Rays of Light Through the Lameness

February is almost over, which means I felt compelled to post the 2008 edition of the Lame Hall of Fame. But I’m in Boulder and the weather is spectacular, and I don’t hate life like I usually do in February, so maybe we’ll have to put that off till next year. Or at least for another few days, when it starts snowing again and DIA is a mess and I wonder why I came home instead of hanging loose in Vegas and California. Instead I decided to write about a couple exceedingly lame situations I found myself in where I was blindsided by something cool and unexpected.
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The summer after my first year of college, I came home to Boulder and desperately searched for a job. I tried everything, and found nothing. The CU students beat me to the punch, and there weren’t many scraps left. Finally in June, when it seemed all options had been exhausted, I found a brand new Italian restaurant on Pearl Street called Trattoria Girasole. They were opening up that summer and needed a staff. I got hired as a busser.

The guy opening the place, Francesco, was a real asshole. He was Italian and hadn’t spent much time yet in the States. The restaurant was his baby, and he was overbearing. He put so much pressure on everyone, it made them constantly look over their shoulders in fear and loathing. It was a terrible place to work and everyone hated it.

When we started, the working situation was naturally very disorganized. These things happen when a restaurant opens. It was understandable but it sucked. We would come in to work, open the place, and then be overstaffed and eventually Francesco would send some of us home. Our wage was something like $4/hr (well below minimum wage) before tips, so often we would come in for three hours and walk with $12 because we wouldn’t get a share of the tips if we left before many customers arrived. I’m not sure about the legality of this. I am sure it pissed us all off.

By the end of the summer, I was the only busser out of the eight originally hired still standing. The others had all quit or been fired. I managed to carve out some dignity and sanity in that place, but I still despised every minute of work there. When I got there I worked efficiently but without passion. When I left I tried not to think about work again until the moment I got back.

Perhaps the worst thing about the job was that Francesco made the bussers clean and close the place down. Outside of the kitchen, we had to do all the cleaning at the end of the night – tables, exterior, bathrooms, etc. This isn’t standard, but Francesco wanted to squeeze every drop he could out of the lowly bussers. It was kind of a savvy business move, really.

At the end of each night, Francesco would stay to order the bussers around. He would tell us what to do and do some bookkeeping. This was how it was all summer. There was never any breathing room, never a chance to relax without his watchful eye boring down the back of your neck.

One August evening near the end of my time served at Girasole, Francesco and I got to talking about music during one of those cleanup closedowns. I’m not sure how the conversation started but eventually Francesco confided in me that he liked listening to Radiohead. I briefly mentioned that I preferred Oasis but some chef was hyping the talents of Genesis. Francesco started making fun of Genesis and I started laughing. Then Francesco asked me if I could guess what his favorite band was back in the day. He said they were the Radiohead of his generation. I assumed Pink Floyd but he shook that off. I threw out a couple more mystified guesses – maybe the Zombies, perhaps Yes? Finally Francesco ended the suspense: Deep Purple.

He was real fired up at this point. I had never seen him like this. He was bouncing around like an excited little boy and then went upstairs and blasted some old Deep Purple record over the restaurant’s speakers. It was halfway decent, not the progressive rock juggernaut Francesco was hyping but a reasonable 60s rock album and 8000 times as fun as the muzak blend of pop opera normally played in the restaurant. That was pretty cool.
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Five weeks ago we flew from Melbourne, Australia to LAX on United Airlines. I have had a number of dreadful experiences involving United, and believe they are not only the worst major airline operating today, but possibly the worst large company in the world. My trip out to Australia was filled with hassles, too numerous to recount here. The return was less stressful, though not near as enjoyable as last year's jaunt on Qantas.

Every step of the way, the United personnel had been rude, unhelpful and incompetent. In Denver, the bitch at the ticket desk had insisted to me that I had no ticket nor visa before being forced to eat her words. On the return, the flight crew flight kept screaming out score updates from the NFC Championship game, which we were overoptimistically, tragically trying to avoid until we got home to watch it on DVR.

Before the flight home, I bet Joel 1% of FTOPS main event action that he wouldn’t get home without at least an hour delay. He did, but I still think it was a good bet – more than half of the flights I’ve been involved in with United have been delayed, and usually not for reasons out of their control.

When we walked off the plane in LAX, it was about 8 AM local time and we had been up all night and day on the 14 hour flight. We blearily trudged off and tried to navigate LAX.

There was a guy working the bag switch for United who greeted us. He was moving fast, jamming away on a computer, slapping tags on bags, tossing them on and off belts, talking with people. He asked where we were going. When I said Denver, he immediately asked if I wanted to catch an earlier flight. I was staring face to face at a miserable jetlagged four-hour layover, so obviously I was thrilled to catch a punctual flight. In just a moment, he had a new ticket to Denver in my hands. Joel then asked if he might be able to help him get to Atlanta any sooner. The guy jammed away on the computer for a couple minutes throwing out hypotheticals involving a dozen random cities, but there just was nothing to help Joel. He sure tried though.

Joel and I couldn't believe a United employee had gone out of his way to help us. We couldn't believe how well this guy was doing his job, and wondered what exactly that job was. Like Michael Clayton or Winston Wolf, he was just The Guy That Gets Things Done, we decided. What a job he did. For whatever reason, he was fired up to work and do the best job he could. I still can't believe he worked for United.