I used to work in a restaurant in the late seventies/early eighties. It was an interesting time. The guys who owned the restaurant, located in downtown Calgary, were an Englishman and a Catholic schoolteacher. The Englishman, who I'll call "W," was custom made for the business. He could talk, and talk interestingly (and incessantly), about anything. He was the perfect host, who could regale customers with stories, make them feel comfortable, and make them feel like they'd visited the homiest, most welcoming place on earth.
The schoolteacher was more laid back, and offered a quieter presence that tended to soften some of his partner's rougher edges.
But behind closed doors...
W could be a tyrant. His temper was quick to explode if anything was not done just right. If you've ever seen Gordon Ramsay in an episode of "Hell's Kitchen," you will know what I am talking about.
For the most part, he was a good boss, and I enjoyed working for him. The work was pretty easy to do, even when we were busy, because I had been trained well and knew what to do. But everybody makes mistakes, and even I got yelled at every once in a while.
One of the things that used to irritate me was changing the tape in the machine that piped music into the restaurant. Every single goddamned time I was walking toward it, W would come around the corner and ask, "Why's there no music playing?"
He was like Sybil telling Basil to put that picture up.
I worked there until 1982, when the city took all the land in the surrounding area and razed everything on it to the ground in order to build a shiny new City Hall. I was sorry to see it go, even though the area was not what you might call "Park Row."
Eastern downtown Calgary at the time was fairly down-at-heel. In the next block from our restaurant were two hotels, the Queen's Arms and the Monarch. They sat on two corners with an alley between them, and there was only a superficial difference between the two. They were home to the less advantaged of the city, and the bars were usually full of blue-collar types drinking their fill and then some. It wasn't a place I would go to alone, but it was okay if you had backup.
Yeah, they're gone now, too.
Down the other way was the St. Louis Hotel, a favourite haunt of then-reporter Ralph Klein. He used to come to our restaurant when he was running for mayor, and even after he won. I've seen him in his cups after hours a few times.
Further down was (and still is) the King Edward, the King Eddy, which now hosts a blues bar famous all over the city. Good music and thirst-quenching drinks.
W was full of plans for a new restaurant, of course, and it seemed like the natural thing when he asked me to come along and help to say yes.
I was going to Mount Royal College (now University), indifferently studying journalism, and I dropped out to work in the restaurant business full time. I thought I was getting in on the ground floor of something big. W said he was going to open pretty much the same place, only bigger and better. Yeah, he could talk, all right.
He decided before he could open this big glittering palace of an eatery, he needed to build up his bank account by opening a fast food joint. We looked around and then looked around some more for a place to set up shop and settled on an old, abandoned gas station. We rented the place from Shell Oil, whose place it was, and set about turning the service bays into a kitchen and the customer service area into a dining room.
We did quite a good job, and we did it all by ourselves; W, myself, and a kid who used to cook for us in the old place. And what a long, back-and-heart-breaking job it turned out to be. In the old place, there were a lot of targets for W's anger, but now there was only two, and boy did we get it.
It seemed like every day or every hour something would set him off, and we'd have to suffer through a tongue-lashing describing in intimate detail just how stupid we were, and how dense we had to be to make whatever mistake we had just made.
We were all under intense pressure to complete the job, and to drive ourselves as hard as we possibly could in order to finish, and get the restaurant up and running as soon as possible.
It makes me tired now just thinking about it.
Somewhere along the line, I burnt out, and lost all my enthusiasm for the resaurant business in general, and W in particular. We parted ways soon after the burger joint (called "Big Dick's," after Big Dick Turpin. No really) opened.
I've had other bosses with tempers like W's, and I was able to examine them more dispassionately, after my previous experience and a little time to think.
Remember the movie "Full Metal Jacket?" If you haven't seen it, you should. The drill instructor who lashes the recruits into fighting men is a perfect example of what I am talking about. He mercilessly berates the recruits until they are quite literally crying.
But he doesn't do it out of enjoyment. He's trying to break down their resistance to his instruction in the swiftest and most brutal way imaginable. He doesn't want to destroy them completely, merely remake them in the Marine Corps' image, and make them into trained, efficient killers.
He does a pretty good job at it until one of the recruits snaps and shoots him through the chest.
So I can see W's (and other bosses like him) point of view. And once you've seen behind the curtain, it's hard to ignore the little man working the controls of the Great and Powerful Oz. The giant head and the fire and the smoke are just special effects, used by an ordinary guy to fool you into doing what he wants the way he wants it.
I became impatient with superiors who used the rant in an effort to cow me. I started to see them as petty and mean, without the imagination to see that I was an intelligent human being who could follow instructions and do the job without all the pyrotechnics. It was their failing, not mine.
I remember when I was working as a security guard at a large office building. For some reason, it was the night guards' job to stock the washrooms with paper, towels, soap, etc. The super would come in the morning and make a quick check before relieving you.
One day I got quite a dressing down for not refilling one of the soap dispensers. When I went to do that (and I couldn't leave until I did), I saw that it was over half full, but not
completely full.
What the fuck?
When I got back from completing my arduous task, the super went on and on, and questioned my dedication to the job, and asked me just what I expected if I tried to get by with such ineptitude.
I quietly agreed with him and told him I would ask HQ to move me to another site.
I didn't see any point in arguing with the mook, who was in a postion of authority, and clinging to his little bit of power like a limpet. Pointing out that he was a fucking idiot might bring some personal satisfaction, but it would be professional suicide.
What was the point? What could I say to this person, who I had just lost all respect for, that would change his thinking that he was right and proper to treat me like shit?
I didn't think it would do any good at all to waste my breath. Over at "What The Kimchi?," Flint and I get comments from all kinds of fucktards. Arguing with them is like banging your head against a brick wall. You can't change their thinking, and all you get is a head covered with bumps and bruises.
My mother is a lot like those bosses. I love her because she's my mother, but I don't like the person she is. At this point in time, she is very disappointed in me, mostly because (like my father) I am a very quiet man. She doesn't like the quiet, and can be very cruel when she makes snide comments about it. I've taken to distancing myself from her, rather than arguing with her. And I try not to think of her as being too similar to those idiots I used to work for.
All of us in our family have had arguments and differences like this with her. My sisters have sometimes gone for months and years before they make up with her. I suppose my mom and I will make it up some day.
But until then, I'll have to stay away from "The Wizard Of Oz" and "Full Metal Jacket."
