A poem

I only have the energy
to write in poetic form
what's happenings not right
not just
not free for all
there is a cost involved
which stands for one and all
disregarding race or idioma
i won't act as if in a coma
teach the truth
fight what's right
inagurate today
they say change has come our way
but the reality stays the same

Wal-Mart death

I cannot believe that yesterday an employee at a Wal-mart store in Long Island was trampled to death while trying to open the doors to the store. I just came across an article titled, "Wal-Mart death preventable, union says." Here is the link:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/29/black.friday.death/

The basic point of the article is that Wal-Mart could have had better security measures in place to prevent this incident from occurring. The president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500 said, "This is not just tragic, it rises to a blatant level of irresponsibility by Wal-Mart."

While I am no fan of Wal-Mart, I think the article fails to mention the responsibility of the over consuming American public. Do people really need to get in fights and trample over each other simply to get into a giant mega-store because prices are discounted even further from the already fairly cheap sweatshop labor products? Get a grip America. And all this the day after Thanksgiving, a day that is supposed to be about giving thanks for all that we have. Regardless of economic status, we as Americans have a lot to be fortunate for. Most of us have hot water and food on the table, things we take for granted everyday. Yet, this isn't enough. We have to go out and spend hours upon hours waiting in line for a chain store to open so that we can get our boom boxes, c.d.s, Sony Playstations, and other luxury items at a discounted price.

I think that American consumerism is out of control and that not only is Wal-Mart at fault, but so are all the American people who buy into this agenda of greed who waited in similar lines across the country for hours upon hours. Whether or not they actually trampled someone all I have to say is, "Find something better to do with your time and your money." If we Americans devoted as much energy to bettering our local communities and the world as we did to shopping, think of the difference we could make.

Waiting Tables

Can I just say that I hate waiting tables? I know that as a bartender in a restaurant I am still serving people, but there is an entirely different attitude with bar service. I can joke around with the customers, dish out witty sarcasms, and learn about who they are. When we know that it is going to be a slow night at the restaurant, I have started working the floor as well as tending bar. After tonight, I came to the conclusion that if I had to work as a waiter every day I would go crazy.

People sitting at tables are just plain annoying. Here is a recap of tonight's irritating events.

"How was everything?" I asked one of the tables as I was clearing away three completely clean plates (usually this is a sign that they liked the food). I don't usually finish everything on my plate if something about it is substandard.

"Well, I was really disappointed with the bun. I can't believe they didn't toast it. It tasted like it was still frozen," commented one of the diners.

Really, I thought. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt that perhaps the bun could have been better quality. I personally prefer not to eat our hamburgers for this very reason. But, why choose to tell me now? When you have already finished your meal, must you actually give your honest opinion to the server? It's not like I made the food. Keep it to yourself, critique the food in detail amongst your friends, but when the server asks how everything was after you have already finished, just lie. Say, "Great." give a pseudo convincing smile and move on.

Next annoying moment of the day happened with a three top of women. These are the kind of women who are all show and no real sophistication. Shopping at Cost Plus world market is probably about as worldly as they get. One of the women asks, "Do you have any Pinot Grigio?" When I reply, "No, sorry, we do not," she wants a recommendation of a wine that is similar to a Pinot Grigio. I begin to explain to her that there is a great Pouilly Fume that is actually quite different from a Pinot Grigio, but it is still light bodied and has wonderful fragrant qualities. The bottle that I suggested was $59. I could tell that she didn't want to spend this much when she inquired about the other Pouilly Fume which was $46.

"What is the difference between these two bottles," she asked.

"The difference is that the other bottle is a little more dry." Notice that I never said that it was a "dry" wine, I simply said that it was more dry than the other bottle. I didn't think she was entirely sold on the wine, so I was beginning to describe one other wine for her, a Licia from Spain, but she cut me off mid sentence and decided to order the cheaper Pouilly Fume.

When I opened the bottle and poured a little taste for her, she proclaimed, "This tastes sweet. I don't know, does this taste like Pinot Grigio to you guys?" as she offered a taste to her friends. "I don't really know what Pinot Grigio is, but this tastes really sweet to me, you said it was dry."

Stupid lady doesn't even know what she is looking for in a wine and then gets mad at me for saying it was dry, which I didn't even say, I said that it was drier than the other wine. The customer needs to know what they want before they have the nerve to complain.

And finally, the most annoying man of the evening. This guy was just all around irritating. His jerkiest moment came when I told him that we were out of the desert that he wanted to order.

"I'm sorry sir, but the kitchen has told me that we are out of the peach crisp this evening. Is there any other desert that you would like to try."

"Jeez, every time I come here you guys are out of one of the deserts. Why do you even bother to have desert on the menu if you are always going to be out of something? What do you have then?"

Wanting to grab him around the neck and choke him and cry out, "Loosen up you crazy, high strung idiot. If you don't like that occasionally we run out of one of our eight different deserts, than go somewhere else. No skin off my back." Instead, I replied, "We have everything else, sir."

After dealing with him all night long, he only left me $16.50 on a $120 bill. I really hope I never have to serve him again. If I do, I'll be sure to tell him that per his suggestion we decided to take desert off the menu.

Thanksgiving board game

I always approach going home for the holidays with caution. There is no telling what kind of chaos will ensue. This Thanksgiving my family actually managed to hold it together for the most part. That is, until it was time to play a board game.

We sort of have a family tradition of playing board games on Thanksgiving and Christmas day. Why we choose to engage in competition and set ourselves up for fighting God only knows. My parents always buy us a different game every Christmas. Sometimes these games are a hit and other times they completely suck or are simply not suited to the nature of our family. One Christmas we got a board game version of those series of books titled, "Chicken Soup for the Soul." This game was called, "Chicken Soup for the Family Soul" or something of the sort. The premise of the game was to go around recalling beautiful family memories. We read the first card out loud and knew that it was too "feel good" for us. That game has still never been played to this day. We need a game about winning, a game where someone can be made to feel stupid if they are not good at it.

This Thanksgiving we played a game that we have never played before. It was called This vs. That. It must have been last years Christmas game and I'm guessing we probably got in a fight and were not able to round up enough people to play the game. The funny thing is that even though game playing is somewhat of a tradition, there is always a struggle at first to get everyone together at the table or in the living room to actually play the game. Rarely do we manage to get all five or six of us to sit down at the same time and listen to the rules so that everyone knows how to play and we can all start on the same page. Then there is always the straggler, the late comer to the game. This role is usually reserved for my mother, she likes to say that she doesn't want to play and then start throwing out guesses from across the room when she isn't even on a team.

This vs. That turned out to be quite a fun game. We had two teams of two. At first the teams were my mom and dad on one team and my sister and I on the other team. One part of the game requires one of the players to use verbal cues to get their partner to guess five words that are written down on a piece of paper. My poor dad was simply not wired for this type of skill. He had a hard time figuring out what to say, using a lot of confusing hand gestures, and saying, "Um...um..." quite often. My mom as his partner was furious with him, "Come on now, you need to give better clues. Your clues stink. You really stink at this. Stop flailing your hands all over the place. How am I supposed to guess these words?" she berated him.

At one point, she was saying all of this when the category of the game was "Things that are stressful." I was quick to point out, "Things that are stressful: being partners with mom in this game." My sister and I won this first game with ease and decided to switch partners. I chose my dad and my sister chose my mom.

This is where the hilarity began. First, my sister was trying to get my mom to guess the words, "old books." Kim used clues such as, "These are things that you read."

"Books," my mom replied.

Then Kim said, "Not new but...."

"Old," my mom got the answer right away.

"Okay, now put those two words together."

Out of nowhere, my mom started guessing some random things, "Literature, magazines" she called out. I could not contain myself with laughter. The buzzer rang signaling time out before my mom could simply put the words together and get "used books." We were all laughing hysterically.

A few rounds later and it was now turn for my dad to make the same mistake. The category was "things associated with barnyards" and the word I had to get him to guess was, "smelly manure." I started with manure. "This is another name for poop," I described.

"Manure," my dad answered.

"Okay," I said. "Now, if something stinks, you could say that it is...."

"Smelly," my dad guessed.

"Right. Now put those two words together," I instructed.

This had my dad completely turned around. He started guessing some different words and I had to redirect him, "No, the two words that you already got. Simply put those together one after the other." I was starting to get nervous as I heard the buzzer begin to speed up signaling that our time was almost up. We still had not guessed one word correct this round.

My dad guessed, "Manure smelly."

I couldn't help but laughing, "Okay, now flip those words around. You are having dyslexia, simply swap the order of the words." Beep. The timer went off and we were out of time.

My mom jumped at the opportunity, "And you were laughing at me earlier? You just did the exact same thing. Manure smelly? What is that?"

I guess the morale of the story is that maybe it's not always your partner's fault. Maybe you both suck. Better yet, maybe it doesn't matter, and it's great to simply be able to laugh at yourself, admit when you suck at something and move on.

Urinelle

I came home last night in somewhat of an exhausted stupor. I was working at the restaurant until around 10:30 pm, had smoked myself silly and spent a good forty-five minutes on the bus to get home. When I finally got to my apartment it was about 11:15 and my roommate's cocktail party was still underway, although most of the guests had left at this point. The first thing I had to do was pee. After waiting for a few people to use the facilities, I dragged my dazed self into the bathroom where I couldn't help but notice something quite strange on top of the toilet. Was I really looking at what I thought I was? All I could see was a bunch of pictures of a woman using some sort of device to pee standing up. Essentially, some entrepreneur finally understood that "penis envy" is real and materialized this Freudian concept into: "Urinelle, the urinating tube for women."

While I thought the product was ingenious, I couldn't help but wonder what it was doing on top of our toilet. Were these really put out here for our guests to use? I read the description of the product and it states, "Urinelle enables women to urinate in a standing position: easily, safely and hygienically. Handy when, for example, you are out of the house where hygiene is often lacking." Is our toilet really that unhygienic that our guests would actually want to use this?

I asked my roommate about it today and she told me that it represented an inside joke between her and some of her friends. She told the story of why the urinating tube was funny (other than all the obvious reasons).

"We were eating dinner and Susie's husband Jeremy was the only man at the table. He mentioned how when it snowed outside, he and his guy friends would go outside and try to write their full names in the snow with their pee. Only, he could never finish his entire last name. He would only get up to Schmee. And that's how he ended up with that as his nickname. All of us girls were jealous, talking about how we wished we could do that too. Finally, one of the girls found this product online used to help women pee standing up and she bought all of us a packet of them. So, I put them out as a joke and kind of as a dare to see if we could get anyone to use them."

I inquired, "Have you tried it? Has anyone?"

"No, no one's used them as of yet. They are just a joke."

I bet that woman since the age of time have wished they could pee standing up and now here is this product that helps us accomplish that goal, yet no one has stepped up to the challenge. Maybe it's because urinelle is made out of this kind of durable paper and the thought of holding it down there and potentially getting pee all over your hands is a bit frightening. Or, maybe it's actually a popular product in the Netherlands, where they are made. And, I wonder, do you still have to wipe after using urinelle? Plus, at $6.85 per 7 pack they aren't exactly affordable. It's already expensive enough being a women in this society, need we add on another cost?

I guess for now the squat will have to do for most of us women who aren't fortunate or gutsy enough to try urinelle. A friend of mine the other day said that some women actually have trained themselves how to pee standing up. I think it might be that their urethras are made especially for this skill, some kind of a natural design advantage that they have. Possibly these women are the ancestors of nomadic groups that needed to pee standing up while they went on long walking journeys from place to place.

If you think about it, it is kind of interesting how different cultures use the bathroom. In Japan, for example, women squat over a ceramic hole in the ground. It's just a different kind of toilet. When my family lived in Japan, I remember having to learn how to use this type of toilet properly. At first, every time I had to go I took off my pants and my underwear, I was afraid of getting pee on my pants. Once, I actually dropped my underwear in the toilet in the process of trying to use the bathroom. That really sucked. With a little time and a lot of practice, I finally mastered the art of this form of peeing.

I actually think that squatting over a hole is easier than trying to squat over an American sitting toilet. At least the hole in the ground is made to be squatted over whereas the American toilet is made for sitting. Only thing is with all the germs out there, you can't actually sit on the public toilet without feeling icky and gross all over. I personally am a fan of the toilet seat cover. Something about that thin layer of paper protection gives me the comfort of mind to sit on the toilet. I recently did this in a public restroom with my friend in the same stall. "Gross," she exclaimed, "Why don't you just squat over the toilet?"

"Because it's really uncomfortable and that's what these paper things are made for." I replied in my defense.

She couldn't believe that I would actually sit on the toilet. Seriously, what the fuck? Why would we make a toilet for sitting on when we can't even sit on it? I think the Japanese have got it right and at least the Dutch have come up with an expensive ass alternative to the discomfort of squatting over a toilet (it seriously is a strain on your thigh muscles) in the product of urinelle. Maybe one of these days I'll give it a try and see how it goes. Or maybe not.

Tobiko

Is the customer really always right? Why is this the motto with which the American customer service sector is governed? I am pretty sure the customer is not always right. In fact they are sometimes and oftentimes wrong, partially correct, rude, and downright obnoxious. Don't we, as restaurant workers, have an obligation towards people to help them learn their manners? When you have children, it is common practice to teach them how to behave at the dinner table. Well, adults of America, isn't it time that you started to learn some manners yourself?

Yesterday night at La Terrasse I was working the entire floor of the restaurant on my own. No host, no manager, no busser, no runner, and no bartender. The restaurant is really not that big, and there were only 7 people in the books on this particular night, but there were about eleven other people in the restaurant beginning their meals at the same time. The largest party size of these eleven was two. Needless to say, I didn't really have time to deal with anyone's bullshit, or indecisiveness, or any other of the many general displays of rudeness common amongst customers.

One of my guests ordered our smoked salmon pizza. On the menu, this item is described as having, "red onions, creme freche, and tobiko" in addition to smoked salmon. This customer never asked me what kind of "tobiko" came on the pizza. If she was such a connoiser of this ingredient, than she should have known that there are three types of tobiko in addition to the traditional ingredient. These types are "colored" with different ingredients: wasabi (green), ginger (pale orange), and squid's ink (black). She never did ask this question. Apparently, she assumed that we were using the traditionally colored tobiko, which happens to be red-orange in color.

When I deliver the pizza to her, she exclaims without hesitation, "This is not tobiko. Tobiko is orange, it's the stuff that comes on the outside of the sushi rolls." Feeling like I was just given a spanking from my high school history teacher for not remembering what day in July our country celebrates independence, I replied, "Um...um...yes, I think this is tobiko. It's Japanese black caviar." The customer pounced on me like a lion and growled, "No, this is not tobiko. It's not tobiko. It has squid ink in it which gives it the black color. I can't eat squid ink." Whoa there mama, I thought. Hold your freakin horses, I can get you a god damn stupid fucking pizza without those black things on them, whatever they happen to be called. Of course I couldn't actually say what I was thinking. Instead, I got her a new pizza, made fresh from scratch. Just because she didn't really know what she was talking about. She was only half right.

Inner spirits

Have you ever met someone and felt that you could see inside their soul? The type of person who radiates an inner warmth and spirit of kindness and love that is enrapturing. I feel that I can get drunk amongst these individuals. When I meet an inner spirit I want to spend all my time indulging in their pleasures.

I want to thank all of these people out there for making the world a more beautiful place to live. And thank you for helping me to look at my own life differently; to make me want to live a more healthy, full, and happy existence.