They did run a full thirty minutes behind.
Wayne and Jackie put on a show, struggled through their fight right there on the loading dock. The episode lasted a solid eight minutes real time, give or take.
Aja came in to the kitchen several times to see if she could pick up orders, to report on the show and the customers who, not wanting to have to see such a thing—after all customers should never have to be subjected to that kind of stuff—got up and left. She passed a remark to the effect that she wasn’t gonna be making any money.
Bill worked it out best he could until Wayne came back in. Jackie, teary-eyed, followed Wayne, picked up her apron and went back to work.
Bill had front-loaded the broiler, kept the drawer mostly open but put hamburgers and some steaks on to cook slowly while he stayed over on the sauté station and worked the eggs and omelets. He hung as many dupes as he could on the board and read through those he couldn’t hang up to make sure when he got to them there was nothing that would hold him up. Everything else done and having to wait for a well-done steak was the pits.
He was frying eggs and making omelets when Wayne resumed his position. He told Wayne stay over on the broiler until he finished what he was working and then they could switch.
So they worked it out and Wayne gave Bill big kudos for doing what he did, how he did. Bill, by this point in his career was way too experienced to let what happened befuddle him.
In this restaurant the office was in the very front of the kitchen off to the side past where the pot-washer worked. By proximity, it was behind the back wall of the bar.
Back to front in the back of the house of this place were the prep kitchen (at the back of which was the one walk-in box), the line then the pantry station. Beyond the pantry station were the doors to the dining room on one side and a trout/lobster tank on the other side. They alternated, one week trout, one week lobster. Past that tank was a hall along which was the dishwasher machine and the pot-washer station. Then came the office.
Rick, the manager, was very much like Drenovis. He was big, chubby, brusque and insistent upon having things his way even though he knew he couldn’t quite get things exactly his way from the kitchen staff. The one great distinction between Rick and Drenovis was that Rick did not mess around with the waitresses. Tony, the manager of the other store owned by this owner, did that enough for all the management.
Rick was a numbers man so when he came out of the office and took in the scene, he started churning numbers in his head, figuring the damage Wayne and Jackie were doing to the meal’s profits. He didn’t say anything to Wayne until after the rush and when he said he was firing Jackie and had a good mind to fire him too, Wayne said he didn’t care, to make himself happy.
Turned out he didn’t do anything. When he said he was going to fire Jackie, Wayne said he’d quit, so Rick put it all on the back burner, which meant that both Wayne and Jackie were lame ducks but didn’t know it yet. Rick would get rid of both of them, but only when the timing was right for him.
Bill caught a bonus. Just before Rick was leaving he asked to see Bill in the office. He thanked him for working the line alone the way he did, for salvaging what he could of a messed up situation. He slipped Bill a fifty-dollar bill and told not to say anything to anyone.
Sometimes it’s good to be good at your job.
