1001 Nights in a Two Hat Restaurant Part 2

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That two-faced bitch stitched me up at work today. There were only two of us in the kitchen at lunch when Marta sent her at 2:30pm to help Tim in the bar, who was by himself and drowning in glassware. All that did was shift the problem to the kitchen where by 4:45pm I was drowning in crockery and cutlery and I still hadn’t cut the bread or tray’d-up the butter for dinner service.

She stayed in the bar and didn’t bother checking back to see if I needed help, even when Tony and Remon started helping with the glassware. Naively, I thought she had my back, but standing around flirting with Tim appeared to take precedence.

Sure, I’d rather be standing around flirting with Tim too.

I was furious.

Still staying at my place, she made the feeblest of attempts to find her own accomodation. One night she announced her search was over. A fully-furnished, newly-renovated apartment in York St with two car spaces for $285 a week.

‘Out of all the people who applied, he approved me! The guy who owns it lives in Africa. He said just wire him the money and he’ll send the keys.’

Her elation verged on mania and was comprehensively devoid of caution. I didn’t want be Negative Nancy - I was pretty keen to see her in a place of her own - but the mise en place was all wrong.

She spoke like it was in the bag. For some reason I thought she must’ve inspected it. She hadn’t. She’d only seen it on the internet. I took her for a drive into town to check-out the building from the outside at the very least. It was a stunning tower complete with concierge.

The circumstances were fishy as all fuck.

Brett concluded it was a scam and sagely advised her against sending money. She heeded his advice.

Szeeto proposed that she stay in his apartment for a week to give me a break but she stuffed around, unmotivated to do anything about it. In the end I gave her a lift and a lecture. It was futile: she wasn’t ready to get her shit together and seemed content wallowing in misery. Remon offered to get her a Big Issue franchise and Casper - renowned for hiding in his closet to film his flatmate’s sexual exploits - offered her a pity-fuck.

Meanwhile at work she continued her experiments in social engineering by trying to smooth an impasse between Joey Bardetta and management which only made things worse, while simultaneously escalating her dispute with Teresa via petty schoolgirl locker-room antics. Lindsay Bondage was openly disdainful of Ping Pong, and Ping Pong’s response was to behave with impunity, as though she was untouchable.

I wasn’t enjoying the tension. I’d lost faith in my protector. Long past the time of cracks appearing, I nevertheless hoped she might take Szeeto and Fei-Jai’s advice to ‘pull your head in’.

While Ping Pong stagnated the restaurant evolved. Plans were proceeding to open a sister restaurant which meant our team would split to staff the new venue. Stephen, Mc Fairy and Marta were heading the front of house management team while Chef Tim and Ritchie were in charge of the kitchen. I was crushed that McFairy was defecting but Rebecca was also out the door: you lose some you win some.

I was away interstate attending to some business when I received a call from Joey Bardetta: last night at the end of service Ping Pong said goodbye to everyone, adding that she intended to resign. I’d been avoiding her calls but evidently this was serious.

I called her back.

She’d been sat-down by P.S. and Calamity Jane from HR. She was being investigated for workplace-bullying Lindsay Bondage. I confess the mental image struck me as absurd - the Clydesdale worried by a snappy shih-tzu. I was surprised that Ping Pong was surprised. Lindsay and Teresa had been involved in covert conversations for weeks, they weren’t discussing the price of tea in China.

I tried to get her to focus on how she might constructively refute the claim, but it didn’t take long for the conversation to descend into the routine pity-party. Why aren’t the managers fighting for her? Why isn’t Brett, Chow and Luffy speaking up for her, why does she have to defend her own job?

Because. Sometimes you just do.

When I got back to work I had everyone asking me: ‘Where’s your mate?’ I was reasonably confident that everything would be OK.

It wasn’t.

On Thursday before work I was sat-down to put forward my own perspective. It was a blur, but one thing I remember was the acknowledgement that working in the kitchen was a tough and unenviable gig. ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ I thought.

I was struck with indignation over the sheer volume of verbal abuse I’d copped in that same kitchen from Chef, how being addressed as ‘cunt’ was apparently acceptable, of how insults intensify on account of your insignificance in the pecking order. To level the same charges against my tormentor would have been inconceivable. People like me simply need to ask themselves, ‘Can I tolerate this, do I still want to work here?’ You internalise the abuse, develop the habit of binge-drinking and get on with your job.

The enormity of the scale of the wider problem had me reluctant to be altogether forthcoming. Despite everything, despite knowing she was behaving badly, I wasn’t prepared to throw Ping Pong under the bus. In that madhouse, who of us could lay claim to impeccable behaviour? I know I couldn’t.

Ping Pong was gone, but so was Lindsay Bondage. Win some, lose some.

We were shocked.

At a loss to explain events, the phrase ‘No-one is indispensable’ became a mantra.

With the opening of the sister restaurant, the loss of so many members of our hospo-family at once was cause for grief. Ping-Pong’s drama and its unexpected outcome was unnerving. Morale nose-dived accordingly.

P.S. was neither oblivious nor insensitive to the atmosphere in the wake of events. Ever the master of public relations, he worked the floor the following Saturday night and generously extended an invitation to supper at Golden Century post-service. It was the first time I experienced this distinguished palace of late-night dining, mecca for the fatigued and famished hospitality staff of Sydney. The welcome gesture of appreciation arrived at the conclusion of unsettling times.

It must have been Spring.

I recall Canadian Dave sharing with me a seasonal salad that we were serving in the restaurant at the time. It consisted of goat’s cheese, preserved lemon, broad beans and cos lettuce. Dave was raving on about how underrated cos is.

Those were salad days for the humble lettuce. It was on menus all around town thanks in no small part to the ‘dude-food’ trend sweeping the city. Hartsyard opened, become instant darlings of the Sydney dining scene and championed the ingredient serving it fresh, charred, sous-vide, confit, BBQ’d and as soup. It was as ubiquitous as pork with scallops had been a few years prior.

The crunch and texture of the succulent was certainly agreeable, but drowning out Dave’s discourse on lettuce were a host of angels with trumpets that accompanied the fresh, double shelled broad-beans, kissed with olive oil and salt.

A curious working relationship had developed between Dave and I. We’d spar and quarrel, fight and flirt and after work, I’d walk down to the Ship and he’d be waiting with two pints of beer - one for me and one for him. On other nights there’d be two pints and a glass of wine for Elise.

Enter the kitchen to start work.

(Dave) ’I missed you on Monday night.’

(Me) ’I missed you too Dave.’

I’d commence chatting with Elise. Behind me Dave quietly asks me to do something, but I’m preoccupied.

‘HEY! IF I’M NOT INTERRUPTING YOUR CONVERSATION!’ (Dave, yelling).

(Me) ‘I take what I said back: I didn’t miss you yesterday!’

(Dave) ‘I didn’t miss you either: you were in my dreams!’

Pete recalls on his first night in the kitchen Dave casually addressed me as ‘cunt’ (I don’t remember this specifically - if you take umbrage at every insult nothing at all gets done) and Chef flippantly made a degrading remark about Pete’s mum, to which Pete responded savagely.

Here we go again on the merry-go-round of toxic workplace culture; Ping-Pong departs but theres a raft of new staff coming on-board, watching, absorbing, learning how to negotiate and survive in this terrain, making allegiances, choosing which mask or disguise to wear to fit-in, figuring out who can and can’t be trusted.

Still smarting from the Spring-Roll’s exit, a residue of suspicion lingered in the atmosphere. I remember talking HR conspiracy-theories with Tim at the coffee machine, feeling like a couple of KGB agents with the coffee-grinder scrambling the clarity of our words. It felt like the blending of a Le Carré novel and Lord of the Flies.

The freshly-recruited chefs wordlessly watched our performance, taking-in all they could of their new environment before they individuated themselves; John-John, Lauretti, Dale, Mia, Sean, Michael, François, Jay…and another fellow whose name wasn’t readily forthcoming.

Aside from being courteous it can be helpful to know your colleagues names. But let’s face it, there’s a lot of stuff to remember and in the fast-paced restaurant environment names are not always high on the list of priorities. Chef Tom deemed it an unnecessary formality for the first three months of anyone’s tenure. He reasoned there wasn’t much point investing someone with an identity until they’d made it through their probation period - understandable once you consider actual real-time human turnover. Carlo didn’t care to know the names of about ninety percent of the kitchen, addressing them with the all-purpose sobriquet ‘chef’. He was far too preoccupied being the best waiter on the floor and was completely unfazed that the chefs felt slighted.

I never asked the name of any of the chefs. My methodology relied on my propensity for learning via observation. Wait ’til someone fucks-up and several things are revealed; the experience-level of the hapless fucker-upper, their name (as it’s being screamed throughout the kitchen) and the constitution of the fucker-upperer, ie how they deal with a relentless tirade of abuse.

One young chef managed to keep his head down and out of trouble for a remarkably long period of time. I was beginning to think his name would never be revealed. Slightly built, he was quiet and serious, possibly overwhelmed and initially out of place (as almost everyone is). I noticed that he shared my proclivity to take in the unfamiliar with open eyes and a closed mouth, but I noticed him watching me with an intensity that reminded me of my visibility and I was laid bare. Yet again, the fourth wall was broken and I no longer felt like I was standing on solid ground.

One day he was out in my world getting steel gastro trays from the shelves under our workbench. Without a word, he reached out and touched my hair. It sounds weird (admittedly no weirder than writing down people’s conversations I suppose) but it broke the tension between us, and thereafter Billy and I became good friends.

With all this activity and integration of what was essentially a whole new kitchen team, it was easy to forget the hard-core animosity that still simmered between the sous chefs. Chef Bruno was good at keeping wounds fresh, animosity alive and grudges in place. Our relationship was mostly positive, as I learnt to side-step his rancour most of the time, but I witnessed more withering encounters than I care to remember, and I sympathised with Aaron, Lauretti, Kerry and others who’d repine their lot over a beer at the pub.

Bruno was not only tough but volatile and at times it seemed like he was taking out his issues on others. On these occasions it was best not to be in the line of fire.

I remember telling him about how Dave’s girlfriend had appeared unannounced at the pub one night. Dave just happened to be smoking at the time. She approached him, took the cigarette out of his mouth and crushed it under her shoe.

‘She wears the pants in that relationship, because she knows that he knows that he’s punching above his weight, that he’s a washed-up old chef past his prime and that she’s going to be the breadwinner, that she’s got everything going for her.’

Chef Bruno’s blunt, brutal honesty made no bones about his opinions. I envied his fearlessness but not his cruelty.

Meanwhile, service rolled on like a machine. Its Saturday night and Bruno’s on the pass calling the dockets. Theres a total of seventy degustation menus ordered that night.

Seventy.

First course; Yellow Fin tuna and Carid prawn sashimi with smoked buttermilk and black garlic.

I have to explain what a carid prawn is approximately twenty two times.

Second course; Partridge, guinea fowl and foie gras terrine with salad of young leeks and walnuts.

‘I’ve just served terrine to a muslim couple in Kevin’s section. He knows the terrine is full of pork, doesn’t he?’

Third course; Seared fillets of John Dory with parsley root, mussels, baked white carrots and lime.

‘So, how rare are white carrots then?’

‘They’re not truffles madam.’

I run past Joey Bardetta who’s poised before a POS station. As I whizz past, I hear him utter one word:

‘Alex?’

Rarely seen during service, to have AK - Sydney’s most elusive sommelier - as your wine-waiter is an epic stitch-up. Every good waiter should have a thorough understanding of the wines they’re serving and Alex is the reason why: because you’ll be pouring them yourself.

Fourth course; Peking Duck Consomme with duck dumplings, shaved abalone, shiitake and enoki mushrooms.

(Dave calling the order in the kitchen) ‘SHELLFISH ALLERGY: ONE CONSOMME, NO ABBO!’

All eyes in the kitchen look to John-John, the softly-spoken, seven foot tall, blue-eyed Aboriginal chef on mash, to gauge whether he deems Chef Dave’s barked order to be a not-unreasonable-request or a casually racist slur.

Fifth course; Kurobuta Pork Belly with pork croquette and muntries.

I explain what muntries are seventeen times.

Sixth course; Roasted fillets of Riverina lamb with fennel and black olive.

‘Is the lamb ‘Spring Lamb’?’

‘Well, given that we’re three days into Spring, I’d say no.’

Seventh course; Cafe au Lait Pannacotta with figs, crème fraîche and cinnamon crumble, followed by coffee and petite fours.

Seventy degustations consisting of seven courses each. Four hundred and ninety dishes flying out the kitchen doors, explained at length, tirelessly, over and over, on any given Saturday night. Thats nine hundred and eighty pieces of cutlery (twelve hundred and sixty if you count serving cutlery and amuse bouche spoons).

And that doesn’t include the two hundred and fifty other guests who are dining à la carte that very same night.

McFairy and I were in complete agreement that while we both loved a drink, we’d never allow ourselves to drink on the job. With the small amount of experience I’d had in hospitality I couldn’t imagine trying to speak to people about food let alone serve them whilst under the influence. McFairy had some outrageous stories about people he’d worked with and neither of us wanted to be those people. Aside from being a terrible idea, its also illegal: there are strict rules forbidding intoxication by alcohol or drugs at work under any circumstances laid down in very clear terms in one’s work contract.

But hospitality by nature is a volatile cocktail of rule-bending miscreants handling the most widely available mind-altering substance known to man. The proximity of one to another means that issues are inevitable so the working policy by the management team was prevention at all times and discretion when prevention failed.

From time to time a certain waiter’s sobriety during service would be questioned. This was no cause for alarm, such comments were thrown about casually and meant very little: ‘such-and-such is on crack tonight’ ‘so-and-so needs to lay-off the bongs’ and so on. They were just part of everyday banter on the floor. Everyone had ‘off-nights’ and when you made a mistake it was natural for the pressure - from Chef, managers or yourself - to snowball, causing you to make more mistakes. Blaming somebody’s errors on being ‘drunk’ was a way of laughing-off the problem.

If someone had asked me whether I’d seen this particular waiter intoxicated during service I’d say emphatically ‘no’. Imagine my surprise years later to hear accounts of his bringing hip-flasks or rinsed-out travel-sized shampoo bottles full of spirits to work which he’d mix with Coca-cola or lemonade behind the bar. It was alleged that he once declared that he couldn’t remember anything after 9pm, meaning the brutality of post-theatre routinely went by in a self-medicated blur. It was horrifying and impressive in equal measures.

A restaurant of this calibre demands the staff have thorough knowledge of what they’re serving and that includes an appreciation for wine. While none of us are likely to ever get a look-in at the bee’s dick’s worth of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti left by a guest before it gets whisked away for the sommeliers to wank over in the office, we’re expected to be well acquainted with the ‘BTG's, the wines on offer by the glass.

The restaurant was very generous in their philosophy regarding staff education, seeing it as an important investment and factoring it into permissible food costs. As well as compulsory food and wine tastings that were held after every seasonal menu change - where both the food and degustation wine pairings were discussed in depth - there were opportunities outside these sanctioned occasions to sample the constantly-changing BTGs.

‘Is that one new? I haven’t tried it yet.’

A phrase that was frequently overheard at the main bar or at a waiter’s station or in the back-bar before any perilously unattended bottle was swiftly accounted for. At briefings after the regular stocktakes, sommeliers wearily reminded us that no more than 10ml pours were permitted for tasting purposes.

It was after functions that the opportunity existed most often for staff to bend the rules, ignoring their own better judgement (where it existed). That took the form of a series of waivers that one could use to justify one’s own behaviour. For example; ‘All the guests have departed and there are a few opened bottles of wine left-over, I’m just having a glass while we polish the glassware and reset for tomorrow.’ What could be the harm in that? Better keep the glass somewhere discreet just in case.

Back then, Front-of-House was comprised predominantly of mature professionals who behaved judiciously most of the time and for this reason such behaviour was not an overt problem of significant magnitude.

There were always going to be exceptions.

The most memorable example involved one of the bar rascals.

They were a law unto themselves, the bar boys. Because the dispense bar is its own autonomous fiefdom, the bar boys were back then (and to an extent still are today) a strange offshoot of the restaurant, kind of like Madagascar, where creatures evolve separately and differently due to their peculiar isolation.

They developed their own argot, a specialised vocabulary devised for private communication, codified to discuss outstanding features of certain guests as they walked past on their way to the bathrooms. Imagine the beautiful, expensive, high-society parade against a backdrop of delinquents behind a bar; rapey-eyed gawkers mumbling deranged and idiotic idiomatic. I once heard J.P murmur his intention to ‘fingerjam Chrissy’s clam’ while Tony was telling unsavoury jokes about lesbians and barracudas.

Jari and Peter came on board in the same era; both were friends of Big Tim’s. Jari was a funny womble of a fellow who had the misfortune to be mercilessly mocked by Pete for bearing a mild resemblance to Alf the cat-eating alien. I don’t know what he did to deserve such torment: Jari struck me as a gentle non-conformist, not a deserving recipient of targeted vitriol.

As brilliant with either a quip or extended oratory and admirably even-tempered, Big Tim was the glue in the bar. He negotiated the schizophrenic nature of changing register between colleagues and guests seamlessly, riffing with the other boys in the bar in a sophisticated manner, pointedly satirising Tony and J.P’s dark, demented humour. Inclusive and generous by nature, Tim opened the pirate’s circle, extending an invitation to everyone to share the amusement and absurdity while simultaneously diffusing the intense prevailing masculinity radiating from the bar.

Anyway, one night after a function in Section 3 we were all busy trying to get the hell out of there, which we always managed to do successfully.

All but one of us did.

I’d left the premises, so I can’t claim to be a reliable eye-witness to what happened. The reports that followed were inconsistent, but basically a member of staff who’d been packing down the function had been found unconscious at the lift, down in the bowels of the building.

Denis and Luffy had to carry him off the premises. 

He claims that he’d consumed a not unreasonable single glass of wine which combined deleteriously with the medication he was taking, but other staff members dispute the amount consumed. Either way it went beyond discretion, and that concluded his chapter at the restaurant.

Being a casual employee I mostly worked nights but I noticed a different vibe amongst the day-crew - particularly Szeeto who primarily did days - and I wanted to be part of this more relaxed way of being in the restaurant so I set about jockeying for some day shifts.

Back then the restaurant wasn’t open for lunch on Saturdays and Sundays. Because lunch trade relied predominantly on business clientele, and also because staff wage costs were subject to weekend loading, opening the restaurant on the weekend was not deemed lucrative. This provided a lovely breather - a break from the relentless stresses - for all staff.

On Saturdays, Kirsten would come in at 10am to answer the phones and take reservations. There’d be two floor staff, one bar staff and a manager or two setting the restaurant and the chefs would take all day to prep for the busiest service of the week.

Andrea had been doing Saturday set-up for some time but when other commitments came up for her the position opened for this choice role and I jumped at it. The opportunity gave me new perspective and valuable insights into levels of operation at the restaurant which I had no awareness or understanding of from my limited exposure up to that point.

Setting the restaurant had it’s own particular rhythm; Saturdays back then could have been set to Ravel’s Boléro commencing with the flute arriving to iron the tables before violas and cellos distribute napkins to each table to be folded, clarinets and bassoons place side plates and cutlery, all contributing and building a long, gradual crescendo that spills into the madness of service, fortissimo possible, as loud as possible.

It was a much nicer, saner way to prepare and fortify yourself mentally and physically for the insanity, the battleground that was to come, in contrast to the occasions when you clocked-on at 7pm and braced yourself for immediate impact.

In addition, Saturday set-ups gave me the opportunity to socialise with other colleagues who didn’t frequent the Ship Inn after work. The familial landscape was becoming richer and more three-dimensional.

It was a Saturday in high Summer when the temperature was forecast to nudge 40 degrees Celsius: 104 Fahrenheit.

Early in the day around 10:30am, Fei-Jai took a call at reception from a woman who said she was coming in to deliver a cake for an 80pax canapé function that evening.

A cake.

For a function.

Reservations showed 347 booked for dinner in all three sections of the restaurant. There were no functions on the books. The cake-lady must have got her days wrong. We continued to set the restaurant as per Res-Pak, while wondering aloud what would happen in the event that there was an oversight. The restaurant was sitting at capacity without the further 80. Could we juggle tables? Could we flip section 3? Impossible.

But this restaurant made the impossible possible. Behind the inevitable doubts and fears that you - cog-in-the-wheel you - thought and felt, was a team that pulled it together and never said ‘no’. Lurking deeper than inconsequential human fears and anxieties was an understanding of the truth of what was to come.

The 80pax canapé function was coming. There was no stopping it.

Kirsten phoned the functions co-ordinator in an attempt to piece together the puzzle. The event had been booked by a family-owned electrical business for it’s end-of-year celebrations. But somebody who claimed to be the owner of the business had phoned earlier in the week to cancel, and Romney had taken the caller at face-value. At the time, there was no policy in place to follow-up by email stating any changes made. That left the onus on the restaurant to provide the function, come hell or high water.

Fei-Jai phoned furiously around; P.S, every available manager, Opera Point Events. It was virtually impossible to call in extra help, as we already had all hands on deck for the night ahead. As staff arrived through the intense, wobbly heat-haze to begin their shifts, they were immediately told to go and lend a hand to move furniture, setting up a bar on the outside terrace. 

A part of the Toaster building that overlooks East Circular Quay, the terrace doesn’t actually belong to the restaurant, but the building managers allow the restaurant it’s use on occasion; for canapé functions, the viewing of fireworks and the like.

Staff meal was put up as usual at 4pm and those of us who’d been there since the morning sat up the back of Section 3 on breaks, witnessing the flurry of activity as staff built and stocked the bar upstairs on the terrace. The space wasn’t big enough to accomodate 80 people comfortably, so it had been decided that the party would arrive, be directed up to the terrace for complimentary drinks before being walked-down to Opera Point Events to conduct their function in comfort.

But it was so bloody hot that just the thought of walking a few hundred metres along the Quay in evening attire would have been enough to send me apoplectic.

I remember vividly that night I was on the door. Outside it was like a blast-furnace, a hot wind blowing so fiercely that smiling as you held the door open for guests caused the saliva in your mouth to dry instantaneously, leaving you with lips stuck to teeth in a grotesque grin.

I showed guests through to the terrace, ushering them to their unconventional party arrangement and expecting backlash in the form of anger and consternation, but none was had. The function guests were laid-back, lovely, salt-of-the-earth types, altogether easy to deal with. Turns out the person who’d placed the bogus phone call was a disgruntled ex-employee of the business who’d been sacked. The owners found the circumstances all very amusing and were terribly grateful for the trouble we’d gone to for them.

We thought we’d reached the limit of our abilities by pulling off the function, but there was more in store. There always is.

Pre-Theatre was well under way in the Front Room and Section 2 when, without any warning the ceiling above Table 12 gave-way and several hundred litres of water gushed from the air-conditioning overflow pan located in the roof space, causing pandemonium.

‘I demand to see the owner! Where is the owner?!’

Drenched in her dress, a lady was yelling at Kirsten at the back of the Front Room near the bar.

‘Ahh, he’s standing on your table holding up the ceiling.’

And still the orchestra played on. Affected guests were presented with gift vouchers to return another time as pre-theatre continued to its natural completion. Table 12 was tidied up but off-limits for à la carte service. Everything - the carpet, the chairs, the ladies dress - dried within five minutes.

Then, as the sun set everyone took a deep breath and it all began again.

In the darkened dining room, there was a gaping hole in the ceiling, but nobody looked up.

‘Carlo? He’s not gay.’

Big Tim was holding court at the Ship Inn after work one night.

‘He likes women. A little too much. He looks their names up in the bookings and then Facebook-stalks them. Imagine opening your curtains and there’s Carlo: “Madam, you forgot your petite-fours.” HAHAHAHA!’

We’d go to the pub to celebrate making it through service alive. Because there are times mid-service that you genuinely can’t foresee an end.

The Ship is a ‘hospo pub’ located at Circular Quay. Staff converge there from nearby restaurants and hotels from The Rocks to East Circular Quay; Italian Village, Park Hyatt, Quay, Rockpool, Wildfire, Four Seasons, Cafe Sydney, Guillaume at Bennelong.

For a long while, we were the largest group to frequent the Ship. Sprawled out in the beer-garden over several tables there’d be a dozen front-of-house staff and most of the chefs on any given night, all talking service-related nonsense.

Indoors, we’d take up the entire left-hand side of the place, which, when the music was good and loud, often set the scene for spontaneous dance-offs. Sometimes these would be instigated by Szeeto and Bardetta: a preppy white guy and a spiky-haired Asian turfing in a Sydney pub - utterly joyfully ridiculous. But Van Oppen, when he hadn’t been banned (or banned himself) was the Michael Flatley of the Ship Inn.

Van Oppen loved to dance and was famous for it. I once made a fatal error of judgement by dancing with him to Prince’s Kiss. I approached the exercise flippantly, pretending no-one was watching, throwing caution to the wind and cutting it to ribbons on the dance floor. People were watching, and when - mercifully - we reached the final lyrics, ‘I just want your extra time and your….kiss’, Charlie expected to finish with a kiss.

With me.

In my wildest dreams that had never occurred to me, so I just left him there all puckered-up.

He never forgave me.

Balls-out, he styled his moves on Jagger, jerking around the dance-floor chicken-heading, eyes bulging and mouth agape conveying deranged angst, arms extended reaching toward the heavens to pull down the sky. He danced like we loved it, and we did.

This treat could only be improved upon when strangers were lured unbidden into the dance-zone (usually in an effort to get to the toilet). Occasionally, if they weren’t completely intimidated, they’d throw-down a challenge to the gyrating Dutchman.

Suddenly it was on: Saturday Night Fever. Big Tim and Pete were up out of their chairs, nostrils flaring. Was the challenger to be annihilated in a clean fight, a one-on-one dance-off to the death, or was the contender deemed worthy only of merciless mocking?

Distracted by Tim dancing with a mop, behind the hapless victim Pete would ridicule his every move, shadow-dancing his earnest efforts into a pool of derision, making him look preposterous.

In this fashion hours would go by. The exhaustion of service faded, bleary beeryness descended. Softly anaesthesia stroked your temples. Those days I often questioned the veracity of my sanity, wondering whether I could trust the very sights before me.

‘Hey Tash’

Chef Tom yelled at me one night over the Ship Inn din.

‘Check out Philly.’

I looked over to see one of the chefs - an altogether bizarre young lady who loved attention and didn't mind what form it came in - had the top of her dress undone and peeled off to one side. There, a dwarf had attached himself to her breast and was enthusiastically suckling.

OK so I might’ve been the drunkest person on the planet, but at least I didn’t have a dwarf attached to me.

Frequently I was thinking that I must have slipped into an alternate universe.

Chef Coco had started seeing one of the waitresses, an elfin-cherub named Gabby. They’d decided to hold a party at their place one Saturday night after service. Everyone was invited.

But organising this group to do anything other than go to the pub or the occasional supper at Golden Century was always problematic due to hundreds of variables. Everyone had said they were interested but once you threw Saturday night service into the mix, people would be finishing work at different times, shattered physically, mentally and emotionally. A few people had the ‘flu, they genuinely weren’t well and should have gone straight home and assumed the foetal position.

It was looking like the party would be a flop.

Slowly the medicinal properties of beer began to work its miraculous recuperative powers, the walking-wounded patched themselves up, gathered into taxis and headed to Glebe.

It was held in a big old share house, semi-detached from its mirror-twin next door. We entered by the side-gate, down a long garden path that opened out into a backyard. Concrete-paved adjacent to the house, a brick pathway disappeared past a gazebo down to a jungle of a garden complete with out-house and shed.

It was a perfect party house.

Entering the house from the back you found yourself in a blinding-bright kitchen, it seemed to be lit with with a magnesium bulb. Here you were furnished with a drink. Beyond the kitchen, a darkened room. After a few moments the rods in your eyeballs adjusted your scotopic vision. It was then possible to make out speakers, decks, strobe lights and a bubble machine.

These guys weren’t mucking around.

We were sitting outside in the gazebo, drinking laced vino. Things were still quite chill. Then along came the hallucinations; the chefs and Tim arrived around 1:45 when everything was pulsing and melting and dancing and warping with colours and bubbles and body-paint and nude dancing. It was best to keep moving and not get bogged down in strangeness, but drinking - that habitual, familiar, comforting action - had become the source of next-level weirdness, the drinks augmented with liquid LSD.

I remember levelling-out on a balcony twenty-stories above the Anzac Bridge as street-lights twinkled and the sky lightened over Blackwattle Bay. Not completely sure of the details of the remove but in safe company, I was flooded with endorphins. It was a zeit party, and floating above the city as the sun came up, we were the geists.

Probably the most de-stabilising experience I had back then - the one that made me question everything and wonder whether I was experiencing a warped, altered state - was the night Chef Turner joined us at the pub.

The head chef didn’t drink with us on the regular: it was one of those unwritten rules; it just wasn’t done.

But this wasn’t any ordinary night. As I recall, it followed New Year’s Eve service, a massive undertaking every time it comes ‘round owing to the location and status of the restaurant at the forefront of New Year celebrations in a city famous for New Year celebrations.

I was several beers deep when Chef, who was sitting next to me on the banquette, addressed me.

‘I think we got off to a bad start.’

Unsure where this was going, I kept silent.

‘But I consider you an important member of the team.’

I spent the rest of the night questioning my own sanity. Did I really hear that, or had I imagined it? I guessed that was as close to an apology as I’d ever get.

I was still wondering about it a few days later as I went about setting up the kitchen.

It was the first night of the new butter service.

In the past, the restaurant had served a pat of butter on a dish with bread to each table. Now, a new system was being implemented. Bespoke butter dishes had been created for the restaurant by a ceramicist in Melbourne, along with a series of distinctive hand-made plates and bowls. The new butter dish was an asymmetrical, surfboard-shaped plinth, on which two pats - one regular, salted butter and one seaweed flavoured butter - were presented to the diner.

We kept the butters on their dishes in plastic lidded trays stacked up in the fridge, taking them out only as we needed them. Small and symmetrical, the old butter dishes fit sixteen to a tray. The new ones, bulkier and oddly-shaped, fit only nine.

I’d done my mise-en-place as usual, traying-up as many as I could. I thought we’d make it through service. If not, I’d just tray-up more mid-service. Simple. But we got quite busy and I never got a chance to slip downstairs to the prep kitchen, away from the incessant call for ‘service’.

Suddenly we were out of mise.

Chef went ballistic.

‘Alright, alright’, I thought, ‘here we go again, back to normal. I’ll cop a spray and then I’ll feel like a cunt and then he’ll let me get on with things.’

But he didn’t stop.

It kept building, like a fission reaction; exothermic, unpredictable.

‘Jesus, stop yelling already.’ I was thinking. ‘Let me go and tray up some more butter, fix the damn problem.’

But I knew we’d gone into a Code Red. The reactors were melting down. Something had snapped and he kept going, white-hot with fury. He was like a rabid dog, following me around the kitchen screaming and screaming. There was no escape. I’d seen this happening to other people - chefs mostly - so intellectually I could identify the form. But I was unable to shield myself from the intensity. He took me apart piece by piece until I broke.

And then he kept going.

I left the kitchen and sought shelter at reception, where Brett and Chrissy told me to go for a walk until he calmed down. To my horror, I found myself involuntarily in tears. I’m not a teary-type, and in all my time in hospitality, with all the bullies and assorted shit-bags I’d dealt with I never encountered anything that could reduce me to this state. And it was so silly.

As I sat on a bench seat watching the ferries go past, I drew breath and calmed down. The other night, when Chef played his cards and I was feeling giddily confident, he must have felt he’d exposed too much. This was the swing of the pendulum back the other way.

For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction.

‘Hey Natasha, you want some broccoli?’

A busy lunch service is drawing to a close. Chicco and I are smashing through the cutlery polishing, now there’s finally a break in running food.

Canadian Dave’s post-service treats were legendary. Take an Iggy’s Sourdough roll. Drown it in the salty brown and bloodied drippings remaining from the cooking of a hundred pieces of meat. Pile on thick, buttery Hollandaise. Prepare for impact with the imminent heart attack.

‘Broccoli seems uncharacteristically healthy,’ I thought, leaving my task and turning around to retrieve two plates from the pass, one for Charlie. There’s a moments pause.

‘Hey Tash, when Dave said: “you want some broccoli”, do you think he meant this instead of those?’

Dutchie draws my attention to a steel gastro tray of prepared broccolini. I’d been about to demolish two garnished plates meant for the last degustation of lunch service. The chefs, who hadn’t noticed until this point, start laughing and throwing insults.

‘Natasha’s a retard!’ (Dale)

‘Oh my god.’ (Dave, face-palming)

They finish plating-up the barramundi and push them forward.

‘Can I eat them now?’

Everyone in hospitality in Sydney knows Van Oppen; if they hadn’t worked with him, they’ve been drunk with him.

He was serving time in the kitchen.

Every day he’d come to work, check the allocations and find himself assigned to the kitchen. This went on for weeks. He was being punished without conviction, and it was because he’d fallen out of favour with certain managers. It got so bad that Chowie had a word with him, telling him he couldn’t guarantee his shifts, so perhaps he should get a job in a café.

Chicco bore the injustice admirably.

He put his head down and single-mindedly did his job, without remonstrating or complaining. He wouldn’t talk about it at work, although other senior waiters alluded to ‘the issue’.

He saved any comments for after work at the pub.

Despite being mildly offended that everyone considered shifts in the kitchen akin to punishment (it was my job, after all) I felt genuinely bad for him at this time. The restaurant is a horrible place when management have it in for you, justifiably or erroneously. The psychological burden is exhausting: coupled with a naturally stressful job, the encumbrance is manifold. For whatever else Chicco is - and he’s a lot of things - he’s a hard worker. We all were back then.

If we weren’t, we’d go and get a job at Rockpool Bar and Grill.

Anyway, one day the issue ceased abruptly. He was reinstated to Section Waiter in the Front Room and awarded a $300 voucher for ‘employee of the month’. Overnight he went from villain to hero.

Eddies of unsettling forces blew around the aria, currents of destabilisation swirled in the air-conditioning ducts. Sometimes the only sliver of solace was the drama du jour wasn’t directed at you.

I recall a failed coup against Kirsten; the circulating of a petition to have her removed and her position annulled, instigated by one of the floor staff who considered her role as hostess ‘redundant’. The plot had the whiff of the Ancient Roman Senate: short of lead-poisoning madness, who’d be delusional enough to take such a task upon themselves?

Other nights it would be less about ‘ongoing issues’ and more about temporal stressors.

As a casual member of staff, it’s usual to be cancelled or called-in at short notice. I remember being summoned one night by Chowie, who was on a 9-5, but on arrival at 7pm, Windey and Kirsten seemed surprised that I’d be needed.

‘Well you’re here now, you may as well work. Go and get changed.’

There’s a trial guy on, Teresa gets re-allocated to a function, and service is really, really busy. Brett is running around in a madly agitated flap. There are moments running food out of the kitchen that it feels more like a beep-fitness-test than service.

I run degustation to table 10. Carefully placing the plates on the table, I begin my oratory on pork, before realising that the pig’s ear crisp is missing from the dish. Embarrassed, I run back into the kitchen and yell at Laureti. It’s Aaron’s fault, apparently. We rectify the issue and I return to the table to complete the presentation. Returning into the kitchen, Brett balls me out.

‘WE HAVEN’T HAD CROQUETTES WITH THE PORK FOR A YEAR!!’

But I didn’t say ‘croquette’.

Did I?

I waste time doubting myself. There’s no way I said ‘croquette’, even if I’d been flustered about the missing pig’s ear. So I waste even more time by calling his bluff.

‘I said “crisp”, not “croquette”’

‘BEATON AND I BOTH HEARD YOU!’ He roared back.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Paulie’s response when (wasting more time) I bailed him up on the matter.

That fucker!

‘Is Brett making things up again? You know he’s getting old and senile.’

We meet again at the waiter’s station, where Brett’s processing a credit card and I’ve got polished cutlery to re-stock the drawers.

‘Behind, Brett.’

‘Oh you just go ahead and do what you want. You will anyway. Hey, Erin already thinks I’m horrible. He said; “Everyone thinks you’re horrible Brett!”’

‘Is that like the “everyone” who heard me say ‘croquette’?’

So long as you hadn’t been drawn-in and turned the quarrel into a rolling street-brawl (Denis had a tendency for this) - Brett would, at the end of the night, generally extend a vague utterance of mitigation, which invariably and dextrously managed to avoid addressing the actual problem.

Bursting into the kitchen at the conclusion of service, he huffs:

‘Just as well you did come in Natasha - we picked up 41 for à la carte.’

He breezes out and I turn to Andrea.

‘Is that his way of apologising for being an asshole?’

And then there are times when you’re simply cannon-fodder, the steep slopes of Plugge’s Plateau rearing impossibly before you.

P.S. is in.

You’re picking-up wild nervous tension before pre-theatre starts, wondering if the guests can sense it too.

‘Pre’ is out of control. In what’s referred to variously as ‘going down’, ‘in the weeds’, ‘in the shit’, there’s been no time to polish cutlery or crockery.

That’s really bad.

Then P.S. says to me:

‘I want you to go on a break, from 6:30-7.’

‘That’s a fucking terrible idea’, I think to myself. I picture myself lying: ‘oh yeah, sure I’ll go on a lovely, relaxing break…’, meanwhile I’m hiding in the lift-well, madly polishing cutlery.

But it doesn’t work like that.

‘Brett!’ I find him on the restaurant floor. He knows what I’m about to say before it’s said.

‘I know. I can’t change his mind.’

So I do as I’m told. I go on a break.

Teresa starts at 7pm but she’s on the floor flipping tables. The kitchen’s a mess. Brett’s screaming for side plates. Erin’s screaming for side plates. How do we turn the restaurant if there’s no side plates? On my work bench, there are four dishwasher racks full of silverware, piled on top of one another. There’s more cutlery in the kitchen than there is in the restaurant.

Calling the pass that night is Kazu, sensei-calm in the eye of the storm - that weird lull, that stillness - in between the end of pre-theatre and the start of à la carte. He regards the Mt Fuji of shrapnel wordlessly, picks up a knife and begins to polish.

The chefs complete their mid-service clean-down in the kitchen, then Kazu directs them to the other side of the pass. Nick, Sean, Philly are all on the polishing production line.

‘Ive never seen that before,’ remarks Ash, cautiously watching from pastry. ‘Maybe we could get the kitchen porters to run some food too.’

‘Behind! Mind your bleeding arseholes! Mind your gaping orifices!’

Referring to the just-completed service as a rough, non-consensual intimate encounter was de rigueur on arrival at the pub: the less ‘PC’ the better. Additionally, the less whinging and bitching about what went wrong, the better. Keeping us out of the misery-trench was Big Tim’s gift.

‘I’ve got this 24-hour sandwich shop near my place, so I can go in at 3am to buy a ham sandwich. Then I go home and I’m eating it in bed and I just fall asleep and when I wake up it’s still in the same position, so I get into it for round two. But by the time I’ve finished, the bed is full of crumbs. It was Friday and I usually change my sheets on a Sunday, but it was just a mess.

So I thought about getting Chicco in there with his tablecloth crumber. Big Charlie with the Oosterdam, the Amsterdam, the Noordam, the double-smoked leg ham…Big Charlie crumbing the bed man!’

‘Yeahhhh.’

Napkins are delivered to the restaurant in bundles of 250, and have to be folded like this, into thirds, with the factory-fold running perpendicular. This way, the napkin cleverly hides the seam, so on the table they look pristine and crisp without the need for ironing.

If you fold your pre-folds the wrong way, the factory-seam runs like a sclerosal spine up the middle of the napkin, over the fabric curves intended to mirror the perfect arcs of the building next door, hideous evidence that amateurs - not vestal virgins - were involved in setting your table.

The distance between the two folds is precisely equal to the length of one butter knife.

Not more.

Not less.

You could use the butter-knife to measure each napkin, but this didn’t guarantee that your folds would be parallel. It was better practice to fold one immaculate pre-fold (measuring to ensure equidistance at either end) and then use this perfect specimen as a guide or template for all consequent pre-folds.

Other methods were permissible, only if the same precise result was achieved. If not, the folder of the napkins would quietly be considered retarded.

The template method requires constant vigilance. You can’t just keep folding up, up, building a pre-fold Tower of Babel, because the distance between the folds gradually diminishes. The natural law of the napkin is that for every inch of height gained, a quarter of an inch in width is lost. Napkin-folders who don’t pay attention soon have a ziggurat on their hands, with napkins at the top falling ludicrously short of the butter-knife measuring-stick.

This wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. The napkin nightmare is when someone discovers a pile of - let’s say a thousand - pre-folds, stored innocuously in the credenza, that have all been folded the wrong way.

Someone (most likely one of the new staff) has been sent to Section 3 to smash-out some pre-folds before signing-off, and they’ve been left unsupervised. An hour’s work may as well be thrown in the bin - they’re no longer suitable to be used as guest napkins - so instead they have to be re-folded as waiter’s cloths.

The most annoying thing about all this is that there’s no-one to blame, scold or harangue. The criminal has given us the slip, gone home and is probably tucked-up in bed. Retribution will have to wait.

I was setting up the kitchen one day before dinner service when Bruno started ripping into me for not screaming ‘behind’. I wasn’t particularly fazed, Bruno was just having a moment. He'd get over it in due course.

Next thing I knew the trip-gong sounded and Luffy exploded through the kitchen doors behind me. Towering over Bruno, he attacked ferociously with incisive words of reckoning, dressing Bruno down for his foul-mouthed hectoring; of me in this particular instance, but there was a whiff about the ruckus that suggested something grander in scale was going down.

I was dumbfounded. It was surreal to have the restaurant manager put up his dukes for you, particularly when I’d become so used to having to do it myself. But something about the nature of the fracas made me realise that over and above the specifics of the spat, the Top Dog was sending a message more broadly: bullying in any form wouldn’t be tolerated on his watch.

Bruno attempted to stand his ground, but he shrivelled in the face of a righteous, revved-up Luffy.

Bruno and I had our skirmishes, but we always managed to resolve things. I remember him being a particularly obnoxious stubborn asshole for a protracted period of time. One night he started making a fuss on the pass in the middle of service.

‘Kirsten!’ (she happened to be passing through at the time) ‘Kirsten, get me a tampon. I’ve got a bleeding nose!’

Denis rolled his eyes and walked out of the kitchen. Unflappable Kirsten contemptuously ignored him, but I couldn’t help asking;

‘Is that because he wants to shove it up his nose, or because he’s a little cunt?’ 

His objectionable manner was in full swing as I left for a three week holiday, but upon my return he acknowledged his lousy behaviour and apologised. I hadn’t lost any sleep over it, so his admission came as a surprise. His willingness to extend himself revealed an admirable, likeable side that I hadn’t previously been aware of. I had new respect for him.

Even more surprising was receiving an invite to his engagement party.

I remember asking Luffy if I could have the night off work to attend. Luffy responded with shock.

‘I thought you two hated each other!’

But relationships at the restaurant were rarely so straightforward. Give me complex, challenging company over the insipid any day, but the dynamics of the restaurant had a way of intensifying everything. An extreme environment without respite, being in the kitchen was like being in a volcano, and there was little relief on the dining room floor, where management were waiting to pounce and you were only a guest away from a complaint letter.

In this hotbed of drama and emotion, we had the luxury of despising people with whom we worked, because the place was so big. If someone gave you the shits, you didn’t have to find a way around the problem, you could simply revert to ‘open enemy’ status. Generally speaking, the rule was; if someone makes your life easier, they’re OK, if they make your life miserable then it’s ‘friends off’.

The rule was open and robust, but circumstances could sour over the making of a pot of tea.

Hurricane Windy was blowing a gale one evening.

‘How many beers did Dave have on his break? Why is he so cranky at the moment? Is he fighting with his girlfriend again?’

(Me) ‘I don’t know, but he’s being a complete prick.’

A flappy Brett and a moody Dave was a terrible combination. I should have been more attuned to the weather and kept my head down, but I got caught in the crossfire, barked at for trying to do something nice.

I went dark.

At the end of service Dave attempted conciliation with a wagyu parcel with stracciatella. I shouldered past him.

Fuck that and fuck you.

Having it out with Bruno was preferable to Dave’s simmering tensions and perpetual moodiness.

That impasse stretched on for weeks, during which time an uncomfortable feeling nagged and gnawed at me, a dull dawning sense that underlying all these intensely charged exchanges, maybe I wasn’t doing a very good job at keeping my emotions balanced or in check. Self-mastery was an appealing concept, but I was rubbish at it.

The flip side to Dave’s sullenness was his ineffable charm. Apparently incapable of an apology, he nonetheless flirted and sleazed his way back into my favour.

(Dave) ‘Hello, you’re looking very Summery.’

(Me) ’It’s Summer.’ I brushed past him, haughty and aloof, avoiding his gaze.

But he came up to me, stood next to me, tried again.

(Me) ‘I thought we weren’t friends anymore.’

(Dave) ’I know. We’ve had a little rough patch. I’m hoping we’re over it.’

That’s it?

Despite my stubborn resolve to maintain strict boundaries, it was an enormous psychological relief to let it go. Huge amounts of energy go into upholding resentments. I was exhausted. Instantly everything felt better. Even though everyone else was in a shitty mood that night - the new waiters Scott and Nick, Bruno was hating on Andrea and so on - things at last felt good again.

Double today.

12pm start, 12am finish, although the finishing time is never set in stone…

I was showing Scotty, the new guy, how to do the kitchen set-up. We were in the bar getting chefs buckets.

Plastic drinking buckets are provided to everyone who spends the majority of their working day in the kitchen, on account of the ‘no glass in the kitchen’ policy.

As a guest, you may on occasion find food-grade plastic or curls of metal pot-wash scourer-pads in your meal. We do our utmost to avoid this of course, but it happens. The ‘no glass in the kitchen’ rule reduces to nothing the likelihood of accidental ingestion of glass.

The minimum provisions are; drinking vessel, ice and a plastic straw, distributed to each of the chefs, kitchen porters and runners.

Ideally, 2-litre food-grade prep-buckets are used, but if none are available (if they’re dirty and in wash-up, for example) 1-litre buckets can be used instead. One litre buckets are nice for a not-terribly-busy lunch service. It’s just the right amount if you’re a runner for a two-and-a-half hour service, and the ice keeps your water cold and fresh. However, one-litre buckets are next to useless for the chefs on the main pass - the hottest part of the kitchen - over a six-hour Saturday night bumming, as the quantity of liquid contained evaporates faster than the chefs can drink them.

There was an undercurrent rippling through the kitchen that morning: I sensed something had happened that was going to affect service. This type of information seeps out obliquely. You gather it espionage-style, from gestures, furtive glances and remarks not intended for you, and from trusted sources and reliable bean-spillers, until the dots form a picture.

The importance of hoovering up crumbs of data was something I picked up early. The restaurant is a highly interconnected system and everything affects everyone. If you’re clued-in, you’re better prepared for what’s coming.

Eventually it became instinct.

Smithy gave me the heads-up. Dave, Dale and Billy had whoppers last night. Smithy was with them at the Ship until close (around 2:30am) from where they carried onto the Criterion and were out ’til 7am.

Then they came straight to work.

Smithy was tired, the rest of them were still drunk. Dave reeked of booze and wasn’t altogether with it.

He was calling the pass that day.

(Dave) ’Remember when I used to get cordial in my water?’

(Me) ’Sorry comrade, we’re all drinking the same now.’

(Dave) ’And my bucket smells of Daikon!’

(Me) ’Well talk to this man.’ (Scotty) ‘He did the buckets. I’m the only one that pre-sniffs them.’

There was a 30 pax function in Section 3 that day. The entrees were either beetroot and goat’s curd salads or pork belly. He misread the docket and called the pork bellies as beetroots. It caused havoc.

Fortunately Luffy was overseeing the function. He saw me go to covers 1, 2 and 3 and immediately knew something was up. He was able to avert complete disaster, but not before we came across looking like a bunch of bumbling, inexperienced dickheads.

One of Sydney’s top restaurants where people pay a premium and expect professionalism, if not flawlessness. No wonder Turner goes off his brain. Thank god he wasn’t here to see this display of incompetence.

After the debacle, everyone went on high-alert and double-checked everything. That’s the good thing about being part of a big team: everyone else pitches-in to over-compensate for a weak link.

But Turner is on a 2pm start. Although he spends the afternoon downstairs in the office and the prep kitchen, word gets around that he’s not in a good mood. He’s probably heard what happened at lunchtime…

To have lunch over was a relief. Staff dinner was put up at 4pm as usual. But relief turned to incredulity which turned into thinly-veiled anger. Staff meal was a thoughtless mess of penne pasta, cheddar cheese cubes, heaps of raw spring onions, lentils, white anchovies and salmon, thrown together by chef Michael who’d chopped it, threw it into a pot and walked out the door at 5:00pm.

I remember looking into the cauldron of horror, while behind me two of the chefs were critiquing the offering. As though in a dream, somebody asked nervously: ‘How is it?’ Sean’s drawled, drawn-out response: ‘Horrrrrrribble.’

Ping Pong once told me that Chef Turner used staff meal as a gauge by which to measure the overall abilities of his chefs; the exercise could potentially showcase their experience, their skills, their creativity, their influences, their care-factor.

Or not.

Either way, it was a barometer which was revealing of whoever was allocated to the task of prepping staffies.

In the past, if meals were deemed inedible or otherwise sub-standard, Chef took it upon himself to throw it in the bin, shaming whoever was responsible before speedily whipping up something simple and delicious to sustain the staff. But this same caring attitude was no longer always evident: atrocities like this were becoming commonplace.

It should be explained that staff meal is not simply an act of generosity, although it can definitely be that as well. There’s a budgeted meal allowance for every member of staff who works a shift. This is particularly important for those working doubles, as front of house are technically forbidden to eat during service and the restaurant’s location is such that buying lunch is impractical. Chefs can and do snack through prep and nibble through service, while front of house are commonly too busy getting flogged to even eat their bananas or protein bars to keep blood sugar levels up.

Front of house hospitality staff the world over behave predictably around any surplus available food. The ensuing scene commonly resembles a pack of seagulls competing for a chip. You won’t find us savouring the experience - we get it down the hatch quickly before it’s thrown in the bin or otherwise confiscated.

It was usually around 4pm when one of the owners would pop-in for a visit. Mr Meringue would stride into the kitchen and help himself to one of the servings of staff meal. Not from the pot out the front - which was a free-for-all. No, he’d jag one of the meals plated-up specifically for one of the chefs - complete with their name written on the foil cover - who was still busy scrubbing down the kitchen preparing for dinner service.

On some occasions he’d walk in and seize a whole chicken, resting by the grill, waiting to be carved for a dish, and commence eating it there before everyone in the kitchen, with no regard to what it’s intended purpose was. Nobody dared tell Mr Meringue that this wasn’t appropriate - he was the owner after all - and if it wasn't so audacious it would have been amusing watching Turner silently fume.

So you never knew when your little bit on the side was going to vanish in a poof of cruel fate. Easy come, easy go. Hence the reason for our animalistic carry-on, which was motivated by one basic law; in this context, food is fuel. No-one likes a cranky waiter, and thats what you get if we’re not fed properly.

Furthermore, it was both demoralising and insulting to be served such dreadful food.

At times like this, Brett could be relied upon to take up the fight on our behalf. He had no compunction in fronting Turner to demand why he wasn’t kicking-ass over shitty staff meals. Chef would defend the indefensible, and Brett would threaten to take control of the meal allowance to go and buy forty servo-pies.

Whatever the outcome, at least there were always bread rolls to fall back on in times of desperation.

The only person apparently unaffected by crappy staff meals was Denis. I never saw him eat a single bread roll, staffies or extra function eye fillet the whole time I was there. I wouldn’t have believed that he ate at all if it weren’t for menu tastings, Xmas dinners and his abundant love of good food which betrayed itself on his waistline. He resisted joining-in ‘feeding time at the zoo’ because he prepared and ate meals before he came to work, and he only ever did dinner shifts.

After a brief, miserable half-hour break, Brett asks me to make pre-sets up for à la carte, then go to the back-bar and polish glassware from the function. I’m not there five minutes before Hurricane Windey storms Section 3 looking for me. God what now!

’What have you done with the pre-sets Natasha! You’ve put two sets of cutlery in each napkin!’

Oh, no wonder all the cutlery keeps falling out.

Pre-theatre’s a blur of barked orders.

‘Andrea! Make table 8 a four! Natasha! Get the door! Natasha! Stand in the gutter and hail a cab! We’ve got to look as though we care about the guests!’

Somehow I manage to manoeuvre my way out onto the floor to be the chief table-flipper. I’ve had enough of being in the kitchen, I’ve been there all bloody day.

Normally Teresa anoints herself that role by arriving for work at ten to seven and mystically levitating onto the dining room floor somehow without getting stuck in the seven circles of hell that is the kitchen. I don’t know, she must slip out through the bar or something. I’m secretly congratulating myself for pulling off this coup as I juggle and wrestle my own poorly-made pre-sets onto tables on the dining room floor…

Not long into à la carte Denis already has one on the line. There’s this couple on 62 who, from the minute they’re seated, are all over each other to an embarrassing degree. They’re virtually having sex at the table, carrying on, sucking each other’s fingers and what not.

Denis is revolted, and has to tell everybody about it. Wait staff, management and sommeliers form an orderly queue to gawk, and take turns in being revolted. The couple don’t care as they publicly devour one another.

(Denis) ’They didn’t need entrees, they had finger-food to start.’

The guy blows his nose into his serviette.

Luffy, gossiping at the waiter’s station: ‘They’re having an affair. It's typical affair behaviour. He’s from Melbourne, she’s from Brisbane and they’ve told their partners that they’re away for business. Did they have wedding rings on?’

(Denis) ’I couldn’t see. They were too far down each other’s throats.’

Dinner service flung you around like a pinball machine. Front of house, at every port of call - reception, the bar, POS machine, waiter’s station - there was someone with a remark, an observation, an exclamation, an expletive, each one the cry of a soul in pain in the pit of damnation. Not so in the kitchen. Turner was focused and wound like a spring. There wasn’t a peep or a wisecrack out of any of the chefs. The tension was phenomenal. A couple of times I locked eyes with Billy and Dale - they were sweating like lobsters in a pot.

Dave kept his eyes down in atonement.

Petite fours coming out of pastry signalled the beginning of the end, as they’re the last thing a guest receives before the bill. Sure, knock-off might still be two hours away, but you’re on the home straight.

I take out a special petite four plate for an older couple on table 10, Ashe’s table. It’s got ‘Happy Anniversary’ lavishly curlicued in chocolate in Andy’s beautiful script. I approach the table, popping with joy, knowing that I’ll soon be at the pub.

Normal, well-adjusted people respond with delight to the presentation of petite fours. They’re intended as a nice little surprise, an unexpected treat to finish a beautiful meal.

But the sour-faced woman on table 10 snaps: ‘We didn’t order these!’

Happy Anniversary.

I turn to Ashe who’s directly behind me at the POS machine. He snarls, completing her sentiment: ‘…and we’re NOT HAPPY!’

I’ve been sent to the bar to polish glassware. Tim is grumbling about a guest who’s asked him to ‘make me a cocktail with white rum, pineapple and coconut, but I HAAAATE Piña Coladas’

While Tim contemplates the impossible, Peter is making coffees. The new guy, Scotty, approaches the bar and in an attempt to ingratiate himself with the bar boys with his wry whacky humour, he flops out the following:

‘This lady asked me if we have flavoured lattes. I told her “yes, coffee flavour”’

(Pete) ‘We can do dick flavour.’

I’m doing a mental inventory of who might come to the pub while I polish glasses. I’m almost certain Dale, Dave and Billy won’t be there, not after what they’ve just been through.

But as we go and clock off, Dale calls out to Pete and asks if he’s coming to the pub for a drink. I’m quietly amazed at Dale’s endurance.

(Pete) ’Yeah, I might get Tim to buy me a drink. I’ve got no money.’

(Dale) ‘Thats how the best nights start. Soon you’re hocking your watch…’ (Then wistfully) ‘I used to have a watch once…’

Down the pub Dale declares that he’s done three back-to-back doubles this week. I shudder as Pete observes sagely; ‘Work’s so much easier without a hangover.’

Dale’s riposte arrives without a moment’s hesitation.

‘Life’s too easy without a hangover.

Of all the guests from all the countries we welcomed to the restaurant, none would do our heads in quite like the Americans.

I’ll never forget seating an elderly couple from the U.S. one pre-theatre on a quiet night. They were the very first guests in the front room that evening. I strode through the dining room, puffed-up with pride, presenting Table 6 to them, offering an unparalleled view of the Emerald City, on a hallucinagenically beautiful evening.

You could walk with extra confidence into the front room, because guests were less likely to complain and ask for a better table, a predictable manoeuvre by visitors from the States that you could confidently put money on.

The elderly lady paused before taking her seat. ‘Oh,’ the emotional vacuum remarked. ‘There’s the Bridge.’

I smiled, poised to regale her with dates and facts names and stories…

‘It’s naht at aaahll beautiful.’

‘Neither are you with that attitude’, I thought as I flicked their napkins into their laps, keeping my dates and facts to myself.

It takes some restraint to pour water at a table of loud, bragging American businessmen as you listen to them describe a Ferrari they spotted earlier that day as ‘red, entry-level,’ and not vomit in your own mouth.

If you’re not used to serving Americans, they’re a pain. Obsessed with micro-management and the illusion of being in control, they insist everything be custom made because…they’re special.

(Guest) ‘I’ll have the chicken saaalad’

(Carlo) ‘Sir, have you looked at the menu?’

(Guest) ‘No, but what restaurant doesn’t serve grilled chicken saaalad?’

(Carlo) ‘We don’t, sir.’

Dressing and sauces must be served ‘on the side’, bread is evil and they can’t wrap their minds around the idea that ‘entrées’ are equivalent to ‘starters.’

Americans dine differently, this isn’t news, but it does make them easy target for ridicule. They’re high-maintenance and demanding - a direct consequence of how their own service-industry operates. Slavery was never abolished in the States, it just evolved into the minimum wage.

But not all of them are tactless and devoid of charm, and at least they have an awareness that formal dining follows a structured framework. They know the moment they’re seated to order a pre-dinner drink - cocktails or champagne - to get proceedings underway. They sit down and they already know what they’re going to order, without looking at the cocktail list, which makes everybody’s life - the wait staff, the bar staff and the guests themselves - a little bit easier.

‘She’ll have a gin martini, Bombay, dry, with two olives, and I’ll have a Gibson, Tanqueray, with an onion and an olive. He wants a Grey Goose with a twist of lemon straight up and I’ll have a perfect Belvedere martini on the rocks.’

Boom.

‘Just as well I didn’t attempt to remember all that. I trust Gunzan knows what all these things mean’, I think as I sweat over the POS machine for a solid ten minutes trying to enter the order correctly.

They’re prepared, they’ve got their priorities sorted. They want to capitalise on the company of their guests whilst enjoying a drink. It’s in stark contrast to Trevor and Denise, the Aussie couple out for dinner catching up with friends.

(Waiter) ’Would you like still, sparkling or tap water?’

(Guest) ‘Yes please. Water.’

(Waiter) ‘Can I get you started with some drinks?’

(Guest, sternly) ‘We’ve only just sat down and we haven’t seen each other in ages.’

(Female guest) ‘Do you have any Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc?’

(Waiter) ‘All the wines by the glass are listed here, madam.’

(Male guest) ‘I’m gonna start with a beer. What beers do you have on tap?’

(Waiter) ‘We don’t have any beers on tap sir. You’ll find our selection of bottled beer here on the wine list.’

(Male guest) ‘Cindy, what are you having?’

(Cindy) ’Oh I’m not drinking alcohol. I’m being good.’

(Denise) ‘Ooo good for you!’

(Waiter) ‘Eh, I’ll give you a few minutes with the wine list. I’ll be back shortly.’

Nine tables have been seated in the time it’s taken for this exchange to take place. The waiters entire section is now full. He needs to attend each of them, take their drinks orders or ensure drinks are coming in the event that a runner or a sommelier has taken the order, as well as verbal any specials. Occasionally the waiter gets held-up and if his sommelier goes missing - looking for a bottle of wine in the cellar - then Trevor mightn’t get to order his beer for another ten minutes, by which time he’s guaranteed to be cranky.

We don’t have this problem with Americans.

The other nice thing about Americans is that they recognise good service and they tip accordingly. While working in fine dining I’ve heard so much rubbish about tipping; Australia doesn’t have a tipping culture, Americans tip because they feel they have to, restaurants in Australia should pay their staff proper wages so they don’t have to rely on tips.

Every one of those excuses is mean-spirited frog-shit.

Hospitality is directly descended from ancient, noble customs. In Ancient Greece, as in civilised cultures around the globe, a guest’s ability to abide by the laws of hospitality determined nobility and social standing.

According to tradition, the people we serve are our guests. In a manner of speaking we invite you into our ‘home’ and all fifty of us are squarely busting our asses to show you a great time. You’re obliged to pay for the food and wine - this is conditional hospitality, which differs from the archaic practice - and some of you go so far as to gush about how it was the ‘best service you’ve ever experienced’, before departing without leaving a tip.

It may come as a surprise, but this is a trifle insulting.

Look at it this way, tipping is both a gesture of gratitude, and of reciprocity.

Let’s say a friend invites you out on their 40 metre Benetti Oasis for a day on the harbour. You can never hope to repay this gesture in kind, because you don’t have the means, but within your means you can still reciprocate. Genuine people manage to find ways to show their appreciation, and demonstrating gratitude need not be extravagant.

Guests aren’t usually in a position to repay us in kind with friendship or days out on luxury boats even if they wanted to, but there’s a simple way around this problem and that’s by leaving a tip to say thanks. It’s always deeply appreciated.

To those of you whose line is: ‘We can’t afford to tip’, I’m reminded of the embedded ambivalence contained within the Latin root word hostis, meaning both ‘stranger’ and ‘enemy’. If you can’t afford to tip, you can’t afford to eat out. (See also ‘hostile’).

Tuesday lunch and we’re flat out. Dave’s on the pass, I’m the only runner, Luffy’s on the floor and Romain is sommelier.

There’s a function of sorts, a big table of 16 out in the front room. They’re like Brown’s cows; they won’t take their seats and there’s a few arriving late who are holding up proceedings.

A docket comes through for a single amuse buche. ‘Thats the last of them,’ I think as I peruse the scene from just outside the kitchen door. There’s no cover number indicated on the docket, so I’m not sure where to go.

Luffy’s at the POS terminal at the waiters station. He sees me and yells out above the chattering guests: ‘Sheeds! Kick it to Sheedy!!!’

There’s a big bloke partially obscured on the other side of the table - he’s the latecomer. I approach the jolly giant from behind and to the side. I don’t get a positive I.D. on his face, but he’s got the biggest pair of hands I’ve ever seen in my life.

Its actually Kevin Sheedy.

In a two-hat fine-dining restaurant, yelling out a conspicuous guest’s name across the room isn’t generally best practice, but so long as you get the job done it’s fair play.

‘SERR-VIIICE!!’

Romain sticks his head into the kitchen.

(Me) ’Here, Romain, run some food will you?’

He enters the kitchen and approaches the pass.

(Dave, to Romain) ‘Table four. Bass Grouper, 1, Dory, 2, sauce.’

On his way out the kitchen Romain holds up the sauce and asks, ‘What do I do with this?’

(Me) ’Finish the dish at the table. You want me to come with you?’

(Romain) ‘No, it’s OK.’

I’m following him to the same table with vegetable sides. As he returns from the table, we meet and I ask, ‘Did you sort it out?’

(Romain) ’Yes.’

But when I arrive at the table I see what’s happened - the Grouper has no sauce and the Dory is swimming in the dashi broth.

(Me) ‘Romain, are you mad? You poured the sauce on the wrong fish!’

(Romain) ‘I thought it was a little bit funny, because the Dory already had a sauce. But it was Dave’s fault, because he said Bass, Dory and sauce.’

As we’re standing at the waiter’s station arguing, Luffy sweeps past the table.

(Josh) ’Are we pouring the dashi broth on the Dory now?’

I go back into the kitchen and tell Dave what’s happened. He’s furious.

(Dave) ‘GET ROMAIN IN HERE NOWWWW! THAT’S LIKE ME GOING OUT THERE AND PISSING INTO HIS WINE!’

Speaking of hostile, Chef seemed permanently set to ‘livid’ these days. He was working on ideas for the new menu and spent hours in meetings with the owners and operations manager. The front of house managers had given up scouting for mood updates. Something big was building.

We had the biggest bunch of wankers in tonight. Table 11 was a party of CUBs - cashed up bogans - chunky gold jewellery-wearing spivs and their Cocaine Barbies. They’re out celebrating one of the ladies’ birthdays. They’re Sylvania Waters on crack, blokes up one end of the table talking about money, real-estate and cars, while the women are going into excruciating detail about diets, diamond rings and boob-jobs.

The table was being looked after by one of the new waiters, a Portugeezer named Alex Jose De Papa De Jesus, or Papa for short.

’Table 11 said when I put the Peking Duck Consommé down, “I’m vegetarian.” So what’s she having for mains?’

(Papa) ‘Chicken.’

‘Classy bunch,’ Ashe remarks in wash-up after clearing entrées. ‘The guy who’s wife is having the birthday insults her three times in three minutes in front of their six friends just now.’

Brash and banal, they’re a parody of themselves; fascinating, entertaining and horrifying in equal measure. The final box of their predictable-personality-profile is ticked when the birthday girl ask if Matt’s in tonight ('We're friends').

Of course you are Darls.

I’m standing at the bar, complaining to Tim about Table 11.

(Tim) ’Do you ever want to lie to people when they ask you “Is Matt in tonight?” I just want to say, “Yeah, he’s downstairs chopping onions”. Sometimes I get confused and I think they’re talking about Matt Dunne and I say, “Yeah, he’s just there on the floor” and they’re looking around, confused, going “Where?”

There comes a time most nights when you feel that the worst of it is over in the same way you feel a storm has passed.

Guests arrive with enormous expectations, on-edge and nervous. The tension some nights could lift the roof off. There are people proposing, others celebrating anniversaries and birthdays, others who feel intimidated to be in surroundings like this and others still who are simply over-wound stress-heads. Some nights its like the doors open to a horde of ‘hangry’ marauding barbarians and it’s our job to feed and soothe and tame them, get them to a point where they’re no longer dangerous, aggressive and volatile.

When you finally feel that change of gear towards the end of the evening - usually around 10pm - you can breathe a sigh of relief while going through the remaining routines of the evening.

Delivering soufflés was a favourite exercise of mine, it was an intelligence-test of sorts (for the guest). Unlike some of the other runners who’d drop the dessert and run, I’d go to great lengths to make sure my important service announcement was heard and understood, even to English language-challenged guests.

‘Madam. Please be mindful that the little copper pot has come straight out of the oven. Please don’t touch the handle as it’s very hot.’

On hearing this, a surprising number of guests reach for the handle to see just how hot, while a few others seize the handle completely because they don’t believe you at all (‘but it doesn’t look hot’).

What possesses people to defy their waiter’s advice I don’t know, but I was not so cruel to find amusing the occasions where a few poor souls required the application of burn-cream.

None of those victims were recipients of my soufflés, I can assure you.

(Chef) ’What’s your stripper-song?’

You arrive to work mid-scene, mid-conversation, walking-in on snatches of disjointed conversation. Roll with it. It’s a chance to scope the opposition.

(Me) ’Trouble. Amy Winehouse.’

These days there's a distinct adversarial ‘us vs them’ atmosphere noticeable in the air, ‘them’ being the guests. There’s a surprising amount of cranky, demanding people in the dining room, and like a dog that’s been smacked over the nose with a rolled up newspaper, eventually you start losing your nerve. That’s why it’s important to have a well of hope to draw from, a glimmer of good fortune, something to keep your spirits up so you can go out on the floor and give good face. Get in character and do some method acting. Pretend you’re not dying on the inside.

You get fisted on the floor and Chef’s in a bad mood and the runners are being bitches so you’re fighting a war in the kitchen as well. Monday, Tuesday, the atmosphere is tense and anxious. On Wednesday we have the new menu tasting.

That’s been building for a while now. We didn’t know it at the time, but the tectonic plates were shifting and the fault lines were about to be drawn.

Menu tastings generally run to a loose script. Scrupulously-detailed booklets of food-tasting notes are distributed along with pens for taking notes. Once the front of house team are seated down the length of a long table, the chefs bring out the new dishes for the wait-staff to sample and discuss, starting with entrées. Chef talks us through the dishes answering any questions about providence and preparation, while the more pedantic wait-staff scan the food notes to pick up typos and other errors.

‘Whats an ‘Ubergine?’

‘A very big eggplant.’

More often than not, wine is involved. The pairings are important, particularly with dishes on the degustation menu. Everyone, down to the dizziest food runner, needs to sound like they know what they’re talking about, but predictably there’s a fine line between wine training and abusing the privilege.

I’ve chosen a strategic position up one end of the table in the company of Kirsten, Kiwi Mel, Rita and Michela. The boys - confident, loud, vociferous boys - are down the other end of the table. We’re out of the line of fire, but it’s a good vantage point from which to observe proceedings.

It’s abundantly clear that Turner’s on a short fuse from the get-go. This is unusual, he’s generally pretty obliging when it comes to food tastings. With months of hard work behind him, he usually showcases the new season’s dishes like a proud father.

But the wait staff are getting loose after a few glasses of wine and the silly questions department is just limbering-up. I’m holding my breath, anticipating the free-radical antagonism thats coming. I watch while the usual suspects get loud and Chef contracts into a ball of anger. He wraps up the tasting component of proceedings as quickly as possible so he can get back into the kitchen and seethe about how much he hates us.

This isn’t the end of the presentation.

P.S. is on hand to explain the new pricing structure, congruent with the new dishes. In a nutshell, upper management have taken the collective decision to follow Guillaume Brahimi, who’d closed the lauded Guillaume at Bennelong on New Year’s Eve 2013 and re-invented itself in Paddington. The price structure at the new Guillaume ensures a minimum spend per head, preventing a compromised dining experience by guests who’d come in and have, let’s say, ‘a salad with the dressing on the side as an entree and then an entree-sized tuna and a mashed potato as a main course.’ (No prizes for guessing the nationality of that particular guest.)

Far be it from anybody to tell anyone how they should dine, the new menu structure prevented this type of nonsense by setting a price for any two, three or four courses, a brilliant tactical response giving guests the freedom to dine as they please while ensuring they still meet a minimum spend.

But none of us had any idea about the practicalities of this new approach and how it would work in real life; presumably that’s what we were here to have explained. Half of us realised it was an important opportunity to ask questions while the other half were busy showcasing their hilarity.

P.S. is waffling, not speaking directly, perhaps because he knows he doesn’t have everyone’s attention. He’s talking about everything else - food presentation, how to set a table, the new huon pine amuse-buche boards that are on order - everything except the nuts and bolts of the new system. The lack of focus starts feeling like obfuscation. Have they worked out all the details?

It seemed a sound solution to a problem that the business faced, but the guests are bound to ask a million questions and front of house needs to know how to answer them. Kirsten got the ball rolling by posing a few ‘what-ifs’, but they were met with a non-committal response and P.S.’s patience visibly wearing velum thin. A query about billing got a nebulous answer before the topic was abruptly changed.

Unsatisfied, Kirsten prompted Michela to re-word and re-pose essentially the same question. For a second time the answer was dodged. She tried a third time.

‘We’ve already answered that question.’ Came the terse response. It was classic Canberra press-conference.

Denis was equally as tenacious on another topic - exactly what I couldn’t hear, but P.S’s agitation was ramping up.

No longer able to follow the detail of the argument, my mind drifted to the recent Hat’s Off dinner, the last time I saw P.S. lose it.

‘WHERES THE CASSIS! I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE IT, WE’VE GOT NO CASSIS! HOW CAN YOU ONLY FIND THAT OUT NOW! ITS A LACK OF COMMUNICATION - SHE WASN’T TALKING….’

As the memory hologram blinked into focus in my head, the real P.S. blurts out;

‘WELL IF YOU CAN’T HANDLE CHANGE, MAYBE YOU SHOULD RECONSIDER WHETHER OR NOT YOU SHOULD BE WORKING HERE!!’

Led by Luffy, the boys responded with jeering and heckling. A football-crowd chorus of ‘ooooOOOO!’ swelled down the other end of the table, pulling the rug from under P.S’s stance. They weren’t going to be intimidated. Chowie tried to step in and take charge, but his explanations made even less sense, if that’s possible. The meeting deteriorated into a rabble-farce.

Two hours was up. Kirsten was freaking out about Brett’s anxiety levels, because the restaurant wasn’t set ready for service. Thank the lord I wasn’t working that night, so I scurried off to the pub and had a couple with the boys. I mentioned that I‘d gone home on Sunday night and for the first time since I started working at the restaurant I got on Seek, the go-to employment website.

‘And what did you find?’

‘Nothing.’

Change was the constant in the equation - resistance was futile - but it wasn’t change that was making me reconsider whether or not I should be working there.

Friday nights were getting more brutal by the week. Starting work, it was difficult to walk into the kitchen with a spring in your step.

Staff meal was up. Poised over the large steel gastro tray, Luffy paused to greet me.

‘How are you Tash? Looking forward to another night of service? I am. I can’t wait to start work. I can’t, really. It’s not a bad place to work, as work goes. I wan’t to be rich! I want to be concerned about my horse running in tomorrow’s Golden Slipper…. I want to be worried about my tennis doubles…I want to be worried about my golf score, 5 under par! I want to be worried because I need to renew the rego on my boat, but I have to take friends out fishing! I want to be worried because my travel agent has stuffed up my flights to Bali, and I have to get a new one….’

Oh no. Luffy’s cracking. He continues to gibber as he sifts through staff meal.

‘They’ve shredded the lettuce too thin and I can’t eat it. And the cheese cubes are too big. It’s like they got two seperate morons in two seperate rooms who didn’t know what the other was preparing and got them to randomly chop things.’

I check the run sheet and the allocations. It’s 116 for Pre, 158 à la carte. I’m in the kitchen with Nik W (he’s OK) Mel 2 and Miss America (both of them need to be handled with kid gloves). We should be OK.

I hope.

Where’s Teresa? Off tonight. Where’s Andrea? They’ve put her in a section. Fuck. This is not her strong suit. Gabor’s in a section for the first time. Jesus are we really that short on waiters? And there’s this new sommelier, Johnny. God only knows what he’s like. Why Friday night? Why can’t we do dress-rehearsals on a quiet night?

Pre-theatre blows through like a typhoon. I have to tray up butter before 7pm but Luffy requests assistance on the floor flipping tables. Chef’s screaming and swearing about there being no waiters to run food and apparently nobody front of house knows what they’re doing.

Not coping with the stress of being on the floor, Andrea has morphed into Andreazilla. Big Tim and I have just managed to clear a large table in the front room together and we’re struggling to carry piles of teetering heavy plates into pot-wash when Andrea screeches ‘BEHIND’ and barges through like a battering ram, body slamming both of us and splattering me aside so she can dump her plates first and get back out into her section before Ben seizes her for service.

(Me to Tim) ‘Sorry mate, I seem to have wiped mash on your pants.’

(Tim) ‘Don’t be; I think I’ll start wearing it like war-paint, commando-style. HAHA!’

I run bread out to Table 35. Johnny’s at the table talking wine, so I stand with my back to the credenza looking down the room, waiting for the green light to approach the table. Six young Asian ladies on Table 40 have only just sat down with menus, I’m sure they’re going to start waving for attention any second. Josh joins me me and performs the exact same inventory. Whispering Ted Lowe provides the commentary.

‘Ah, Paddy McPaddy’s taking his time…’ He glances at Table 40. ‘What do these cunts want?’

The ding of the pastry bell sounds. It’s a special ‘Happy Birthday’ petite fours plate for a table in Andrea’s section, complete with birthday candle. Now, the general rule of thumb is that the section waiter responsible for the table presents the special occasion plates where possible, for reasons of continuity and to personalise the service. That way, it looks more like a thoughtful gesture undertaken by the waiter for their guest, as opposed to a robotic factory production line. The personal touch is paramount.

I can see that she’s busy, so I leave the plate on her station with a slip of paper clearly denoting which table it’s for so as to avoid confusion. Before long, we cross paths at the pastry pass.

(Me) ‘Did you get those petite fours for 42?’

(Andrea, screaching) ‘I’VE TOLD EVERYONE; IF A WAITER DOESN’T HAVE TIME TO PUT IT ON THE TABLE, THEN DO IT YOURSELF!’ (Marches off in a huff.)

God. No wonder Windey goes off his brain when people make up their own rules.

Next thing I know, Chrissy punches through the door from the front room and stacks spectacularly at my feet. Its the second time in two weeks, the last one happened on the polished wooden floor in the main bar. She doesn’t get up right away and it’s clear she’s in a lot of pain. Ash passes me a milk crate for her to sit on, and I go to find Josh.

(Me) ‘Crack-pipe Chrissy’s fallen over again.’

(Josh) ‘I thought I was the only one who thought that.’

An ambulance is called and she’s stretchered off with a broken wrist. Chrissy’s not long been promoted to assistant restaurant manager. She’s been wearing these silly heeled boots with her new manager’s suit to give her a bit of authoritative lift. Either it’s the shoes or she’s injured herself doing a fun-run a few weeks back to raise money for bears in China, I’m not a hundred percent certain.

Anyway, another dramatic conclusion to a blur of a night

I’m standing in the kitchen next to Luffy, reading the run sheet.

‘Now,’ he says, ‘I’ve cancelled Brooklyn….’

I scan the allocations to see who else I’m working with. Teresa and Mel 2. I groan.

(Josh) ’What’s wrong? Who’ve you got?’

(Me) ‘The coven of witches.’

(Josh) ‘So who’s on your team now? Andrea?’

(Me) ‘Sometimes.’

(Josh) ‘You’re in a team of your own. Like Buddy!’

It’s tricky explaining why somebody doesn’t fit the culture of a particular workplace without coming across as a psycho yourself.

Mel 2 was a frail, undernourished slip of a woman who dreamed of starring in B-grade soaps and T.V. ads and had just emerged from a borderline abusive relationship with a waiter from Quay named Reza.

That I knew such intimate details five minutes after she entered the building was already, in my opinion, cause for concern.

She hadn’t been there a week when she pulled Brett up at reception to demand why he didn’t say ‘hello’ to her when she arrived at work.

We’d be mid-service in the kitchen with Chef on the pass and she’d start asking inane questions, oblivious to the tensions simmering in the background.

(Mel 2) ‘What’s the name of the architect for the Opera House?’

(Me) ‘Jørn Utzon’

(Mel 2) ‘Pardon?’

(Me) ‘Jørn Utzon. UTZON’

(Mel 2) ‘Ah yes, that’s right. And what year did it open?’

(Me) ‘’73’

She’s studying for her tips test. I’m freaking-out because on one hand I know that any minute Chef’s about to rip-off my head and shit down my throat, while on the other hand, if Miss Mel doesn’t like the tone of my voice, she’ll run and cry to H.R.

Training staff isn’t a simple task. It requires a specific skill-set, patience and plenty of time. Management was giving Teresa and I people to train, but they weren’t investing us with any authority; we were still just kitchen shit-kickers. So if someone came in with a chip on their shoulder and took umbrage at a couple of runners making them polish cutlery, they were under no obligation to follow directions. Nor did management ensure that we were equipped with the appropriate skill-set for the task. They basically brought new staff into the kitchen in the same way people were pushed into the arena at the Colosseum.

Most of the time, this method worked. When it failed, it was because someone was patently unsuitable for the role. If they were smart, they quickly realised and left. This was a good result. On other occasions people stayed and expected special treatment.

Teresa took these people under her wing.

Teresa had a thing about bullying in the workplace. This subject is such a cause célèbre that I’m not even going to attempt to deal with it, suffice to say that we all know what it is, and yet it’s a dangerously subjective topic. I try not to behave like a bully but I’m aware that I’m not a hundred percent rational all the time and I’m far from perfect. That said, if I can avoid both bullies and the people who claim to be victims of bullies, then I’m stoked. I’d rather have nothing to do with the whole messy business.

I was constitutionally ill-equipped to deal with hair-trigger mind-fuckery, and given past experience (Lindsay Bondage, Rebecca) I considered the safest thing to do was keep well clear of unstable explosive devices.

Brooklyn arrived around about the same time.

Young and very pretty, Miss America was a virtue-signalling, two-dimensional cartoon character with a three-dimensional booty (which she liked people to notice). Her mother was also an attractive woman; I have no idea why, but she was often in the kitchen participating in a mutual sleaze-fest with Mr Meringue.

Brooklyn wasn’t a dreadful person, just a silly one. She’d turn up to work each day wearing camel-toe active-wear and proceed to touch her toes in the kitchen, revealing to the chefs on the pass everything she’d had for breakfast. She was adamant she was going to study brain-surgery before revising her career-path to yoga-instructor. In a similar fashion, she was in the process of exploring the spectrum of her bi-sexuality, which also had to be broadcast as though we gave a fuck. One of the boys did give a fuck - right down the back of her throat - in the interest of helping her ‘discover’ herself.

For the record, I’m inclined to pay scant attention to excessively good-looking people as they get more than enough attention from everybody else. Furthermore, I consider it unlikely they’ve ever felt the need to cultivate either their brains or their personalities, which makes them predisposed to dullness and stupidity. I’d be delighted to be proven wrong but in this case I wasn’t. Not that I had any problem with Brooklyn ‘discovering herself’, I just didn’t care to hear about it in the context of work (bring it down the pub, make it entertaining).

Teresa cosseted these girls in the kitchen, whereas I had no interest indulging their tedious chit-chat. Sure, I was prone to bullshitting and gossiping just like anyone, but in the kitchen it was important to keep communication brief and to the point. When tensions were high, Andrea and I would speak in sound-bytes.

The predictable outcome of all this was a radicalised splinter-faction of ‘you-can’t-talk to-me-like-that’ uppity entitlement by an overly-sensitive but powerful minority whose raison d’être became more important than the work they were being paid for. I agree it’s important to stand up for yourself but there’s a fine line between self-determination and self-indulgence.

They started suiting themselves, behaving like a mini-gang.

I remember coming to work one evening after a night off and I had people queuing up to complain bitterly about their collective work ethic the night prior. Andrea was in the kitchen with them until close and there was a backlog of cutlery and crockery to polish when Brooklyn decided to start doing pre-folds. ‘It’s like, why don’t you bitches finish what we’re supposed to do first?’

Then Luffy has a grizzle - which was really unusual. According to him, they’d decided to pursue their own agenda to get out of the kitchen by a certain time. Then they were told they had to set section 3. Then Mel 2 and Rochelle had to leave so they could catch last busses at 12:45am. ‘Thank god Andrea just put her head down and got on with it.’

Then Rochelle starts telling me her version of what happened - Rochelle’s a compulsive talker, who speaks her world into existence in minute and excruciating detail. She can be entertaining on occasion but has neither a filter nor a cut-off switch, and so vomits excessive verbiage most of the time and I have to walk away mid-conversation to escape.

Down at the Ship after work, we’re taking the piss out of Brooklyn.

(Pete) ’Have you heard her present the amuse buche? She calls them ‘palate openers.’

(Me) ’Where did she find such a dreadful expression? Oh that’s right, she’s American.’

It seems to me that Septics are hell-bent on making everything to do with food sound ugly. You can have your steak broiled - that sounds disgusting - you can have a slider - straight down the hatch, no need to chew or taste - or, if you prefer, you can have trash-can chicken, a sloppy joe or some cookie-dough ice-cream. My appetite is positively whet.

Leaving aside the obvious smutty reference to alcoholic drinks purchased for a female with the express intent of bedding her, ‘palate-openers’ doesn’t even make any logical sense. Are we talking orthodontic jaw-expanders? Sit back and relax while we get a ratchet-jack in there and open up that damn palate of yours!

(Scotty) ‘Someone’s got to say something to her about that.’

(Charlie) ‘Yeah, it’s terrible. Someone needs to tell her.’

Alright, I’ll do it.

The following night during service I call her over to the dispense bar.

(Brooklyn) ‘You didn’t tell me there were monks on Table 13! I love monks - they’re everything I want to be as a yogi.’

(Me) ‘Brooklyn listen to me, you’ve got to stop calling the amuse-buche ‘palate-openers’. It sounds awful. It makes everyone think of leg-openers.’

She was shocked. In typical pretty-girl fashion, she genuinely had no idea of the effect her words had on other people because of a glaring lack of ability or inclination to scrutinise herself. She had to ask several other waiters for confirmation that what I said was true.

(Brooklyn) ‘Is that wrong?’

(Michela) ‘Yeah, it sounds horrible.’

(Brooklyn) ‘It must be an American thing.’

Poor Brooklyn. She was probably genuinely aspiring to be a decent person, even though she was completely clueless as to how to go about it. My cynicism was decidedly less charitable - it had taken up residence in my soul and like pestilence laid waste to all that was good. I was brittle, letting trivial things wear me down. Maybe I was coming unravelled like Ping-Pong?

I needed to shift my headspace out of the restaurant. Maybe socialising with different people would alleviate the intensity? But hospitality contains a  paradox; we’re working when everyone else is off-duty. ‘Nine-to-fivers’ exist in an alternate, parallel universe. Even if you meet one, you’re never going to be able to spend time with them.

So when I met a tradie in a pub one night, I ignored the multiple warning sirens, waving red flags and other signs and decided that this was my chance to escape the forces pulling me under at the restaurant.

One story from that time serves as a neat little allegory for the wider, sad mess of the ensuing months.

One hot summer day we went to the beach for a swim. I’d never swum at Tamarama, so that’s where we decided to go. A narrow opening between two headlands with a sharp drop into deep water, Tamarama is treacherous for swimming, although arguably if you’re foolish enough not to take a few moments to read conditions before getting in the water (like the ‘Beach is Closed’ sign) you get what you deserve.

No sooner was I submerged in cold salt water, I was claimed by a tremendous rip. It happened ferociously quickly - I seemed to be getting sucked towards the big rock at the South end of the beach and yet I wasn’t travelling at all. I thought about my Open Water training and all the other times I’d been caught in rips - it wasn’t one of those where the rules to stay calm and float out from the shore applied - this was so capricious that simply staying afloat was nearly impossible. I swam for my life just to keep my head above water, and I could tell I didn’t have much left in me to keep going.

The tradie managed to make it to shore, but I barely hung on until the lifeguard dragged me up onto his surfboard. Back on land my legs were jelly, I couldn’t stand from fatigue.

In real life it took much longer to learn and fully integrate the lessons presented at the time - I’m not too quick on the uptake, after all. But it remains humbling that at the end of the whole sorry saga, lifeguards were there to pull me out of my foolish demise. They wore chef’s whites and waiters vests.

(Laureti) ‘I’ve gotta go mate, Billy and Tash have just arrived. No I’m glad they’re here. It’s just Dave…’

Laureti’s on the phone to Aaron as he opens the security door to his apartment complex. He’s having a party and seems displeased about some of the company.

It was either commendably courageous or thoroughly naïve to hold an after-work party at your place, as they were typically haphazard affairs. Stamina’s always a problem - usually for overworked chefs - but that’s why substances were invented. Even still, there was always guaranteed to be someone crumpled in a heap and on this occasion it was - let’s say his name was ‘Bob’ - who had the misfortune to fall into a coma on the couch with his head tilted back, mouth wide open. He was begging to be tea-bagged, and Dale was happy to oblige.

I was standing in the kitchen talking to Romain, Pulp Fiction was playing on the stereo. Before me in the lounge room, Dale stripped from the waist down. Wearing just a T-shirt and his infectious grin, Dale mounted the couch spider-like and ever so daintily. Hovering briefly to ensure the payload was on target, he lowered his pendulous scrotum with great care, gently into Bob’s gaping maw. It was executed with such lightness that the sleeping chef wasn’t disturbed in the slightest.

That sort of behaviour was quite normal back then.

Dave’s time at the restaurant was coming to an end, and while it may have been a relief for people like Laureti, it was disappointing for those of us who enjoyed our entertainment low-brow and in bad taste. Who else would question a wheelchair-bound disabled person at the pub for a chair, challenging them with the reasoning: ’but you’re already sitting down!’ before pissily returning to the group and carrying on, ‘Thats bullshit! Why does he need it?’. Who else wouldn’t hesitate to describe some god-awful ferment experiment gone wrong in the kitchen as ‘smelling like a hooker’s asshole’?

Then again, who would miss the monumental embarrassments?

It may have been the day after Laureti’s party, a Sunday dinner shift where everyone was hung over and wishing for death or the pub to come quickly. Dave was on the pass. I’d just managed to make it through the worst of service and had decided to treat myself to a restorative bowl of mash. On occasions like this I’d wait for a quiet moment and discreetly take an empty bowl over to the chef on mash duties for a scoop of pristine, untouched pommes mousseline - it was probably Kiwi Shane that night. Then I’d take a generous pinch of Maldon sea salt flakes to replace the salts I’d sweated out through service and sprinkle them on top, before squirrelling myself out of sight from chef on the pass in the pastry alcove to take a hit of soothing, velvety mash.

On this occasion the world and everything I believed in instantaneously imploded around me. I hurled myself from the safety of the cover of pastry out into the open and over to pot-wash where, gagging, I spat out the mash into the garbage receptacle. Malek the kitchen porter looked at me as though I’d lost my mind.

(Me) ’DAVE! The mash is SOUR!’

This was not a small oversight. We’d been serving it all night.

(Dave) ‘What do you MEAN? How do you KNOW!’

‘I just had some,’ I confessed. I wasn’t about to pull the bullshit charades you have to at times, like when Szeeto and I were eating oyster canapés out the back of section three and we discovered they were off, but couldn’t tell Turner how we discovered the problem…

Fuck it, it’s the chef’s job to taste as they go, to make sure the seasoning is balanced. It shouldn’t be up to a runner to discover at the very end of service. And this wasn’t just a little bit off, like when people question the crème fraîche thinking the sourness is a mistake. This was very definitely wrong. Why hadn’t any of the guests complained?

3:30pm and I’m early to work for a 4pm start to get myself dinner and get organised at a leisurely pace. The minute you walk through the door you can tell what sort of lunch service it was, but you ask anyway for confirmation.

(Me) ‘How was lunch Charlie?

(Charlie, grumbling) ‘Sooicide is easier than doing lunch.’

The G20 Summit is in town and Matteo Renzi was in with a delegation of Italian brass. Francois Hollande is coming in for dinner. Its a big day. Everyone’s stressed except for Davide, the Italian Tasmanian Devil.

More excited than I’ve ever seen him, he’s managed to get a selfie with the Italian Prime Minister. He’s running around showing everyone and it’s the most unlikely photo-with-a-politician imaginable - Renzi and Davide look like they’re raving at a music festival together. Davide always looks clownish, but kudos to the bemused Renzi who permitted himself a moment to relax.

It was in complete contrast to the Gauls.

Section 3 is set for the très sérieux French contingent. Scotty and Christian have been allocated to look after them, but they’ve brought their own waiters, sommeliers, Major Generals, guillotines….not to mention their own wine. They’re extremely high maintenance, but they’re not letting anyone do anything for them. It begged the question, why didn’t they bring their own chefs and foie gras too? I don’t suppose there’ll be any selfie opportunities.

If two European heads of state are better than one, it failed to fill the political quota for the restaurant that day. Additionally, we entertained Cate Blanchett, Robert Redford and Denis Quaid on Table 12 who happened to be promoting the political docudrama Truth.

There were more security in the house than guests that evening.

‘Do you think I could get a photo with Mr Meringue?’

The question wasn’t uncommon, given the owner of the restaurant was a celebrity chef, although it was generally asked by the guests. A particular brand of insanity was on display when the question was posed with dogged insistence by one of the newer members of staff. 

‘I come from a small country town in Queensland and nothing ever happens there. It’s the least they could do for firing me all those years ago.’

One Hit Wonder Rochelle left nothing to the imagination, due to a total incapacity to shut the fuck up. There was zero mystery to the woman, on account of a tireless enfilade of never-ending nonsense emanating from her bottomless pit of self-belief. Sometimes it’s healthy to have inhibitions and limitations; Rochelle was living proof of what happens otherwise.

A shameless self-promoter, she was upfront about a failed attempt at rock-stardom. Now, had I been the one pinning my hopes and dreams on such a tenuous, fickle career-move only to have it amount to nothing, I’d probably do what most normal people would do and attempt to move on with life making as few references as possible to my miserable aborted aspirations whilst relying on drugs and alcohol as an escape.

Not so Rochelle. She was proud and boastful of what she considered her heady achievements, despite now having to turn her hand to waitressing in order to earn a living.

I took the stories about her alternative universe on face value. ‘Award winning Australian rock singer-songwriter, attained Top 5 Music OZ People’s Choice Award in addition to being Top 50 Music Oz Awards Rock Genre Finalist 2010.’ Accolades mixed with delusions.

But Chef Turner delved into her allegations: he Googled her. He discovered visual evidence of this unlikely scenario. Blonde hair, smudgy black eyeliner and studded leather biker-jacket making a coy, semi-apologetic ‘rock n roll’ hand gesture at the camera.

Her self-penned songs include, but are not limited to, ‘Miss Bad Thing’, ‘Sweet Lemonade’ and ‘Rebel Queen’.

‘Hey there sucker with the ripped up jeans, I think I want to be your Rebel Queen’.

After laying eyes on the product, I felt less disheartened for her and more cross at the production team and managers involved who’d allowed her to waste time and effort on what amounted to an expensive dress-up session. She is a completely unique individual, but none of her delightfully deranged personality made it through to either her songs nor her branded image. Just a sad facsimile of tired, manufactured rock-chick clichés. There wasn’t a shred of authenticity or originality to any of it; it had all been done better before.

Anyway, she was thrilled that we were all talking about her, and because of her no-holds barred approach to life, she could be stupefyingly entertaining.

Since her glory days, she’d stacked on the kilograms, though it has to be said that even back then she hadn’t been svelte. Lusty in appetite, she loved food, and never let a guest’s uneaten petite-four go begging.

Heliproctor adored engaging in lewd banter with her in Section 3 bar, pushing to see what he could get away with. Hidden from guests, the back bar was where any spare food - including unwanted petite-fours - would end up.

(Rochelle) ‘Ooooh, petite fours! Can I eat them?’

(Proctor) ‘Why do you have to eat them all?’

(Rochelle) ’I’m comfortable with my body the way it is!’

(Proctor) ’Do you imagine eating food when you’re having sex? I bet your favourite position is doggy-style, so you can keep eating petite fours at the same time as your boyfriend’s giving it to you.’

Rochelle would giggle and blink her big brown eyes, fluttering her lashes in mock surprise. Her saccharine artifice made me wonder about the claim that she’d studied acting at one of Australia’s premier drama schools. Everything about her was more Warner Brothers Loony Tunes than NIDA. But while her riposte was never dazzling, to her credit she was never left speechless.

Speaking of bad actors, this chef had come on board that was driving me up the wall, but where Rochelle was light comic relief, Alexis was a dark Scandinavian drama. She was like a black hole of intensity - she had the uncanny ability to suck the joy from you as you walked past her through the kitchen. The awful part about it was that she desperately wanted to please, but that desperation and it’s associated neediness served as natural repellent.

It didn’t help that she was a passionate advocate for the gluten-free lifestyle.

Initially I expressed interest in her views, merely as an attempt to understand her. No sooner was I bludgeoned by her prescriptive indoctrination. I remember her talking-up a miraculous chocolate and chia seed cake.

(Alexis) ’Take coco powder - it’s so bloody good for you.’

(Me) ’Why?’

(Alexis) ’It just is. It’s so much better than McDonald’s.’

She proceeds to tell me she’s had two incidents involving Red Rooster where she bit into an abscess and after that decided to turn vegetarian. She’s telling me this whilst smoking a cigarette.

It reminds me of when I was 16: knew nothing, but made up for it with an excess of enthusiasm.

And what the hell is up with Scotty these days? He’s started making all these sad, sorry remarks about how ‘females only like bad boys’. Textbook incel behaviour. All the more ridiculous because I know he got a root at Ashe’s farewell. I hope this isn’t a result of the time we went to have a drink at the Agincourt and I was having a cry about the loser ex-boyfriend. Jesus, you can’t even have a beer with some people these days without giving off the wrong impression.

Distinctly I remember, it was back in mid December,

I was sitting with a schooner, waiting for the group to gather.

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As if someone gently rapping meant an end to my relaxing.

Imbibing and relaxing at the Ship Inn,

Only this and nothing more.

While I pondered weak and weary, ‘My god now who could this be?’

‘Is this seat free?’ scarcely answered when he joined me with a beer.

‘Can I read a poem I’ve written, it’s a Scotty family tradition,

It’s a thing we do at Christmas and it’s my turn this year.’

Not given choice or option, I didn’t get to mention,

That dabbler doggerel I distinctly do deplore.

‘Surely,’ thought I, ‘surely someone else will come along so I won’t suffer all alone.’

Deep into darkness peering, long I sat there wondering, seething,

Doubting, fearing I’d be held hostage as Scotty took the floor.

The composition’s meaning little relevancy bore, the pace and flow was torpor, 

Simple, corny, saccharine, I listened cringing, wincing.

It was everything I feared and more; I’d not request an encore.

But poem’s end was not cessation, there were things he’d failed to mention,

Evidently he deemed his words beyond my comprehension.

‘Neil McDonald is my my grandpa, Neil is his middle name,

But Donald is his real name’ Scott helpfully explained.

‘Neil’s nephew’s name is Donald too, they call him Donald Junior.’

‘How very uninspiring’ was my response to factoid, poem, either.

But wait there’s more, he adds, ‘Ronald’s name was Donald once’

As if I didn’t get the reference, he points off in the distance,

‘That McDonald’s what I’m on about.’ As if I were a dunce,

He continues on mansplaining, ignoring plain annoyance,

While I’m quietly amazed at how he fails to read his audience.

‘This is why,’ think I, ‘the restaurant’s getting bad reviews:

Patrons bemoaning waiters who are arrogant and rude.’

‘Doubtless,’ say you, ‘what they utter could apply to any waiter’;

There’s a dozen strong contenders for ‘Garçon Most Condescending’

But guests bent out of shape, their thirst for vengeance biblical, 

Made certain that their criticisms are clear and unequivocal;

Decorum undeniable, descriptions indisputable,

Called-out, named, identified, downright incontestable.

‘He made it seem a privilege that you are in his presence’,

When we asked to have our wine topped-up he huffed and mumbled ‘nuisance’,

‘Don’t ask him questions unless you like responses fit for neonates.’

When I asked ‘How does the steak come?’ he told me ‘On a plate.’’

‘The waiter looked down his nose at us, he was very condescending’

‘He thought no end of himself’, it was thoroughly belittling.

A funny Canadian accent and ridiculous waxed moustache,

Thinking himself dapper, distinguished, dash, best of the best, arbiter of panache.

Lack-of-awareness, superiority, arrogance weren’t qualities I admired,

Nonetheless I meant to be encouraging, regardless of how bad,

But I quickly came to understand that it wasn’t really required.

Actually, I didn’t need to be there at all for his autoerotic sesh.

Where were Pete and Johnny? When would they arrive to save me?

‘No more!’ I shrieked, upstarting ‘Leave my loneliness unbroken!

It’s well past time we parted.’ And when he went to have a dart, I darted.

Desolate, undaunted, at the pub by horror haunted, pestered, blighted, taunted.

Take thy words from out my heart, I feel I’ve been assaulted,

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating in my beer,

To bad poetry yielding - nevermore! will I adhere.

You’ve just spent the past eight hours at work being annoyed, so the last thing you feel like is more annoyance in your down-time, even though it does come in a surprising array of flavours. It could be an overbearing colleague, it could be a Ship Inn patron who decides to join you uninvited, just to be ‘sociable’ - the last thing most of us feel like after being brutalised all shift. The company might be the problem, or it might be the subject matter being discussed, or a combination of the two. For example, I found I had zero tolerance for people who repeated their stories ad nauseam, although that issue could be mitigated if the teller of the story was entertaining. That was also a good opportunity to jog a blurry memory.

On this occasion, Pete and Johnny had the jump on me. Whether by instinct or intelligence, they knew to give the Ship a wide berth. They were drinking in the Sports Bar, up the Cross.

Back then, as far as I was concerned, Johnny was still a bit of an unknown quantity. Self possessed, he’d come on board and assimilated seamlessly, but held something back in reserve. We worked well and drank well together, but the other runners - Teresa, Brooklyn and Mel 2 - didn’t like him at all; he openly refused to tolerate their bullshit. Admittedly, even for me, his intensity mid-service could come across as a bit scary, until the day he volunteered his natural inclination for shyness, then it all made sense.

After a few beers at the pub, Johnny’s pedigree as a craic-talking Irishman never failed him. Actually, come to think of it, he had a few stories that were on high-rotation back in those days, but my distaste for going over old ground was evened-out by his exotic Dublin accent, his outrageous stories and his overall oratory skills. He was the subject of Romain and Pete’s most enduring ditty;

‘My name is Johnny,

I live on the second floor.

If you’ve got a story,

I’ve done something better before.’

The Sports Bar was located on Darlinghurst Road, at the William St end of the tarnished Golden Mile. It was a modest venue - some might call it a shithole - but you could go there and drink and play pool and not be bothered by all those who’ve already been mentioned above.

That was until I turned up and got involved talking to a very loud, annoying homosexual gentleman, who’d already taken a strong disliking to Johnny, who was openly refusing to take any of his bullshit (and there was plenty). Honesty, you couldn’t afford to let your guard down for a moment. Still, it was an improvement on being stuck at the Ship.

Back then, Pete, Johnny and I lived within one suburb of one another - Rushcutters Bay Park separated Pete’s place from Johnny’s House of Death, and I was over the other side of Oxford St in Surry Hills. It was handy for taxi rides home, particularly since the lock-out laws had been introduced, which had the net effect of forcing us out further - and later - to what was becoming our new home-away-from-home-away-from-home, the Strawberry Hills Hotel.

It’s Sunday night and Romain and I are standing before the allocations sheet in the kitchen. I’m quietly dying inside and I see that Josh has put me in a section. You think you’re safe coming to work hung-over, cruising through an easy Sunday night service, when suddenly you find yourself chucked in the deep-end with no floaties on. Fucking hell, four years you’ve waited for a chance to prove yourself worthy of being out on the floor and you’ve fucking stitched yourself up, you idiot. You’ve got Ping-Pong’s voice in the back of your head reminding you that ‘being on the floor is a head-fuck!’ and you’re wondering if you might be able to swap places with someone. Mel 2 and Tess? That’s not going to happen. Why didn’t I just call in sick? OK, I’d better pull myself together. I can do this.

Romain looks sideways at me. ’Oooh, you’re ‘UNG OVER! And you didn’t know you were in a section! Oh I looove dat…when you look at the run sheet and realise it’s going to be an ‘ORRIBLE night!’

My first night on the floor, and I’m greeted auspiciously by Nick, who had this to say; ‘Welcome to our world! Now you’ll understand what we have to deal with. Hopefully after this you won’t think to yourself: “Nick’s a dickhead because he didn’t put a spoon on the table”.’

Actually Nick, I never thought that, ever. Some people’s mistakes I find endearing. Particularly when you’re one of the strongest waiters, you’re obviously good at what you do, and because of that you get to bypass probation in the kitchen - compulsory for all the mere mortals and wannabes - and that gets people’s noses out of joint (Rochelle) who’s sense of justice in such matters is deeply put-out.

‘I’m really mad at Nick right now,’ She’d say (on more than one occasion). ‘I mean, I quite like working with him, but I don’t understand how someone who hasn’t worked here all that long can be so arrogant!’ Queue long-winded, boring story about something he just did. Perhaps this was when my camel’s back snapped over repeated telling of stories… Anyway, her reason and logic frequently left me scratching my head.

That night, I was at the front of Section 2 looking after the 30’s and 40’s. Pre-theatre was quiet: I only had four tables, they were in and out, it was easy. I was standing at the waiter’s station doing my last pre-theatre bill when Josh came around to write notes for the à la carte tables; reminders for which tables had gift vouchers or were celebrating birthdays or anniversaries. As a little reassurance before the next wave, he turned to me and said,

‘Now, don’t be afraid to ask for help.’

Five minutes into à la carte, my entire section has been seated.

(Me) ‘Josh, I need help.’

(Josh) ‘I can’t, I’m busy resetting tables.’

And that was that. You sink, you go down, there’s nothing anyone can do because everyone’s in exactly the same amount of shit, so you just keep swimming furiously until it’s over.

Monday December 15, 2014. I’m due to start work at 4pm. It’s a beautiful day and I decide to walk through Hyde Park to work, but the city’s chaos. There are police everywhere. Macquarie St is closed.

I arrive at work to discover I’ve just walked past a siege unfolding in Martin Place: there’s a gunman holding eighteen people hostage in the Lindt Café.

How odd that I’d chosen to walk today.

Bookings were in free-fall. Lunch dropped from 97 to 30 and dinner had dived from 180 to 57 and falling. Gabor, Papa and Giuseppe were all standing around Josh at reception waiting to see what would happen next.

(Josh) ‘Was Macquarie St closed?’

‘Yeah, only cops around. No civilians.’ I replied, gesturing at a car parked in the turnout at the front of the restaurant.

(Josh) ‘They’re not civilians. They’re undercover.’

Tony Abbott told us to go about our business as usual, but the most conspicuous Sydney landmark target for a terrorist attack, the Sydney Opera House, disagreed; they cancelled their shows and closed their doors for the evening. Next door at the restaurant, a subdued service went ahead.

 The siege lasted sixteen hours, and two of the hostages lost their lives.

One night I arrive at work, it’s 7pm and the kitchen’s in the lull between pre-theatre and à la carte.

Conspicuously, Bruno is drinking a beer.

‘Kazu said I could,’ was his reply to my quizzical glance.

Miss America had won. She’d gone to H.R with a bullying and harassment claim against Bruno, the sordid details of which weren’t as important as the outcome; she was staying and he was going.

I felt a hollow in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t necessarily about Bruno leaving - he’d be fine - it was about having to work with a freshly emboldened Brooklyn. Her victory turned her from garden-variety narcissist into full-blown megalomaniac, made worse by Jari’s throw-away quip that ‘she was now the most powerful woman at the restaurant’. She took that remark on face value - completely missing the irony - grew two-foot taller and walked around like she owned the place. From this moment Miss America became altogether insufferable.

But in the everyday madness, she’s just another cog in the wheel. The managers have more immediate problems to deal with.

I’m on the door watching the endless parade of ‘roid monkeys and their girlfriends dressed-as-hookers getting out of Ubers, tottering off to Opera Bar, when suddenly I notice a big, knuckle-dragging rock-ape hulking up the stairs, unbuckling his belt. Without a second’s hesitation Luffy leaps out the door, his hand held out as a barrier, pushing the bloke backwards.

(Luffy) ‘No you don’t buddy, you’re not taking a piss on our stairs.’

There’s quite the commotion, as people are trying to enter the restaurant. I take some guests trough to their table, and when I return to reception the guy’s back with a couple of mates, wanting to flatten Josh. Brett has his chest puffed out and Davide is standing in the corridor in the background, looking on.

‘We’ll take him, c’mon mate!’ The coked-up morons yell from outside.

Luffy and Brett are flustered, as Davide calls out from the safety of the corridor ‘I have your back, Josh!’

The adrenaline’s still pumping when Luffy approaches me at the waiter’s station not long after.

(Josh) ‘It’s not that I like that sort of aggression, but can I tell you what happened a few weeks ago? A bloke came up the stairs and did exactly the same thing and Mr Windey stood and watched as he pissed on the stairs! I wasn’t going to let that happen again.’

(Me) ‘At least you know strategically we have the upper-hand. We’re higher up so he’s already at a disadvantage. I’ll have a go myself next time.’

(Josh) ‘Yeah it’s fun. Until they come back…’

Towards the end of the night I’m dismissed by Christian - the manager we call ‘The Statue’ on account that he’s never seen doing very much. Rather than run straight out the door, I finish what I’m doing in the kitchen. Unbeknownst to me, Christian’s followed me into the kitchen from the front room, and stands next to me while I pack folded hand-towels away into milk crates.

(Christian) ‘Nice to see you still working after I’ve sent you home, while Brooklyn stands in pastry and eats.’

(Me) ‘It happens every night.’

Then downstairs as I’m signing off, Luffy pulls me aside and asks whether I’ve said ‘goodbye’ to my colleagues.

I erupt.

’I HATE my colleagues! I have no respect for them! They don’t listen! I don’t care about them!’

I was furious, my sense of injustice was piqued. I had to work with her. I had to do twice as much work because of her. And then I had to wish her ‘goodnight’? It was too much.

I’m not saying the culture didn’t need to change, goodness knows I’d copped plenty in my time and I didn’t enjoy it. But I was getting a horrible, cold premonition of the future of hospitality as dictated by the H.R. industry who operates with no clue as to how to genuinely rehabilitate and rebuild a healthy workplace culture.

What typically happens is someone goes whimpering to H.R. about somebody else, and rather than H.R. doing the hard work of re-educating someone around their behaviour, their idea of disciplinary action is dismissal. In doing so, they often replace a serious career hospitality person with a part-time yoga instructor who henceforth doesn’t understand the deeper implications of what she’s just done, nor does she take her responsibilities as an employee seriously. What it boils down to is the blunt instrument that is H.R. replaces serious staff with amateurs who aren’t passionate about hospitality, and in Brooklyn’s case, joke staff who are quite happy to openly take the piss.

H.R. aren’t there with us in the trenches. How can they possibly understand what goes on in the heat of battle from behind their desks, even if they do have hospitality backgrounds? Training and correction needs to be implemented consistently, and in a busy restaurant it’s a difficult and tireless task. Perversely, this makes me ever more grateful for Brett Windey being an uncompromising pain in the arse about doing everything the right way all the bloody time.

Furthermore, Brooklyn’s gone to H.R. and played the ‘I’m being bullied’ card, but then she’s got this imagined, self-generated immunity, becomes as lazy as a cat in the sunshine and no-one pulls her up because everyone’s too scared of her pulling the ‘bully’ card on them. This is compounded by her princess complex, lack-of-awareness force-field, and the fact that she’s sleeping with the bosses’ son.

Sociopaths who don’t give a shit about what anyone else thinks about them and their slack work ethic are particularly ruinous to hospitality, a heavily interdependent, collaborative system, underpinned by the concept of not letting your team down. We keep each other honest but that only works if everyone has a conscience. Naturally I was projecting the idea to it’s logical end conclusion and predicting the end of civilisation as we know it. The horse had bolted, this was the direction the world was headed. I was the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Was I suffering from martyr complex? Maybe. Did I need a reality check? Definitely. Because to make things worse, my attitude had begun to attract the attention of management. If I wasn’t careful I’d end up throwing myself under the bus.

It’s a quiet Monday night - there’s only fifty people booked for à la carte. I’m standing at the allocations sheet next to Kiwi Mel.

(Me) ‘I don’t know who I hate working with more. Do you ever play that game Mel? Maybe I can get them to cancel Brooklyn.’

Luffy and Windey are steering the ship, and they’re both getting obvious pleasure from the fact that I wasn’t thrilled to be working in the kitchen with Brooklyn.

(Josh) ‘Ever since she started shagging the bosses’ son I can’t cancel her.’

Miss America arrives twenty minutes late for her shift - unapologetic - and Jack, the little English chef makes a show of welcoming her with a big kiss. Last night I overheard him tell Teresa that ‘Poor Brooklyn was “all alone” in the kitchen. Obviously the disenfranchised had come together and formed their own bizarre splinter group. I needed to put the blinkers on and just get on with my job rather than get distracted by the circus. Brooklyn’s her own undoing, it’s in her DNA. On Saturday night we were ridiculously busy, we didn’t have Andrea, and towards the end she lost the plot and simply refused to run food.

So I was pretty happy when service wound down and I got sent into Section 3 to set up a function, poor little Brooklyn left “all alone” to finish the kitchen. Luffy came in to help. He wants to chit-chat. What’s the topic?

(Josh) ‘Pick one. Or do you want to work like you do with your mate, polishing cutlery in silence?’

It’s an aggressive call, and I’m struck silent with aporia. I like a chat, but I’m not one of Luffy’s blokey dancing-bears, and sometimes the disparity is evident.

(Josh) ‘You’ve lost all your mates in the kitchen, haven’t you? Dale, Lauretti, Ash, Aaron. Billy’s still there, and Tom, and the bar boys. But that’s life, isn’t it? Everything changes. It’s the only thing you can count on.’

Maybe that was it, maybe I was feeling unsupported and isolated. I’d appealed to management for help managing her but what I got was Chowie who sat us both down and told us to ‘sort it out’ otherwise we’d both get our shifts cut. I wasn’t particularly bothered, (I knew I was more useful and therefore less likely to lose shifts) but it prompted her to approach me.

(Brooklyn) ‘What’s the problem between you and I?’

(Me) ‘I’s your work ethic. Some days it’s OK, some days it’s terrible. Maybe I should tell you when its OK, but other days when you’re stroppy, all you want to do is go and hang out in pastry and talk to Chris. The other night Turner had to come and flush you out of pastry just to get you to run food.'

'I avoid talking to you because I don’t know when you’re going to go to management to complain about something that happened in your imagination. I think you’re a lose canon. That worries me.’

(Brooklyn) ‘I don’t even realise I’m doing it. You have to tell me.’

I can’t say that this solved the problem, but we were at least able to reach a cease-fire.

I’m down at the pub having a beer with Billy, François and Marco when Johnny arrives with Jess, the new manager. It’s unusual to have a manager join us for drinks at the pub. She fits in OK - the conversation’s decidedly more femme-oriented - and I notice that she’s subtly scoping us. It isn’t long before she flops out the elephant.

(Jess) ‘So what’s the deal with you and Brooklyn?’

Yawn.

Why am I constantly having to justify myself. Isn’t it self-evident? This was driving me mad. I give a mild, watered-down summary of the situation.

(Johnny) ‘Being nice doesn’t suit you Tash. Tell us how you really feel.’

(Me) ‘Mate, I’m sitting here next to my new manager. I’ve got to appear balanced and reasonable.’

(Johnny) ‘In a nutshell Jess, Brooklyn’s a psycho.’

The mental and physical relief that comes with feeling understood - by your colleagues, your team, by those around you - is palpable. When you don’t have it, you struggle. You defeat yourself. It’s utterly exhausting, expending excessive nervous, worrisome energy. Just a wink of camaraderie in the middle of a busy service can make all the difference.

And that’s the reason I hang out with these people.

(Me) ’So, Scotty. What are your New Year’s resolutions?’

(Scott) ‘I don’t make them. I find them pointless and futile.’

(Me) ‘Me too. So what are they?’

(Scott) ‘Well, I suppose; to quit smoking and concentrate on having better health…’

Mine was to pay off my credit card, so I was working as many hours as I could, picking up extra shifts at Woollahra’s offshoot restaurant at the Gallery. There were several advantages in doing this; it was a long-term insurance policy, given the restaurant was slated to close for six to eight weeks for extensive renovations, it was a welcome change of pace from the relentless stressors of the restaurant, and I was working with McFairy again, who’d been appointed restaurant manager.

The Gallery team was lovely, supportive, encouraging, and everybody expressed genuine gratitude to have me there. It was stark contrast to the aggressive atmosphere I’d become used to at the restaurant. I noticed it had a remarkably sunny effect on my general wellbeing.

I’d finish lunch shift at the Gallery at 3:30pm and walk across the botanic gardens to start at the restaurant at 4pm.

I was in the front room one afternoon ironing the tables and chatting to the others as we set up for service.

(Me) ‘I had to be at Woollahra-at-the-fucking-Gallery at 9:30am this morning!’

(Nick) ‘Hey Tash, I don’t think it’s called “Woollahra-at-the-fucking-Gallery”.’

(Johnny) ‘It’s been rebranded.’

(Josh) ’I hope you brought your A-game tonight Tash, you’re on the door.’

(Me) ‘Excuse me, I always do!’

(Josh) ‘Well I just heard you saying how much you’ve been drinking lately, and how you’ve already had a busy day. We’re going to be super-busy tonight.’

(Me) ‘I’m offended.’

(Josh) ‘Do you feel bullied?’

(Me) ‘No, just slighted.’

(Josh) ‘Well I’m a manager, I’m allowed to offend.’

Luffy wasn’t joking. From the moment the doors opened at 5:30pm it was game-on. A large group of guests from the Queen Elizabeth came in all at once. Most of them were Americans. They’d paid $1000 AUD for a tour of the Opera House and dinner at the restaurant. They had to be seated all at once, and the booking names given to us were different to the people who’d arrived.

They started off demanding and furious. We looked unprepared and foolish.

I watched Jess, the new manager, for cracks in her constitution. Admirably she didn’t betray what she was thinking.

‘Excuse me, we’ve asked four different people for water, and it STILL hasn’t arrived!’ (P.S. is running to the table with a tray of water as we speak).

‘Excuse me, our meals are here and our wine is still breathing!’

Windey yells at me in a flap.

‘NATASHA! I need you to take some orders! Papa’s section is behind and if we don’t get the orders in the kitchen will go down. Go to table 40 NOW!’

It’s a table of six elderly Americans. More than anything else, they want your time and attention. I take things deliberately slowly, massaging their very particular egos. They want everything on the menu explained - there’s only one amongst the group who decides what they want quickly and without modification. Everyone else wants bespoke.

‘What’s a pipi?’ ‘What’s “Coorong”? ‘What’s dulse?’ ‘Can I have mine without pipis? And no crab.’ ‘The flat-iron steak: can I have mine without onions? And what’s the yuzu dressing like? It’s strong you say?’

‘I can arrange to have that served on the side, sir.’

Baffled and ruffled, I go to the waiter’s station to put the order in. One of the party wants a burrata entrée - I forget to enter that first and then wrestle with the computer to insert it in the correct place without wiping the painstakingly-typed modifications. I always get the sick feeling my order’s going to be incorrect, but I hit send regardless, so as not to waste time dithering.

Back to reception, Brett yells at me.

‘GET BACK IN THE KITCHEN! YOU TAKE TOO LONG TO PUT IN AN ORDER!’

Fine.

A million things happen. Just before table 40’s mains come up, I remember I didn’t make the modification for the steak, so I verbal them to Jay who’s calling the pass. No problem. I run around a bit more. I notice that Jay's only written ‘onions on side’.

‘Sauce on side too please!’

Phew, just in time.

The order’s run to the table, the Americans want to joke around. More time, more attention.

‘Where are the pipis?’

‘They stayed in Coorong, sir.’

I head back into the kitchen to get their side dishes and Papa tells me they want ketchup. The man with the steak wants it cooked more, but he’s already cut it into little pieces.

P.S. is in the kitchen, overseeing the mayhem. I address Jay.

‘The man who requested ketchup would like his wagyu cooked a little more, please.’

Cue general eye-rolling.

I go back to reception, there’s a man yelling at Brett.

‘My wife’s chair was not pushed in enough, and no-one came and asked if it was pushed in enough!’

On my next lap around the restaurant, Brett’s standing alone at reception, looking broken.

(Brett, to no-one in particular) ‘I need a glass of vodka. Make that a schooner.’

It’s how we all feel.

In contrast, Woollahra at the Gallery was like Summer camp; relaxed vibe, stunning space, floor-to-ceiling glass windows facing North-East overlooking Wooloomooloo featuring an arresting, ever changing sky-scape. In a very short time, the company expanded it’s portfolio to include similar destination-dining venues, all of which boasted stunning Sydney-centric outlooks.

But the new era dawned with clouds on the horizon. The company was becoming top-heavy with middle management. When Woollahra opened, there was one Operations Manager, the blonde-haired blue-eyed Brisbane boy who’d hurry between venues overseeing things. He’d appear in the kitchen lift from the carpark and smile genially while rushing through the kitchen dressed in motorbike leathers, and that was the extent of the contact most of us on the floor had with him.

And then overnight it seemed there was an Operations Manager for every day of the week.

Summer camp ended one day when a woman named Estelle walked through the door.

Married to her job with an altogether plastic persona, her claim to fame was opening a busy taco-themed pub in Surry Hills for Merivale. Her ‘look’ was prescriptive rockabilly - tattoos, hair set in curls and tied with a scarf 50’s-style, tight top, big skirt, heels. She conjured Lynchian-nightmares; intoxicated in some venue with skull-splitting psychobilly swirling out of the speakers, this leering, hair-raising face with grotesquely manic open-mouthed red lips floats up to you out of the darkness like an incubus to ask you if you’re having a swell time…

This isn’t an exercise in judging someone’s capabilities on how they present themselves, as the world so enjoys doing with female leaders. I don’t have a problem with distinctive dressing per se: come to work dressed as Wonder Woman if you want. But if you’ve made a conscious, deliberate decision to stand out you’d better make sure you’re damn good at your job.

She wasn’t.

She’d greet guests at reception in a frightfully exaggerated, artificial manner.

‘Hi, WELCOME! Your hair looks GREAT! What’s the name of the reservation?’

Then she’d look perplexed, peering myopically at the reservations screen through Dame Edna spectacles, before leading the guests through to the wrong table, espousing facile bullshit all the way. ‘Girls day out? You DESERVE it darlings!’

We were bewildered but it seemed that abrasive bluster was her modus when it came to management. She became slightly less of a one-on-one pain in the arse when Dave Zincalume arrived on the scene, then together they set about drinking MerSul out of negronis. Zincalume was the male version of her minus the rockabilly aesthetic - chiselled plastic good-looks and a surplus of self-confidence - they both looked as though they’d been pushed out of the same Merivale sausage machine.

The days of the happy Gallery team were short-lived. Morale dropped off a cliff. I remember arriving one morning, clocking-on and walking through the Gallery with Kiwi Mel.

(Me) ‘How’s it going?’

(Mel) ‘Awful. This last week has been awful.’

I hear this all the time lately. Let’s see, what’s happened since Estelle arrived on the scene? After changing the linen supplier across the company to save a few bucks, she fired the functions organiser.

The functions organiser was a young woman named Elise, who’d been the inaugural recipient of the Mr Meringue Scholarship from the Inter-Continental Hotel School. Actually, the first and the last, come to think of it. She’d been with us at the restaurant for about eighteen months, and was now being trained in every aspect across the business. She was an asset; a bright, enthusiastic ambassador for the company.

Estelle informed her that she didn’t have enough experience for her role (that’s right: she was being trained) and unceremoniously told her to finish up.

(Elise) ‘I’ll just…uh…finish…my two weeks then.’

(Estelle) ‘No you won't. You’ll finish on Thursday.’

Her replacement left after four days and the new replacement has also just departed, never to return, so Karen from our restaurant has to do two jobs to sort out the shit-show Estelle created.

What else; she’s taken over doing the tips, so that gets done every three or four weeks with no explanation as to why the delay. She’s stretching people to their limits; Flo, his visa sponsored by the company and therefore on salary, works sixty hours and gets paid for fifty, while Mel did sixty-nine last week and likewise got paid only for fifty. I can see McFairy isn’t getting the support he needs as restaurant manager, and he reckons she’s playing psycho mind-games. One day on the restaurant floor she whispered into his ear ‘I’m going to fucking KILL YOU.’ Thinking he must have misheard, or it was some sort of joke, he looked her square in the eye. And very slowly and deliberately she repeated herself.

Mother’s Day was horrific. There were a total of 300 booked for brunch and two lunch sittings. It was a shambles; heaps of stuff got given away in an attempt to appease unhappy guests. Estelle, who’s taking her own mother out to Opera Bar, stands around chatting for twenty minutes like a useless Queen of Sheba, while we’re being raped trying to perform change of service.

It broke McFairy. He joined the exodus away from the company, along with several chefs and staff, including the restaurant manager from Woollahra. Flo, who worshipped McFairy, following him from Woollahra, was devastated.

(Flo) ‘MerSul ‘as become a company no longer interested in it’s staff. Once, they were like a family company. If you said you were sad, they’d offer an alternative to make you ‘appy. Now they don’t care. I think they want to get rid of us because they’ve got their own people to replace us. When McFairy goes, they won’t care. It will be like nothing ‘appened.’

I’d arrive back at the restaurant in the afternoons with ever-more concerning anecdotes about this alarming new style of unfamiliar undignified management practice. One day, Luffy opened the front door for me as I breathlessly described the latest oddity.

(Josh) ‘How long before all this stuff starts affecting us, d’you reckon?’

I was surprised. As G.M, I thought the buck stopped with him. Never for a moment did I imagine she might meddle in our inviolable establishment. What sort of maniac messes with a perfectly engineered machine? You wouldn’t start putting Toyota parts in a Rolls Royce.

Would you? 

(Me) ‘We’re supposed to be the flagship restaurant. You tell me.’

But it was Brett who drew the line. She came in for a management meeting one day.

(Estelle) ‘You look familiar. Have we met before?’

(Brett) ‘You served me hot dogs at the Excelsior.’

He wasted no time in setting King Solomon straight.

(Brett) ’I don’t care how qualified she is; she’s not appropriate for the restaurant, nor our clientele. She’s only suitable for pubs.’

Mercifully, King Solomon respected Brett’s plea.

The restaurant was safe, for the time being.

Brooklyn’s away for a ten day yoga retreat, thank the lord. On Thursday night Gabor complained bitterly to Teresa about his housemate.

(Gabor) ‘She’s gone for eleven days - now I don’t have to worry if I hear a firetruck it’ll be her…I can’t bear to hear her speak….she owes us money…her friends are as bad as she is…’

(Teresa) ‘Is she paying you back?’

(Gabor) ‘Slowly…’

I hadn’t realised she’d moved in with them. I was overcome with schadenfreude - the disenfranchised club was looking ridiculous thanks to the efforts of Miss America.

The front of house team had been called together for a meeting. With all the structural changes that were going on in the company, Kirsten and I walked into Section Three with trepidation. There was no menu tasting or training session scheduled, so we assumed it must have been a major announcement of some kind.

We braced ourselves.

Chowie had instigated the meeting. There wasn’t really any preamble or explanation, which there usually is to set the scene at gatherings of this nature. Instead, we were asked to consider - and then speak about - the following topic: ‘What Makes Good Service?’

Not everyone’s made for public speaking and even though we were amongst people we spent more time with than our own families and in some cases knew more intimately, to be put on the spot like this was mildly unsettling.

Fortunately, our leaders were strong, considered, imaginative and thoughtful - precisely why we were willing to be led.

A gifted speaker, Luffy (who let’s face it must have had the advantage of a heads up) went first.

(Josh) ‘Whether you’re out for breakfast, or you’re dining, you should feel as though you’re being served by people who want to be there, who’re enjoying themselves, and who don’t make you, as a guest, feel like you’re a bother.’

Order proceeds around the table, everyone makes a contribution.

(Michela) ‘Well, since becoming a mother, I’ve really noticed that people see you coming and you can see them say to themselves, “Oh, here we go…” I mean, it’s really obvious that they just want to get you out of there, that they don’t want you to be there.’

(Denis) ‘Know your shit. Have confidence and have your answers ready, because there’s nothing worse than saying, “Hang on, I’ll go and check with the kitchen.” Their faith in you instantly vanishes.'

(Luke) ‘There’s nothing worse than things left on a table that shouldn’t be there, whether it’s a glass that only has ice left in it or empty plates. Or even plates with food still on them but the people have clearly finished. It’s obvious. When you’re in service and you walk past a table and see that, and you walk past again ten minutes later and you know that twenty people have just walked past and done nothing about it, it’s the worst.’

(Chow) ‘Davide, what do you have to say?’

(Paul) ‘MADONNA!’

(Davide) ‘Calm, patient Waiting. Give a sense that all your attention is on the customer. Even when you’re walking around the restaurant - I know I need to improve this…’

Gabor, whose English is not great, rambles incoherently and makes little sense, probably from nervousness.

Brett tells a story about travelling in Morocco, completely lost. A little old lady came out of her house, smiling. She knew no English.

‘I got out a map and she helped me. Then before I left, she grabbed my arm and made me stay where I was. She went inside her house and she came out with a plate of orange and dried figs and she gave them to me with a big smile. She was so happy because she was able to offer me hospitality. And I think a lot of us forget which industry we’re in - we’re in hospitality and we’re offering to serve people’s most basic needs. Food. And don’t forget to smile.’

(Szeeto) ‘Thanks, Ghandi.’

(Pete) ‘I walk out of a place if no-one speaks to me in the first five minutes.’

(Denis) ‘ Just as well everyone knows your name at the TAB.’

(Paul) ‘Use the mirrors. Eye-contact is so important to me, and smiles! Yes, I do like looking in the mirrors…'

I came away with an odd feeling. It was like we were being asked to identify, quantify and bottle an x factor, an unquantifiable, unobservable particle. It was as though, after sixteen years of service, upper management suddenly realised there was something unique about this beast - something beyond comprehension, the forest they’d missed for looking at the trees, and now we were all sitting there trying to put our fingers on it for them.

I suspected that the x factor might have been a kind of chaos, a wild untameable beast, held together by a collection of ring-masters who were fearless in their ability to engage with the ‘difficult’, the ‘tricky’, the ‘unpredictable’ - all things that hospitality can be. A singular form of self-organisation arose from the apparent randomness of individuals and personalities brought together at this particular establishment, and I believe that's where the alchemy happened, where the gold was spun. It was the oxygen that made the fire breathe.

Fair play, a bit of honest self-reflection never goes astray. The hive-mind is capable of unearthing nuggets of wisdom and lightning strikes of insight when ideas get kicked around like this. I know, because we did it at the pub every night, but no-one was there taking notes for management. But my inherent cynicism couldn’t help feeling that there was a coating of something plastic, inauthentic - a cheapness to this exercise that had me wondering if soon we wouldn’t be listening to motivational speeches and finishing with group high-fives before service like they do in the Apple shop before the doors are unlocked and the shutters come up each morning.

This made me concerned.

While the feeling of apprehension seemed for the moment misplaced and we were lulled back into the security of the status quo, changes were afoot. P.S. had made the decision to depart the company. He was the mercury in the equation that the powers above us knew we were going to have to operate without, and just like cutting off a couple of limbs it was going to be a significant loss.

The restaurant ran by his systems, ethos, philosophy, and much of it was essential, unquantifiable, unspoken - virtually a spiritual belief system. Even if we didn’t understand a certain direction or concept, we’d go along with it, knowing it had been considered and there was a damn good reason for it, even if we didn’t necessarily agree. P.S’s hospitality instincts were impeccable, and when he left the company, that sixth sense was going with him.

Mc Fairy’s been staying at my place - sleeping on my couch - for his final two weeks in Australia, before he joins Marta over in the U.K, and he’s been partying harder than usual. His plane leaves at 2pm Tuesday and I haven’t seen him since Sunday. It’s 9am and he still hasn’t arrived home. Crikey, where is he?

He walks through the front door at 9:30. I get up. We shuffle around each other. I have a shower and go over the road to get him a coffee and something to eat. He reckons he hasn’t eaten since his farewell party, Sunday night at The Clock.

When I get back from the café he’s sitting on a bulging suitcase, trying to zip it up and failing, crying.

‘I don’t want to be one of those people whose luggage explodes!’

It’s time I left for work. It hits us simultaneously and I can’t cope.

(Me) ‘I can’t do this. I’m going.’

(McFairy) ‘I love you.’

One last hug and we’re a mess. All those nights of madness, exorcising our demons on the dance floors of clubs on Oxford Street. Arq, Stonewall, Midnight Shift and Palms. The intense rainbow spectacle of wonderful freaks all thrashing about under strobes and hazy smoke machines, mind-altering substances, surreal and dreamlike. My leprechaun was making his exit. That chapter was closing.

I arrive at the Gallery. Lee is there. Lee? Leigh? Don’t know.

(Florian) ‘’E’s the new McFairy.’

Too soon.

The restaurant’s ready, the kitchen’s clean, tidy, organised. What’s going on?

Estelle shows up looking immaculate. She grabs Hannah in a playful way. Hannah grimaces uneasily. We get called for briefing. Briefing? It’s an awkward, farcical ‘Go Team’ from Estelle - oh fuck it, let’s high-five. Poor Lee, he’s got no clue what he’s just stepped into.

Lee reads our allocations, ‘Flo is on the left, Hannah on the right - I want to see how you guys work. Tash, you’re on the pass.’

(Estelle) ‘I’ll be on the door. I’ll be seating people, talking to people - I’m good at that.’

Yeah but will you take them to the right tables?

There’s a small commotion from the kitchen. Laura Burrata and Nina are on the phone to McFairy. He’s managed to get himself into a taxi and he’s on his way to the airport. He’s sobbing, incoherent, inconsolable.

(Laura) ‘The poor taxi driver!’

It had been an intense weekend, chaos spilt over. For McFairy it started on Friday when he did the nine course degustation at Sepia with Laura. Turner told me that when he went, he had to go and spew in the middle just to make it through, so when McFairy and I were looking at the menu online, McFairy joked,

‘I’m going to spew here, here and here…’

Mr Meringue had obtained a reservation for them at short notice, so naturally they sent out extra courses - hospo always looks after hospo. I could only imagine the strife McFairy would be in with all that rich food.

He arrived home at 7am the following morning - I could hear him getting his little bed ready - then suddenly he was doing an Irish jig to the bathroom in a terrible hurry. He played the national game for a good ten minutes. Florian predicted this.

He was fast asleep when I left for my 12 o’clock double.

Kirsten was off work doing a clothes-swap so Jess and I set the restaurant in the afternoon, and I got the sense that she was keen and looking forward to a drink after work. Service didn’t sound ridiculous at 274 bookings, but it dragged on and on. The performance finished late, and post-theatre - already big at twenty-four - blew out to thirty-four.

At 11:30pm I was told I could go. Relieved and exhausted I yelled ‘Thank God!’ and ran downstairs to get changed. I was physically and emotionally shattered - I don’t know how the chefs do it day after day - and I stopped in the office downstairs for a knock-off beer. On a night like that, one beer’s enough to toast you - fuzzy and sedated. Soon the sugar kicks in and you have your second wind.

Szeeto and Andrea come in for one before Szeeto decides to go to the casino. I get Tom a beer, Jess comes down, Zoë….what time is it? We’re concerned that the Ship will lock us out….is it 1am? 12:30? Who knows, ‘Who’s coming to the pub?’

The consensus was no-one because…I don’t know why exactly - maybe people had recently had big ones, but it looked like it was going to be a fizzer. Tom had an 8am start for stocktake. It was Pastry Chris’ last Saturday service.

Jess and I went. I had a little rant on the way and I started feeling like I was being a boring fuck - she seemed to be after a bit of fun and I was talking shop.

When we got into the pub we found a pile of chefs already there, including Tom, who’d forgotten all about stocktake. He was involved in a very intense discussion was about killing ‘someone’ in the kitchen using the dip-tank downstairs to dispose of incriminating remains, with consideration given to security cameras, camera angles, pushing the victim down the stairs, (Johnny and I pushing each other down the stairs) dragging the body out the back door…. Tommy orders pizzas for everyone which are demolished in five seconds and before long it’s last drinks and we get kicked out, whereupon we all pile into taxis and head to the Strawberry Hills Hotel.

We are admitted. It’s a zoo.

The place is going off. It’s where everybody goes when they’re already fuck-eyed, and on Saturday nights / Sunday mornings it’s full of random weirdoes fuelling their various insanities.

I can’t remember who I was hanging out with - it may have been Jess and Zoë. Chef Jay was there: he and Lucio played for the pool table, and they played doubles with Frankie and Tom. But I had a shitload of coins and I wanted to play, so after Lucio disgraced himself by playing extremely poorly, I joined Jay for doubles.

Then in walks Pete, Johnny and Scotty. Pete and I were standing next to each other when Paddy the barfly appeared and greeted us like long lost friends - odd, because we saw him every night at the pub.

(Paddy, yelling, with spittle) ‘How do youse two know each other?’

(Pete, yelling back) ‘She’s me wife!’

Ask a silly question, get a silly answer.

The mood was frivolous; eventually closing time was upon us, and people started talking about kicking-on at the casino. Fucking why, I’ll never understand; how to ruin a perfectly good night. There’s lurking and some oddness creeps in.

Levity departs.

I go and stand outside. People are making up what’s left of their minds about their next move. Then Scotty corners me, starts spilling his guts, telling me how much I mean to him. It’s really embarrassing. Christ, ’in vino veritas’, but in beer as well? Jesus Johnny, where are you?

Johnny comes spilling out of of the pub, he’s giving Jess a massive spray. I can’t make sense of what it’s about but he’s furious and wants to get the hell away from her. At work, Nick and Carlo posture around her like a couple of peacocks; I thought everybody wanted to have sex with her. But Johnny’s livid and scathing, telling her she’s dreadful at her job.

This all turned sour remarkably quickly.

Scotty decides it’s a good idea to keep telling me how he feels about me. ‘Holy Jesus’, I think, ‘You had a minted opportunity to stop talking and pretend it never happened, but you’ve decided to keep blundering along, badly expressing a concept that obviously isn’t being received well.’ Outwardly, I’m speechless.

Then Pete arrives on the scene.

‘I think you should get in a taxi and come with me.’

I’ve had enough bizarre for one night.

(Me) ‘Thanks gentlemen, I’m out.’

I turn and walk across Elizabeth, then up Devonshire St. Charging up the hill, I’m relieved to be away. Nothing at all about the night seemed sane or real, just hyper. I’m opposite the church, near the corner of Crown St when a taxi pulls up. Pete gets out. I’m surprised, but not entirely surprised.

I would suggest a drink at my place but McFairy’s there (I have a hopelessly misguided image in my mind of Mc Fairy peacefully asleep on my couch. How naive...) So we walk around for a while and eventually we end up back at the Strawbs, which back then closed for an hour from 5am til 6. We sit on the kerb, waiting for it to open, Pete sympathising about my latest disastrous romantic misadventure. He’s trying hard to avoid going to the casino, and I realise I don’t have the words to tell him how glad I am he’s there without sounding as silly as Scott.

Work’s been wonderful since they got rid of the Seppo. Since she’s been gone, everyone’s been in a much better mood. It happened when I was away; Brett told me she pissed-off every one of the managers during her final week - Chowie, Jess and himself included.

(Brett) ‘I said to Chow ‘We’ve put it off long enough. She failed her food test along with Teresa and Louise; they all got put on half-tips and when I handed her her envelope she said ‘I don’t want it’, like a little brat. She took it of course. So it was that attitude that did it for me. She’s been told to lift her game several times and she just hasn’t.’

Vindication at long last, oh happy day! It’s extraordinary how the presence of one individual can have such a deeply corrosive effect on the greater workplace dynamic, and yet like gingivitis, they’re nearly impossible to remove.

I’ve arrived at the restaurant at 4pm after a punishing day at the Gallery. I’m hoping for a leisurely staff meal before service, but that’s not how things pan out. There’s heaps to do, and Luffy asks me to start early. I get some dinner and woof it down. It’s terrible, but I’m starving so I go back for seconds.

Szeeto and Papa haven’t set Section Three for tonight’s wedding function. What the hell were they doing between 9 and 12, when they’re supposed to have set up all three sections? Turns out lunch service was horrible, and Turner’s in a filthy mood. Jay, who’s on a 9-5, tells me he gave Papa and Fabrizio the fiercest dressing-down he’s yet witnessed. Fabi went down on fish section during lunch and Turner tore him a new arsehole. François said when he came in for his 2pm start, Fabi immediately asked if he could make staff meal for him.

We scrape into dinner service barely catching our collective breath before the mayhem begins afresh. Guests haven’t a clue that behind the scenes we’re busting arse to the brink of actual human limitation, while people in the prep kitchen downstairs are being flayed alive, their very own consciences serving as instruments of torture. To the guests, we project the impression we’re in control, while chaos sweeps in through the door in their slipstream.

At the bar, we get a moment to steady ourselves.

(Me) ‘Johnny, the tight-arses on Table 1 want to share a glass of wine. I shouldn’t say that: maybe they’re driving.’

(Johnny) ‘I think you were right the first time.’

(Pete) ‘Tash, What do you make of the new guy? Would you say he rates himself a bit much?’

(Me) ‘Mil? Yeah he’s cocky. But he’s rather charming as well I think.’

General consensus on a new staff member usually forms as a conglomerate opinion, the result of several remarks which contribute to an overall identikit picture. The group conversation’s helpful in determining whether someone has the ability or social skills to fit the team, the added benefit being that some of us see details others don’t. Most of us know within ten minutes whether a candidate will be able to make it through their trial successfully or not, after that comes the extended sussing out, to determine who you are beneath the surface.

Luffy had voiced his concerns to me regarding this fellow.

(Josh) ‘I’ve caught him saying ridiculous things to guests, like; “Here is your fantastic lamb!” and “Here’s your lamb, from outback Australia.” I mean, what if we get someone in who comes from Cowra and they see on the menu that the lamb’s from Cowra and you get this idiot telling them it’s from the outback! Why can’t he just say what he’s told to say!’

I hadn’t worked Mil out. He seemed normal when I was training him in the kitchen, but then he’d go out on the floor and mumble incoherently to the guests. I think he’s nervous as hell and he’s putting on a massive front because he feels like he’s out place. It’s easy for us to forget this restaurant can be incredibly intimidating.

It would be some time before he told me the story of one of his earliest experiences working in a ‘fancy’ restaurant. As a young clueless kid, he pronounced a certain French cheese ‘Camem-Burt’ for which he got laughed out of the kitchen and told; ‘Go back to Bankstown you fuckin’ Lebbo!’

It was possible Mil was a rough diamond, and Brett clearly had a soft spot for him, due to his predilection for handsome Lebanese and a fondness for educating impressionable young men.

There’s seven people sitting on Table 19. It’s 6pm and we require the table back at 7:30pm. This was explained when they booked online: they’ve checked the box to say that they’ve read and understand the terms and conditions and one of the conditions is that they vacate the table for the following reservation. It’s mentioned again when I take them from reception to their table, and Luffy explains it unequivocally one final time at the table.

They’re playing dumb, pretending English isn’t their first language.

So they get to dessert and clearly they’re not going to make it out on time.

Guillaume’s serving them: he’s only new on the floor and unsure how forceful he’s allowed to be with them.

I seek Luffy’s advice at reception.

(Josh) ‘I wouldn’t have offered them dessert. I told him not to offer them coffee.’

(Me) ‘Guillaume said the slowest eaters have ordered cheese.’

(Josh) ‘They were always going to overstay. I explained to them that the table was re-booked at 7:30pm and she snapped back at me: ‘Then get me the waiter!’

Let’s just say that’s a pretty cunty move. It’s a condition of booking that you vacate by a certain time. We always try to accomodate the guest. For smaller tables, we have the option to relocate them to the bar to enjoy their desserts or coffee, but realistically this isn’t possible for a table of seven. An inexperienced waiter like Guillaume won’t know how to handle the situation. 

So they overstayed. Table 11 and 12 overstayed too. The guy who booked and requested Table 18 couldn’t have it because someone else was on it. As a result, there were three tables sitting well after they booked at 8pm. It threw everything out. Luffy worked the desk like an electro house DJ re-arranging tables at 128 BPM.

It was a very tight night.

The last table was down on paper at 8:15, but it was 9pm by the time they were seated.

Then they ordered degustation.

Turner’s already retired downstairs to the office after a particularly arduous day, so Tommy’s in charge of the kitchen. His face clouds over, white with rage, when the docket comes through on the printer.

Oblivious to the psychological turmoil they’ve created in the kitchen amongst the staff, the guests then graduate to next level cunts by going out to smoke between each course.

Meanwhile, the function in Section Three is up to dessert. With dozens of plates up on the pass, Andy prepares to call the docket.

I spit the dummy.

Andy’s a great pastry chef but always and without fail, he cocks-up calling function dockets. I know I’m just a lowly runner and I always try my best to circumvent disaster but time and again I’ve watched the car-crash unfold and it always goes down exactly the same way. We get to the end of a beautiful function, run with Swiss-watch precision, and then we end looking like a bunch of clowns.

I plead with Josh to call the docket to avert the catastrophe but my pleas go unheeded. The predicted fuck-up happens right at the get-go.

At a wedding, the dishes are supposed to be served to the bride and groom first, before the other guests. Andy commences by not following protocol. Forthwith, the shambles snowballs.

When a sizeable function like this is called at the pass, the normal flow of the kitchen is severely impeded. If it’s entrées or mains up, the majority of the kitchen is engaged in the exercise, and no other tables in the restaurant will be served during this ten minute window. Similarly when desserts are being run, the focus is on nothing else in the pastry section.

Meanwhile, in à la carte land, some tables are wrapping up their evenings, preparing to pay their bills and leave. At this point it’s customary to bring petite fours to the table, whether the guest chooses to finish the evening with coffee or not. The waiter sends a docket to the kitchen, as with any other order. But the grinding to a halt that occurs when large volumes of desserts are leaving a section stymies that usually seamless process, and waiters are suddenly finding their guests departing without their ‘little ovens’.

Windey has killed for less.

So Mil - acting quickly, wishing to make a good impression, thinking outside the petite four take-away box - takes it upon himself to run to reception armed with a petite fours to present to guests as they walk out the door.

I’ve made sure with Charlie that the dessert debacle has come to a close and that all the guests have what they’ve ordered, then I head to reception to let Josh know that all’s well in Section Three.

(Josh) ‘Andy’s down in the office crying because you called him an idiot.’

(Me) ‘I beg your pardon Josh, I don’t go ‘round work calling people idiots. I wait ‘till I’m at the Ship Inn to do that.’

I look incredulously at Mil, who’s holding open the door with one hand and a plate of chocolates in the other, a grinning petite-four canapé waiter.

(Me, to Josh) ‘Is this what we’re doing now?’

(Josh, to Roman) ‘I think Mil might be running out of petite fours…’

Later, at the Ship, Tom proposes a system whereby tables that are still seated at 7:30pm should disappear into the floor while a new fresh table drops down from the ceiling ready for the 7:30pm booking, so that people who overstay are welcome to finish their cheeses in a darkened room below.

It’s here at the pub talking to the chefs where I learn the nuances of the kitchen, about things - even though I’ve worked there for some years now - that you wouldn’t pick up even if you’re a keen observer. For example, how staffing operates on certain sections.

(Tom) ‘There’s currently four chefs in the kitchen who cook meat; Michael, Jay, Billy and Alexis. They all negotiate their positions depending how tired, depleted, hung over, drained or emotional they are. They all work it out amongst themselves, whereas Kazu’s only ever on garnish, unless he’s calling the pass.’

‘Garnish is the most exacting section in the kitchen. It ties everything together. Kazu’s on garnish day after day after day. He’s the machine within the machine.’

Jess joins us.

For a manager, Jess is spending more time mingling with us plebs at the pub than I would have expected. There’s no rule against doing so, and who can blame her after a night like tonight? Like myself, she’s interested in observing people. I like that she’s bringing fresh insight to a social dynamic which has a tendency to stale with overuse, and she’s already revealed her hand, announcing that she finds the chefs generally much nicer than the front of house boys.

(Me) ‘What are you doing here?’

(Jess) ‘I was supposed to head up the coast but the trains aren’t running between 10pm - 2am, so I’m here getting drunk instead. I’ll get up early and go tomorrow morning.

Jay arrives. He and Marco have been to dinner at Firedoor.

I settle in and watch on with interest.

(Jay to Billy) ‘How was service?’

(Billy) ‘My favourite part was when Tash sprayed Andy’s niece in the face with foam.’

Andy’s brought a new dessert onto the menu that requires us runners to finish it at the table with foam piped from a whipped cream siphon, but if there isn’t enough liquid in the canister, the siphon craps itself and foam goes everywhere.

Andy’s family were seated at the Kitchen Table in full view of all the chefs and all the kitchen. They’d come in at his request to sample his latest concoctions, and he asked me specially to serve and explain their desserts. In such a situation, you’d think as a pastry chef that you’d ensure the siphon was filled with enough liquid that the big impressive cherry-on-the-top reveal would go off without a hitch.

That’s what I thought.

But that’s not what happened.

Andy’s niece, who happened to be celebrating her birthday, had the honour of receiving the new whizz-bang foam dessert - literally, all over her - while Andy watched on in dismay from the kitchen.

Naturally, Andy claimed I did it on purpose.

The guests are driving me up the wall.

It’s a busy night. A group of three-people come in for à la care without a reservation. Josh asks me to take them to Table One. Front room for walk-ins; that’s gracious of Luffy I think, on such a busy Friday night. I present their table and pull out a chair.

(Guest) ‘Can we have a window table?’

What the bloody hell do you call that, I wonder, looking blankly out the window adjacent to the table.

(Josh, back at reception) ‘People lose their minds over a piece of glass…alright, give them Table Eight.’

A family of five arrive through the front door. Luffy asks me to take them to Fourty-One.

The father is a big hoof-headed bloke, reeks of money. His wife - a large, self-important woman - wearing a Camilla kaftan. Their three daughters are very tall and very attractive.

(Wife, with distain) ’I thought we’d get a better table than this.’

Oh, it’s The Entitled Family. I smile cordially, take their drinks order then go around the corner to the point of sale terminal.

(Me) ’They’re not happy with their table.’

(Davide) ‘Yeah, I can tell.’

I return to the door, followed closely by boof-head. Luffy’s at the desk, but boof-head makes a bee-line for me, towering threateningly over me.

(Boof-Head) ’Look, are you sure we’re at the right table?’

How does he know I always get Tabes 40 and 41 mixed up? Just joking…

Like everybody else, he expects to be seated in the front room. His standover tactics don’t allow me the opportunity to respond graciously let alone coherently: I end up pointing behind him at Josh who’s smiling serenely, ready for the confrontation.

This uncouth buffoon isn’t interested in hearing ‘no’, nor is it beneath him to imply threatening behaviour to an employee of a restaurant, for god’s sake; it’s just how someone like him ‘gets things done’. We’re obviously getting pumped but he’s not fazed about causing a disruption.

(Boof-Head) ’I booked two months ago, back in July.’

Josh looks at the reservations system. ‘The problem is, sir, that the people on the large tables in the front room booked seven months ago, back in March.’

Luffy offers to bump one of the groups onto Forty-One if they’re happy to wait a few minutes until we get a table ready. That done, I let them know and tell them to follow me. Behind, I hear one of the girls remark to her sister:

‘Oh thank GOD, when you told me what happened to Danielle, I CRIED!’

I’m returning to the kitchen after presenting amuse bouche to Table Six. A lady on Table Eleven lifts up her plate, regarding it as though there’s something unspeakably vile on it. I’m guessing she’s going to say she found a hair…but I actually can’t imagine what she’s found that would justify such face-pulling revulsion.

(Lady) ‘This plate has coffee ice-cream on it!’

(Me) ‘The dish is meant to have coffee ice-cream on it, M’am.’

(Lady) I said I want VANILLA!’

Carlo comes running over to the waiter’s station.

(Carlo) ‘Is she allergic?’

(Me) ‘No, she’s just rude.’

(Carlo) ‘They’re all like that on Eleven.’

When the guest’s behaviour isn’t confounding, baffling or discombobulating, it can be a source of amusement. ‘You think you’ve heard it all!’ Szeeto and I declare to one another. Guests may well feel entitled to be rude - their expectations are justifiably high and they’re paying a lot of money for the experience. But we aren’t automatons. We’re human. Every act of aggression leaves it’s mark, blasting you like glass beads in the autoclave of life, until you’re smooth and featureless. Anticipating people’s problems, you wince to deflect their insults and it takes you by surprise when people treat you with kindness and empathy.

Chipping away and grinding you down, it starts as mild annoyance and builds until you find yourself burdened by heavy angriness that you drag around daily; emotional baggage. Toxicity, narcissism and general shitty behaviour have become all too familiar concepts in today’s culture, yet like climate change, the more aware of the problem and the negative affects it has on us, the more ubiquitous and pervasive the issue seems to be. Why is it we’re heading full-speed towards the precipice of nastiness and self-destruction? The paradox of the The Human Condition; if you’re lucky or if you’re smart, you find a way to side-step out of the juggernaut’s path. Otherwise, you could end up getting a mention in a newspaper article alongside Justin Bull, Darren Simpson and Jeremy Strode, all of who graduated from the planet in short, shocking succession under the worst possible circumstances.

Another busy night; Luffy’s off sick, Brett’s in a flap and he’s called in Chowie on his day off. Windey hasn’t been able to reach any front of house staff to call them in for earlier start times.

(Brett) ‘Everyone’s at the beach, Thomas is at Bodyline with his has dick in the glory holes… Natasha I’ve got you in K.T. tonight, but I need you to set up the kitchen first.’

Rochelle and Denis come in and Brett shoos me out of the kitchen, so I go off to set the Kitchen Table. Brett’s upsetting everyone and service hasn’t even started. It’s going to be a long night.

(Kirsten) ‘The only reason he’s so stressed is he didn’t do the allocations last night. Usually Josh does them before he leaves…’

(Davide) ‘Seeri! Hey, Seeri! Seeeeri! PORCA MADONNA!’

Davide’s just bought an Apple watch and he’s pacing the corridors of the restaurant imploring Siri to do his bidding, but she’s unresponsive to his accent.

(Me) ‘Hey Davide, come and help me set K.T. will you?’

Tonight I’ll be the dedicated waiter for a family celebrating their son’s sixteenth birthday. The younger son - a keen Masterchef fan - is due to go into hospital the following day for a bone-marrow transplant.

In the downstairs kitchen, Chef Zoë points me to the booking notes, specifically those regarding the boy’s illness.

(Zoë) ’I hope they don’t order the beef.’

The current wording on the menu for the beef dish is Wagyu Inside Skirt, Swede Puree, Watermelon Radish with Bone Marrow Sauce. Right. Good point. We change the wording on their menus to Bordelaise Sauce.

Working the Kitchen Table requires modifying your waiting style as a section waiter, and it’s polar-opposite to the skills of a function waiter. You’re serving a group of people who know one another, so you need to have a heightened sense of their dynamic and you need to be able to seamlessly and successfully slot into it. Until you work them out - do they understand food and dining, are they here because they’ve got too much money and they just want to show-off, have they ever experienced anything like this before or is this something they do all the time - it can be intense. Once you get their measure you can concentrate on doing what you do best, but you can take it next level by entertaining them. You’re a big part of their dining experience, so put your social anxieties aside and give them something to remember.

This is why Luffy favoured staffing K.T. with the restaurant’s most colourful characters. Brett, on the other hand, only had me in there because, as he said to Denis, ‘We’re short on expertise.’

The flow of service begins and the restaurant starts getting busy. I’m anticipating the arrival of my guests and all the things that could go wrong. Fortunately there’s always a few sub-plots on the boil to steer your mind away from worries and concerns. I’ve so-far managed to avoid Windey’s wrath, and it seems the prevailing energy this evening is positive. Staff are relaxed and jovial, there are no major issues or irritations threatening to derail the locomotive.

Nick’s tuned-into Davide’s struggle to communicate with Siri, and sees a prime opportunity to take the piss.

(Nick) ‘Siri doesn’t understand Eye-talian Davide. She’ll start listening once you learn to speak English properly…’

Needling Davide’s signature frustration, Nick goes on pushing. At one point I’m walking through a packed Section Two watching them verbally scuffle down one end when suddenly a small, gleaming white projectile shoots out of Nick’s mouth, flying through the the air. It follows an elegant, parabolic arc before dropping to the polished wooden floorboards, where it bounces, clattering, under a table of unsuspecting guests. Before I’ve worked out what the object is, Nick’s dived down to pick it up. Once righted, he flashes a cheeky gap-toothed grin where the pointy nose of a surfboard gouged a hole in his smile.

(Nick, holding up a single false-tooth) ‘I used to flush them down the toilet accidentally until they started costing me $1000 a pop!’

My guests have arrived, it’s show-time.

I take their drinks order and spend a little time getting them settled-in before talking to them about the menu and tonight’s specials. They seem like nice, normal people; the birthday boy and his sister are typical shy teenagers, the mum too is meek and feeling a bit out-of-place. It’s the younger boy, who’s name is Ethan, who’s out of his mind with excitement. My challenge will be making everyone feel equally as comfortable.

I take their order. Mum wants venison.

(Me) ‘OK. Now, you understand what venison is m’am? You’re OK with that? Because some people don’t know…’

I’m getting the sense that only Ethan the Masterchef-watcher knows what’s going on. The rest of them seem like a normal Aussie family that isn’t into all this fancy stuff. Maybe dad has a bit of business-lunch dining experience. I don’t want to assume anything and I don’t want to be condescending.

Davide’s at the waiter’s station.

(Me) ‘I’m not sure these people understand our food. I think the mum’s under the impression that venison is veal.’

(Davide) ‘Look, I know what you mean. Last night, two Chinese men ordered two courses - one ordered entrée / main, the other main / dessert. After they finished mains they said “Thank you, can we have the bill?” I said, “But, are you serious? You don’t want your dessert?” They thought that the mashed potato was the dessert!’

(Me) ‘Remember the lady who asked, “What kind of fish is wagyu?”’

(Davide) ‘Oh, you missed the best one! The other day a lady asked me what part of the cow is the lamb from?’

We could have gone on like this for hours, only the dad had left the kitchen table to come and find me. As suspected, Mum wants to change her order.

(The Dad) ‘I said to her when you left, “You realise that’s deer, don’t you?” She said: “It’s no more expensive than any of the other dishes!”

Right, so everyone’s having beef. Thank god we changed the wording.

Tommy’s on the pass. The flow of communication between us is super. It helps that Turner isn’t here yelling at me, adding stress to an already charged situation. Even Brett’s backed off.

I’m acutely anxious during the early dishes because I’m not confident the food’s going over very well. The girl leaves more than half her Moreton Bay bug, for chrissakes, and that’s a ripper of a dish. Tommy reckons the daughter’s sulking because the younger brother’s getting all the attention. He sends them a round of à la carte appetisers, a beef broth, which they love.

But the youngest boy is glued to the window, watching the kitchen, and the chefs are loving the attention. The family are delightfully lacking in affectation, and once they warm up, Ethan’s infectious enthusiasm encourages them to ask plenty of questions about the restaurant. I couldn’t have been looking after lovelier people, or scripted it better.

I leave them alone with their mains, but see that Ethan isn’t digging his beef.

(The Mum) ‘Can I ask a favour? What was it you just carried out of the kitchen on those green plates a moment ago? It looked like a spring roll.’

(Me) ‘The oxtail croquettes! Sure, I’ll organise a plate for you.’

She told me that Ethan’s tastebuds are all fucked up because of the chemo. But of course! And how nice to be asked - nicely - and to be able to do something about it! It was clear that between Tommy and Brett we were happy to do anything for them. Between the five of them they ordered five different desserts, so we sent out the other two just to make up the full compliment.

They wanted to hear stories of famous people who’d been to the restaurant - Ethan was thrilled to discover he was sitting right where Leo was sat - and they wanted to hear disaster stories, so I obliged by telling about the time Chris used salt in the soufflé mix instead of sugar, and the night the air-conditioner shit the bed in the front room all over the guests, but I decided against telling them about the sour mash debacle.

After service I took Ethan for a walk into the kitchen, where up close he met Marco, Zoë, Chris and Billy. The kitchen was still as hot as a dragon’s dungeon and I sensed Ethan was overwhelmed, so I got the whole family to join us downstairs in the prep-kitchen. Understatedly gracious, Chef Michael welcomed them with genuine warmth and kindness.

What the fuck. It was in complete contrast to the aggressive Herculian efforts we put in on other nights just to get our asses over the line. It was as though the mechanics of the operation were being massaged and lubricated by celestial beings that wanted everything to run smoothly, touched by actual magic. Every member of staff was a smiling vision of helpfulness and loveliness - even Brett, who saw them all out the front door with Denis and Szeeto, all warmly wishing them well. It was such a stunning example of teamwork, I was nearly moved to tears, knowing I had the unconditional support of the entire squad with me.

After they left and I’d finished high-fiving myself, Kirsten drew my attention to the fact that I’d failed to take their deposit off the bill. Great, so I overcharged them $870.

(Brett) ‘Now they won’t be able to afford Ethan’s operation.’

Nobody brings you back to earth quite like Brett.

Down at the pub after work, there’s a residue of seraphim dust from service in the air. Everyone’s there, it’s a good turn-out, the occasion feels well-earned, and the good vibes carry us through the evening. Davide’s telling me a story of a beautiful pasta that he made at Andrea’s place the other day after a recent bender.

(Davide) ‘Afterwards, I went to catch the train home. I got on at Wynyard and set my alarm to have a sleep. I woke up at Wynyard TWO HOURS LATER! So I’d gone all the way to the end of the line and come back to where I started!’ MADONNA I want a cigarette…’

There’s nowhere to smoke inside at the Ship - although the boys frequently attempt it in the male toilets. With the new lockout laws stating no re-entry after 1:30am, you’re forbidden from popping outside of the venue for a dart.

But I’ve got a solution.

(Me) ‘Davide, what you need's a glory-hole for smoking. Just a little hole in the external wall where you can stick your cigarette and puff away without having to go outside.’

(Davide) ‘THAT’S IT! THAT’S THE ANSWER! WE NEED GLORY-HOLES! GIVE ME THE GLORY-HOLES!! I MUST HAVE GLORY-HOLES!! SEERI, TAKE ME TO THE GLORY-HOLES!!’

Kathy in the office refunded the nice family the following day.

Dave Zincalume’s been fired, from whatever it was he was supposed to be doing. I was chatting to Chow one afternoon at reception about time-off over Summer and Windey was ranting about him in the background.

(Brett) ’Anyway, why would you bring over that shitty Pinot Noir from Woollahra because they want to get rid of it? They’re cheapening our product; it should be the other way around!’

I look to Kirsten for an explanation.

(Kirsten) ‘Dave’s been told to move on.’

(Denis, walking past) ‘He drank the bar dry.’

(Brett, scoffing) ‘He wanted to have the Christmas party on a huge boat on the harbour like they do over at Merivale!’

Luffy told me the “official” story was that he was made redundant when Mersul dissolved after P.S. left: he was told there was no longer a position for him, but yesterday Terry told me another story. Apparently he changed the menu at Woollahra, involving big structural changes to service, and he didn’t run it past King Solomon. When Solomon found out he had a shit-fit, so they unceremoniously sacked him on the spot.

Speaking of renegades, senior sommelier Paul Beatoff appears to be re-entering the rocky phase of his increasingly erratic cycle. Apparently he doesn’t have the balls to speak to his staff face to face when there’s an issue.

Johnny was expecting a sit-down with him after Sunday’s shift and Paulie ended up sneaking out of work early to avoid the confrontation. It may not sound like much, but we’re used to strong leadership, and in this context it’s difficult - if not impossible - to respect someone once their gelatinous spine is exposed.

Personally, I’d never had any beef with Paulie, but I’ve observed on occasion his volatility in service. Outwardly charming, a twisted narcissistic cruelty lurks just below the surface. He’d play staff off against one another mid service - just a few destabilising words here and there, as he prowled from one end of the bar to the other like a caged tiger. So it was surprising to learn that he was shirking an opportunity to sit down with a member of his wine team for a serious discussion.

It might have had something to do with his “sabbatical”.

Johnny mentioned that over drinks one night, things got weird when Paulie started grilling him about ‘what people at work are saying about his eight-week sabbatical after he was sent away to “dry-out”, ‘…and who was saying it’?

So, Paulie fucked-up at work and all the stops had been been pulled-out to save him from instant dismissal. He’d been told to take a break and re-evaluate his life, but instead of sitting himself down and making an honest appraisal of the situation, thinking, ‘well, maybe I should get help and I should clean up my act’, he instead thinks… ‘people are talking about me, so I’m going to focus on that.’

For the past four Friday nights we’ve been remarking to one another ‘That was the hardest service I can remember for a long time.’ Last night topped the lot. On paper, it was only 246, but it felt more like 746. There was a degustation function of 45 pax in Section Three, commencing with canapés on the terrace: even if everything runs smoothly, that’s like having the gravitational field of Jupiter dragging the kitchen to a standstill between each of the seven courses.

While casual racism is an unquestionable byproduct of hospitality, it’s scientifically proven that 80% of East Asians carry a gene coding known as ADH1B*2 which converts alcohol into toxic acetaldehyde which in a further 30-50% is worsened by another gene variant known as ALDH2*2 which results in a less functional enzyme that’s responsible for the breakdown of acetaldehyde.

On Friday night our Section Three function - most of whom were of Asian extraction - weren’t efficient metabolisers of alcohol.

Walking into the kitchen was an early indicator of trouble - François was yelling at Ray the dwarf about how bad staff meal was and Billy didn’t even have time to say hello. The kitchen was a mess. I ran downstairs to get ready and emerged, vested-up and ready to go at ten to four.

Mil and Cat are in the kitchen, talking about self-help books.

(Mil) ‘I’ve only ever read one self-help book. It was when I was fourteen. It was called: Get Any Chick You Want.’

(Me) ‘Are we talking ‘self-help’ or ‘help-yourself’’?

With these two and Papa running, I was confident that we’d be fine.

At 104 bookings, pre-theatre was in theory busier than à la carte, however we had several big tables (twenty was a fourteen, thirteen was a six) who’d also requested dego, along with several smaller tables.

I knew the function was going to be ‘extra’ from the moment I breaded them - I just got that feeling - and my concerns were confirmed by sideways glances from every member of staff working Section Three that night; Szeeto, Luke, Rochelle, Riccardo and Pete.

By course two, most of the guests were munted.

Whether or not they’re drinking, Asians dine differently. Their dining culture’s all about sharing. Western formal-style place settings don’t work very well in this context. Waiters and runners attempting to serve a seven course degustation with matching wines are met with free-form chaos on the table. Shit was everywhere except where it was supposed to be.

But it got worse.

From the wait-staff’s point of view, we’re running seven courses to forty-five people who won’t sit down and dine in an orderly fashion. It could be argued that these people are paying good money so let them dine as they please. But the kitchen’s holding up service to the rest of the restaurant so they can get the function food out. There are two hundred other guests being catered for, whose night is being affected by these Chinese bogans.

I began to see the trickle-down effect in the front room. Scotty’s Table 8, a group of four doing degustation, started to get loud, complaining they’d only had two courses over one and a half hours. Not long after, the guy from Table 13 (a 6 pax also doing dego) was complaining bitterly to Josh at waiters station one.

It was a thoroughly demoralising service. I could feel myself growing despondent about life, the universe and everything.

While the vast majority of the function were behaving like wild animals, there were those individuals amongst them who were visibly cringing, trying hard to disassociate themselves from the awful people they were dining with. I felt bad for them, but in such circumstance everyone gets pulled down to the lowest common denominator and tarred with the same brush.

Pete’s in Section Three bar.

(Me) ‘You look as though you want to murder someone.’

(Pete) ‘Oh, only about forty-five people…’

Towards the end of the night, Mil walks into the kitchen and announces, ‘There’s people passed-out in Section Three, and Table 54 smells like vomit.’

Nick enters the kitchen from the corridor and hurries through the kitchen making retching noises, carrying a bundle of linen. As he makes a bee-line for the linen bag near wash-up, an unbridled string of expletives about the Chinese leave his mouth in between dry heaves. Shortly after, Luffy does something similar. He’s got vomit on his shoes and he’s fuming.

(Mil) ‘Come on Josh, you’ve got kids.’

(Josh) ‘It’s the smell! God I want to punch her in the face.’

There was a trail of vomit all the way up the corridor to the men’s toilet.

(Mil) ‘Ahh, they’ve got the Febreze onto it. I love that stuff, it’s like magic.’

Later, Josh tells me that he got the got the girl who organised the event to rub her nose in the mess her guests made.

(Josh) ‘I said “Come with me, I want to show you what your people are doing.” There was spew all the way up the corridor. She looked at me horrified and I said, “No, it doesn’t end there. Come with me.” I opened the men’s toilet door, there was spew everywhere - floors, walls, ceilings. “This is your culture” I said to her. “Ganbai, bottoms up, sculling - this is the result!”

They tipped $30. And they were charged a $200 cleaning fee.

A week before on the Thursday night, there’d been a badly behaved function who recognised they’d been horrible so they double-whammied, which meant the tips for the poor, traumatised staff were good, and we were placated. That was not the case this week, so we were insulted and sad.

Jess and Paulie were in the office downstairs when I clocked-off. They offered me a knock-off beer, but I said thanks and declined. Jess called after me,

‘Chef are you alright?’

(Me) ‘Just tired.’ Dehydrated. Broken. ‘I’ll have a drink tomorrow night, if we ever get out of here…’

There was a monster wedding setup to look forward to after Saturday night service.

Saturday before dinner service and I’m in the kitchen setting up. Billy’s out on my side of the pass getting steel trays from the shelves.

(Me) ‘How do you feel about chefs that wear cologne to work Billy? That new pastry chef, Lucio, I feel assaulted every time he walks past.’

(Billy) ‘It’s like wearing a mini-skirt to a mosque.’

Just then, Ray comes out from behind the pass with a tray of pre-theatre appetisers and places them on the shelves we use to store butter.

(Me) ‘Ray! These racks need to be clear of your stuff, ok? I explained this to you last night. On a busy night I don’t have time to fuck around with your shit!’

Oh great. Here I am, plumbing new depths, yelling at a dwarf.

On Wednesday I go out to lunch with my dad and brother. I’m working at 4, but I feel like a beer. The brother and I are both complaining about our jobs. I have another beer. And then a couple more for good measure, while I work myself up about work.

I turn up intoxicated, and get sent home.

I have a problem. I can’t slow down. I can’t soothe myself, look after myself, be kind to myself. I need to be out drinking, amongst people. No quiet time; I make sure of that by filling it full of alcohol. I don’t feel good about myself.

Friday night: it’s my first night back after making a dickhead of myself. Yeah, I did that. Squirming inside, I sneak through the back door and slip past the managers. Well I did see Jess, and she saw me. I don’t think she was present last Wednesday for the goon show, (starring me) but she’s probably heard all about it. The look she gave me seemed furtive, I interpreted it as disappointment, but after the close of business tonight perhaps she’s got something else going on.

I was preparing to be dragged into the K.T. after service to get properly yelled at by Luff or Chow: both Nick and Tommy primed me for it. Then, around 11pm, Nick approached me and asked quietly,

‘Is Jess getting fired? She’s in the K.T. with Chow and she’s crying.’

They were in there for ages.

We’d finished up in the kitchen and Teresa was pestering Luffy to let us go. He was on his own at reception, and after asking us to check there were enough pre-folds he gave us his blessing to leave.

(Me) ‘Do you want me to hang around so you can yell at me?’

(Josh) ‘Why would I want to yell at you?’

(Me) ‘It would make us all feel better about ourselves, wouldn’t it?’

(Josh) ‘Chow, do you want to yell at Tash tonight or leave it for some other night?’

(Chow) ‘Nah, we’ll talk about it next week. But we’re going to talk about it, OK?'

All night I’d been stressing over it; I have no excuse, it was pure dickheadery. I try to be on the ‘she’ll be right’ team. It’s all good, it’s all good, it’s all good. Until it isn’t. Sometimes I hate myself, sometimes I get worked up about little things, sometimes things build up and irritate me, even though I pretend I’m all over them. Sometimes I obsess, fixate. Sometimes I convince myself I’m happy then I find myself seething with envy of things others around me have - Michela, her perfect family and calm exterior, Cat, her partner and her rabbit, their house up the coast and a serene life. Sometimes I think think I’m a good person and sometimes I catch glimpses of my ugliness. Sometimes I think I might be as intelligent as people tell me I am and other times I think I’m a fraud. Sometimes I think everything will be OK and other times I despair. I try my best at work to please but I always feel defined by the mistakes I make.

I thought I was moving beyond all of this, I was finally starting to feel worthy.

But something tells me they won’t judge me as harshly as I judge myself.

Not long ago I’d said to Luffy, ‘So, when are we going to have that sit-down you promised, the staff review?’

It was supposed to happen nine months ago.

You’re left alone to do your job, getting very little evaluative feedback from higher-up. They run largely on the principal that a mature team of career-waiters will more-or-less self-regulate, which fortunately is what happens most of the time, because management’s too busy to deal with non-critical issues.

But feedback’s important - although, granted, not to everybody.

To me, it demonstrates that management have considered your role as an individual within the team, and it’s a way of showing you you’re valued. Some of us without massive egos appreciate feedback. Thoughtfully constructed external observation can be invaluable in both professional and personal development, particularly when it comes from somebody who’s opinion we respect.

But I could see in the restaurant’s current environment there simply wasn’t time for navel-gazing, so it was better not to do it at all than do it poorly and hastily.

By turning up to work drunk, I’d unconsciously forced management to give me the assessment I’d been craving, although most of the feedback I got was from my mates down the pub. Forgiving and understanding, they assured me, ’It’s OK, we know you’re not an asshole, most of the time.’

The night I finally received my written warning I also learnt that I’d upset Jess at Luke’s 21st. Thinking back over the offending conversation, I realised how it could’ve been misconstrued, although hand on my heart I’d not meant to be hurtful. I knew it was a risky manoeuvre, talking-up to management, but I assumed it would be taken in good faith.

It wasn’t.

Consequently, I had to have a good hard look at myself, and wondered whether maybe it’d be better if I didn’t attend this year’s staff party. God knows, all my recent misdemeanours involved alcohol. But after a few frank discussions with colleagues, and with some trepidation, I gave myself permission to go.

The theme was ‘Heroes and Villains’.

Kirsten, Denis, Terry and I Ubered to the venue from my place. Mr Meringue was there with King Solomon and a bunch of office ladies who I didn’t know, as well as several of the chefs. Jay came dressed as Donald Trump and Turner was the Gladiator.

Turner greeted me. ‘Natasha, P.C. as always. I don’t think Hasselhoff is very happy with you.’

Oh great. I’m barely keeping my anxieties about simply being here under control, resisting the urge to binge-drink myself into oblivion for example, and already five minutes in I’m told that the blonde-haired blue-eyed Group Operations Manager from Brisbane isn’t happy with me. I assumed that it must have been because of my recent indiscretion at work.

(Turner) ‘Have you seen Solomon?’

(Me) ‘No, why, what’s he dressed as?’

The penny dropped. It was my outfit. For god’s sake, it’s a fancy dress party! Heroes and Villains, and I’ve come as the biggest villain of all - Osama Bin Laden. Courting controversy, provocation inciting feedback; I just can’t seem to help myself…

(Chow) ‘I like your costume Tash. A few people have a problem with it…’

(Me) ‘Am I in trouble again?’

(Chow) ‘Nah mate, you’re fine.’

No one seemed to have had an issue the year I turned up dressed as the dingo that ate Azaria Chamberlain, on the end of a leash held by Lindy.

Summer, as we all know, is the apogee of the cycle of madness, when hospitality staff are pushed beyond breaking, serving the demands of their industry, then pushed a little bit further by their own appetite for reckless recreation. That year was a standout for after-hours transgressions best forgotten.

There was the night of the accidental acid-trip, when hallucinogens were ingested after far too many hours at work, followed by far too many beers at the pub. One of us ended up having a less than satisfactory experience and called in sick to work the following day, probably the smart thing to do on reflection.

I, too, was rostered on, but I thought it would reflect badly on Sauce Force if I also chucked a sickie, so I ponied up for my shift, aware that my mind was still experiencing an altered state of consciousness.

I walked into the kitchen, terribly paranoid.

(Billy) ‘You OK mate?’

Wide and wild-eyed, I replied, ‘No!’

Billy had the heads-up from Johnny, who’d texted him. The relief that someone understood my predicament was palpable. I knew I could trust Billy and Tom.

I pep-talked myself into readiness for service. How hard could this be, I’ve done it a million times, I should be able to do it in my sleep. I put on a front, leaving behind the safe confines of the kitchen, out onto the dining room floor. No fancy footwork tonight, keep everything super simple.

All goes well until I have to engage with the guests. The food’s throbbing, warping, looking sideways and laughing at me, I’m sure the guests suspect there’s something up.

Get it together, be like Teresa: drop the food and run. Get the job done and get out of there.

I go to run some mains. Tommy’s calling the pass from the other side.

(Tom) ‘Lamb one, chicken two, table seven.’

I can see the lamb, it’s there on the pass in front of me. But I don’t see no chicken. Silently I look from the lamb, to Tom, to Billy. They stare back at me, then glance at one another. My brain pulsates and postulates before the lack of evidence.

(Me) ‘Come on guys, don’t do this to me.’

The chicken’s been hidden under a silver cloche, their idea of a bit of fun. It’s nice to know I can rely on my mates for support.

By some miracle I survive service without making any glaring errors, although the level of difficulty was much higher than it needed to be. Towards the end, Brett flounced into the kitchen, declaring:

‘We have to set Section Three.’

(Mil) ‘What for?’

(Brett) ‘For a bunch of wild animals! There’s going to be crocodiles and wildebeests, whaddya think?’

(Mil) ‘Which end do you want the trough?’

My brain nearly exploded.

(Brett) ‘Don’t get smart Mil, you’d better shape up or you can ship out!’

(Billy, winking, aside to me) ‘I think he means Ship Inn.’

Not long after this, Pete sustained head injuries drinking red wine in my apartment. One minute he was standing, the next minute he was sprawled on the concrete floor, his head surrounded by a widening halo of claret.

Only it wasn’t claret, it was blood.

That’s when we discovered the gaping hole in the market for a particular category of ride-share. Until this point we'd been spoiled for choice with Uber X, Uber Taxi and Uber Black, it was now apparent that Sydney Hospitality needed an Uber Ambo option, an organisation sympathetic to individuals dressed as Bin Laden, holding a plastic Kalashnikov to the head of a legless colleague in a desperate attempt to flag down a ride home.

That same Summer, Johnny and I very nearly perished on a trip to the Hunter Valley. It was the middle of the night and still thirty degrees. Naturally we were intoxicated, swimming in the pool at the farm where we were staying. There was a stick floating around which I went to pick up to throw out of the pool. Despite my dulled senses, primordial hard-wiring made me rapidly recoil away from a juvenile brown snake, as it slithered through the water in the direction of Johnny, who miraculously levitated out of the pool.

Another Tuesday, another menu change. I’ve arrived early so I sit up the back of Section Three. Szeeto’s running a function in Section Two in between changing over the menus. We have the length of the room and a table set for staff tasting between us.

Windey’s in a flap. Turner’s only plating up four dishes for roughly thirty of us. He’s in a foul mood, which is usual around menu changes. Now is not the time to lodge my complaint over the recent quality of staff meals. He was venting to Szeeto and I, adding that he’d just texted Luffy. With that, Josh enters the room. The two of them stand up the back of Section Three while I try not to listen to their conversation.

When they leave, Szeeto remarks:

‘Brett needs a holiday.’

(Me) ‘They need to hire another manager. Jess isn’t coping.’

(Szeeto) ‘The guy Josh wanted for the job, guess who vetoed him? Stacey. Those muppets in the office…Anyway, as of Friday, Stacey’s gone. She gave her notice a month ago and the people haven’t stopped dancing in the streets ever since.’

Somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain, I was aware I’d been furnished with this information. Szeeto continues.

‘I don’t know how they’re advertising these days: once upon a time we used to place an add in the Sydney Morning Herald. Now it’s all done on seek.com, flyers on telegraph poles, notes on people’s windscreens…’

(Me) ‘Who’s got the job of selecting candidates now?’

(Szeeto) ‘I don’t know, but those yellow dunking bird toys that bob down to pick up cards would do a better job.’

At the end of menu tasting, Jess hands out the latest tips test. Up until this point, the test has always been oral - not written - and it’s usually sprung upon us when we’re least expecting it, so we can’t really prepare, we just have to know stuff. The rationale behind conducting it in this fashion is that it’s more life-like, similar to how a guest asks questions.

Jess has reformatted the test. Now it’s a series of printed questions that we can take home and finish at our leisure, taking time to research our answers, or just copy them off someone else. A different skill-set’s required to pass, and I’d argue that it doesn’t hone the knowledge, practice, aptitude and excellence that all floor staff should have at their disposal at a moment’s notice. In Denis’ words, you instantly lose a guest’s confidence when you can’t answer their question without having to go and find the answer.

I’m in the bar filling plastic drink buckets with ice. Scott’s asking Roman the wine questions from the test. What’s the Syrah by the glass? How many millilitres is the wine by the glass pour? etc etc. I’m deliberately making as much noise as I can whilst scooping ice, because I want to answer the questions myself, that way I’ll better retain the knowledge.

Some time later, I’m standing at Waiter’s Station One, reading the wine list. Scotty’s walking through the bar with wine buckets, carrying them out to the stands on the floor.

(Scott) ‘Luke Lambert.’

FUCK OFF SCOTTY! He stops to look over my shoulder. My blood pressure goes into orbit. Yes, of course he’s correct, but I’d rather be wrong than feed his insufferable need to be right.

Tonight we’ve got an amuse bouche they’re bizarrely calling ‘Panzanella’. Exponentially multiplying my ample irritation, little Cat (my fellow food-runner) is officiously and authoritatively trying to explain it to me. It’s like fucked-up Chinese whispers. Kazu’s described it to Cat, who then renders the concept utterly unintelligible.

But just because you say something’s Panzanella doesn’t qualify it as Panzanella.

(Me) ‘Mickey, what does Panzanella mean to you?’

(Michela) ‘It’s a bruschetta salad with tomato and basil.’

(Cat) ‘It’s kingfish ceviche with bread croutons, a tomato basil foam and olive dust. It’s dairy-free and Kazu says it can be modified for pregnant women without the kingfish, and made gelatine-free without the croutons.’

(Me) ‘You mean ‘gluten-free’.’

(Cat) ‘I always get those two mixed up.’

Luciano enters the kitchen. ‘What is this ‘Panzanella’?’ I heard him ask. He also can’t believe what he’s hearing versus what he’s seeing. Cat, unaware the problem’s conceptual, blithely fumbles over her clumsy explanation.

(Cat) ‘I’ll have to get Kazu to explain it to you.’

Yeah, that makes perfect sense: get a Japanese person to explain an Italian dish to an Italian.

(Me) ‘It’s a Tuscan bread salad!’

(Cat) ‘NO! Kazu said it’s ITALIAN!’

Oh for fuck’s sake, this is ridiculous.

Fatigued and frustrated, toward the end of the evening I volunteer to go downstairs into the bowels of the building to bring up five large rounds, the huge circular ten pax table tops. Brett handed me the keys to the cookbook storage room, which historically was where furniture was stored. When I arrived there, I could only locate one large round. After coming back up and searching for the missing rounds (were they in use, were they in the lift room) I ran into Scott in Section Three, who informed me in his most condescending of manners,

‘You know they’re kept where the ice machine is, don’t you?’

(Me) ‘They’ve always been in the cookbook store room, and that’s why Brett gave me this key.’

It was a black master key with a tag that read ‘Cookbooks’.

As though addressing a mentally impaired child, Scott continues:

‘No, you’ll need the BLLL-UE key.’

Have a listen to yourself Scotty! The way you speak to people is unpleasant in the extreme. It’s been a long time since I remarked, ‘Scott, there’s no need to boldface, italicise and underline everything you say to me: I get it.’ because some people are simply beyond help.

But of course, when you’re perfect, why would you take anyone’s advice?