{"id":324,"date":"2012-08-19T00:35:24","date_gmt":"2012-08-19T00:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joeplumstead.com\/?p=324"},"modified":"2012-08-19T19:21:02","modified_gmt":"2012-08-19T19:21:02","slug":"its-still-all-greek-to-me-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joeplumstead.com\/?p=324","title":{"rendered":"IT’S STILL ALL GREEK TO ME"},"content":{"rendered":"

The good don\u2019t always win<\/em><\/p>\n

And might makes right<\/em><\/p>\n

The Sword of Damocles is hanging above your head<\/em><\/p>\n

–Lou Reed<\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ever since my restaurant went out of business back in April, I follow the same fruitless routine every morning.\u00a0 While drinking multiple cups of coffee, I search on-line for employment opportunities.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cDad\u201d, my younger daughter declared one morning, \u201cyour outfit screams<\/em><\/strong> of unemployment\u201d.\u00a0 She was, of course, correct.\u00a0 I was wearing my usual internet job-search outfit: red, floppy, elastic banded shorts monogrammed with black-winged death skulls, a black t-shirt with a silver airbrushed portrait of Popeye on it, and a disintegrating pair of flip-flops.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The flip-flops constitute half of all the footwear in my wardrobe.\u00a0 The other half is a pair of sturdy work boots.\u00a0 They provide a modicum of arch support for the pancakes I call my feet.\u00a0 It is too little, too late for all of the joints north of my feet, though.\u00a0 My knees and hips are playgrounds for arthritis and bursitis\u2014the end result of four decades spent on my feet working in the restaurant business\u2014hastened less by bad fashion sense and more by orthopedic cluelessness.\u00a0 I have no regrets, though.\u00a0 My stiff, aching joints are the badge of an odyssey.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The odyssey began sometime in the early 1970\u2019s in Baltimore.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure of the exact year because I\u2019m getting forgetful\u2014and, back then I was a stoned, clueless high school dropout with the awareness and attention span of a pile of rocks.\u00a0 For me, dining out meant carryout, never anything fancier than pizza, tacos or Moo Goo Gai Pan.\u00a0 Restaurants were a place other<\/em><\/strong> people went to eat, especially fancy ones.\u00a0 The only way a stoned, unemployed drop out could ever eat at one was to work at one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then, as now, restaurant work was the most viable employment opportunity for the tired, poor huddled masses, as well as for clueless, otherwise unemployable teenagers.\u00a0 Immigrants flock to restaurants for work, either because they are skilled restaurant professionals worthy of a decent wage, or they are biding their time until the doctorate that they received in the Old Country pays off in the form of a \u201creal job\u201d.\u00a0 Teenagers easily get restaurant jobs based on the simple qualifications that they are breathing and ambulatory.\u00a0 No skills are required\u2026just sturdy feet and legs, and a willingness to take a lot of crap for a low wage.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bussing tables was my first restaurant job. It was memorable only for the monotony and the standard-issue busboy uniform: white shirt, clip-on black bow tie, yellow waist-length \u201cbus\u201d jacket with wide lapels, black pants and high-gloss black shoes.\u00a0 Other than looking like an organ-grinder monkey, I didn\u2019t mind the uniform.\u00a0 I hated the shoes, though.\u00a0 They were uncomfortable.\u00a0 They gave me blisters.\u00a0 They were made for dead people.\u00a0 Unlike my non-work shoes, they required daily maintenance– scraping splattered food crud off of them, then buffing and polishing them back to a lustrous glow.\u00a0 The only maintenance my non-work shoes required was periodic applications of duct tape and odor eaters.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Promotion from busboy to kitchen helper came at a restaurant named Gambrinus.\u00a0 The place was a model of consistent inconsistency.\u00a0 It suffered from an enormous identity crisis.\u00a0 It was sort of this, sort of that\u2014with nothing ever clearly defined.\u00a0 Even the most clueless employee could seem competent.\u00a0 I thrived there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Gambrinus was sort of a Greek restaurant.\u00a0 The owner\u2014Mr. Leo\u2014was a wealthy Greek\/American businessman. I guessed that the restaurant was one of the crown jewels of his empire, but it was more likely a venture of whim, serving as an entertainment venue for his three-piece suit and gold-chained business buddies.\u00a0 The menu seemed whimsical also\u2014there was a smattering of delicious Greek comfort foods, an overabundance of pedestrian American steak and seafood dreck, and a few puzzling pseudo-Mediterranean entrees.\u00a0 It all seemed alien and exotic to me back then, though.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Most of the kitchen staff were native-born Greeks who could barely speak English.\u00a0 The chefs were large, burly, loud men.\u00a0 They were very intimidating.\u00a0 Their chef coats were always splattered with blood from the whole lamb and veal carcasses that they had hacked into servable portions.\u00a0 They were all chain smokers.\u00a0 They all had impressive, bushy mustaches.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The one woman who worked in the kitchen\u2014Tessia\u2014was also loud and burly.\u00a0 She also had a mustache\u2014better than anything I could muster, but not as impressive as the other cooks\u2019 mustaches.\u00a0\u00a0 Tessia didn\u2019t smoke.\u00a0 She was very kind and could speak passable English.\u00a0 She was the liaison between the Greek-speaking cooks and the dining room staff.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A few Greek-American guys worked in the dining room along with a melting pot of Iranians, French Moroccans, Bolivians, Brazilians and Americans.\u00a0 The dining room staff constantly whined about everything, and in multiple languages.\u00a0 They complained about the brutish Greek kitchen staff and the idiotic cheapskate customers.\u00a0 They bitched about not being able to get \u201creal jobs\u201d and they pissed and moaned about what a shithole Baltimore was and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.\u00a0 They mostly complained about how little money they were making in tips.\u00a0 Business was usually slow.\u00a0 If they owned the place, most of them declared, things would be a lot different\u2026but they didn\u2019t own the place so nothing ever changed.\u00a0 Mr. Leo owned the place.\u00a0 Change didn\u2019t seem to be on his agenda, nor did he seem to have an iota of knowledge about the restaurant business.\u00a0 He seemed, at times, more clueless than me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For one thing, he had named the place Gambrinus.\u00a0 Initially, I thought that it was some sort of actually pronounceable Greek name.\u00a0 But it wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 The place was named after the Flemish patron saint of beer.\u00a0 At the time, Flemish to me might as well have meant a condition of pulmonary congestion, rather than people from a region in Belgium.\u00a0 What did a snot-clogged Beer Saint have to do with a restaurant that lamely portrayed itself as being a Greek restaurant?\u00a0 Beer needed a patron saint?\u00a0 Who knew?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The odor of stale beer pervaded the restaurant, leaking into the outer corridors, all the way up to the second floor of the high-rise office building in which it was located.\u00a0 Some of the employees referred to the d\u00e9cor as \u201cGreek Freakish\u201d.\u00a0 It appeared to be the end product of a bad experience on LSD and a vague concept of ancient times, thrown together on a shoestring budget.\u00a0 It was a collage of mismatched bad taste.\u00a0 There were small murals on the walls of Spartan or Trojan soldiers marching in ant-like order, and toga-clad gods and goddesses in the repose of grape-eating foreplay.\u00a0 There were large, dark plastic urns with impressions of mythical beasts on them, scattered throughout the place, filled with odd-looking plastic plants that were filmy from the resin of tobacco smoke.\u00a0 The twenty or so tables were covered with dingy yellow tablecloths, barely illuminated by tiny Christmas tree lights that were strung everywhere.\u00a0 Bouzouki music constantly whined and twanged on the crappy sound system.\u00a0 It was depressing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The bar and lounge was a little less depressing but no less weird.\u00a0 A large, darkly stained oak bar with a polished granite top faced out on several cocktail tables and booths.\u00a0 There were plenty of Christmas tree lights, but also colorful track lighting that shone down onto a small stage where, every Monday night, a belly dancer would jiggle her stuff to the music of a live<\/em><\/strong> Bouzouki band.\u00a0 There were no murals on the wall.\u00a0 Instead, the walls had a collection of framed photographs\u2014different sized and hung crookedly\u2014of famous Greeks, none of whom I recognized except for Jimmy The Greek and Vice President Spiro Agnew.\u00a0 I did recognize the two non-Greeks on the wall, though.\u00a0 There was a portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and her murdered first husband, JFK.\u00a0 I guessed that this was some sort of clumsy display of Greek\/American solidarity or a pathetic homage paid to the ghosts of Camelot.\u00a0 Conspicuously missing was a portrait of Jackie O\u2019s second husband, Aristotle Onassis.\u00a0 It made no sense.\u00a0\u00a0 I assumed it was Mr. Leo\u2019s idea.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I also assumed that it was Mr. Leo\u2019s idea to move me from bussing tables to a position as a kitchen helper.\u00a0 It was never beneath him to engage in small talk with the help, even with peons like me.\u00a0 On occasion\u2014usually during the rare instances when I was overwhelmingly busy\u2014he would take me aside in confidence.\u00a0 \u201cMichael\u201d, he would say, followed by something such as, \u201cis that Bobby giving you a hard time?\u00a0 If that Bobby\u2019s giving you a hard time, you tell him that I gave you permission to kick his ass\u2026okay?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cOkay, sure thing, Mr. Leo\u201d, I\u2019d respond nervously, trying not to drop the fifty pounds of dirty dishes I was balancing on a tray with one hand\u2026while also wondering why he called me Michael instead of Joe.\u00a0 As to who \u201cthat Bobby\u201d was, I had no clue.\u00a0 Nobody by that name worked at the restaurant.\u00a0 Still, if \u201cthat Bobby\u201d ever did materialize, an ass kicking was in store for him if he ever gave me a hard time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One day\u2014during another uncharacteristically busy lunch\u2014Mr. Leo beckoned me to the waiter\u2019s station: \u201cMichael\u201d, he said, handing me a white kitchen apron, \u201cgo back to the kitchen and help those malakas out of the fucking weeds.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cMalakas\u201d was the one Greek word that I knew.\u00a0 It is a noun.\u00a0 It means a \u201cjerk off\u201d, connoting many other unfortunate qualities such as laziness, cluelessness and misfortune. Everybody at Gambrinus qualified as a malakas at some point, for whatever reason\u2014especially me.\u00a0 If not a malakas, one was a \u201cshoemaker\u201d\u2014an interchangeable sobriquet offered in English by the Old Country melting pot of waiters and busboys.\u00a0 It was one of the few English words I ever heard the Greek cooks use. That shoemaking was a worldwide profession of luckless, indolent wankers was a cultural revelation to me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Less of a revelation was the necessity of getting someone out of the weeds.\u00a0 Getting in<\/em><\/strong> the weeds was very common at Gambrinus.\u00a0 It is restaurant slang for being hopelessly overwhelmed\u2014usually to the point whereby reason and rationality are abandoned and panic takes over.\u00a0 Getting in the weeds is easy.\u00a0 Being assigned the task of getting a bunch of malakas out of the \u201cfucking weeds\u201d sounded like a death sentence to me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The malakas Mr. Leo commanded me to get out of the fucking weeds were the Greek cooks.\u00a0 Considering the fact that I knew only one word of Greek and couldn\u2019t cook my way out of a box of Bisquik, it seemed like a fairly ridiculous order.\u00a0 Besides this, the cooks scared the shit out of me.\u00a0 They had always yelled at me a lot, even when they weren\u2019t in the weeds.\u00a0 I never understood what they were yelling, but they would throw enough \u201cmalakas\u201d and \u201cshoemakers\u201d in their gibberish to drive home the fact that they were really pissed off.\u00a0 Sometimes, they would even throw kitchen utensils and wet bar towels at me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I suspected their obvious dislike for me stemmed from the possibility that they had overheard me and a couple of busboy buddies making fun of them.\u00a0 Actually, we hadn\u2019t make fun of them–we had made fun of their language, particularly the tongue-twisting surnames many Greeks seemed to have.\u00a0 For instance, the \u201cLeo\u201d in Mr. Leo was one syllable of a long, complicated, unpronounceable last name.\u00a0 It was merciful that we were allowed to call him just \u201cMr. Leo.\u201d\u00a0 His real name was Something-something-leo<\/strong>-something-something-opolous.\u00a0 Greek last names always seemed to end in something that sounded like opolous.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Given this tidbit of Greek language knowledge\u2014usually aided by the inspirational effects of a joint or two\u2014my busboy buddies and I would invent Greek nicknames for some of our other, less-cool, non-Greek coworkers.\u00a0 The names were assigned to them on the basis of an unfortunate physical condition that they possessed, an infamous act or, simply, on the basis of their demeanor.\u00a0 There was Denny Pop-a-lot-o-pus, a busboy with a horrible acne condition.\u00a0 Fernando Got-a-lot-o-butts-but-not-a-lot-o-bucks was a fat-assed Bolivian bartender who never tipped the busboys. Patrick Pukes-in-stacks-o-pots was the Haitian dishwasher who, one New Years Eve, chugged a whole fifth of gin that he ended up gacking into the pot sink.\u00a0 And, there was Gilbert Prick-a-saurus, a Moroccan waiter who was just a big dick\u2026and on and on\u2026just harmless fun.\u00a0 Nevertheless, I was pretty certain that the Greek cooks were not pleased with this.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To my surprise, when I entered the kitchen to bail the malakas out of the weeds they cheered me\u2014\u201cGood boys!\u201d they cried, \u201cJoes to help work keechin!\u201d\u00a0 It was a heroic moment, but only a moment\u2014\u201cMany dirty deeshes\u2026you go wash\u2026make deesh clean!\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They weren\u2019t kidding about the \u201cmany dirty deeshes\u201d.\u00a0 Patrick Pukesinostacksopots had bailed out of the kitchen\u2014shit-faced drunk\u2014long before the lunch rush began.\u00a0 None of the cooks had noticed he had left until they began running out of clean \u201cdeeshes\u201d.\u00a0 A mountain of pots, pans and dishes awaited me in the dish pit, a hot, steamy closet of a room with no ventilation.\u00a0 I<\/em><\/strong> became the malakas in the fucking weeds\u2014but throughout the next several hours, the cooks treated me kindly and respectfully.\u00a0 They even helped me when they had time.\u00a0 Later, Mr. Leo came back and thanked me.\u00a0 He asked me if I might want to pick up a few dish shifts.\u00a0 Ever the obedient soldier\u2014and basking in the glow of all of this Greek adulation\u2014I said \u201csure\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The few dish shifts ended up being a lot of dish shifts\u2014so many that I ended up giving up my bus shifts.\u00a0 Dishwashing is a miserable, monotonous job, but at least I didn\u2019t have to wear the dead people shoes anymore.\u00a0 I made a little more money than I did bussing tables and my meals were free.\u00a0 Besides, Mr. Leo had hinted that I might even be promoted to prep cook at some point \u201cin the near future\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The future never comes quickly enough for a teenager.\u00a0 After several weeks of washing dishes, I began pestering the cooks to let me do cook stuff.\u00a0 Of course, because I didn\u2019t speak Greek, I spoke with them using the standard American method of communicating when confronted with an incomprehensible foreign language\u2014I spoke to them very loudly in Pidgin English while conducting silly pantomimes.\u00a0 \u201cMe learn-ee make-ee spinach soup-ee today?\u201d I would ask them, while holding an invisible wire whisk, stirring an equally invisible ten-gallon soup pot.\u00a0 They would usually stare back at me for a few moments\u2014a look of disgust and pity on their faces\u2014snort and say, \u201cNo, Joes clean\u201d or \u201cJoes wash deesh\u201d.\u00a0 They probably thought that I was severely retarded.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tessia\u2014the lone woman of the kitchen\u2014came to my rescue.\u00a0 She began to teach me things\u2026not food stuff, though.\u00a0 She began to teach me how to speak Greek.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Within a few weeks, I could count in Greek up to one hundred.\u00a0 I learned the proper greetings for different times of the day, how to say thank-you and please.\u00a0 Eventually, I could form a few useful sentences such as, \u201cMay I have a clean bus bucket please\u201d or \u201cHow many potatoes do you need me to bring you?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The cooks seemed genuinely impressed and began encouraging me.\u00a0 Being cooks, they taught me the dubious skill of swearing in Greek\u2014much to Tessia\u2019s disgust\u2014and I became bilingual in profanities and vulgarities within days.\u00a0 Within a month or so, they actually began showing me some useful kitchen skills like how to hold and handle a knife.\u00a0 Eventually, step-by-step, they would show me how to chop vegetables, make roux, soups, sauces and simple pastries.\u00a0 My dynamic with them and perception of them completely changed.\u00a0 They were no longer hostile brutes.\u00a0 They were wonderful, patient teachers and willing mentors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Even Mr. Leo was sincerely impressed with me.\u00a0 He actually began calling me \u201cJoe\u201d.\u00a0 He would tell me stories of Greek culture, history and customs, and quiz me on what Greek words I had learned.\u00a0 He would give me advice.\u00a0 One time, he took me aside and told me, \u201cYou\u2019re never gonna be really smart until you realize that you don\u2019t know shit\u201d.\u00a0 Words to live by, I suppose.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Years later, long after Gambrinus had gone out of business, I ran across a quote in a book I was reading: \u201cTrue knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing\u201d.\u00a0 It reminded me of what Mr. Leo had advised me decades before.\u00a0 Socrates had said it\u2014Mr. Leo had paraphrased it in a way that a clueless teenager could understand it.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t clueless.\u00a0 Mr. Leo was a philosopher who just happened to own a restaurant.\u00a0 His apparent cluelessness was because his business had turned him into an anxiety-filled, exhausted stress case.\u00a0 He was a lot like Damocles\u2014probably all restaurant owners are.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As much as I embrace the notion that the unexamined life isn\u2019t worth living, more important things require my attention.\u00a0 I have to find a friggin job.\u00a0 There\u2019s got to be one out there for me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I heard the other day that New Balance might be hiring.\u00a0\u00a0 Hell, I\u2019ve sort of been a shoemaker.\u00a0 It would be nice to get a discount on shoes.\u00a0 I think I\u2019m due for a new pair anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The good don\u2019t always win And might makes right The Sword of Damocles is hanging above your head –Lou Reed Ever since my restaurant went out of business back in April, I follow the same fruitless routine every morning.\u00a0 While drinking multiple cups of coffee, I search on-line for employment opportunities.   \u201cDad\u201d, my younger […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,14,9,24,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cooking","category-cooks","category-cursing","category-greek","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeplumstead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeplumstead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeplumstead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeplumstead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeplumstead.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/joeplumstead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336,"href":"https:\/\/joeplumstead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions\/336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeplumstead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeplumstead.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeplumstead.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeplumstead.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}