in the good old days, whoever committed this foul would be responsible for buying the bar a round on the house.

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Funny thing of it is, instead of politely asking me to leave, they gave me a promotion! I had actually been bumped up to a senior payroll specialist during this time.  They gave me a few more dollars an hour and another week vacation pay, and a shiny gold plated watch.  I guess they figured if they finally threw more money at me I would shut the hell up and start behaving. 

The brilliance of the whole thing was when they called me up in the meeting room to congratulate me on the promotion and give me my special watch (which I still have on display to this day, my corporate trophy), I took the opportunity on stage to announce my two week notice.  Then hens in the back clapped and cheered, my co-conspirators laughed and smiled, and the bosses faces grew red with anger and humiliation.

I went out on my own terms and I did it on stage with all the higher ups from corporate in the audience.  Quite frankly, it was one of the shining moments in my life.  Sure, people talk about the day they get married, and the day their children are born, or the day they buy their first house…yes, these are fabulous moments that are certainly in my top five…but when I quit the payroll company, it didn’t get any better than that!

Two weeks later I was free to pursue my true passion in life, tending bar at a neighborhood watering hole.  I purchased a copy of Beethoven’s ninth symphony and played “Ode to Joy” in my computer’s disc drive as I was packing up the things on my desk.  My friends came to wish me luck as the hens and the supervisors stood in separate groups shaking their heads with arms folded as the music filled the office with hope. 

I had escaped the evil clutches of the cubicle world.  There were those who despised me and those who wished to be me…and whatever camp they were in, I never had to see those miserable people again.  I was free.