When we last left off, I was working at a shitty Irish pub where I was not making any god damned money.

Not making any god damned money is a pretty miserable situation to be in when you are at work. But there are things that could make it worse. For instance, if it was just sitting around and not making any god damned money, that would be one thing. But this Irish pub worked out a situation where you not only sat around making no money, but also had to work for the pleasure. I would show up for work early in the morning and do the preparatory work for opening. This is fine. But then you would wait around for the lunch rush to show up, and it never would. At which point, you would think that the management would have the foresight to let you go so that you could do anything else. Much of the staff were either students or employed elsewhere, so our time could be better used at other pursuits. But no, that would never happen. You would hang out there till three o’clock, with fuck all to do.

The manager would cut you around two. Maybe you would have had two tables. There were six servers working for some reasons, so you’ve had to share the customer pool with them. Maybe you’ve made 15$, but you have to tip out the host and the bartender, so really you’ve made 10$. But you can’t just go home at this point. Before you go, you have to do sidework, which includes polishing and rolling  up silverware. Despite having only had two tables, you need to roll up 36 pairs of silverware.

Get all that done and now it’s 3:30. You’ve been on the clock 5 hours for your 10$. A great deal.

Hypothetically, if you are at a restaurant not making any god damned money the restaurant must compensate you till you are making 7.25 an hour. However, I have not seen any of that theoretical money.

But the misery does not end there. Gradually you get the idea that the rest of the staff really does not like you. It seems to be because you ask to many questions – something  you have to do because nobody fucking bothered to train you there. They seems fine and chatty with each other, but if you so much as ask ‘how’s it going’ you get some icy shoulder.

At some point you go talk to one of the hosts (the one who seems to like you and is nice to you), and while  he does confirm that they all dislike you, he also mentions how the latest batch of servers there are a bunch of assholes, and there used to be a much better group.

Now at this point one could just give up, maybe even quit the job. But right at that point I had a memory of my mother, who many years ago was in a similar situation at her place of employment. We had gone out for dinner one night when she was recounting not only how she was being snobbed at work, but how she turned it around on the assholes she worked with (and most notably when she looked at me and, in regards to her situation, said “Beh, nessuno snobba la Severina!”).

Fuck it, and fuck them! They wanna snob me? I’ll show them how to snob.

At that point I began to return the icy conditions they gave me. I pretty much spoke to no one there unless first spoken to. Unless it was one of the four or so people that actually treated me like a fucking human. I treated everyone with the same disdain they gave me. I largely ignored people.

Oddly enough, it kind of worked. People started asking me how I was. And I would answer, before going to back to doing whatever it was that was keeping me from making money, and I would never reciprocate the question. Because fuck those guys.

But there were really only a handful of people I actually seemed to get along with at the place,and those people were not always there. So the job had reached a trifecta of sorts:  I was busy with shit work, not making money, and disliked.