I may be in over my head

Ok, so I don't know shit about shit about being a "real" server. I learned this last night. I'm NOT fancy at all...and I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb for real. BUT the cool part is everyone is willing to like help fancy me up...teach me how it goes a little bit...without making me feel dumb some how (as Paul knows this is a difficult task).

All I know is I served three tables last night and walked out with around 90 dollars. Granted this was a training day and these three tables are going to be more giving and forgiving...but still they all pretty much tipped their 20 percent. I didn't get a crazy hand out in there which means that serving three tables and making that much money isn't such a far fetched thing in the "real world" of Jason's Downtown.

Learned about the tip-out policy tonight. It's decent. I still need to know how much money I'm making on the clock, especially as far as hosting is concerned.

Need to straighten out parking. I parked where they told me to last night and ended up with this weirdo "You need to pay us your parking fee" ticket, which didn't look like a real ticket so much as them begging for me to pay eventually. I was told it would be a dollar for night shift, so i don't know what that's about.

Well, I should go and start my day.

SIDE NOTE>>>

If anyone knows any good tutorials on how to make this blog a little cooler...send them my way. By no means am I an HTML pro...but I have one sleeping next to me I think so yeah.


Also, I could really go for some banana bread right about now. Yeah, that's what I want, banana bread.

Could I have found a more perfect restaurant?

http://www.jasonscatering.com/downtown.html


Tonight was the meeting with all the people I will be working with...Jason's Downtown Wine Cellar. I am debating if I will go into a long winded description of the people and the place or just go as far as to say it will be a pretty sweet deal. Maybe somewhere in the middle?

This is a either singularly or family owned endeavor. "Jason" is an actual dude. He has been in the catering business for pretty much as long as I have been alive and has done multiple things with his own restaurants for year. I wonder why he is not still working at these places...but his laid back style, and quirky confidence appeals to me, and I can't help but like the guy right away. He will be an interesting boss to say the least.

His "hiring manager" of sorts...or at least the woman behind the man doing all the real work is his girlfriend Tammy. She reminds me of a classier version of an old supervisor I use to have. She's also very quirky. She's an entertainer, and does some kind of work on the "Queen Mary" which is this huge ass boat in long beach harbor...or something. I actually just saw it yesterday on accident...its funny how things go in circles like that.

There is like a server supervisor. I don't remember her name, but she's a friendly little Latino girl/woman. She cant be much older than me but she's got her stuff together and seems to know what she's doing.

Besides that I met a few other people "in charge" but didn't remember much of them besides the fact that they had a casual comfortable manner about them. I didn't feel freaked out to be meeting any of these people like I usually am.

My co-workers seem decent, though it seems like a lot of them already know each other so making friends for outside of work might be difficult. Besides that, they all seem to have very very busy lives...if not school then a second job. I may have gotten this job just because of my open availability...but hell whatever works right?

The restaurant itself is amazing. The design is spectacular. Exposed brick, red yellow and orange walls done in a very classy and not "Macdonald's" kind of way. Metal. I have been there twice now and don't even know how to describe it. Diffused lighting. Lots of bright reds and whites. It's nice...it's upscale...but accomplishes all of this without being pretentious or stuffy. It's one of the most comfortable environments I have been in since i got out here.


Here are some pictures I stole off their website. They aren't terribly flattering and because it looks like they were taken with a flash, they really don't look much like they really do in real life. Real Real Real. Word on the street is there will be a web photographer there tomorrow...I will take them all I will!





Uniforms are soft soft tee shirts, black pants, and comfy black nonstick shoes of our choosing with a bright red apron. Jason personally pays for half of our parking...which will only be a grand total of 5 bucks a day or so anyway...a dollar an hour...and that's only if we park in the big lotted building. On weekdays I might just try to find some street parking. Leaving there late at night was kind of new to me and therefore kind of frightening but I think I would feel better about it if it were in parking structure. Not that those are any safer.

Perhaps I will get some mace. Or a bomb ass switch blade from Mexico.

Sundays we are closed.

My schedule is Monday through Wednesday Lunch. I am off Thursday, and then work Friday and Saturday Dinner. We are located across from the court house...and this is THE courthouse for Orange County so I am sure we will have our fair share of drinking attorneys coming in for week day lunch. What I mean to say is that my schedule can't get much sweeter.

Oh, besides the fact that I host on Tuesday. That could turn in to a serving shift, but considering the hosts get tipped out here I should be ok.

And the food sounds crazy good. Most lunches are around ten dollars, and most dinners fifteen to twenty five. I don't feel like searching the keypad in the dark for the numbers, so enjoy the spelled out ones.

I should be making decent money here, especially with five shifts a week.

This is so exactly what I was looking for.

I wont lie though, there is a small part of me that is upset that I am serving again. I wanted to be on with my life, working towards something of my own not just waiting tables...but I guess this is still a step in that. What I need right now is some cash and some time to think about what my next move is...and this is a good place to make that cash I think.

That's yet another good thing about this place!!! They will be doing events all the time. This girlfriend Tammy is involved with events on the queen Mary...they know all kinds of people that are involved in the Santa Ana arts, theater scene. They are possible connections. This isn't a dead end server job if I don't want it to be, at least thats what I believe. This may be one of those times to be that squeaky wheel and get what I fucking want.

But first I must figure that part out...huh?

Ok, I now want to blog about something entirely different...so I will make a new blog I thing.

Well...on second thought I will save that for a later date. It can go with girl songs for boys, because it's also media related. It's two in the morning and I have to wake up and buy yet another pair of black pants. Arg.

Jobs...and not girl songs about boys

Well...I'm not in the mood for a rant today so girl songs about boys is on hold yet again...but I wanted to let internet world know that I do in fact now have a job. I start kind of on Wednesday. Its a place that is just opening up...so it could be awesome or it could bomb. Either way, its a job as a waitress and naneenaneee bo bo.

Its at this place called Jason's downtown wine cellar...right by the courthouse in Santa Ana. It's in an area that reminds me of the little streets in St. Joe, MI for those of you that know that area (IE none of you).

My first day will be like an opening party type thing just for the people who will work there. I don't know. It's like an orientation I guess but...bla

Very bla today. Very bored but not wanting to do anything at the same time. I need Paul to come back home so he can entertain me and shield me from Nana. She sees that I'm bored but also uses cleaning as a cure for that. Woo hoo. I got this video game black and white 2 I want to play... but that wouldn't fly with all this cleaning to be done. PS the house looks spotless and immaculate but not to this woman. She's got a crazy eagle eye when it comes to this stuff.


well...im outta steam. So much for this blog.

Job Searching, Casinos, And Girl Songs About Boys

So yeah...still job searching. I have gone the restaurant route and encountered a few strange things. A) Downtown Disney (Denis Practically twisted my arm and told me to go there) has the regular kind of "busy in the summer, not busy again until Christmas" thing. OK, I can handle that. Then there are the College towns. College towns are busy right now, and in fact they are hiring...or they all already did like a week ago. Ass Fuckers. Ok...then there's the sports bar. Sports bars are actually my favorite because I feel comfortable in them. There have been a few really fancy places I have interviewed in, and even though I was all done up right, the difference in Pole in your ass culture as apposed to no pole in your ass culture shown right the hell through. Also...Uno's didn't quite give me the skills necessary to work in one of these establishments.

Another thing that's pretty fucked up is the amount of people working to get these jobs. California doesn't have a server’s wage. Minimum on everyone is 7.50 an hour plus tips. This goes up to 8.00 in January. I may have said this already but it seems that I am the only one this is mind boggling to...and every one already knows this game.

I have a degree. My degree is going to pay me an entry level pay check of....oh probably between 5 an 10 thousand dollars less a year than a serving job.

Also...I'm in Anaheim, Orange County...not terribly close to LA. Even that job I applied to in LA was on the south west side...as in I didn't have to drive through LA to get to it...as in pretty friggin rare.

Denis and Carol keep telling me there are all kinds of jobs in my field in Orange County...I would like to know where (other than Disney...and shut up about it.)

Another problem I am finding with a degree in my field is that I have no experience in it really. I have never had any management experience. I have only had maybe 4 months secretary type experience with my internship...everywhere "entry level" wants like two years experience in either.

So, I feel stuck banging my head against a wall for a job that will pay me less than my last one, will take longer to get to and from, and will probably make me wear that business attire I hate so bad.

To tell you the truth...I'm kind of done with Performing Arts Management. I would love to get into other arts management...but shitty small time bands can eat it.

Truth be told...I think I'm gunna get into breeding dogs pretty much as soon as I get my own house.

And getting my own house will go quicker if I make more money. And I will make more money waitressing. And I will be happier waitressing in a sports bar, where I can wear jeans and shoot the shit...not stick my nose up in the air.

Speaking of making more money, we went to the Casino yesterday. Have I said that Denis and Carol are just too rich for their own good and don't know what to do with their money yet? Don't get me wrong, they wouldn't really look it unless you really looked hard. Their house is modest...in one of the richest property areas in the country. They have two cars for the two of them...kind of. I won’t go into that. They shop for things so frugally that you would think they are on some crazy budget, until you realize that they just like the hunt of shopping for deals, because they have two or three of whatever at home already (or at least the one they have is just fine).

I mean, there not crazy, but they love to shop and spend money...on themselves and everyone around them.

SOOOO they love the casino. We all went yesterday, had a pretty lush buffet breakfast and they gave Paul 200 to gable with.

Roulette.

Now most people will tell you that it has the worst odds...and it does...if you play the numbers. However there are these other spots on the board where it’s for black or red, the first half of the numbers or the second, odds or evens. These pay one to one, and so far both in the real life and subsequent computer versions of the game I have never seen a streak of anything more than 8 times in a row.

Soooooo....what you do is you find a small minimum table. 5 dollars is what we found. You wait until there has been a streak of 2 or 3 of something. 3 blacks, 2 odds, three in the second half of the numbers....whatever, and you bet the next round will be the opposite of those (red, or even, or the first half)

If you lose you just double your money on the same bet until you win. The tricky part is you need like...500 dollars minimum to make sure you can cover a streak of 8 in a row (there are these 0's in there, they throw shit loopy some times) and I'm pretty sure you never lose.

The thing is it gets scary to put that much on the table. Also, I would never go to the casino with that much money anyway unless I was...Old and rich and didn't know what to do with my money.

You can play with the bet amounts and not do exact doubles each time...but it has to be more than double or it doesn't' work.

We were doing this yesterday and it was working...but we didn't have 500 we only had two. Paul got up to three then gave me 50. He lost a lot of his because he got a streak of 6 or 7, but I had turned my 50 into 90. Then he had another plan he wanted to try and it looked pretty good, but it wasn't as good as it looked so the rest of the money ran away too.

Go ahead, find an online one, try it out.

Well...Paul is bugging me for the computer so I guess I will have to save my rant about girl songs for boys later. That's ok, I just woke up and kind of need to brush my teeth before I gag myself.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT GIVE ME A JOB

YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO!

No job for me :(

They are looking to go "in another direction" meaning not me. Fiddle sticks. Back to the restaurant scene I go.