I Congratulate You & Your People

Sen. Grassley & Judge Koh. (photo credit, US Congress, Pelicanbrieflaw)

As if I didn’t have even more of a bone to pick with Chuck Grassley, the soon to be nonagenarian US Senator from Iowa, this happened. When the news hit on Wednesday, I was literally struck dumb. I’ve had something similar happen to me, as have almost all Asian Americans, where a white man complimented me in a backhanded manner. Last year, when I spent almost four months working as an order taker and saute cook because the restaurant I managed was all but shut down, a man told me I’d get through it, because “your people are resilient.” My people? The sixty or so employees that we furloughed, and whose health and livelihoods we were worried about? My people, as in, the hospitality industry as a whole, which has bounced back after repeated recessions and downsizings? Or did you mean my people, as in, those who look like me and whom you automatically assume to be foreign?

When will it end? By “it,” I mean, old white men who continue to act and believe and speak as if Asian Americans generally — and Korean Americans specifically — haven’t been around for so long that we have children who are third or fourth generation Americans. I’m so tired of being othered, being denied my American-ness by dint of my appearance. And, I suspect, the Honorable Lucy Koh is as well after Wednesday’s confirmation hearing.

I couldn’t bring myself to care that Senator Grassley’s daughter in-law is, indeed, Korean American. If anything, that realization made me feel sorry for her, for being related to a live action version of Statler & Waldorf from the Muppets. Will she speak up, or as seems more likely, will she remain quiet, unassuming, and acquiescent — all qualities that Senator Grassley has probably come to expect from an Asian woman? What made the exchange so squirm-inducing for me was that Judge Koh thanked him after his ignorant “compliment.” And I understand, she wants to be confirmed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but God almighty, that stung. Grassley may as well have patted her on the head.

Senator Grassley later doubled down, insisting that he was being complimentary. That, however, begs the question, “to whom?” Was it Judge Koh’s parents, who immigrated from South Korea and whose lifetime of hard work, while important, had no bearing whatsoever on their daughter’s qualifications for the apellate bench? To Judge Koh, who like millions of Asian Americans, was born and raised in the United States? This is coming from a man who refused to state unequivocally that the former President was racist for telling a group of minority Congresswomen — Americans — to go back to where they came from, so I fail to see sunlight between that action and his “complimentary” words at the hearing..

Let’s set aside the tired old trope of Asian Americans as the “model minority,” because it’s reductive. You’re either a good minority, working quietly but hard, not bothering your white neighbors with calls for equal treatment under the law, and definitely not threatening those white neighbors’ senses of superiority and privilege. Or you’re not, and now pose an existential threat. And we wonder why replacement theory has gained so much widespread acceptance, after rightfully being on the fringes of conservative thought for years. Even with “model minorities,” our nonwhite appearance can lead to violence, which is how Trump’s gross simplification of Covid as the “Chinese virus” led to an over 200% increase in anti-Asian crime since last spring, and Robert Aaron Long seems to have intentionally targeted Asian women, killing six of them after having “a bad day.”

As you could probably tell, I’m angry. I’m angry that the pushback to a doddering old man using a racist diminution of a federal judge has mostly only come from Asian Americans, while for most non-Asians, that was but a blip in our world’s incessant news cycle. I’m angry that such attitudes continue to exist in the upper strata of our government, a representative democracy that Senator Grassley has been quite busy attempting to undermine. I’m angry that words like Grassley’s continue to have any sort of power, but they do. Those hurtful words will continue to poison the waters with respect to acceptance of Asian Americans as just as American as any old white man on a Senate dais.

The Guest Is Always … Not Right?

Disclaimer: I am only speaking for myself, not for my employer in any capacity.

Peyton Fulford for The New York Times

My thoughts on this amazing article, which encapsulates what it’s like to work & manage a restaurant in the time of Covid.

Where to start? Sure, let’s go with the title. My dad’s stepfather Charlie was a semi-successful restauranteur in the 1970s and 80s in Chinatown, New York, where Charlie loved to say, “I can spill soup all over that lady’s dress and fur coat, but she’s gonna hug and kiss me on her way out the door.” That guest-focused ethos worked for Charlie’s generation of restaurant professionals, and indeed, mine as well up until the late aughts. But that’s when things started to get hinky, and we began seeing guests with a far greater sense of entitlement than we previously had. As the article above states, guests have very little sense of the boundaries that should exist between them and the service team, and this is twisting my industry into a place I hate seeing it go.

Take it from someone who’s been in this biz since before Clinton’s impeachment, we will do everything within reason to try to accommodate the guest, but only up to a point. We will account for every real and perceived food allergy known to modern man, likes and dislikes that we meticulously track in your Open Table guest profile, even where you prefer to sit. But please, don’t for a second, think that this in any way, shape, or form, equates with subservience. Yes, we are in this industry to serve, but not to be your servants. The distinction is huge, but most guests in fine-dining restaurants have yet to perceive that.

Bob Kinkead, god rest his wonderful soul, was an early and firm proponent of “the guest is not always right.” His was one of the first open kitchens, where the expediter had his back to the dining room, and guests could sate their curiosity on what was happening on the cooking line. One night in the late 90s, when I was waiting tables at his eponymous 4-star restaurant, Chef received a longer than usual ticket for a party of 4. Each seat’s entree order had at least three modifiers, which was about as cardinal a sin as you could commit in that restaurant. I remember seeing Chef’s face as I passed expo, and being thankful that my station was far away from his coming wrath. We all knew the problematic guests in question, and Chef did the unthinkable: he put down the headset on which he communicated orders to the line cooks, and went directly to the table. “Lady,” he said, “you’re dining in my restaurant, not a Burger King where you can have it your way.” That’s all I remember Chef saying, because I was about to wet myself from laughing so hard. I also remember feeling a profound gratitude, because the one person who could’ve pushed back, the guy with his name on the awning, stood up for us. It would be a long while before I felt that again, and under far different circumstances.

Fast forward almost twenty years. I’d progressed from server and bartender in DC to general manager, then briefly owner of my own restaurant (which flamed spectacularly, but I digress), then general manager and wine director; this is not exactly an industry where one experiences linear progression. I’ve gone from Manhattan to the suburbs, but the arc remains the same: guests dining at restaurants are coming in with a sense that not only must our team bend over backwards for them, but the mistaken notion that we are not allowed to push back in any way.

Years ago, I was part of the cultlike following of Danny Meyer, and believed like he did that we as a service team needed to do whatever we could for each guest. That mindset has its merits, but only up to a point, beyond which you have little choice but to stand up for your team. If that’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned from the last six months since we reopened from the curbside-only period, then that’s where I’ll make my stand. This has been a long time coming, especially for a guy who’d tell his grumbling chef to just do “it,” regardless of how ridiculous the request might be, for a good regular guest. I look back on the Dan of even two years ago and hardly recognize the guy.

Beginning in late June, when Long Island reopened for indoor dining at 50% capacity, though, everything changed. Part of my formerly dormant self, the Sergeant Kim who took care of his troops, was resurrected. One reason is the increased demand for personalized service, which many guests think of as servitude, an attitude I hadn’t seen since I once helped cater a private dinner party in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Another reason is maskholes, who are too numerous to count, and whose conduct risks the health of my team. Yeah, you’re not doing that without a good amount of pushback from me.

Just a few examples of many. An older man trying to flirt with his woman server tells her to take off her mask, as if the way she did her job, and the manner in which she would be renumerated, depended on him seeing her smile. She doesn’t want to risk her tip, but she also tells me. I tell the man that it’s our policy that no server can remove their mask, so he shorts her tip. This is when I try to smile with my eyes at the table and ask if everything was all right, since a tip is customarily at least 15% of the bill if service was satisfactory. Oh, goody, I see two days later on Yelp that I was “disrespectful.” People who live here, near Covid’s epicenter in the spring, yet nine months after the start of the pandemic still can’t be bothered to go to a restaurant without a mask, regularly demand that I provide one. I do have spare masks, but they’re for my team, not you, and I’m not about to tell you about them. People who post negative reviews because I deign to offend their laissez-faire sensibilities and tell them to wear a mask whenever they aren’t at their table. People who wonder what the big deal about masks is — this is a direct quote, “I don’t see any Covid in the air, do you?” People who book multiple reservations and ignore your entreaties to not mingle between tables, only to post a negative Yelp review after they leave because the manager disrupted a birthday.

Shall I go on? Yes, I shall. People who ignore the velvet rope between two stanchions I set up, so that the hostess and I can have some social distance between us and the guest checking in. What did they post later, after I insisted that they stay on the other side of that rope, ladies and gents? You guessed it, a negative review.

“But I forgot my mask, why don’t you hand them out?”

“I’m only going to the bathroom.”

“You’re being too much of a hardass.”

“That isn’t the law.”

To all of them, I’ve said, and will continue to say, that the continued health of my team, and the continued viability of our business, relies on everyone following public health rules. Not only that, but our establishment’s liquor license is not worth their temporary sense of comfort or entitlement. Taken one instance at a time, it’s almost bearable, since what is the art of managing a restaurant without a little pain; but when it happens all. The. Fucking. Time. Every. Single. Night. Yeah, Sergeant Kim is coming out again.

Respect goes two ways. Earn mine, as opposed to insulting me and trying to buy it, and I’ll move the heaven and earth to make that dining experience as memorable as possible. Lose it because you don’t believe in such things as public health or the greater good of the community, and I will put up roadblocks to every niggling request you might have, damn the consequences.

My life is on the line. Literally. So are the lives of my team. You need to earn that trust, or not dine indoors in restaurants until you do.

Do You Know Who I Am?

Note: This is a companion piece, of sorts, to this and this. It is loosely based on my time as the general manager of a fine dining restaurant in an upscale suburb, but by no means are any of the characters in this story based on real people. Names and other details have been changed to protect me from litigation.

The front door of the restaurant leads you to the podium, where I stand sentry with at least one of my managers, a hostess, an Open Table reservation computer, and two phones that don’t stop ringing. To your right is a long L-shaped calacatta marble bar full of white men in their 50s leering at every woman of any age entering the restaurant, swilling martinis from our birdbath glasses, or double vodkas from Burgundy glasses as if dying of thirst. To your far right is the lounge, six low-top tables with soft chairs, an area I use strictly for walk-ins that remains full from 5:00 until closing most nights.

Past me is the long rectangular main dining room, which can fit two hundred, with a smaller thirty-seat private room all the way in the back. A hundred conversations echo off the walls and twenty-five-foot-high ceiling, mixed with a dated music mix that has become just white noise. The restaurant is halfway through a busy Friday night, during which it will feed about 450 guests. Outside, luxury sedans and SUVs that cost more than my annual salary fill the parking lot, a homogenous sea of white or silver cars, at least four of which bump into each other daily, in the eternal search for a parking spot closer than twenty feet from our entrance. The cops from the nearby precinct look out for me because I usually buy their meals when they’re on break, but they also know our lot is a target-rich environment for nabbing DUIs. Half of our regulars drive on suspended licenses anyway, repercussions are for poor small people.

“Good evening, Mr. Palermo,” I say, recognizing an attorney who might dine with his wife or his mistress, depending on the day of the week. Since it’s Friday, he’s here with Miss Salerno. Mrs. Palermo and the kids usually come wit him on Sundays. Palermo made his money suing various municipalities on Long Island as an ambulance chaser, and later founded a firm that litigated on behalf of those same municipalities. Our tax dollars at work.

“Danny,” the lawyer says, his lacquered teeth and manicured nails glimmering in the restaurant’s dim lighting. I hate that name when uttered by anyone other than two guys I grew up with, and even answer the phone as Daniel. Palermo shakes my hand, and I pull my hand away to stuff a folded twenty into my trouser pocket. Palermo never has a reservation, but I make them for him anyway, because his visits are as regular as his colon after a Metamucil. Miss Salerno smiles in our general direction.

I turn to Lisa the hostess, a college student who’s wide-eyed at the shenanigans of her town’s putative grownups. I’ve already had to warn a half-dozen dirtbags at the bar away from Lisa since she started, knowing that they have daughters older than her. “Table thirty-one for the Palermo party, please,” I say, a coveted corner of the long banquette that lines one of the walls. Lisa just nods, grabs two menus, and leads them away.

“Motherfucker,” Martin the manager mutters next to me, his Eastern European accent making his R’s roll. I couldn’t run this restaurant without Martin, who took my arrival in stride, even though the owners had considered him for the general manager position. There isn’t a player in this Long Island bedroom community that Martin doesn’t know, which is invaluable when we’re at the front. Then I see the motherfucker in question. It’s Mr. Merrick, he of the impressive height and a girth to match, longish gray hair that always looks a day past needing a shower, and about $20,000 in pinky rings. He does something related to real estate or mortgages, I never bothered to find out, and can’t even fathom that people would trust a guy with an affinity for velour track suits with their money. Like, did the Sopranos need a stand-in for Big Pussy?

“I can’t stand this clown either,” I say to Martin through clenched teeth. “Your turn, I dealt with him last time.”

“You owe me, bossman.” Martin gives Merrick a huge, fake, obsequious smile. “Welcome back, Mr. Merrick, good to have you.” Merrick is trailed by a smaller younger clone of himself, an older blonde lady whose boob job and facelift look like they should be insured by Lloyd’s of London, and a sullen teenage girl whose glare at her father’s back could freeze milk.

No hello, and more importantly for Martin and me, no handshake. Strike one, Merrick. “There’s four of us,” he says in that faux-Long-Island-guido-tough-guy accent that makes me want to pierce my own eardrums with chopsticks. Yes, thank you, we can count.

Martin maintains the charade. “What time is your reservation, Mr. Merrick?”

“Don’t need one, I’m playing golf with the owners tomorrow morning.” Ahm playin gawlf wid the ownahs tuhmawrra mawnin. Jesus wept, I have non-native-born employees here who speak better and clearer English.

I step in. “If the owners had just called ahead for you, I’d have saved you a table.” I make a show of looking at my watch while Martin retreats to the coat closet to keep from laughing. “Give me about twenty or thirty minutes.”

He gives me a look my five year old might give me after I take his cookies away. “But I wanna sit down right now.” Impatience? Sense of entitlement? A swing and a miss for Merrick, strike two.

“I haven’t got a table for the folks who do have a reservation.” The owners do, in fact, enjoy how I push back with some of our regulars, who believe that their excrement is not odiferous. I followed the owners’ example, glad handling but digging into an untapped and surprisingly deep reservoir of passive aggressiveness. “Please, wait by the bar, I’ll let you know.” And kindly get your complimentary case of kiss my big Korean ass while you’re there.

The Merricks retreat to the bar, where Martin tells the guys to put the Merricks’ drinks on the owners’ comp check. Ernesto the bartender slips me a rocks glass with two fingers of Jameson, which I gulp down quickly, then head back to the podium. The next guy speaks before I even turn to face him, because I’m expected to be clairvoyant. “I’m Mistah —”

“Huntington,” Martin finishes for him, and shakes his hand. Martin gives me a look, there was money in the handshake, then points his eyes down at a panting furry rodent in a ridiculous little stroller. “Mr. Huntington,” Martin says, “you know you can’t bring the dog in here.” Mrs. Huntington, pushing the stroller, looks like she might gouge our eyes out with her car keys.

“She won’t bother anyone. Just bring us a bowl.” Yeah, no. Last I checked, we don’t have nourriture pour chiens avec demiglace on our menu, and the Huntingtons had already made the mistake of admitting their rodent isn’t a service animal, which I do allow. I let Martin continue to work on Huntington while I help Lisa answer the incessantly ringing phones.

“Thank you for calling The Restaurant, this is Daniel, how may I assist you?”

“I need a table for five people in about half an hour.”

“Earliest I can do that is ten o’clock, otherwise we are fully booked.”

“What if I showed up now?”

“Then I’ll put you on the wait list, but not until you physically arrive. I can’t speak to how long the wait might be, though.” Because my middle name isn’t goddamn Nostradamus. Click.

“Thank you for calling the Restaurant, this is Daniel, how may I assist you?”

“David! It’s Marty!” Who? I’m already not doing anything for this guy if he can’t get my name right after I just identified myself two seconds ago. Marty, last name and face unknown, expects me to miraculously shit him a table — like the Immaculate Conception, but for Maître d’s — when I have a long enough wait list physically in the restaurant, most of them waiting patiently. “Nothing sooner?” No, I just get a kick out of the schadenfreude. Click.

I transfer the next call to the bar for takeout, and check the next guests in. A younger couple, younger for this town meaning not born before the Johnson Administration. She has the lean, hungry look of a bored Long Island housewife who spends most of her day doing yoga or spinning while studying for the realtor exam; he has the pallid, fleshy look of someone who spends way too much time in a Midtown office, pushing tidy piles of paper from one side of his desk to the other. They give me their name, I send them off with Lisa, and instantly forget them.

Mrs. Jones, arguably the den mother of the ladies who lunch and do yoga and go to spin class. Always a party of six, including four kids who barely acknowledge their parents’ existence except as chauffeurs. Of course you’re forty minutes early. Of course I still don’t have the table ready for you yet, because reservations work on other diners’ schedules, not yours. She says she’ll walk around, but make sure I call as soon as the table as ready. Otherwise, she’ll just be back in forty minutes. She’s a pill, but not always, and she did just hand me a ten, so I decide we’ll call. Maybe in thirty minutes.

Problem. Lisa hurries back to the podium with a few updates — who’s on dessert, who’s paying their check, who’s camping out — and a stack of menus clutched to her chest. I feel bad for the kid, who until two weeks ago had no idea what her neighbors — or, rather, her neighbors’ parents — are truly like. “Dan,” she says, “that couple doesn’t like the table. She yelled at me.” Don’t cry up here, kid, keep it together for fuck’s sake. I hand her the keys to my office, tell her to man the phones from downstairs, and get Erik up here. Erik is another of my managers with an accent of debatable provenance, one of those Mediterranean islands that always seems to either be a vacation hot spot or terrorist target. On busier nights, he’s my eyes in the dining room, but with a hostess on the verge of tears, I need him more as my other bookend opposite Martin.

Erik ambles up front, he’s so damn tall he could play center for the Maltese national basketball team if they had one. He looks like a blonde square-jawed Aryan recruiting poster, but claims that everyone in his family fought the Nazis as partisans during the war. What matters more for me is that he’s a classically trained waiter who came up to management years ago like Martin and me, and is utterly unflappable. One irate guest had recently told Erik that her party’s dinner was a disaster. “Madame, the Middle East peace process is a disaster. This is just dinner. How can I fix this for you?”

I leave the podium to deal with the complainers, who are standing next to table 41, a small rectangular table for two along the banquette wall, not a more intimate square table in the back where they can sit catty-corner to each other. Is it our best table? Not by a long shot, Palermo and his side piece are sitting there, but it’s hardly our worst. The husband speaks up while I’m still fifteen feet away and can still barely hear him over the crowd noise. “Listen, pal, I’m not gonna spend two or three hundred dollars tonight just to be shoved up against other people like this.”

The reply escapes me before my internal censor can keep up. “The guests on either side of you don’t seem to mind. We actually provide more space between tables on the banquette than [two of our competitors].” Okay, shit, I hadn’t wanted to say that, but in for a penny, in for a pound. If I back down now, the guests will see that as weakness and take advantage of it on their next visit. No mercy.

The wife taps him on the elbow, and I can just about intuit the husband’s next words. He even stands straighter as he says them, but I’m 6-foot-3 and not intimidated in the least by unarmed men. “You obviously don’t know who I am.”

It is definitely no-mercy time. “Yes, I do know you are,” I lie like a rug. “But I’ve also got two CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, a CNN legal analyst, the owners’ daughters, and the managing partner of a billion-dollar hedge fund dining here.” This is only partly a lie, the hedge fund guy has a reservation tomorrow, and the owners’ daughters left an hour ago. “Forgive the Orwell reference, but some animals are more equal than others, especially during a busy Friday dinner service.”

Pudgy man slouches ever so slightly, and I know I’ve won, but I decide to let him off gently. “If you’d requested a standard square table, I can always try, but I can never guarantee it. One of those will probably be available in fifteen minutes or so. Can I buy y’all a drink in the meantime?” That’s my other tool to throw people off, “y’all” is not a word often heard north of Maryland, and for damn sure not east of the Gowanus Canal. Pudgy man looks at his wife and shrugs as if to say, I tried, and I lead them to the bar. Behind us, busboys push two of the banquette tables together for the Merrick party. Merrick gives me a nod as he passes me — this could mean anything from thank you to go fuck yourself, I can’t bring myself to give one-third of a fifth of a shit. I stop by the bar, where Ernesto rewards me with another whiskey.

“Nice job,” Erik says, a satisfied grin on his chiseled face. “I would have made them stay there, though.” He would have, too, the soulless bastard. Then he and I turn to face The Douche. He’s a Thursday/Friday regular, usually at the bar, and is convinced with the conviction of a saved evangelical that all women want him, a taller version of Bob Hoskins’ character from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. His real name is George, and he owns car dealerships without which these townspeople would wither: Mercedes, Jaguar, BMW, Land Rover. My and Martin’s down-market but far more dependable Japanese hatchbacks look grubby in comparison in the parking lot.

The Douche is in full regalia tonight: an untucked striped shirt that strains against his belly, sleeves rolled once to show off the contrasting inner cuff, gold chains and Amazon rainforest of chest hair displayed by unbuttoning the top three buttons of his shirt, and sunglasses even though it’s almost 9:00. He’s by himself, but assures Erik that three ladies will be joining him shortly. Erik shunts him to the bar until The Douche’s ladies arrive, and we watch in horror as The Douche uses the olives in the bar’s garnish tray like a personal salad bar. Ernesto now has to discard everything in the garnish tray, then cut fruit and spear olives in the middle of the dinner rush.

Martin says what’s on my mind. “The odds are, he’ll drop his coke in the men’s room, a busboy will find it later, and we can sell it back to him next week. The girls will leave him because he can’t find his coke, so he’ll get drunk and try to start a fight.”

“Christ, I hope you’re wrong,” I say, because no one who doesn’t run a nightclub needs that kind of drama. Lisa is doing yeoman’s work downstairs, juggling four or five calls at a time, only intercomming us if she has a question, and her voice sounds more even. I wonder if she’s rifled through my desk and found my flask, it could do the kid a world of good.

Erik greets the next couple, whom he recognizes as regulars of our sister restaurant down the street, where he worked before transferring here. And of course the couple doesn’t have a reservation. Why should they? “Call your sister restaurant,” the guy says, without making eye contact, which I hate down to my bone marrow. “They know me there. He does, too.”

“Erik knows you,” I say, “but here, you don’t have a reservation.”

“Come on,” he pleads, because I dared to call his bluff, and sees that Erik defers to me.

“The wait without a reservation is about an hour,” I say, and watch while his face collapses into layers of jowls. “If they know you at our sister restaurant, they might get you in over there, but here it’s gonna be an hour.” The couple reluctantly places their name on the waitlist, and squeeze past a dozen people because by now the bar is standing room only.

I’m suddenly exhausted, and tell Martin and Erik to cover for me while I sneak out back for a smoke. The unspoken agreement is that Martin will poison himself next, then Erik. I glide through the dining room, ignoring Palermo’s wave, Merrick’s inscrutable nod, Mrs. Jones’ wagging fingers, through the swinging doors and into the kitchen. Chef, yelling orders to his cooks, the back of his head covered in sweat in the hundred-degree sauna, doesn’t even see me, which is for the best.

Out back, which smells exactly like the loading dock of a restaurant should, a miasma of rotting food and deck cleaner, I lean against the wall and inhale carcinogens deep into my lungs. It’s blissfully quiet here, no phones, no people, just me and my cancer stick. To be perfectly honest, I don’t need the cigarette, but I’ve been addicted since the Reagan years and this is the only plausible excuse I have to leave the front during service. I rub my eyes, which are tired from staring through dim lighting at the reservations computer and people under the mistaken impression that I like them.

I walk towards the front of the restaurant, realize that the crowd waiting to be seated has thinned, and I can even see a few empty tables as we enter the downslope of dinner service. I give Erik a head bob and hand him the stash of folded and crumpled bills from my trouser pocket. Martin does the same, and Erik disappears into the coat room for a few minutes. Erik hands me my share of the door tips, and tells me he’s giving Lisa a half-share. I have no problem with that, and tell the boys I’m leaving after a thirteen-hour day.

“See you tomorrow, boss” Erik says, and I just give him a look. Back to the salt mine tomorrow.

One Last Job – Part 1

Author’s note: In the Star Wars universe, all you hear amongst the English accents is Received Pronunciation, the cultured intonation most fans associate with the actors Peter Cushing and Sir Alec Guinness, who played Grand Moff Tarkin and Obi Wan Kenobi, respectively.  Since the 1980s, when I used to go to a friend’s house simply to listen to his dad’s wonderfully melodic Liverpool accent, I always wondered where the Scousers were.  The working-class northerners of that galaxy far far away, the space opera equivalent of the British Army rankers who took me on a four-day drunken trek around Merseyside.  We in the US talk about Southern hospitality, but Liverpudlians put American Southerners to shame.  On a related note, I fear that the damage to my liver from the autumn of 1999 may be permanent.  When I watched the film Solo, especially the last scene, I wondered who the guys in Lando’s corner were, egging him on during the sabacc game where he lost the Falcon, and the voices I heard were Scouse.  My standard disclaimer for those who will inevitably find fault with some niggling detail in the story: it’s a story written by a casual Star Wars fan, not a concordance blessed by the high priests and priestesses of the SW canon.  If you like this, I gladly take all credit; if not, I’ll know whom to blame.

I never got tired of hearing the story.  Actually, no, let’s start again.  I did get tired of the story itself, but I always tuned Aarle out after his fourth Corellian ale.  There was never a shortage of willing listeners at the pub two decks below Numidian Prime’s spaceport.  Not the posh first deck with its VIP lounge and sabacc parlour, where Captain Calrissian held court; no, the dodgy pub where ship fitters, longshoremen, deckhands, and smugglers would have a laugh and drink until they got blind.  Aarle’s mates would ply him with another beer that smelt like rotting pine cones strained through dirty knickers, and he’d regale them with the oft-told tale of helping Lando smuggle weapons to insurrectionary Petrusian slaves.

Aarle and I ended up working for LC — that’s what we called Lando — because no one else would employ Imperial defectors, let alone former stormtroopers.  Despite this setback, we’d done well for ourselves the last few years as LC’s subcontractors, for lack of a better word.  In ancient times, we might’ve been called pikeys, but with nicer caravans.  Do you need to run guns, seaweed drugs from Vainai, or contraband slaves past an Imperial blockade?  Give LC a week, and he’ll get through to Aarle and Michu — or, if you really must be accurate for this holo-vid, the clones formerly known as AL-1489 and MC-3317.  What we needed was one good filthy lucre that would allow us to buy our spouses from captivity, then retire to comfortable anonymity somewhere in the Outer Rim.

The translator on my wrist vibrated before I picked up on what the two-metre-tall bug was saying.  “I’ve been told that if I were looking for something, you might be able to help.”  A Mimbanese.  Big smelly sods, with scarlet skin and enormous blue lidless eyes.  Every time I ran into one, I shuddered.  I also couldn’t help but admire their pugnacity, fighting the Empire’s invasion of their world with primitive weapons left over from the Clone Wars.  Aarle and I would know, we’d been in the first wave and had witnessed the carnage on both sides firsthand.

I leaned back in my stool and crossed an ankle over a knee, hand on the ankle where I kept my social weapon, a small blaster inside my boot.  “What seek,” I asked in my horrible Mimbanese, which I’d learnt from a prisoner.  Humans can only mimic some of their sounds, which makes communicating without a translator difficult, but many at places like Numidian Prime, where hundreds of species passed through, tried their best.

The bug clicked and chirped, and my wrist translator said, “People all over this sector said that if I need weapons, I need only to talk to you, your friend, or your boss.”

This was a setup by the Imperial Security Bureau if I’d ever seen one.  “Bollocks, mate.  We’re crewmen on the Corellian freighter Millennium Falcon,” I said to the bug.  “Captain Calrissian doesn’t haul anything without an Imperial seal on the bill of lading.  I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“More’s the pity,” the Mimbanese said.  He or she almost looked disappointed.  “You were also supposed to be greedy beyond belief, but that’s also obviously not the case.”

Aarle finally finished his story and started paying attention to the bug.  “What else have you heard about us?”

The Mimbanese pulled up a stool and sat between us.  “I’ve heard that Michu wears a mini blaster inside his right boot, and you carry your social weapon, as you call it, on a harness inside your right sleeve.  That the two of you defected from the 501st Legion on my home world after killing your commander, and have a price of ten thousand credits on each of your heads.”

I leaned past the bug to shrug at Aarle.  Any good ISB agent would’ve just shot or slotted us by now, rather than trying to show off how much they knew.  “What seek,” I asked again in the bug’s language.

He or she started answering before I finished.  “Five hundred E22 rifles with at least ten plasma magazines per weapon, one thousand proton grenades, two hundred autonomous thermal detonators, one hundred M35 machine guns with two pre-loaded rucksacks of ammo capsules each, and two ion cannons that can be broken down and transported by three beings each.”  The Mimbanese seemed to smile at us.  “That would be a good start.”

“A good start,” Aarle almost yelled, then I reached across to put a calming hand on his arm.  “Where the bloody hell would we find anything like that, much less get that cargo on a ship that’s able to break the imperial blockade, then deliver everything to a swamp planet patrolled by a squadron of TIE bombers and half the 224th Division?”

“Your problem, boyo, not mine.”  Do Mimbanese smirk?  Because he or she certainly seemed to enjoy this.  “You have the Falcon, which just did the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs, if you believe the tall tales here.  Shouldn’t be a problem.”  The barman put up a glass of rotted fruit, the smell of which made Aarle gag, but which the bug threw back with gusto.

“Oi, mate.  We” — I gestured at myself and Aarle — “don’t have the Falcon.  She belongs to Captain Calrissian.  We only work on her.”

The bug leaned closer to me.  “What if I were to say that a Reserve Fleet supply ship had been hijacked right here in the Numidia system, and that we only have two days before the Empire throws everything at this planet like it recently did to mine, just to find out what happened?”

Aarle answered for me.  “Then I’d say you’re buggered, aren’t you, mate?”

“As are the two of you,” the Mimbanese said.  “Your forged IDs and badly covered Legion neck tattoos won’t get you past the most inept ISB agent in the galaxy, let alone a higher ranking officer searching for defectors.”  Neither of us said anything for a moment, then we both asked “how much” in different languages.  The big egg layer was smiling now.  “We will need a pilot.”

“Captain Calrissian would never go for something like that,” I said.  “You’d have to make it well worth his while to risk his ship on a suicide run like Mimban.”

“My stormtrooper friend, why don’t you scan this credit chip?”  The Mimbanese reached into his wrinkled red cloak to produce the chip, which Aarle plugged into his wristband, and — holy Sith!

“Half directed tomorrow to an anonymous account on Tatooine that most of the galaxy knows belongs to Calrissian.  Half upon completion, if you live that long.  Will this amount suffice?”  The bug rose and turned for the door.  “I will be at rest in terminal four, please let me know before moonrise tonight.”

———-

“That’s the stupidest Imperial Security Bureau setup I ever heard of,” LC said aboard Falcon two hours later.  Then we showed him the credit chip’s value, and a smile slowly split his face in half.  “Well, there’s stupid, and then there’s stupid.  This, however,” he said, waving the chip at us, “is the most delicious kind of stupid.  We could retire on this kind of money.  When and where, gents?”  Aarle had a rare bright idea, so we told him.

It took ages for just four of us to transfer all the cargo from the supply ship, winding our way past blaster scorch marks on the bulkheads and the already rotting corpses of her crew.  We stored half the cargo under Falcon’s deck, the rest lashed onto every available horizontal surface, including inside LC’s cabin.  LC sent the supply ship onto a direct course for the Numidian sun, then immediately un-docked and jumped to hyperspace.  The bug, a female we now knew as Droch, sat in the jump seat behind LC whilst stars and nebulae and planets spun around in the cockpit windows.  Aarle and I manned the turrets and tried our best to not get spacesick while LC manoeuvered Falcon like she was a speeder bike. Normally we’d have hired a copilot from one of the freelancers on Numidian Prime, but we had a hold full of hijacked weaponry and scant time to figure out who was sober enough to man the nav console.

No one talked about the recent loss of L3.  Abso-bloody-lutely no-one.

We exited hyperspace just outside the Mimban system and slowly followed the spaceway, the Navy-approved track, to a high orbit above Mimban.  LC had to constantly adjust our orbit to avoid ore carriers and military transports coming and going, a constant parade of lookalike rectangular metal boxes.  Mimban looked hot and wet and uninviting from three hundred kilometres up.  From where I sat in the ventral turret, not much had changed.  Staccato explosions in the the southern hemisphere flashed through Mimban’s perpetual cloud cover.  Someone was having a shit day, and I was just happy it wasn’t me.  The first Imperial signal woke me up, and I flipped switches to scan my sector.

“Unidentified freighter, this is the Imperial Star Destroyer Conqueror.  Please authenticate chi sigma.”  An alert popped up on my screen, then a huge shadow as the star destroyer’s arrowhead form blocked the suns from my viewport.  I swallowed, because every cannon on her bow seemed to be aimed at us.  Did we come out of hyperspace too close to the planet?  Did we not have our transponder on, which let Imperial vessels know we were friends?  Did some two faced muppet grass on us for a hundred more credits than what we paid him?

Aarle had gotten a hold of an unexpired code book, and LC took up the façade.  “Conqueror,” LC said, “we are the Bakuran freighter Millennium, heading to Camp Dominion on a resupply run.  Mission number one five zero dash two four.”  That was, or had been, the mission number of the hijacked vessel.  “We authenticate upsilon.”

We waited three heartbeats longer than usual for a response, and I started to sweat.  If that Sullustan had turned us in, I thought, I’d run back to Numidian and kill him again, feed what was left of him to the shacklaws.  The destroyer let me off the hook.  “Millennium, this is Conqueror.  Best approach to Dominion is from the north, to avoid heavy resistance from bugs to its south and east.  Sending your nav system the authorised tracks now.  Safe flying.  Conqueror, out.”  That bloody enormous shadow moved to a higher orbit, and I was able to breathe again whilst LC took an incongruously gentle descent to the surface.  Honestly, we weren’t used to that sort of thing from him.  Riding an LC-piloted anything where he made the descent more comfortable than a thousand-tonne spaceliner boggled the mind.

The 224th Division had built Camp Dominion atop the only piece of dry high ground on the entire southern continent.  It looked like a two-kilometre-wide spider from above, but with ion-cannon battlements instead of legs, and a climate controlled dome in the centre, where troopers could dry out after tabbing in wet muck for weeks.  Below the marshes surrounding the camp lived a billion Mimbanese, who hadn’t even left their home system until the Empire decided to strip mine Mimban’s minerals.

When we first landed here, Aarle and I commanded infantry platoons equipped with sensor packs that sought out air vents for Mimbanese underground hives.  Some of them were large enough, with enough industry, to comprise small cities, up to two kilometres below the surface.  Once we found them, however, we’d call for TIE bombers to not just incinerate the suspected hive, but to gas the tunnels under the still-smoking craters.  We would wait on the periphery to shoot anyone trying to escape to the surface.  Males, females, hatchlings, eggs.  It never mattered, they might be sentient bipeds, but they were still bugs.  It was nothing more or less than murder.  After a year, neither Aarle nor I could stomach it any longer.  Now that we were back, I was just happy that the first Mimbanese we defected to hadn’t shot us straightaway.

LC checked in with Camp Dominion, but the reply gutted me.  I knew this voice.  “Millennium, this is Kappa Control.  I hold you east of the authorised track.  Please authenticate lambda theta and re-state your mission number, over.”

I hit the intercom button to speak to Aarle.  “Is that who I think it is?”

“You would’ve thought he’d be off this planet by now, unless he pissed off the wrong officer.”

LC gave Kappa an answer that seemed to mollify him, then asked us, “What the hell are you two talking about?”

“It’s Jost, our old warrant officer, used to be the sergeant major of the entire garrison here,” Aarle said.  “Michu shot him when we defected, but apparently his aim wasn’t good enough.”

“I put three blasts in the center of his chest plate!  Now you take the piss?”  Aarle and I had been on patrol with the major who commanded our company, Sergeant Major Jost, and a dozen other troopers, searching yet another muddy field for Mimbanese hives’ air vents.  Aarle drove one hovertank whist I piloted the other.  He passed one vent and didn’t report it, but when the major confronted him about it, Aarle simply shot him.  Before anyone could say another word, much less think, I stopped my tank, threw two proton grenades into the troop compartment, and jumped out.  Jost fired at me but missed – yes, I know all the tired jokes about stormtroopers’ aim – and I hit his chest plate with three quick blasts.  Apparently, Jost had paid for our defection by being marooned here ever since.

Under the perpetual rain clouds, LC darted between higher elevations of marshland and the above-ground ruins of Mimbanese cities, which looked like ten-metre-high anthills.  Below the surface, thanks to Aarle, me, and our Legion, some of those cities were nothing but crypts.  “We’re low,” LC said, “so they can’t see us right now, but we need a place to offload.  Droch, your people better show up soon.”  A trio TIE fighters patrolled above the clouds, waiting for infrequent calls for close air support, and likely didn’t hold us on their sensors.

“There,” Droch said, and I rotated the turret to two o’clock.  A hundred-square-metre mud and rock outcropping disappeared, replaced by a rectangular maw that revealed a line of Mimbanese waiting to offload the cargo.  LC set Falcon down, but just barely, keeping enough power up in case we needed to run, then lowered the starboard ramp.

I unbuckled and began lifting the deck plates that hid our cargo.  Aarle maintained his scans of the sky above us and kept us informed of every passing fighter.  I turned towards the ramp and collided with the biggest damn Mimbanese I’d ever seen, almost three metres tall and probably weighing twenty-five stone.  He gave me a look that might have been hate or pity, and spat something multilegged on my boots before hurling crates to the bug behind him.

The big bug spoke as he worked his way through the cargo hold.  “You probably don’t remember me, as I wasn’t fully mature at the time.”  When he paused to look up at me, I shook my head.  “My hive’s queen was ready to put two blasts in your skull when you defected to us.  I thought at that moment, if she doesn’t, I’ll take the gun from her and do it myself.”

“Why didn’t you?”

The big bug threw another hundred-kilo crate down the ramp like it was a ball.  “The queen wanted to first see if your intentions were genuine.”  We’d proved that soon after we defected, arranging an L-shaped ambush that killed several dozen of our former comrades and wounded a hundred more.  It was one of those “rebellious acts” that might get a dismissive mention in a news holo-vid, but one that trebled the price on our heads within a week.

“Time to go, folks,” LC said.

“Almost done, boss,” I said.

“Forget the rest,” LC said, “I’m pulling pitch in three seconds.  We have two drop ships approaching from the south.”

Aarle piped up.  “Those TIE fighters just turned towards us!”

“Droch,” LC said, “it was a pleasure doing business with you.”

I started to say something, but Aarle’s dorsal turret started firing at the approaching TIE fighters.  I felt the deck rumbling under my feet, which meant LC was adding power.  I helped the big male bug with one last crate when an explosion on the starboard quarter threw me, the bug, and the crate off the ramp to the mud below.  Falcon‘s engines revved, and she was gone in a blink.

With my face buried in black muck, I heard blasters from TIE fighters, Falcon, Mimbanese, and what had to be advancing soldiers.  The firing stopped as soon as it started.  I wiped mud from my eyes to see bugs holding smoking weapons, behind the cover of their outcropping.  I looked right and traced two pyres to wreckage of the drop ships halfway to the horizon.  In front of me, bits and bobs of charred gray mud trooper armour, but no sign of intact soldiers who might yet advance on our position.

And because the boss was the best pilot in the galaxy, no sign of Falcon.  The bug who’d almost killed me years ago pulled me upright with one hand, the other holding a brand new E22 blaster he’d pulled from a weapons crate.  “We have two minutes at most until half your Legion is here,” he said, and dragged me underground.  A hundred drone males made the stormtroopers’ bodies disappear inside the cavern, cleaned up the battlefield, and replaced the earthen dome of the hive.  Another hundred drones picked up the crates and followed us down.  The tunnel wasn’t lit because Mimbanese can see in the dark, but one of the drones handed me a small torch so my face wouldn’t keep colliding with the tunnel wall.  I bumped into Droch, who grabbed the back of my neck and pushed me further along, clicking to nearby Mimbanese so quickly that my translator couldn’t keep up.  One word that did repeat was “trust,” so I reckoned I was safe for a bit.

“We are here,” Droch said, and we finally stopped after three hours of nonstop movement, from one tunnel to the next.  My senses of time and direction were worthless without visual cues like suns and moons, so I trusted that she knew where our lot were headed.  I had to work harder than them to keep up, and completely knackered.  The younger male, Shask, told me we were under Camp Dominion.

“Are you kidding me, mate?  Under the camp?  Might as well bring me topside so that wanker Jost can collect on the bounty on me.”

“Are you always such a gobshite before you’ve heard someone out?”  Shask had me there.  “If you and your species would shut up now and again, you might learn something,” he said, and pointed upwards.  I could see a few shafts of light, with fast shadows that could be anything from an unarmed drop ship to a TIE bomber loaded with thermal munitions for hives like this.  The very thought of that made me want to shit meself, but somehow I didn’t.

Droch stopped under the air vent and looked up.  Standing next to her, I could hear helmet-less stormtroopers going about their business, bantering as if there weren’t five hundred newly armed Mimbanese who could hear which trooper missed what dish from back home.  Shask put a blaster in my hand and a bandolier over my shoulder.  “You will need to lead us.”

“To do what?”

“Erase this blight on our planet,” Shask said, confirming that this had been their plan all along.

Open For Business

Graphic by Associated Press

At last count, I’ve opened seven restaurants in varying roles, from bartender to general manager to owner.  A new restaurant opening (NRO) is a labor-intensive process that saps your strength, and often leaves you wondering how much you truly love and/or enjoy the restaurant industry.  Every full-service establishment will have to essentially treat the lifting of their state’s stay-at-home order as an NRO, with all of its attendant misery and then some, and I’m not 100% convinced that even some of my peers realize how brutal the process will be.  After almost seven weeks and counting of operating as a curbside takeout joint, how do you reopen to the public?

The key to every NRO is staff training, which will be necessary for everyone including managers, after months of allowing their restaurant muscles to atrophy.  Cooks have to get used to consistently producing the menu; servers need to remember not just the proper steps of service, but also how to describe menu items, food, and wine to guests; many furloughed bartenders haven’t made anything remotely like the intricate cocktails they made at work before the ‘Rona shutdown.  This isn’t to say that the training need be as intensive as that required by an NRO, but it will be indispensable for getting a front-of-house team back in a service mentality.  This all costs money, not just in food, but labor dollars a restaurant might not have, so expect a lot of bumps along this road.

Secondly, how many of your furloughed team can, or even will, you bring back?  Have they been tested for Covid-19?  How long has it been since they last had a fever?  Is that a pollen allergy, or the beginning of symptoms?  People you hired, gotten to know as individuals, whose major life events you celebrated in the prep kitchen before dinner service, are going to inevitably be permanently laid off.  The math isn’t in their favor, because operating at 50% capacity means you will only be able to rehire 50% of your team.  It will suck, and there’s no softening that blow.  I’ve fired, laid off, and furloughed hundreds of people over the years, and it never gets easier if you have even a thimbleful of empathy.

Your physical plant, not just your restaurant muscles, has also atrophied since your state shut down.  Stoves will need to be thoroughly cleaned, oven thermometers re-calibrated, every possible surface disinfected before your team can return.  Add to this every daily cleaning task you’ve simply abandoned since you transitioned to a curbside takeout establishment: polishing silverware and glasses, dining room floor either polished or the carpet cleaned, glass windows and doors cleaned, your dormant back bar display dusted and cleaned, light bulbs changed, plateware all rewashed before a single morsel of food touches it.

Entire floor plans will be redrawn to account for social distancing, with many restaurant managers I’ve informally polled talking about the wholesale removal of half their tables.  Speaking of social distancing, who in your restaurant will be nominated as the bad guy enforcing social distancing between guests at the bar and between tables?  Can, or will, you cap the maximum number of people at a table, as is happening in some Asian countries?  What will be your new protocol on table resets?  Should a busboy completely disinfect the table, along with the chairs or banquette, after guests leave?  What about menus; use the ones you had before, or use disposable paper menus to avoid more than one person touching that menu?  Should you hire an attendant to ensure single occupancy in your restrooms at any given time, then disinfect before the next person enters?

It goes without saying that everyone who works in your new/old restaurant will be masked and gloved.  This is for not just their own safety, but that of guests.  Then, finally, the elephant in the room, which not a single state governor frothing at the mouth wanting to reopen is mentioning: more widespread testing.  I’m the furthest thing from an epidemiologist, but how confident will any of us be, not knowing if the guests sitting in our restaurant aren’t Covid-free?  I sure as hell won’t be, until anyone who wants or needs a Coronavirus test can obtain one.

I’m as tired as I’ve been since I opened my own restaurant in 2010, and New York probably won’t reopen its restaurant dining rooms until June at the earliest.  The prospect of doing everything I mentioned above, when coupled with the cumulative fatigue from weeks on end as an unfamiliar takeout operation, is daunting, if not low-key terrifying.  With that said, all of this will be necessary for anyone in my industry to feel safe going to work.  I’ve been responsible for other people’s lives before, but that was in my former life as a soldier, and it weighs heavily; are my restaurant management and chef peers mentally ready for the same burden?

Knowing might be half the battle according to the 1980s G.I. Joe cartoon, but in this case, knowing what lies ahead adds to my sense of unease that we will witness an avoidable spike in Coronavirus infections among restaurant employees if we – as a state, as a country, as a nation, as a society – rush headlong and unprepared into re-opening for re-opening’s feckless sake.