Oooooooo Lawd!
Up at 7:30 so's I can leave for my first day on the job at 9:30. Yes, it takes me two hours to wake up and get ready to leave the house. In my defense, around 40 minutes of that involves walking and feeding the dog and a hot shower/shit/shave (for me, not the dog). A couple cups of coffee, some general pokiness and two hours fly by. I like to ease in to things rather than roughly plunge into the day's sphincter. I'm sensitive like that. Sometimes, I like to rim the day for about 20 minutes, but that's another story.
Anyhow, as expected, I've landed in a huge undertaking as far as jobs go. I'm working with a manager/consultant and another manager. Two more have been hired but they don't start for a week or two respectively. Unfortunately, by that time we need the entire staff hired and trained. Bussers, hosts, waiters, bartenders, runners, at least one Maitre d' and some barbacks if we can find any. Also, reservationists and seaters while we're at it. This while construction is ongoing, bars are being built, the waiter stations are purely theoretical, intricate computer wiring and soda systems need to be completed and beer lines have to be extended, hooked up and refrigerated. I need to come up with a wine list that will work for the time frame allotted as well as please the consultants. We need inventory sheets and a whole host of request forms, training manuals and legal documents. Bar supplies need to be ordered as well as all the liquor and food, linen napkins, aprons, bar mops and a million other things I haven't listed.
I spent today touring the facilities, offering up opinions for storage options and doing interviews and arranging call-backs for people already seen at least once. Talking on the phone is usually one of my least favorite things to do, but I must have called 20 people this afternoon. My irrational fear switch appears to be turned off. I hope it lasts.
The other new manager is gorgeous. And really nice. He's got very distracting fingers. But that might just be me. Anyway, we met with one of the (many) owner/investors, who was nice enough to take us through the storyboards for the entire concept. From bars to retail to entertainment to custom made state of the art recording booths to the real time on-line performance cams to the projection billboards over Broadway. To say that millions of dollars are being spent on this project would be a gross understatement. It could potentially be a destination complex for tourists worldwide. Even if it reaches flash-in-the pan status, I see it having a great 5-10 year shelf life in NYC and I also see huge potential for expansion to Vegas, Disney and anywhere else huge throngs of American Idol wannabe's gather. Assuming I don't dive headfirst into a giant martini glass, this could be an enormous source of income and a great coup in my career.
I put in a solid 8 hours and then headed downtown. I missed the first 15 mins. of a Gay-A meeting. I'm a little stunned I'm at 34 days now. I could have waited an hour and gone to a later one but I wanted to get home to Jet, and after a brief assessment of how I was feeling I was sure that there was no way I was going to spoil today by falling off the wagon. By the by yesterday found me skipping game day with the POZzies. I opted for getting caught up on my vomit crusted laundry. And I made it to the Alka-Palooza for the afternoon session. After catching a Gay-A meeting I popped over to Union Square Whole Foods for a Buffalo Chicken paninni that was div-ooon before returning for the big meeting in the school auditorium. I caught the last 15 minutes of one speaker. Shortly after the next speaker began, my head rolled forward as my seat-tray table returned to the "nap" position. I feel asleep. If you go to a meeting but sleep until the closing prayer it still counts, right? I mean, I was there ...
Well, I have to give the puke-meister his last walk now. I'm on day shifts at least until we get the joint open so by midnight I want to be in bed with a vampire DVD of some sort playing. That always soothes me to sleep.
Amazingly, they're sticking to the opening date of April 5th. I expect we'll be gluing down floor tiles right up until the doors open.
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