We're not your babysitters.....

Let’s start by looking at the layout of any given restaurant…..since every restaurant wants to fit in as many tables as they can, any open spaces are usually called aisles. Common sense dictates that these are for easy access to any table, for both the customer and the people who work there. Should you run across a wide aisle way or open space, these are usually high traffic areas. They are not designated playgrounds, nor are bar stools to be considered jungle gyms.

Across from our service bar is a coat rack, and it is also the entrance to the lounge….so this would be considered a multi-purpose area. Again, not playground.

We had a large group of about 80 in the main dining room for a memorial luncheon on Saturday afternoon. Two members of this group, who were about two and six years of age, were using this area by the service bar as a playground. These two little girls were running, (yes running) in circles. I was waiting for them to get dizzy and fall over. At least then they would’ve sat in one place.

In close proximity to where they were running, was a staircase, that goes down. I kept an eye on them, mainly because no one else was, in case they got to close to the stairs. Which they did. So when the two year old got to close to the stairs, I barked out an order. “NO! Get away from the stairs!” She did so immediately. (Where are her parents?) You may think my actions were not politically correct, and I don’t care. I’m not about to stand there and try to reason with a two year old. I’ve got a job to do, and no where in the job description does it mention babysitting. However I can not with good conscious stand by and watch a small child set themselves up for a horrendous fall down a long flight of stairs.

A few minutes later I had to run into the kitchen for a minute…..when I came out, I saw that these two small children had discovered the jungle gym bar stools. (Had I seen them climbing up on the bar stools, I would’ve again barked “NO! You can’t climb on those!”) As I was walking towards them, they were in the process of climbing down, and the younger took a bit of a tumble. Just at this moment, the mother of the older child was coming around the corner….the younger child started crying as she hit the floor. Just after the she started crying, another mom appears, I’m assuming this is the mother of the younger child…..she glared at the older child and demanded to know what happened. Nice job, Mom, you’re right on top of things.

So for all you politically correct parents who think we shouldn’t bark at your kids to keep them out of imminent danger……shove it. Get off your lazy asses and watch your kids!

The Chemistry of People.......

For the most part, people go out to be sociable. Sometimes they travel in packs, other times in smaller groups….it doesn’t matter….it’s the interaction that I find so interesting. Take the other night at the show for instance….like I said before, our tables seat 10. So I may put together a group of 4, and 3 groups 2. Here’s the cool part, there will always be someone at the table who gets the conversation going, or will introduce themselves, and before you know it, the whole table is buzzing with conversation! I watched this happen at all of our tables the other night. For starters, they all have one thing in common, they came to see a show.

“Have you seen this show before?” “No, but it sounds like it’s going to be a lot of fun!” We were at one in Chicago a number of years back….” “Oh, were you visiting or are you from Chicago?” And they’re off and running…….

“I’m glad this starts at 7:00, I have to go to work in the morning, but I didn‘t want to miss the show.” “I’m retired, I don’t have to worry about that.” “What did you do? Where did you work?” And now a new table is off and running……

Last night at the bar, an old friend came in…he sat at the end of the bar…after a few minutes, I told him to come and sit at the other end and talk to my friends. A good time was had by all.

By virtue of human nature, some are talkers, some are listeners, and somehow it all works out. There are times when you may have to get the ball rolling with an introduction or a tidbit of information, but it really doesn’t take much……”Helene and Larry used to do a comedy show in Chicago!” “Really?!?” Someone will bite and ask a few questions, and another conversation has begun.

All people want is a little basic human interaction… or a kind word…..and we’re all capable of that.

Another Opening, Another Show.....

We had our second “DOUBLE TAKE IMPERSONATORS SHOW” last night. Another blast! No two shows are ever exactly the same…we threw in some ad lib stuff…great fun!

I was standing off the side with two of the servers while “Madonna” was singing. We were swaying to the music…the next thing you know she walks over to us, tells the crowd we’re her back up dancers…so we danced behind her for a minute. People in the audience were all nudging each other…”Look over there!” They loved it! That was a totally unplanned moment.

Demographically speaking, we had an older crowd last night. I realized a little way into the show, that their nodding of their heads, was the geriatric equivalent of be-bopping in your seat. They may not all know who Lady Gaga is, but they love her!

We like to incorporate the servers into the last number…..last time we had them walk out to front, so we could tell everyone their names, they dance with us for a few bars, then go into the audience to get everyone dancing . This time they made a great entrance….they came in through the main doors to the room, and down the 7 steps, in single file, wearing sunglasses. Totally cool! We added a little choreography this time before they went out into the audience. I was amazed at the number of people who got up and danced with us! We had people 80 years old and more, up dancing! It’s great to see people who know how to have fun, no matter how old they are!

So the phone cameras were snapping pictures right and left, (we encourage this)…all the men were eating it up when “Cher ” sang to them…..they were singing along with “Karen Carpenter”….and Marilyn Monroe had them mesmerized.

It’s fun to have fun, especially when you can get everyone involved. The more the merrier……

Unnecessary Parties........

There was a birthday party scheduled in one of the big rooms, last Sunday. I’m not sure how many people were there, I peeked in, the room was pretty crowded. There were kids running all over the place, which is usually loud enough in itself….but acoustically speaking, this room is the worst…..so all the noise seemed amplified as it bounced around the room, just like the kids.

See, this was an over-sized birthday party for a one-year-old. They brought in a popcorn machine, a sno-cone machine and a cotton candy machine. There was also a clown doing the face painting thing…..and again, kids running all over the place.

To say the least it was very hectic, and I was very glad that I was not assigned to work this particular event. However, Nate, who was working the dining room with me, had to run down and help out with the cotton candy machine for a few minutes. None of us have ever worked a cotton candy machine, as it is not a regular menu item. When Nate came back upstairs, he told me I missed the whole fiasco. Apparently there is an art to making cotton candy. He learned that once it started spinning the sugar around, you had to have the paper cone in there ready to catch it, or it went all over the place. His first attempt was not very successful, and I knew that he was not exaggerating due to the fact that he had cotton candy in his hair.

I also knew that some of the kids had escaped and found their way upstairs when I spotted a used cotton candy cone on the floor in the lounge.

I forgot to mention that the room is which this party was being held, also has a bar, and it was a pretty busy area.

So who was this party really for? The one year old is NEVER gonna remember it!

Setting the bar high........

When I talk about setting the bar high, I’m not talking about the one you belly up to. I’m talking about that what we strive for. That unseen line we draw in the air and aim for. Is it a foot off the ground? If so, then what you’re too lenient on yourself. You need to draw it higher, and when you pass it, you need to make it even higher yet. Never stop raising it higher and higher. We are all capable of things we may never have thought possible….mostly because we never tried…or never tried hard enough.

I have an old saying posted on my wall…..”Obstacles are the things we see when we take our eyes off of our goals.” I first saw this on a giant poster that was hanging on the wall of an elementary school. We all need to think hard about this…..look back at the obstacles that we allowed to block our path, without really trying to find a way around them, or over them, or just crashing through them. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” If everything was easy, we would never learn new things or grow. “A lot of things would’ve happened sooner, if someone had said YOU CAN, instead of YOU CAN‘T.”

What this is all leading up to is, I’d like you to meet a dear old friend of mine, who is the personification of all the above sayings. He’s had far more, and greater obstacles (some of which I just found out about last week) placed in his path, than the average person…but he overcame them all, in a major way.

Please got to www.youtube.com and enter Daniel Warren. Then click on “Meet Daniel Warren - A Man, his music: Tragic and Triumphant.”

I dare you to tell this doesn’t move you in some way. We all need a little inspiration (or a lot) from time to time. Let this inspire you to raise the bar.

Anatomy of a Friday Night......

I didn’t know until I got to work Friday night, that Ann Marie, my fellow bartender, (we both work Friday night, take care of the bar, the service bar and do some tables) wasn’t gonna be there. I knew she was going on vacation, just didn’t know exactly what day. That’s okay, I’m a solo act, but will not take any tables.

The Happy Hour crowd starts wandering in. At one end of the bar are two women, we’ll call them Ginger and Maryann. They came in to relax, listen to the music, have a bite to eat and a couple of drinks. At the other we had part of the nightly Happy Hour group…..one guy reminds me of the Skipper, the professor (retired) was present, the Howell’s were at a soiree, so they were absent….and Gilligan was MIA as he had wandered into a different bar for the evening. (We knew this because the Skipper had called him)

The middle section filled in with a friend of ours, who also brought a few friends.

We’re off and running.

The tables were rapidly filling up…the servers were rushing over to the service to get their drink orders….sometimes it’s difficult to hear them call me, between all the conversations going on in the room and the music and singing, their voices just blend in with the din, so one day Nate reached up and rattled the hanging wine glasses…..it was a noise different from anything else, so I heard it. That’s when we decided that the rattling of the wine glasses would become the international signal for “Hey! We need drinks down here!” (It works)

The middle section, which now included a couple I have known for 20 years, decided to become the back up singers for the evening…so Deb obliged them and sang songs they could be a part of. Oh, not a huge part…just enough to have fun…like Petula Clark‘s “Downtown.” Deb: “When you’re a lone and life is making you lonely, you can always go…..” Group: “DOWNTOWN!” You get the gist of it.

The lounge was on full tilt boogie all night. What a blast! What more can you ask for?!?

The Social Butterflies.....

We’ve all heard that saying, “Six degrees of separation” …….I believe in reality, it’s much less than that. Take the other night for instance, my sister was sitting at the bar having dinner with a couple (Karen and Tom) that I have known for years….they were having a great conversation. Then Jim (a social butterfly) ended up talking to them….I heard someone mention coaches, from local high schools, and before you know it, we had a circle of information that kept going round and round.

Turns out that Jim, knew the athletic director at the high school where I was the president of the athletic boosters club for five years. My sister also knew this man. Then Karen mentioned that her nephew was one of the football coaches at another nearby high school. It suddenly dawned on me that I knew this same coach through my neighbors! Then a light went off in my head…..I told my sister that this coach was also our old neighbor on the street where we grew up!

I also knew Jim from a few years back when I was in the title business….and that spawned another conversation about people we knew in common.

We have a book club that comes in for lunch once a month. (I have a book, how convenient) I gave them a copy of my book, one of the women recognized my last name….she used to work with my step son.

Oh! Back to Jim for a moment……we all laugh when he asks someone (out of the blue) “Where’d you go to high school?” But that seemingly innocuous question can provide a wealth of information. It tells us where you grew up…usually leads to how old you are…conversations flow to “the old neighborhood”…and so on and so forth.

So YAY! For the social butterflies, their gift of gab makes the world a smaller place.