Saturday, December 31, 2011

A Righteous Proposal ©2010 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     If this looks familiar, it's 'cause, as promised, it's a righteous repost! "A Righteous Proposal" was the final post of 2010 and it's even more true now than it was the day it first appeared. Enjoy!

     I had a nice 12-25 and I hope you did too. I thought I'd make that the subject of this edition of TAS being as how it's about that time again. But "A Sixtop Family Christmas" sounds like a bad TV movie they run every December on the My Pussy Hurts network (on some cable systems it's called the Lifetime channel). So I 86'd that plan and actually wrote "Selling Beer at Pro Football Games for Fun and Profit the Joe Sixtop Way!". I'll probably tweak that one a little and put it up here on TAS pretty soon, but it just isn't ready yet. So here's a good idea I had awhile back, y'all will be the first ones I've shared it with.
     If you work in the restaurant industry there's a real good chance that you're at least an occasional reefer consumer and an even better chance that you like to knock back adult beverages. You're probably unhappy with America's drug laws, especially how alcohol is pretty much legal and marijuana is not. You might have made the argument to someone about how much tax money could go into federal and state treasuries if the shit was roughly as legal as beer is, and you had a good point.
     Fuck that, though. Look how much money the alcohol industry spends buying politicians to cockblock any competing intoxicants. Look how much tax money comes from legal alcohol. Look how financially hurting America and its cities and states are. Think how fucked they'd be if every server that favored cannabis legalization quit buying alcohol. Ha Ha Ha! I think you see what I'm getting at.
     Please talk this idea over with your coworkers at the after-hours bar y'all go to for late nite happy hour after your shifts are over. Feel free to invite anyone who wants to participate, not just restaurant folks. If we get enough people and start by springtime, you and your friends will be purchasing Party Joint Menthol Light 100's by Philip Morris at Walgreens and woofing down hookahfuls of Humboldt Heaven along with your Miller Lites at the after-hours bar before Thanksgiving.
     If this thing gets going there's a chance you'll make just a little less money for awhile, especially if you're a bartender, but if you're anything like me you'll more than make up for it in savings from all the alcohol you won't be buying, especially the way you drink; at bars, prodigiously, tipping 50%. Plus you'll get out of your rut and experience life sober and without hangovers for a change. Who knows? You might like it.
     Happy New Year everybody!

  

Thursday, December 22, 2011

What's Good About My Work Situations ©2011 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     If you read These American Servers™ and really, most of your restaurant-centric internet columns, you're going to see a lot of griping and whining. Lord knows, there's plenty that's gripe-worthy and whine-inducing where I work. But last night—maybe I'm getting the Christmas spirit or just drunk—I started thinking about what's good about my work situations.
     One reason for the un-Joelike positivity was because I had a pretty good shift. I had a station that can be real good or a nightmare. Last night it was good. There were a couple of parties, several deuces and some fourtops. One of my fours had their food take well over 30 minutes to come out of the kitchen and no, I didn't forget to ring it in. The guests were real nice, low-maintenance and very patient. I had Dale the manager pay them a table visit and he comped their whole check. They left me $25. Another cool thing about last night was that our new GM gave me the option of being part of first cut or sticking around. Of course I opted to bail 'cause even though I work pretty hard I'm also a lazy bastard and I love to get the fuck out of there.
     But back to what's right about my work. Both my jobs are cool with working around my schedule. I have a day job where I don't have to arrive prior to 10:30 AM. I've got a night job where I don't have to get there earlier than four PM and usually not 'til five. I love that the night gig closes at ten on weeknights. I usually get a decent break between shifts. Sometimes I even have time for a nap! The day job is about ten miles from the night gig and my crib's right in the middle. It doesn't take me very long to get to either location.
     The management at both places seem to approve of my job performance (as near as I can tell), which is always a good thing. I've got a lot of regulars at my day gig, where I've been for years, and I'm starting to get some at my night job, where I've been for about six months. I usually get pretty good tips and I make enough to have my own place, a car and something to eat.
     Just about everybody I work with has a good sense of humor, which helps to have on the job. I like that both workplaces have a lot of diversity on their staffs. Most of my co-workers and managers are good people and I wait on and work with a lot of attractive young women.
     Like every restaurant, we get our share of jerks, the persnickity, douchebags, fucktards, cocksmacks, dumbasses, Arkansas violators, shitheads, fundamentalists, eurocrats, a-holes, scam artists, fart blossoms, idiots, bastards, lousy tippers, Kentucky butt-hockers, drunks, biznatches, morons, gawkers, cheap-asses, malingerers, Alabama turd-burglars, waiter traitors, fascist pigs, johnson skulls, right-wingers, unsavory characters and just all-around sorry-ass motherfuckers but most of the clients I deal with are OK.

     Here's wishing a Merry Christmas to you and yours. If you're from a point of view that doesn't celebrate Christmas, I hope whatever you've got going on December 25th kicks ass! Just you reading this is Christmas present enough for me, but if you insist, you could LIKE These American Servers (product/service) on Facebook®, leave a comment here or start following it on Google®, something like that. The next episode's going to be a righteous repost, so see ya next year! Have a good one and God bless you everybody!

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Warding Off Drowsiness ©2011 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     Did ya miss me? You probably didn't notice that it's been a little longer than usual between episodes of These American Servers™ but if ya did, sorry about that. What I was planning on serving up was not only off-topic, which is cool, but you've been getting plenty of the subject I was contemplating if you read the sports section or watch ESPN. You've probably had more than enough of it; I know I have. Consequently, that post got eighty-sixed.
     Anyway, I don't know about you but when I feel pretty good I can do great things and make terrific money. When I feel like shit, not so much. I used to get really drunk on a regular basis so I spent a lot of time hung over. I concealed it well and few co-workers and even fewer managers and guests knew what was up. If I overindulged and felt bad the next day, it's all on me and I got no one to blame but myself. Right now I'm more talking about how some days you feel pretty good and other days you don't and there doesn't seem to be a reason for either as far as you can tell.
     It helps to get some exercise and enough, but not too much, sleep. What you consume has a lot to do with it as well and I mean normal foods and beverages, not just recreational intoxicants. If a lot of your nourishment comes from a drive-thru window you're probably going to feel kind of sluggish more often than you otherwise might. I've been trying to consume more healthy and less unhealthy these last couple of years, with some success.
     I don't get sick very often but about two weeks or so ago I got a pretty hellacious cold. I'm not a big fan of medicine but I figured I had to take something or the marginally adequate service I mail in every day was going to suffer. I went to my local Dollar General® store and purchased NyQuil®. Ha ha, just kidding! I didn't really get NyQuil. I bought a store brand. Some of the pills were dark green and meant to be taken at night-night time. These were alleged to knock out symptoms and help you sleep. Some of the capsules were orange, to be taken when sleepiness was something to avoid.
     The meds worked suprisingly well in knocking out my symptoms and causing or warding off drowsiness when the appropriate color-coded procuct was taken. The recommended dosage was two pills at a time but I only ever took one. Like I just told ya, I'm not all that crazy about medicine. I liked how the green ones helped me sleep but I really liked how the orange ones kind of made me feel better, and not just with symptom relief, during the day.
     They didn't get me high or anything like that. But beyond alleviating my ague, they made me feel better than I usually do in the late afternoon. I got well. I ran out of pills. Yesterday, I worked my dinner shift and felt kind of BLAH all evening. When I got ready to go in tonight, I had the same BLAH feeling again. So I came up with what I thought was kind of a bright idea. On the way to work, I stopped at my local ShittyMart™ and got some more pills, even though I'm not sick. I bought a two-pack (Tupac?) of the orange, name-brand product, DayQuil®, and took one of them.
     I made it through a fairly uneven shift pretty well and felt good, way better than I did yesterday. I need to try and find out if there are any unhappy consequences to long-term, frequent use of this stuff, but I think I've found a new "friend." And since I'm always trying to get some fame for my little internet column here, as an added bonus I'm pretty sure this is how such noted celebrities as Elvis Presley and Dr. Conrad Murray got their starts!
     What do you do to make yourself feel OK at work?