Foundations of Service
Jennie stays with her mother as long as she can, but Frank’s repeated calls make it clear that, family death or no, she is expected at work. Sensing that her mother may need some time apart from the daughter who accidentally killed her husband, Jennie dons her server uniform and departs for Mussolini’s.
At 6 PM the sun has long since set, and the garish red, white, and green sign of Mussolini’s Modern Italian Restaurant cuts through the dark as Jennie’s Civic pulls into the parking lot. “I can’t believe I’m about to go work nine hours for money I’ll never get to spend.”
“I suppose your diligence will have to be its own reward. Of course, the choice is yours; no one is making you report for your shift.”
“Like I’m going to skip out on an obligation with you on my back. That’ll get me sent to hell for sure, or reincarnated as a meter maid, or whatever the ‘less desirable’ thing is. Or maybe not. For all I know, maybe I’ll be judged more harshly for being a cog in the corporatist machine. I really have no idea.”
Rupert’s smile is a proud parent’s. “You are beginning to understand.”
Mona is working the host stand when Jennie enters. About a dozen people milling about the podium, some holding those little buzzing beeper discs (whatever they are actually called) to alert them when their tables are ready. It looks as though it will be a busy night. Jennie fights the urge to run screaming from the restaurant. She feels this urge every time she arrives.
Mona’s bright countenance suggests that no one in her family has died in the past few hours, but upon seeing Jennie she appears concerned. “I heard what happened, love. How are you holding up?”
“Hanging in there,” Jennie replies as she adjusts her work-issue black tie. It is stained with the marinara sauce of countless pasta bowls. “Nice of Frank to give me a whole hour before dragging me in here, wasn’t it?”
Mona frowns. “Well, hang in there. I’ll try to seat you light tonight, and we can catch a drink afterward if you’re feeling up to it.”
“Thanks. We’ll see.” Jennie takes a peek at the roster: booths. Thrilling. The fussy customers always ask for booths. She strives to remember why she chose to relive this day.
Her first table is a two-top; they each order the Blitzkrieg Bottomless Soup and Salad. They keep Jennie running for forty minutes, but their check totals under $20.
Her second table is six college kids in for drinks and appetizers. Half of them appear underage, but all present identification; Jennie doesn’t particularly care if some of the cards look dubious. “What’s the ‘Petals on a Wet Black Bough?’” one boy asks as he skims the starter menu vacantly.
Jennie sighs and points at the smaller print beneath the item names. “Onion rings.”
In the kitchen, Jimmy has her two-top’s fifth bowl of soup on the line. “Yo, you feeling okay? You look beat.”
“My stepdad died today.” Apparently the news hasn’t already made it to the kitchen.
“And Frank made you come in anyway? Fucker.”
“Yeah.” She claims the soup bowl from the line. “Thanks.”
When she turns, Frank’s squat frame is blocking the doorway. He looks more intimidating than usual—mostly due to the design of his tie, which gives one the impression that he killed and skinned a living thing to create it. “Jeanette. I need you to come see me in my office.”
Shit. “Okay. Just let me drop this soup off—”
“One of the runners can get it. Come now.”
She enters first. The office is fluorescent-lit like the rest of the back of house. Overwhelming any effort to suppress it, a thin layer of unidentifiable food-service stuff clings to every surface, from the off-white particleboard desk to the framed poster of Giovanni Jones, Mussolini’s Founder and CEO. Frank closes the door behind him; Rupert drifts conspicuously through it. Frank sits and starts without welcoming Jennie to do the same: “I’d like to speak to you about your attitude at work recently.”
Jennie blinks. Everything is playing out differently this time around, but she is beginning to remember a similar conversation place in the previous version of today. “And you’re absolutely sure this is the best time for this talk.”
It would appear that he does, but Frank isn’t much for lengthy conversation. He is holding a VHS now. “I’d like you to watch this.” Atop the file cabinet in the corner of the office is an ancient nine-inch television screen with built-in VCR. Jennie is wondering what the hell use anyone still has for a VCR until she catches the handwritten title on the tape: “Foundations of Service.” She already survived it once, during training week when she first started. To make her sit through it again is inhuman. She turns toward the door.
Frank wags a finger. “Stay. Watch the tape.”
“This is goddamn ridiculous—”
“Our conception of Service is all-embracing,” the tour-guide voice of the narrator interrupts. The screen depicts a set table at an immaculate restaurant; customers and wait staff alike turn to face the camera in sync, all bearing monstrous white grins. “Outside of Service, no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. We define Outstanding Service as totalitarian, and the Restaurant Experience—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values— interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of our Guests and Partners.”
The focus of the video shifts: one of the servers from the previous scene awakens in a spartan white home. One shot shows her eating a balanced breakfast; in the next, she enjoys some morning exercise before donning a spotless uniform and departing for work. The video does not explain how she affords this house and car on a server’s income. “We consider that a spirit of enterprise and dedication on the part of our Partners is the most effective and useful instrument in the interest of the Brand. In view of the fact that instilling these values in our Partners is a matter of corporate concern, the principles of Service address both the Actions and the underlying Attitudes of all Partners.”
At this point Frank mercifully pauses the tape. He turns to Jennie, his gaze heavy with meaning. “Now, what does this say to you?”
Jennie shoots an expectant glance at Rupert but sees nothing on his face to guide her, and she cannot imagine how putting up with this might improve her standing in his review. “It says,” she replies to Frank, “that you brought me in here because you doubt my dedication to my job. On the same day, mind you, that my stepfather died, and I left my mother to show up for my shift.
What does that say to you?” She pauses a beat, but Frank finds no response in that time. “I have tables waiting.”
“We’re not done here.”
“Either you keep me on or you fire me. If you’re considering that, I want you to read up on the Family and Medical Leave Act and think about the lawsuit you’re about to get yourself into. Now if you don’t mind, one of us has better things to do.” She storms out, first of the office, then out of the restaurant entirely. It is a freeing departure.
To her surprise, Jimmy is on a cigarette break out back. Jennie doesn’t believe she’s ever seen Jimmy smoke a cigarette before. She approaches and leans against the wall beside him.
“Rough shift?”
“Eh, more like a rough season, dude.” He sighs deeply, takes a drag from the Marlboro, exhales. The smoke melds with the cloud of cold from his breath. “How about you? Don’t you have some valued guests to be attending?”
“You know those days when you know you should care, but you just can’t bring yourself to?” She snatches the cigarette and takes a quick pull. It tastes awful and she hands it back. “I don’t know. When we were in college, I actually imagined that afterward, we’d have careers and adult relationships and drink less and generally just have our lives more figured out. Like we’d have some kind of direction, you know? Eliot was the only thing in my life that seemed to be moving toward something better, for a while, but that imploded.” Jennie still does not understand how it happened, her gradual estrangement from th
e boy she was sure she was going to marry. Had she only known how, it would have been the first thing she had revised, but she knows it is nothing that twenty-four hours could repair. There was no single error. It was the gradual accumulation of both their mistakes, and of distance. She gulps back the gap. “And now we come in here and we bust our asses for fifty hours a week—we could have done that without even going to school. So yeah, I’m not really too torn up about bailing on our valued guests tonight.” She shrugs. “I guess you have things a bit more figured out than I do. You and Joanna will probably end up getting married, and you’re working in your industry, at least.”
“A lot of days I feel more like I’m working in the food-reheating industry. It’s job experience, and hopefully that’ll help me get a real cooking job at some point, but really, right now it feels like I’m spinning my wheels. And I have a job where I can barely support my girlfriend but also barely get to see her with the hours I’m working, and the benefits are so bad I can barely afford insurance… It’s just a lot of barely’s. I’m gonna have some big decisions to make in the next few weeks.”
“Big decisions,” Jennie echoes. “Yeah.” Regarding her own big decisions, she feels very small. “I’ve been thinking about death a lot,” she blurts suddenly, before she realizes what she is saying. “I mean, not in a suicide-y way. It’s just I used to think I knew what would happen to me when I died, either that or I didn’t care very much. But suddenly that seems really important, more important than anything, and I feel I know less than I ever did. I guess it’s just this thing with my stepdad dying so suddenly.” She wants to say something else, to tell him about her own death, but what can she possibly say? It is difficult to convince one’s friend, even a close and trusting friend, that one is deceased. “My mom’s making funeral arrangements. It’ll probably be some time this week.”
“You wanna know what I think?” Jimmy’s dark eyes reflect the dull glow of the streetlights that illuminate the restaurant dumpsters, guarding against theft. “What I hope, actually. A lot of people talk about heaven and hell, somewhere you go when you die, and that idea scares me. Not the judgment thing; the idea of an afterlife in general. Reincarnation, too. Because what I’m really banking on is nothing. No sensation, no consciousness, just total peace, total calm. And don’t get me wrong, I really like my life, most days. Less often when I’m working here, but still, I do. I just don’t want it to last forever.”