It began last week, the owner was upset over a bill the manager presented him for the new website. And so he calls me to take a look at the bill, $3000 for a basic HTML site with flash banner, content copied and pasted from the old site, maybe 12 hours work all told. And I try to diplomatically tiptoe around it, "different people bill differently" I explain, but there's no denying he's been fucked over good.
Real good.
And I tell the manager too, he's furious with her as well (it was her boyfriend who redid the site), and I let her know there were some serious inconsistencies with bill, and no matter how you slice it it was seriously over the top.
She's not happy. No one wants to hear that their boyfriend is a crook.
And the owner, he's gotten a few more second opinions that confirm a little more harshly my own opinion and he's going off, flying into tantrums and rages looking for things to break around the restaurant...
It's a long week.
In the middle of the week Sam's wife shows up at the restaurant to plead with the owner to give her husband his old job back.
Sam was the waiter I replaced when I returned. He'd been fired for abusing the waitresses, pushing them, hitting them, other stuff like that. He's from one of those countries where women don't work, I don't need to be more specific....
Since he was fired he's been selling cars. One a month, not enough to pay the bills, feed the children. She's at her wits end and pleading with the owner to do something for him, anything, if not give him his job back then get him into another job...
Nobody liked Sam. I never worked with him, can't say, but I know the country he's from, know the type and I'm not sure that I like him either.
So yesterday the restaurant is fully booked, a large party, they've pre-ordered all their food, it's basic service. And the owner takes a few more reservations over the weekend despite our being booked and finds room for them in corners of the restaurant that we didn't know we had...
At the last minute he decides we're understaffed. We're not, but he has the manager attempt to call in the one waitress with a night off. And, as luck would have it she's taken the weekend to go to Edmonton with a friend.
That's it. He flies off the handle again, screaming at the manager to tell her she's fired (and she's not even working), he's going to call Sam to come back and work, he's had it, and we're all treated to a list of the waitresses faults (namely that she takes off during days off and doesn't answer the phone - who would?) and he gets on the phone, calls Sam and tells him he starts the next day, 10:00, "And no bullshit with the ladies Sam..." he yells into the phone...
"It's only until Summer" I tell myself.