From The Ashes ...

Tom Was Here

Home from work at 2:30 am. Of course, I went in at 10 am. The day shift was uneventful. I spent a little time bonding with the owner's mom. She handles the bookkeeping for the club. She's actually a pretty nice lady, relatively mellow. She seems (on the surface, at least) to forgive mistakes as long as you can document what happened, in order to resolve the issue and send better information up the chain. The owner et. al, apparently only want clean, bottom line data. So Mom is the filter between us (management) and them. I had a $98 credit card discrepancy on Friday. I tried to figure it out. After about 20 mins. of adding and re-adding credit card deposits at 4:30 in the morning I finally gave up. One thing I've learned is that sometimes you need to look at a problem with a fresh pair of eyes. Either someone else's or your own after a night's sleep. Something that appears unsolvable at 4 am can be instantly resolved the next day at noon. Mom confirmed that I made the right decision. Pack it up, leave a note, and go the fuck home.

The night shift was technically uneventful as well. We did the Sunday night comedy show in the restaurant and an outside contractor booked the show room. This is usually a recipe for disaster as an outside promoter can be totally unprepared for the vagaries of a nightclub booking in New York City. They don't seem to grasp that you need to issue backstage passes for your entire crew. Trying to push your way through a doorway by muttering "He's with me." gets you a stiff-arm to the chest and a demand for a ticket or ID. Insisting the person you're trying to mack through the door is "hooked up" only serves to redouble the staff's resolve to not allow you to get what you want. This group was surprisingly professional. They were organized and very low maintenance

In any case, if I had any difficulties at all it was with the other new manager. He has a serious problem with insecurity and tries to cover it up two ways. He fixates on a single issue for a couple of days and talks about it and fusses over it ad infinitum to the point where the staff just ends up rolling their eyes and not responding at all. Or he just starts yelling and swearing at people, starting arguments and building resentment among the staff to what appears to be a growing critical mass. Now, I'm not absolving the staff of any guilt in this scenario. They will try, given the opportunity, and depending on who we're talking about, to get out without finishing their work. But I do maintain that in my opinion, the manager that tries to get what he wants by yelling, by threats and intimidation, by talking to adults as if they were less than or not adults, is usually covering up for his own insecurities. People that solve a problem by screaming are usually trying to not allow you to find out they're not too bright. His latest fixation seems to be with the key box. To explain: We have a key box in the managers office with duplicate keys to almost everything. Dressing rooms, locker rooms, dry storage, liquor rooms, menu cabinets etc. The staff, during the course of the day, will grab keys they need to open up rooms or bars or storage. They're supposed to return the key to the key box ASAP. That doesn't always happen. But the new manager is obsessed and keeps urging me to take people's ID and use Post-It notes to track who has what key. Feh. I know who returns keys and can be trusted and who can't. I endured my key lecture only to enjoy the image of me stabbing his temple with a pen and driving it deep enough to write my name on the surface of his brain. But maybe that's just me.