In the midst of it, as the pace kept up and the hustle and bustle continued without letup, as everyone worked individually and together as a machine, both front and back of the house, Mr. Bowman himself came to pick up the meat needed for the west side.
He came in quietly through the back door and stopped for a brief moment to talk to Bill who was working the broiler. He said they were equally busy on the West side and needed immediate delivery now. He said they would probably need another delivery later on. Then, without talking to anyone else, he went on down the stairs and into the meat room.
A few moments later, Henry Lee came up the stairs carrying two trays of meat, one stacked on the other. He stopped in the doorway to tell Paulie to come on downstairs with him to cart the meat.
Despite Mr. Bowman appearing in the doorway, Lillian did not let up, did not hesitate. She kept ordering as the orders came in. So long as she had orders in her hand, she would never try to pick up. Bill, however, quietly made her do so without letting her know he was controlling it. That was the trick. Bill knew the trick. He knew he had to make her believe she was in charge.
And so it went. It went straight through until four o’clock when suddenly, there was a lull, a moment to actually breathe.
They could all feel it. The sound of the automatic doors decreased in interval. Moments of the doors not opening and closing occurred. Lillian, who had been relieved by Tommy several times during the course of the rush, stayed quiet, watching, looking. At one point she walked along her side of the counter to Bill so she faced him directly. Quietly, she asked if he was ready to go with anything.
Bill had consolidated everything. The second Garland was now empty. Bill would not shut it down until later in the evening. He would brush it regularly and keep the grills really hot so that in case they backed up on the one Garland he could work steaks very quickly.
The charcoal grill’s front shelf was a also empty now except for four burnt steaks. They were all Tops and they were all pretty close to ash. These were the ones that had been in the very back corners of the broilers, the ones that Bill could not get to to save from burning. You might argue, and Mr. Bowman would, that he could have saved them. But Bill knew, any experienced broiler cook would know, that to have done so would have meant burning his arm. There was no time for such a mistake in the midst of the type of rush they were having.
There was no room for any type of real mistake in the type of rush they were having. The only way to have survived such a rush with dignity and reputation intact was to keep up, and the only way to keep up was to have a fully experienced crew doing the work. Even then they had to be lucky, not have a major faux-pas.
There’s always the x-factor, that random thing that can happen. A waitress drops a plate, even a tray. One piece of an order is missing. A well done steak, especially a thick one like a filet mignon, here called Kings and Queens for the two different sizes, could set everything back. You could run out of plates or silverware or a steam table item. You could have a spill. Even with the best and most experienced crew, anything could happen at any given time.
This was one of the things Bill loved about the job. It was like playing a baseball game. Every day, every game was a new game. And no matter how good you were, like even in the pros, you could always make an error.
