The Mexican Hat ©2012 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     Conversing with Sid the bartender caused the memories to come flooding back. The shit all went down on a Saturday night. Paula, our main PM bartender, had her kids that weekend so instead of closing on the floor like usual, I got to tend bar. It was pretty busy. I got some nice tippage, all of which I kept throwing into a vessel we lovingly referred to as the Mexican hat, although I'm pretty sure it was really just a Chinese basket.
     It was a long-ass bar, not circular. We had the service well at one end of it, to-go at the other. In between those, my narrow workspace. When I was facing my barflies, I had a wall behind me. On the other side of that wall was the kitchen. There was a little window in the wall that served as a passway. And there was a swinging door to the kitchen as well, right next to the POS register, my till and that aforementioned tip recepticle, the Mexican hat.
     It was a cool shift, I got some good money. The only thing a little out of the ordinary was that we had a new cook working that night. He stuck his head through my swinging door a few times to ask me stuff. Those brief convos seemed kind of unnecessary but really, I didn't give them much thought.We eventually closed. I stocked and cleaned. I did a checkout and turned in my drawer. Even though I was a hard-core partier in those days, I wasn't that night. I clocked out and went straight home. A couple of hours later, I realized I'd forgotten to transfer the money from the Mexican hat to my pocket. Oh fuck!
     I was off lunch the next day but I got up and went in anyway. I went in at 7:00 AM, when I knew the manager and a couple of cooks would be the first to arrive. I went behind the bar with great trepidation and stared into the Mexican hat. It was empty.
     Well, what can ya do? I don't know exactly how much I lost out on but a very conservative estimate would be a hundred bucks. Fortunately, it was the middle of the month and in no way at the time was it make-or-break money for me or anything. Still, it hella sucked.
     I never found out what happened to that cashish. I strongly suspect that the chatty new cook helped himself to it from the Mexican hat after I'd left the store. Hell, maybe he took it before I left. He's the only person on that night's shift with good bar access for whom I can't confidently vouchsafe their honesty. Looking back, he stuck his head through the bar door a lot that evening. A couple of days after the incident, he consumed a shift meal at my bar and told me an unsolicited sad story about how he and his wife were having problems and their daughter has sickle cell and his car was fucking up.
     That Saturday night was a long time ago. I've worked a lot of Saturday nights since then, including this one just past. Not at my usual night job but at my usual day job; I picked up a closing PM waitshift there. Future episodes of These American Servers'll probably tell more about that. Anyway, a pretty good shift for me, decent tips and no major difficulties. Just before I left the building I asked Sid, that evening's closing bartender, if he'd done OK. He hadn't. In fact, due to a shortage in his till that he had to make up, Sid was walking with a negative twelve dollars. He had a good attitude about it, he laughed a little and said, "Oh well."
     I asked if he had any idea what happened. He didn't know for sure but shared a very plausible theory about how he'd been the victim of Dallas, an affable, overweight, kind of slovenly young co-worker of ours who's a major stoner. I don't know Dallas very well—or if he's guilty or not—but my opinion of him just improved slightly. I previously wouldn't have thought him imbued with the cunning and self-motivation necessary to steal anything.

     Are there any unusual tip jars or suspected shyster-ass motherfuckers where you work?

Corporate Picnics ©2012 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     Did ya see the most recent previous episode of These American Servers™  ("Fun New Drinking Games," September, 2012)? It's a righteous repost. When it originally appeared it showed up in the Google searches of several people who were looking for "monday night football drinking games" and like that. So I decided to rerun it this year when Monday Night Football® came back. This time, you know how many search engine hits it got? Precisely bupkus. Oh well.
     How about the installment immediately preceding it ("Hogging the Parking," August, 2012)? That one did a letter better; a couple of obviously super-cool intelligent people read it and commented! One of them chose to remain anonymous and wanted to know what Corporate Picnics are, I guess being as how that episode mentioned them. Corporate Picnics are when a good-sized work group, like a doctors' office or a passel of attorneys or something, calls in a big to-go order. They're usually one check, thank God, but that gets made up for by oceans of special mods. These things usually get phoned or faxed in during the rush. There tends to be a lot of other bovine cabins accompanying them, like the clients wanting their actual names—instead of just the name of the menu item—on their opaque chow boxes. Once in awhile if it's a slow to-go shift I'll yearn for a Corporate Picnic but usually they happen when I'm already pretty busy and cause me to plunge even deeper into the weeds. On the plus side, most, although certainly not all, of the people who pick these things up are pretty cool and it's rare that I get a less-than-adequate tip on one.
     Incidentally—no brag, just fact—I invented the term "Corporate Picnic," at least so far as I know. I don't recall reading or hearing it anywhere before I ever first said it. My co-workers, and probably you if you work in a restaurant, knew right away what it meant when it premiered and some of them even got a little chuckle out of it.

Fun New Drinking Games ©2011 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

      In honor of ESPN's Monday Night Football, and pro football in general, starting back up, here's a (slightly modified) righteous repost from last year that was kind of popular. And by "kind of popular," I really mean "nobody saw it." If you haven't ever checked it out, it's new to you, right? Enjoy!


     Do you ever play drinking games? For example, there's Monday Night Football. Watch Titans at Chargers, for instance, and every time Joe Buck or Mike Tirico or whoever, says, "First down San Diego!" everybody takes a drink. Then there's Fox News, where every time one of their resident douchebags says "Democrat" when they should have said "Democratic," or disses President Obama, your whole crew has to down a shot. I think it's safe to say that either of these drinking games will get anyone playing it fucked up pretty quick and there are a whole lot of other variations out there.
     I don't play drinking games, even when I'm hanging out with people who are. I binge at my own pace and get wasted just fine, thank you. Neither do I advocate drinking games. I think they encourage individuals who already like over-consuming alcohol to get even more hammered than they would if left to their own devices. But if folks are going to play them anyway, I want some of that market share! So here's an awesome new drinking game called These American Servers™. Play at your own risk.
     Everybody get out their internet-connected device. Log onto your favorite search engine. I like Startpage because of their privacy claims, and Google works pretty well too. Have someone call out a phrase or a title from These American Servers™. The first one to find a  reference to my internet column gets to make everybody else take a drink. Or you can deny the others a drink and have one yourself. Remember, and this is very important, you have to actually click on the link to These American Servers or your win isn't official.
     Try different search engines. If you want an easy, fast-paced game, go with Google Blogs. If you're trying to not get too blitzed too early, see what Yahoo or ixquick have for ya. They're not as friendly to These American Servers as some of the others are. Maybe you could see what Chinese Google has to offer.
     Whatever alcohol you imbibe when playing These American Servers is up to you. Perhaps the Chili's crew in Opelika, Alabama enjoy the game with 40 ounce jugs of Schlitz® Malt Liquor after work and you might have a good time with those. Watch out though. That shit is way more powerful than the weak-ass  "light"  beers that so many people are into these days.
     Please don't operate a motor vehicle if you've been playing These American Servers or while you're playing These American Servers. If you run across any rumors that poor, talented-yet-troubled entertainer Whitney Houston was playing These American Servers this past February 11th, please disregard them because they're probably not true.
     "But Joe," I might be asked if anyone actually read this, "I really want to play These American Servers, but ever since I read your excellent post from December of 2010 entitled "A Righteous Proposal," where you advocate a boycott of adult beverages until America ends its fucktarded "War on Drugs," I've given up drinking. Is there anything that I can do?"
     Well thanks for joining me, my hypothetical brother or sister. Just so you know, I haven't consumed any alcohol since that post went up either and I applaud you for being part of the solution instead of the problem. Together, we can make a difference. As a matter of fact, I do have a couple of suggestions about that. Instead of using Colt 45® say, or bourbon, you could substitute dankity-dank bong hits! Or maybe swap the booze for Caffeiene-Free Diet Pepsi®. Of course, if you go with that last one, you and your friends are probably some irredeemable wussies.

Hogging the Parking ©2012 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     It was crazy fucking busy at my store a couple of Fridays ago. Like every Friday, I was working Curveside™ to-go. Alone. If you're new to These American Servers™—and these days, who isn't?—Curveside is the gimmick where you phone in your to-go order and I put it together and bring it out to your ride. Most of your full-service, corporate casual dining restaurant-type chains have something similar, by whatever name they call it.
     When I got to work at the usual time, 10:30 AM, there were a lot of Curveside orders already phoned in, written down and stuck to my register—mostly featuring really shitty handwriting—including a couple of massive Corporate Picnics with oceans of special mods. I was getting weeded as soon as I clocked in and we didn't even open for 30 more minutes.
     At this store, I'm lucky to have competent managers who're (whores?) not skittish about jumping into the mix if they're needed and helping out. They help me plenty and I appreciate it. However, a lot of the time, they're busy eating the weeds of other employees or handling various crucial situations and I'm left to play my position as best I can without a lot of assistance from anyone.
     When you're working Curveside, you frequently get those eager motherfuckers who pull up way before their quoted time. It's usually not a big deal but that Friday it was like the trendy, latest thing that all the cool kids were into. Fortunately, everybody was pretty chill. I'd smile and tell them, "Hi! I wasn't expecting you for another 15 (or whatever) minutes," and they'd be OK. Except that by hogging the parking, they were cockblocking hungry motorists whose orders were ready. Most of these victims had the good sense and telecommunications to call and tell me where they'd found parking and I was able to get them taken care of. I dealt with it but all the extra steps ate up precious seconds.
     At one point during the busiest part of the whole ordeal, a nice, pretty attractive blonde, mid-30's, ordered and pulled up at the appointed time. I got her order out to her, negotiated commerce and made her some change. She commenced to johnsoning around with the ones and fives she'd received. It looked like I was in line for some tippage. I was so trying to not crash and burn that I inwardly frowned and said "fuck it" and outwardly smiled and said "thank you!" and hauled my ass back to the kitchen to bag up more orders. I felt really bad when, two or three minutes later, I was hustling out of the kitchen with several satchels of to-go grub and my lady had gotten out of her silver 2008 Hyundai® Elantra® and walked into the store so as to give me four dollars. She's a nice person; her name's Joy. I seriously hope and expect Joy's not reading this but if you are, thank you Joy. That was very kind and you didn't have to do it.

Alleged Fan ©2012 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     There were three of them, two men and a woman. They got seated up near the front, table 13 I think it was. One of them was clad in a golf-type shirt with his company's logo on it and the other two in more conservative business attire. They had a briefcase open and a lot of paperwork. It was pretty obvious that they were reps, or something like that, for a product called Arizona Iced Tea®.
     Their lunch was some kind of business confab so I played unobtrusive, silent server as much as possible. When they were through enjoying their entrees, they agreed to my suggestion that they share a dessert. After that was finished, they sat and conversed for maybe 15 minutes and then requested the single check. Just a nice, normal table during the slow afternoon. No big deal.
     I ran the plastic and returned with it. I thanked them and invited them to visit us again. I'd seen Arizona Iced Tea displayed at my neighborhood ShittyMart™ although I'd never actually purchased any. Just for fun, I said something like, "Hey, I got a can of that tea the other day," and named the store. "It's really good!" and witnessed three pairs of eyes light up.
     They were an easy table and nice people so I figured I'd be adequately compensated for my efforts but wasn't anticipating anything out of the ordinary. When I returned to bus my trio's vacated table, I looked at the voucher. I'd been left 12 bucks on a $40 check.

     It looks like Willard "Mittens" Romney has selected a running mate. I thought it was going to be Governor Fatass (R-NJ) but instead it's a weaselly Minnesota congressdude and alleged fan of Rage Against The Machine named Paul Ryan. I've thought of a moniker for their unholy pairing, you can use it if you want. I think it'd be great if it caught on with the general public although I'm well aware that, arising as it does from my struggling internet column here, that's very unlikely. Anyway, let call them the "Double Douchebag Ticket!"
     And just in case you're wondering, Arizona Iced Tea offers some diet varieties. I've since tried it and like it pretty well.

Kind of a Close Call ©2012 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     Hi! Here's a guest post for ya, it's from Joe Sixtop over at These American Servers™. Oh, hang on a second. It's not a guest post. Sorry about that, it's getting to be a habit. The previous pair of episodes immediately prior to this one were guest posts. And I'm really, really glad they were.
     My neighbor, Jakey G, is about to move. Not to another part of town but several states away. He knocks on my door just a little more often than I'd like but otherwise I kind of hate to see him go. He's told me about his plans and frankly, I think they're pretty retarded and I've told him so. He seems not to have amassed sufficient resources for the relo and he's pretty vague about what he's trying to make happen. Even though I fear they won't, I really hope things go well for my friend. If you get a minute to think a good thought for him, that'd be great.
     Anyway, the other night when we were both off from our respective jobs, Jake asked me to help him set up a Craigslist account. Which is kind of like if Helen Keller asked Ray Charles to drive them somewhere but hey, he needs to sell a lot of his stuff and I'll see what I can do. My internet at the crib has been kind of messed up here lately and Jakey G doesn't have the internet at his place at all. So I was like, "Dude. Let's grab my laptop and go over to Mickey D's® and use their wifi."
     Do you have These American Servers set as your homepage? If not, I'm afraid you're not wringing every last drop of golden goodness out of what the internet has to offer you my friend and I encourage you to get with the program. I had it set as mine but not anymore. If you want to keep something a secret, don't let anybody in on it. I knew what my homepage was when I went to grab wifi but I also knew that McDonald's®, like a lot of "free" hotspots, has their little disclaimer pop up when you log on instead of what your computer usually does at home so I was unconcerned about being busted.
     It took several minutes but we set him up an account and placed an ad. But at one point during the ordeal, the page we were after wouldn't load. So I hit "REFRESH." Guess what popped up? That's right: These American Servers. Uh-oh. I acted like it weren't no thing but inside I was like, "Oh fuck!"
     Jakey G looked at the screen before I could navigate away. "These American Servers. What's that? Who's David Hayden?" That being a guest post saved my ass twice. The first time was when I got to serve up something actually, you know, good to y'all instead of the usual crizzap from yours truly and the second was when my name wasn't on it. I casually acted like I didn't know anything or give a rat's ass about it and returned to the task at hand. Whew!
     Jakey G's a good guy and if I asked him to keep things on the DL for me, I'm sure he'd try. Of course, he wouldn't care about my little project here or my anonymity nearly as much as I do. I just vastly prefer that nobody in this town (besides me) is aware of my struggling internet column. If Jake had glimpsed my name, it'd probably have sparked some questions, maybe even a later search engine query or two. As it stands now though, I think you could ask him about it and he probably wouldn't remember the incident at all and if he did, couldn't tell you what website popped up if the correct answer came with a hundred-dollar prize.

     Lucky for me, my buddy obviously doesn't read any server blogs but that's no reason you shouldn't! I highly recommend, for example, that you check what delights Terry Everton has to offer you at  Working Stiff Review and then there's David Hayden, who's been a ginormant help to me and These American Servers but please don't hold that against him. His myriad projects, sheltered beneath the nurturing umbrella that is The Hospitality Formula are required reading for anyone who cares at least a little about our challenging industry. Thanks again, guys!

The People That You Meet ©2012 by David Hayden all rights reserved

     Once again, it's a real good guest post! This one courtesy of David Hayden over at The Hospitality Formula. Thanks, bro!


One of the remarkable things about spending the better part of two decades in the restaurant business is the people you meet along the way.  I have former co-workers who are Doctors, Lawyers, and very successful business owners.  There is something about the restaurant industry that draws people with talent and ambition.  It is always nice to see a former server achieve their aspirations and move ahead in the careers of their choice.  Sometimes you even get a chance to wait on them again.  While it may seem awkward to do so, that feeling is dwarfed be the sense of pride you have in playing some small part in watching their rise to success.

It is the people that remain in the industry that always fascinate me.  I am endlessly inspired by the people who would be successful in any career they choose, but choose to stay in the restaurant industry.  The ones who stay do so out of a passion for the business and the unrivaled ability to make an impact on the lives of others.  Foregoing wealth and status for the ability to put a smile on someone’s face is one of the noblest callings in the world.  Those are the people I truly admire.

People like Penny Shultz.  To say that Penny is beloved is to say that George Washington is mildly respected.  She is the confidant, cheerleader, and counselor to countless regulars at the bar she has called home for over 20 years.  I’ve known Penny for most of those years and she is one of my most cherished friends.  She never forgets a face and nothing makes you feel more special than being welcomed like her best friend when you pull up a stool at her bar.  The compassion she shows for those who bring their problems to her and the excitement she shares with the success of others is remarkable.  At some of the lowest moments of my life, Penny was there to make me feel that everything would be alright and hundreds of other people could say the same thing. 

Then there is Scott Henze.  There might be a few people in Kansas City that don’t know Scott Henze, but I haven’t met many.  I have never asked Scott for the shirt off his back, but I am pretty certain the only delay in him giving it to me would be taking the time to iron it first.  Scott is the most patient server I have ever met and can turn even the gruffest guest into a friend.  His sincerity is easily shown to others.  This is probably why Scott is like the Yelp of the city.  My car recently died.  I had some money set aside, but not enough for anything nice.  I definitely had no time or transportation to go shopping.  Scott made a call and had his friend Pete on the phone.  Two days later Pete was at the restaurant to show me my new convertible.  I would have never imagined I could afford a car that was this nice.  I probably couldn’t have, but Pete knew I was friends with Scott and financed the difference with no interest and no rush on paying it off.  Being a friend of Scott’s comes with credit approval and discounted rates.  This is also something I will always extend to Scott’s friends.  That is all the recommendation a person will ever need.

I really wish everyone in this business could meet Chef Jasper Mirabile.  Jasper loves this business more than anyone I have ever met.  It was like the man was born to be a Chef.  He runs the restaurant named after his father in a manner that must constantly earn him smiles from his first mentor.  He is a tireless cheerleader and advocate for the entire community.  His Facebook page is filled with mentions of other restaurants.  His radio show provides publicity to small restaurants that could never afford it on their own.  He is an advocate for the community and the community loves him in return.  I can imagine that it must be frustrating for his staff to have every guest that comes through the door know the owner.  I don’t think he would have it any other way.  To meet Jasper and encounter his seemingly limitless optimism and enthusiasm makes everyone he meets a new friend.

I am certain that any of these people could have succeeded in any other industry.  They have passion, drive, and the sincere desire to improve the lives of others.  What makes them special to me is that each passed up those opportunities for the ability to keep bringing smiles to the faces of others.  No one ever gets rich in this business, but I am not sure money is any of their primary concerns.  They have a passion for this industry, my industry, and their examples inspire me every day.

     David's got a Restaurant Marketing Plan that'll drive traffic like you won't believe! If you've got anything, especially an independent restaurant, to promote, you owe it to yourself to check it out. You're welcome!