Comments on: Saturday Redux: “The Dork List” or Things You Should Do Once, And Only Once

By: Jan Novotny

Jan Novotny — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:04:51 +0000

I don’t know when I’ll be on the West Coast but thank you for the offer. We should talk soon. I’m starting to draft up my bakery business plan but still need some artisan bread making experience. Trying to figure that out…Besides pizza cook at the sports bar, I am working in the bakery at Safeway. This is a community about the size of Napa and there are two Safeways here, plus another chain with a couple big stores. And we crank: Another kid and I spent our whole shifts wrapping product. We’re just one store and Mondays are our slowest baking day. It’s pretty impressive and a solid foot-in-the-door education. jn

By: Jan Novotny

Jan Novotny — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:54:13 +0000

Things you should do only once (except in South Dakota where quotas are boundless. And some people could use some boundries): I am working as a pizza cook in a sports bar which shall remain nameless (though Andrew Zimmern, the Bizarre Foods guy from the Travel Channel, was in a few days ago. No aspersions I hope on our mecca of fine dining and my current employer. The metal head that I work with who’s only 21 but has been arrested 5 times already was estatic to be cooking for his hero) . We were short our kitchen manager last week due to his failure to moderate: during an employee party on Sunday, he got drunk, passed out on the bar and got suspended. The kicker? It’s not the first time. Btw, watch Full Throttle on Tuesday night at 11 (check for local time). It’s a reality show about a bar/concert venue at the Sturgis Motorcyle races about 20 minutes north of here. They can hold 10,000 drunk bikers and semi-nekked girls and have 80 bartenders on shift a night. The owner basically operates his own bank for the 10 days of Rally, racking up ~$100,000 a night. And the guy just looks like some dreaded-up slacker dude. It’s pretty impressive. The cliff hanger from the first episode–you know the one where an employee gets all insulted and irrate and stomps off the job–is the owner of the aforementioned pizza joint and the guy who hired me. The meter is running on his 15 minutes of fame. He is so basking in the glow of his public bad behavior that we’re screening Full Throttle live with a Wings & Pitcher special.

By: nativenapkin

nativenapkin — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:55:31 +0000

I miss “Mom”. She was the best. When you coming out to visit. The room is always here…

By: jannovo

jannovo — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:48:28 +0000

My mother was a whisky-voiced mother of 6 who started smoking–and maybe drinking–at 16. In her later years, she looked androgenous, but after all those kids and years with my father, if anyone addressed her as sir (which happened regularly), she would squinch up her eyes like Clint Eastwood and demand, ” Do I look like A MAN to you?” Whereupon the hapless waiter would wilt and run for the hills. Except for the ones who still didn’t get it and continued to address her as “sir”. They are all, hopefully and deservedly in true Darwinian fashion, sorting nails at a workshop somewhere. jn

By: Ex-Restaurant Manager

Ex-Restaurant Manager — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:05:33 +0000

My dorkiest experience? I just started serving at a swanky Country Club. The GM, a real Sopranos-type Italian, came into the club with his lady friend, who I addressed as “Mrs. GM”. Awkward!

He was a skank, though. His son also worked there as a server. And was non-plussed. Son-of skank.