If they had restaurants in the fires of Hell

Breaking a near two-month streak of unemployment, I started my first official job. And before my first shift, I was already setting up interviews to replace it. Let's go back to Tuesday.

After a string of dead-end interviews, I came home to check the always informative craigslist job postings. My eyes beheld an ad looking to hire a server...gasp...immediately! The one drawback (...one drawback my ass) was its location in Encino, which is 20 minutes north on the 101. And that's without a single sign of traffic. Still, I went in for the interview.

The restaurant, which is located conveniently on Ventura Boulevard, had a welcoming ambience. Most of the seating was outdoors. The food smelled incredible. When I walked in the restaurant, I thought, "How cute. This looks like a simple lunch counter." Seconds later, I learned it was a simple lunch counter. Soooo, if people order their food at a cash register and pay the cashier, how do the servers make money?

Ah, but what does the term server mean, anyway? At my new place of employment, we're basically glorified bus boys who are lucky if a customer leaves an extra dollar or two on the table as gratitude for a drink refill. "So why take the job?" you ask? Simple. Rent is due in almost a week. I can either sit at home and wait for the perfect job, or I can take the first available until the perfect one presents itself.

But that's where my positive outlook ends. Never in my life have I ever had such a sense of dread about going to work. Even before Thursday's shift ended, I was already thinking, "I have to be back here in 24 hours. Shit." While my fellow servers and everyone in the kitchen are fun to work with, my managers are another story. Their total lack of restaurant aptitude and people skills, combined with their hilarious idiocy, would make for a great sit-com about incompetent restaurant owners (who happen to own a restaurant in the deepest, darkest pit of Hell).

Let's take for instance yesterday at lunch. In the midst of an intense lunch crowd, the manager took both of the cash register operators aside and said, "This is very important." They both looked nervously at the long line of hungry customers and said, "Well, ok..." Not minding the long lines, not minding the ridiculous cook times, not minding the audible gripes from customers, our manger...in front of the entire line...showed the cash register operators a new way to make an egg float. AND THEY AREN'T EVEN RESPONSIBLE FOR MAKING EGG FLOATS...BECAUSE NO ONE EVER ORDERS THEM! I just smiled weakly at the customers with a look that said, "Feel sorry for me, I work here."

Perhaps the only joy is our celebrity clientele (although I'm sorry to disappoint Friends fans, but Matt LeBlanc is the biggest asshole in all of L.A. county). On the flipside, as I was taking my lunch break yesterday, I looked through the fence at a couple coming in to dine. She looked just like Katie Holmes and he looked just like Chris Klein. Why...it was Katie Holmes and Chris Klein, and they sat right in my little section of Hell. She was a bit shy and reserved, but he was as friendly as anyone I've met out here. Both smiled and said, "Thank you" several times. And Mr. Klein even left a tip.

That said, Gwyneth Paltrow could come in to dine and leave me half her fortune, and I'd still be reading the ads for a new job. You know you're in trouble when you ask the official server trainer how long she's worked there and she answers, "One week." And she's 18.