Bill was never impressed with himself. He never complimented himself, never praised himself, was never comfortable being out-front or in the spotlight. He was self-conscious, self-aggrandizing and generally, this even moreso after his still-recent visit to the Columbus workhouse, afraid. He didn’t like new things or change and the one real comfort he found in restaurant and kitchen work was that everything was always in the same place and done the same way. In his life, in retrospect, he would discover the one thing that held him back the most was himself. Self-doubt and general fear plagued him constantly.
The move up to Cleveland had not been terribly hard, but it wasn’t easy. It took him a month to find this job. He’d applied for two others and tried out for one. They had saved enough money, mostly, to be able to get an apartment, but they’d waited until he was working to move. They were sensible.
Starting the new job wasn’t easy either. Nevertheless, despite his self-doubt, Bill worked through it, worked at it, discovered the same regularity (and his own comfort in it) in The Falstaff Room and the job in general. Everything was always in the same place. Setup was the same. Each day was exactly the same. You did the setup and then the service was like a baseball game, every night a new game based upon how the orders came in and how many customers they had. That part of it, the playing a baseball game, was fun. It was a challenge.
So they did move, found a nice top-floor apartment of a two-family house in Garfield Heights. It wasn’t far from where her parents lived and it wasn’t that far from downtown Cleveland. Garfield Heights had regular bus service he could use, express buses at scheduled times that were generally good for him. It was turning out all okay.
Because it was a quiet day, they were able to sit for a while in the chef’s office. Neither Bill nor the banquet chef knew it, but while they were meeting the the executive chef was meeting with the F&B Director. In the scope of things, the new first cook’s salary, his raise, was small potatoes, but it came up as they did business and it got settled.
For the week, they had banquets but were not overly taxed. Afternoon, more like late lunch affairs, were scheduled for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Friday’s was another political thing, more chicken breasts and rolled filet of sole to the tune of some four hundred people. The meal was scheduled for 1:00 PM which meant dish-up would be between 12:00 and 12:30, closer to 12:00. The others were smaller, but Jimmy Banquet Chef made it clear he wanted Bill working all of them.
So they built him a work schedule, and when they looked it over, the banquet chef told him to just come in at ten every morning as a regular thing. When they didn’t have parties or banquets, he could do prep work.
“I’m gonna teach you everything,” the banquet chef said. “Good for me and good for you.”
Bill was already calculating. He was figuring the hours he’d be working and the overtime hours he’d get. Overtime hours, as he’d been told by the union steward, were not after forty hours a week. They were after eight hours in the day. That ninth hour and every hour after it was overtime. It looked like, and Bill was really happy about this, he’d be making good money.
The Falstaff Room closed on Sundays. Originally Bill’s schedule had been presented to him as six days per week with Sundays off. As they talked about it now, that was going to stay in place except he’d work Sundays too if the Sunday was excessively busy. Or, as the banquet chef told him, they were going to arrange for a way for him and Bill to relieve each other.
Done. Settled. Finished.
