(Well,
after doing six weeks of blogging about my crazy big brother Tom -- may be rest
in peace, and I’ll be working on finishing a book-length version of that story,
with his writings interspersed -- I said I’d return to the original blog’s
purpose: my survival jobs through the years. Along the way, many other interesting things happened. . .
like living in NYC, being part of the CBGB music scene, moving to England,
visiting Paris, etc. It’s been
QUITE the life -- and it’s not even half over yet!)
One
of my fave things about the survival job at One U was how they handled the
waitstaff. We were a young, good
looking bunch, all between 20 and 40 years old. Girls only served; guys were either bartenders, kitchen
staff, or busboys. Mickey Ruskin’s
two daughters, Victoria and Nina, worked as waitresses. They were both very good at their jobs,
and Nina especially took it seriously.
She was a thin, sallow girl who looked remarkably like her dad -- his baleful
eyes, his lanky dark hair, his big teeth.
Nina didn’t have the best moods, in general, and she was head waitress
for a while. That meant, she knew
more, had been around longer, and got to boss people around if she so chose.
Nina
walked with purpose and she rarely smiled. She was the responsible sister.
Her
sister, Victoria, was younger, curvier, and more cheerful. Her dark hair was long and wavy, and
she had a sweet face. Mickey’s
girls were, of course, off limits to the customers & staff. No foolin’ around with those chickies,
nosiree.
The
rest of us “girls” were called to a waitresses’ meeting one day by bossman
Richard “Richie” Sanders. Skinny,
dark, intense, with big eyes and nose and a haunted look about him. . . Richard
was invariably kind and funny, or one gruff, tough asshole. He was a Pisces (if that means anything
to you). Richie didn’t walk so
much as “roll ‘n’ stroll” with this strange kind of loping, limping gait. I figured it happened in Vietnam: war
wound. He had a tendency to
self-medicate, if you catch my drift.
At
any rate, he says at this waitress meeting, in his street-tough New York accent:
“Okay, girls? We don’t want any of
this in-between shit from our staff, with customers getting all namby-pamby service
that’s just okay, okay? So girls,
either be really really nice or be a real bitch, Okay? Okay?” Richard was a crazy, lopsided-smiling mess; his nose had
perpetual sniffles; his body kept in constant, jangly motion, smoking
cigarettes, drinking, never sitting still. Still in all, he was charming and he seemed to genuinely
like us -- for whatever that was worth.
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