Yesterday I give my notice. I'm on another 12 hour double as JR has a job interview. Day is slow, night is busy, a "late busy", the kind that pisses you off when you're getting ready to go home and tables start arriving, the piss-off of a late close.
Tickles, of course, is crashing, and SR and his wife are in the kitchen helping, SR washing dishes, his wife cooking, Tickles on cold side making salads.
It passes and Tickles is left to clean up.
The shift, probably the biggest single ring out of the summer, yet it ran smoother than any of the shifts where I rang out half as much with the "help" that I was given.
They ask no questions about my resignation. It was expected, overdue, they don't want the answers they know will come. Like "Am I a fucking Donkey?" and "How did you think this was sustainable" and "WTF???". They're strangely, solemnly quiet.
Out loud they voiced a plan to work towards closing, then, my departure is the nail in the coffin.
It isn't, there are servers that would happily work in reasonable circumstance, reasonable hours, but these are things they can't provide. They need donkeys, a whole new team, they've killed the old team...
Today, up early, another day in fucking hell. Drive out, because I don't fucking know my schedule, it's perpetually being upended by JR's antics, find JR mopping, he arrived late last night, no, I'm on the split today...
Sure. 2 weeks 2 more days of this.
SO now, on the Balfour Beach, bottle of tequila in one hand, laptop in the other, a scour of the beach found me a well-worked flint with all of the divots from pressure flaking, but no good shape, a scraper, or discard. A beautiful day made lousy by the prospect of work, but 12 shifts left and I'm free, and there's no telling that I won't be free before then...
***
I start at 12:30, JR retires, his day is done. He's upstairs pouting. He told me they'd be closing on October 9th, I held firm on my departure Sept 30th. The opportunity to negotiate a graceful exit is long past.