Entry 1

Saturday AM

"Ask me how I lost 50 pounds." That's what the big button on the old guy's lapel says, but I won't take him up on it. I HATE lapel buttons. They're like walking bumper stickers, prominently-displayed proclamations: "Hey you!", they say, "Look here! There's something I want you to know about me! I voted for _____! I survived a hand grenade at the tropical isle! Ask me how I lost 50 pounds!"

Well, that's what his button says, but what HE'S saying is: "Give me a double, one TALL side of soda, and don't charge me for the soda, plus for my wife here an Absolut OJ TALL, not too much ice, and a...what's that you just made over there? Yeah, one of those too, a top shelf Margarita light on the salt."

Come to think of it, maybe I WILL ask him: "Is THAT how you lost 50 pounds?" Well, I DON'T ask him that. We bartenders rarely address the truth directly, though we are often at its vortex. We process it and filter it back out with nice little nods and cliches and witticisms and sage remarks remarkable for their LACK of sagacity. "That's women for ya!" "Yeah, I know how THAT is." "What can you do?" "Here's to THAT!" People don't come to the bar for the truth, they come to ESCAPE it. Our job is not to confront it, it's to DEFLECT it (on those rare occasions when we're allowed to be the little boy in the "Emperor's New Clothes," such as with an over-the-top asshole, it's incredibly liberating).

So, while this guy and his big lapel button and his wife with the pulled, pained look of forced youth and his meticulous/rambunctious ordering style all say "Yes, I am a pain-in-the-ass alcoholic mother fucker who doesn't tip, but now at least I'm 50 pounds LESS of one," I have to do my duty and put on MY pulled, pained look of forced civility and make the drinks and shut up. People on a mission, after all, don't like to be reminded of their obsessions, or the "former" habits and addictions they cling to in the face of that obsession.

So, I make him and his wife their drinks (including the "bonus" 3rd drink-the margarita) and he gets up and drunkenly calls in a prescription (Yes! He's a doctor-perhaps years ago; drunkenly phoned in Rx set him on this path) and he goes off to the bathroom and his wife (without provocation, as though someone had just switched her on) proceeds to spout: "We just came from a nutritional conference on aging and did you now that men suffer menopause?" "No, I didn't," I say and she says, "Oh yes, they do. They have irrational bouts of anger." "I thought they were just grumpy," I say, and she says, "Well, that's just it. You see that grumpiness is a result of a hormonal imbalance exacerbated by poor dietary habits. Nutrition, you see, is the key. Did you know that alternative medicine is the wave of the future?" And just then her husband returns to the bar and scoops up their drinks and heads off to a table, but before he does, he has an irrational flash of generosity and leaves me a 20 percent tip.

Entry 2

Monday AM

The lunch shift again. Ugh. There's something about working a bar in the daytime-even a restaurant bar-that's SO depressing. Of course, there's something about working a bar at night that's depressing too, but it's different. At least at night you can have that feeling of being at the CENTER of things, the host of the party, the raconteur, the bon vivant. There's even a GLAMOUR about it. But who has the ENERGY to be a raconteur in the daylight? It's hard enough at night, sometimes, to muster up/turn on/fake eagerness. In the daytime, one is expected to be cheery. Like I said, ugh. Just as there are certain things one shouldn't do at night (picnicking, shopping, bakery), there are certain things one shouldn't do in the day (moviegoing, bowling, stripping, gravedigging). Digging graves, especially one's own, should be done under the cover of darkness.

This is a short shift. Only five hours, instead of the 8 to 10 of the night shift, but it FEELS twice as long: There's an ever-present bad taste in my mouth, like I'm chewing on stale gum that I can't get rid of and that gets tangled in one's teeth in a bad dream. At night it's bombast and glamour and crowds and wit and repartee and women. In the day it's "our soup is delicious today!" I am the vampire out of his coffin. Bartenders weren't BUILT to see daylight, with all it's subtle permutations suggesting the passage of TIME, for Chrissake, and it's cruel to make us. (One particularly sadistic bar manager used to schedule bartender meetings at 9 am, which was like holding a migrant workers' meeting at midnight). At night, with the absence of sun (and all its cruel moods; e.g. morning, afternoon, evening) one can retain the sensation that time is endless, frozen, and in this state of suspended animation. Bartending, and going to a bar, is not a waste of time. It's essential.

But in the day-well, people shouldn't go to a bar in the day. And especially not WORK in one. Maybe that's the depressing part. Daytime's different dynamic is what brings out the true alcoholic and his/her true alcoholic excuses, which I have to absorb. Like the lawyer who used to come in and down * bottle of J.D. at lunch and then go back to work ("Well, it's past 12 and I had a rough morning.") Or the one today-a middle-aged school teacher from Guthrie, OK, perfectly pleasant ("you wanna talk about WIND-we have WIND") who proceeds to down (in about 45 minutes) a gin-and-tonic (before lunch), a Merlot (during), a Mai Tai (ordered as simply as a glass of water), and a decaf coffee. "Would you like some cream with that, Ma'am?" "Yes, and a shot of Frangelico!" Well, this is the French Quarter-the whole city's an enabler.1.What rewards did your selected worker receive from his/her job? Were these rewards intrinsic or extrinsic? Please explain.

Entry 3

Tuesday PM

More stuff happened tonight before opening than during the entire shift. First, Michelle (a French-Vietnamese waitress who speaks four languages) arrives with four cops, who are getting a report on a local creep who's been stalking her; when he pressed up against her at the convenience store around the corner just before work, this pissed her off enough to call the fuzz. (Michelle is tough too, and no stranger to stalkers-she's even got celebrity ones). One of the cops advises her to "get physical" with him, i.e. use force, which is more effective, he claims, than having the guy arrested. ("That'll only piss him off more, but if you kick him somewhere he'll know you mean business. WE can't beat him up. YOU can." "Oh, I mean business," Michelle says). Later, I find out that the guy's been stalking/bothering women all over the Quarter and has been kicked out of every record store in town. When Michelle hears this, she seems oddly slighted, as though she's lost some exclusivity...

Bruce, the 6'6" food runner and self-styled rapper, gets permission from the G.M. to leave during the shift so he can audition at the House of Blues around the corner for an MTV Veejay gig. A nationwide search, and it's narrowed to two, Bruce being one of them. ("I'm cool either way," he says, "whether I get it or not"). One of us may escape...

Our 16-year-old hostess from the West Bank, who has a 45-year-old face, overhears me tell Angela, the other bartender, that she has a "45-year-old face that she has another 29 years to grow into." I spend the rest of the evening groveling, but I fear I've killed the goose that laid the golden egg (or at least the one who used to buy me Kit Kats before work).

Brad, our drunken cook, bashes into a taxi while emerging from a parking spot across the street; all while the cops are inside taking Michelle's report. Poor Brad spends the next hour at the mercy of the cabbie. Kurt, our nerd cook, arrives with two Lancombe lipstick cases, which he ceremoniously presents to the two female bartenders. Mary slips a Camel non-filter into hers. Angela pouts and tosses hers into the beercap dispenser.

Bruce returns later from his audition, beaming...

During the shift, I overhear some guy at the bar say: "I'm all about sauces."

Entry 4

Friday PM

Madness. Fest Time in New Orleans and we're on the MUST list. Every out-of-towner now in town wants in HERE and will resort to any tactic to get a table. These tables have the temporal worth of Mardi Gras beads-one night valuable commodities dispensed to the hungry masses; by morning, plastic trinkets trampled underfoot and swept up with the refuse. Tomorrow they'll just be TABLES-those square contraptions with legs that are traditionally accompanied by chairs, with all the perishable glory of the oysters in our spinach salad. But all this doesn't matter to the urban-sophisticate-boomers here THIS week on THIS night-it's all part of the experience, the ritual, the GAME. So, whatever it takes-provocation (It'll be worth your while to get me a table for six at nine, or one for nine at six..."), persistence ("If I were just to stand here in front of you and not move for an hour you'd eventually relent and get me the exact table I want at the exact time I want it for the exact amount of people I need it for despite the fact that this night has been booked solid for the past four months"), pathos ("You don't understand-I simply HAVE to get a table tonight. My promotion/marriage/happiness depends on it!"), pompousness ("Do you know who I AM?"), or good old-fashioned bribery ("How about some tickets to the Stones-REM-the 3 Tenors/ one hundred dollars/the keys to my hotel suite?")-will be employed in the cause. (And, if all else fails, there's always the cellphone; wielded with brash despair outside the forbidden gates. Like a yuppie Merlin's wand, it works it's magic until something, or someone, gives. And when it doesn't, the wilted countenance, the wilting reality: dinner tonight at TGI Friday's...)

None of this, however, has any effect on us-we are pros who have seen it all and who are immune to such facile tactics. Well, perhaps bribery...could I see those Stone tickets again?

A couple enters with a baby. They have an hour wait. "Can we ORDER our food in advance, so it will be ready when we sit down? We're in a hurry." "Sorry, sir, I don't think so." "Maybe we'll leave then." Is this a THREAT? The customer may not always be right, but he's always the customer.

Entry 5Saturday PM

Doors open. Beeline for the bar, where there are only seven stools-commodities as rare as the tables for which there is a 2-3 hour wait (for those without reservations), and because of that wait, even more valuable. That is, the wait can be neutralized by eating at the bar, an option selected by many whose chief concern is good food in the belly and a place to put their ass while they eat it. Or, for those who just choose to sit and wait (and sit and wait, and sit and wait...), a stint on a stool sipping (or guzzling) Mardi Gras martinis and Cosmopolitans can be a rather soothing (or mind-erasing) preface to a meal. And so, it's almost wire-to-wire chaos, especially at a bar not designed for high-volume service. Unlike those at the night club/college/sports bar, equipped with deep and numerous ice bins and speedwells and barbacks, our operations are geared for businessmen and tourists to sip (or guzzle) cocktails and Chardonnay while perusing a winelist before dinner. And not even THAT-our bar was designed not by a bartender or by anyone who's ever spent any time on "the sober side of the bar" (to quote O. Henry) but by the owner's wife, a former interior decorator with a keen vision of the prevailing "aesthetic-chic" (to quote Gurley Brown). Her most inspired flourish was to raise the floor of the bar several inches above the floor of the restaurant which, combined with her OTHER notable caprice-a concrete bar sans doorflap-created a unique situation whereby a bar with a natural dearth of supply space is continually serviced through a crawlspace that would induce claustrophobia in a coal miner. (Of course, THEY have unions...) Now she is not only a former decorator, but a former wife, an epiphany arrived at by the owner too late to prevent the legacy of a hip-looking bar toiled at by successive generations of miserable bartenders.

Tonight my defenses are stripped and as a woman sluggishly searches her purse for some cash to pay me, I find myself involuntarily making the "let's go lady!" gesture with my fingers. She notices and reduces her 3 percent tip drastically to 1 percent. Oops!

Entry 6Thursday PM

Gradually, the bar becomes mine. As the night progresses and customers stroll in and I service them one by one by one, the vestiges of the last shift wear away. The rhythm of the evening is tuned to MY station; I create its memory, its order, and rearrange the domain until I am its captain. People arrive at a bar with a different psychology then when they sit at a table. People come to the bartender, the waiter comes to the table. Therefore, they are in a different head, even though we are dressed like the waiters and work in the same place. Therefore, they are more supplicant at the bar than at a table, where they can order a waiter around. Therefore, we can get away with a lot more shit. A LOT more shit. Therefore, this exchange:

"Do you have any anchovy-stuffed olives?"

"No sir, we don't."

"Do you have ANY anchovies?"

"No sir, we don't."

"You have NO anchovies in the house? None?"

"No, but I could stuff the olive with something that would taste about the same..."

A scraggly-looking lawyer type sits down at the bar. "Cocktail," he says. "Scotch. Dewar's. Dewar's and water. Dewar's and water on the rocks." After she makes the drink, Mary, my partner says, "Bill. Money for the bill. Pay money for the bill. $5 for the bill. $5 money you pay for the bill." He notices nothing of her mimic, pulls out a 5, lays it on the bar, slurps the drink down, and walks out.

Two ladies from Kentucky, 50s, jovial, suburban. "Chives and Chopin," one says. I look at them. "A Chives Regal and a Chopin vodka please," she repeats. "Oh," I say. "I thought you were introducing yourselves."

Seven of the frumpiest women I've ever seen enter and take up the entire bar. After they leave, I look at the credit card voucher. They all work for Glamour magazine.

Car dealers. Reminiscing over cognac and cigars and port wine. "That was our greatest billboard slogan!" enthuses one. "What was it, Ralph? Oh yeah, a picture of the Mona Lisa. 'Don't Moan-a, Lease-a Cadillac!' That was our best! Wasn't it Ralph?"

Entry 7Monday PM

Return from vacation. Once a year, during the summer doldrums, we take two weeks for rejuvenation, while the restaurant takes two for renovations. When we're lying on beaches, strolling foreign cities, camping beside western craters, kicking up hometown dust, catching up on cleaning, painting, reading, writing, sleeping, sleeping around, hanging around, hang gliding; the restaurant is primed, painted, buffed, leveled, retooled, re-equipped, updated, upgraded. Sometimes it's for the best, sometimes it's not. One year, the bartenders returned to an "improved" bar that was HARDER to work, but prettier. The restaurant has show-by removing the standard rubber stress mats because "they looked ugly" (oh, my knees!), by getting rid of the cart we used to restock liquor and supplies from the 4th floor because "it scratched up the newly painted walls" (oh, my back!), raising the upstairs wine rack to an unreachable level, except by a rickety ladder, because "it looks better" (oh, my ass!)-a consistent pattern of aesthetics taking precedence over safety, efficiency and the quality of the work environment. I once blurted out in frustration to one of their improvements: "Is this a working restaurant and bar or a goddamned MUSEUM?" The lawsuit waiting to happen, WHEN it happens, sometimes seems the only solution to their disregard.

This year, we return to a new cooler (sorely needed-the last one kept our beer nice and lukewarm) and a new computer. Unfortunately, the cooler is less spacious than the last one and the computer less user-friendly (not as swift, more "scrolling down"). There are problems which all manifest themselves acutely in the busy season-right now they're just an annoyance. Management (which has ALSO been retooled, with two former waiters getting "upgrades"-more hours, less pay, a questionable "promotion") has promised to rectify the problems by getting another, smaller cooler and by streamlining the computer's program so we're hopeful. Meanwhile, it's weird being behind the bar with the new cooler (glass doors instead of solid ones) and ESPECIALLY the new computer. It feels as if there's a new, other presence in our midst.

There is a general staff meeting before service this afternoon-ALL employees are required to attend. It is rare to have the whole house (around 75 employees) together. What is to be the topic? A welcome back after vacation? An introduction of new employees? A 25 percent raise for all (yeah, right!). The rumor is new uniforms (an idea we cringe at, knowing it might mean our beloved, comfortable, denim and khakis might be replaced with the dreaded black and whites-and all those trips to the drycleaners). But NO. We are gathered together so some corporate dude from "The Home Office" (we are part of an organization with four, and soon six, restaurants) with a name out of Mark Twain can read to us from the newly printed ____Manual. An insidious waste of time (schedules, attendance, grooming, parking, etc. etc. ad nauseum)-something that could have been accomplished by distributing it with our paychecks. But this being Louisiana, with its high illiteracy rate, I guess they wanted to make sure we all GOT it. My favorite part: "Outside Representation". (To be continued.)

Entry 8

Tuesday PM

Slow night, but some color, intrigue to the evening. An attractive blonde woman in her late 30s/early 40s sits at the bar, orders a Bombay Martini and dinner. She has a pleasant face and scribbles in her notebook. At one point (between her crabcake and barbecued chicken), I sidle over and toss her a bon mat: "You're here, I take it, for the Black Shriner's Convention?" (The past several days has seen an influx of black men in purple fezzes strolling the Quarter, some extending their dapperness into white tuxedos.)

"No, I'm here for a trial."

"Not your OWN, I hope."

"Well, yes."

"You're a lawyer, then, not the defendant?"

"No, witness. I was the victim of a violent crime a year ago in Pere Antoine Alley, behind the St. Louis Cathedral. This is the 3rd trial-the first two ended in hung juries. But I think we'll get him this time."

"Were you hurt?"

"Oh, yes."

Her chicken arrives and she resumes scribbling. Angela, the upstairs bartender, calls on the phone. She tells me to "keep an eye" on "that woman at the bar," that the night before she'd arrived at the restaurant, drunk, one hour before closing and begged to be let in. She was allowed to sit at the bar, where even though she'd been informed of the closed kitchen, she asked to order food. The chef brought her a pizza. She cut into it with all the groggy, deliberate focus of the inebriate, as though it were the most important thing in the world. Tonight, she appears sober and alert, and as the evening wears on, she is engaged in conversation by me and a couple of brothers at the bar. It is revealed that she is a writer and producer for a popular prime-time TV series, as well as a musician, composer, AND a published novelist. (Her 3rd novel is about a crime in New Orleans.) All this begins to seem a bit much and with Angela's antennae up, so are mine: I begin to detect all the signs of a pathological liar. (We bartenders know them well.) What's next, I think, an Olympic fold medal in the luge?

The blond finishes her dinner , her scribbling, her 5th glass of Chardonnay, and asks for the check and a cab. She thanks everyone and exits shakily, leaving behind 3 pages on which she's written: "Dear Staff of ____: One year ago I was choked, raped, and nearly killed while walking back to my hotel in the French Quarter. Late night, after a grueling, emotional day in the courtroom, I came to your restaurant after you had closed and was let in and fed. Today, after an equally difficult day in the DA's office, I experienced another fine and pleasant evening here. I have eaten in many restaurants and have never known such kindness bestowed upon a stranger in need. Surely there is a place in heaven for the people of ______."

If we served crow at ______, I'd order some to go.

Entry 9Wednesday PM

Tonight I arrive at work five minutes late, but all the fluster and anxiety of the cross-town battlefield of traffic and traffic lights and stop signs and slowpokes and parking spots that is the nightly drive to the Quarter is suctioned out of me as soon as I step into the restaurant: There is a dank flatness, a deadness about the place. Everyone-waiters, managers, runners, cooks, dishwashers, bartenders-is standing around; there is not the usual bustle of activity that is standard at the pre-opening hour. An explosion near the A & P (about four blocks away) has knocked the power out of most of the French Quarter (just before 3 PM, it is now 5:05), and is expected to last another couple of hours. So the computers, phones, ovens, coolers, dishwashers, fans, blenders, coffee makers, credit card machines, and-most importantly in August in New Orleans-AIR CONDITIONING are all down, leaving the restaurant in a state of suspended animation. (And me to wonder: Did they HAVE restaurants before Edison?) Our G.M makes a brave speech about "opening at 6 PM no matter what-we've weathered lots of storms here-we can at least do one good turn"; but there is a difference between a power outage BEFORE service and one DURING. If it happens during, while the restaurant is full of patrons mid-meal, well, then you HAVE to continue and improvise and be resourceful. It is thus decided that we will wait to pen, and if the power doesn't come on by 8 PM, we will be sent home. So we sit and wait in the hot restaurant. I spend the time loosening my tie, reading a New Yorker article on the pre-Nazi composer Wagner, and flirting with Marie, the French-Vietnamese busgirl from the West Bank whom I [not so] secretly adore, and who doesn't know Wagner from Weird Al Yankovich. (Sometimes ignorance IS bliss.) The bunker mentality begins to set in amongst the staff, as is humanity's want during blackouts, floods, snow-ins, air raids, hurricanes, nuclear holocausts. I have visions of societal breakdowns, atomized hierarchical structures, revolutions, all sorts of apocalyptic "Lord of the Flies" scenarios: Who, in the event of such a Biblical cataclysm which left only THIS staff, at THIS moment, alive, would rule? The intelligent? The strong? The obsequious? Who would be Piggy? Jack? Snowball? Napoleon? Squealer? Who would pair off? Who would be Adam? Eve? Noah? (We would Have to, after all, repopulate.) I mention this latter aspect to Marie, the French-Vietnamese busgirl from the West Bank whom I [not so] secretly adore. She looks around at the gathered staff, all guys sharing Camels and scatological stories, and says she'd rather "jump off the balcony." And I imagine, to some Wagnerian strain, all the lemmings jumping off after her. And then decide to eschew all the sociological speculation and focus, instead, on a more productive fantasy: Myself and Marie, the French-Vietnamese busgirls from the West Bank whom I [not so] secretly adore, stuck in the elevator between the 3rd and 4th floors. The power never comes on and we are sent home.

Entry 10

Thursday PM

From the "_________ Manual: Outside Representation"

"Management believes that when employers treat employees with consideration, empathy, and respect and pay a fair wage for a fair day's work, employees will have no desire or need to pay an outside agent 'dues' to represent their interests. It is felt that employees who "know what is going on" and who are "empowered" to make decisions, participate in the resolution of problems and have a sense of security about their employment relationship, do not need or want to pay an outside agent to represent their interests. They do not need a union. The Company does, however, recognize an employee's right to seek representation."

"Outside agents"? "The Company" (capitalized)? Sounds (at best) a little too Orwellian to me, or (at worst) a little too McCarthyesque. I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night and he was wearing a denim shirt, khaki pants, and wielding a martini shaker.

Speaking of denim and khakis, the talk if heating up about our new uniforms. P., the stiff-necked, stuffed- shirt second-in-command who oversees all the new Orleans restaurants, and whose M.O. is to appear in the restaurant with arms folded across his chest, eyes peeled, and scribbling in his notepad, is said to favor the traditional black-and-whites. Which is anathema to us, for several reasons: 1) it makes us, when dispatched after work into the French Quarter night, walking targets, 2) I may neutralize the casual atmosphere our customers gravitate toward; we were, in fact, created to be a laid-back alternative to the more formal original restaurant uptown-we are supposed to be friendlier, more dressed down, but with equally good food and service 3) we'll look like goddamned penguins, or worse, dorks 4) our present uniforms are far more comfortable, easier to move around in, and easier to keep clean (in fact, after three wearings, they magically re-wash themselves) 5) dry cleaning (ugh!) and 6) starch burns (aargh!). Our G.M. has allegedly fashioned a compromise: white shirts and khaki pants. Our fingers are crossed...

Jack, our bartending cohort, who comes to us via Prague and Bourbon Street, tells this story about a recent incident that occurred to one of HIS former cohorts, at a Bourbon Street restaurant: A well-dressed man, bald, black, baby-faced, sits down and orders a steak. After the steak arrives, the man motions to the waiter (Jack's cohort) and says: "How abuot some f------ steak sauce?!" The waiter, a long time resident of the French Quarter, grabs some A-1 from the back station, plops it on the table, and says: "Your f------ steak sauce...sir."

The next day, the newly unemployed waiter says to Jack: "The Lakers? Are they baseball? So who's this Nick Van Exel guy?"

Entry 11

Friday PM

The summer is finally waning in New Orleans; there is a breeze off the Mississippi; soon the busy nights, the bustle, the madness, the welling tip jar. Soon the chaos. I've worked all sorts of bars-singles bars on ladies night, sports bars on Super Bowl Sunday, French Quarter bats on Mardi Gras, opera house bars at intermission, service bars at hotel banquets, country club bars at the 18th hole-and chaos is chaos. And there is something freeing, even EMPOWERING about it, On low/moderate/steady nights, everything is restored immediately to its proper place-bottles back to the well, glasses washed and racked, wine corked, blender rinsed, juices filled. One always keeps up, keeps clean, out of the weeds (which probably explains why my apartment looks like Dresden after the bombing). But when the weeds grow up around you and encircle you, there is no time to do anything restorative. One is sheltered by the chaos. There is no time, on these nights, to do anything or think about doing anything, but DOING it. No worry over preparation, clean-up, catch-up. One of freed from all that-it becomes all improvisation, action, NOW. The exhilaration of the moment. Of the active, or reactive, like a shortstop turning the double play. No change? Pull from the tip jar. Round off the price. Give it away. No beer mugs? Put it in a water glass. No water glass? Put it in a rocks glass. NO rocks glass? Forget the glass? No ice? It's neat then. No C.C.? Use V.O. No cranberry juice? Use grenadine and pineapple. Close enough! No time for the chess game, to plan the next move (you've planned them already, way in advance), to groan (even inside) at an order for a frozen daiquiri, a mint julep, and a sazerac (only the time to go ahead and make them); no time to hate (or like) anyone. Whomever you see when you look up (or choose to look up) is who you deal with. You sense all the eyes, even know from whence they peer. You can fee. Their hunger, or more accurately, their THIRST. You know, of course, who wants you, who NEEDS you. But you'll get to them when you're good and goddamned ready, and not before. And they'll love you for it, and thank you for it, and reward you for it. Neil, our sous-chef, describes the rhythm one must attain on such nights at "auto-drive." And he should know, exhorting 100 percent from a kitchen staff that is expected to provide gourmet food in a high-volume setting. Our chaos is nothing like their chaos. And he pulls it off, with only an occasional tear or display of temper. And I am in awe. Whenever I peer through the porthole that separates the bar from the kitchen or step through it to grab supplies in the patio behind it, I sense an oasis of calm, even on the busiest nights. There is a Zen-like quality of the working beehive, each drone going about his task with the serene and serious precision only Karl Marx could have envisioned in one of his Socialist reveries. And these people in the kitchen LOVE what they do, have made peace with their chaos. Of course, they don't have to deal with the PUBLIC. And say, behind a force smile, with false sincerity: "Yes sir? Can I help you sir? You got it! Thank you, sir! Enjoy your dinner, sir!"

2.Which process motivation theory - Equity theory or Expectancy theory - better explains how your selected worker is motivated to go to work every day? Why? 3.If you were his/her manager, how would you change his/her job to make him/her more motivated? What motivation theory or theories are reflected in your recommendations? Please be specific in your answer.