Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [104]
As no one else wants the job, or even wants to stay up all night watching him do the job, or wants to train someone else to do the job, he's got a pretty secure position - even if suspected of occasional petty thievery. Even a known sneak-thief porter is a valued employee, as long as he knows what he can steal and what he can't. There are, I'm sure, many apartments in the outer reaches of Queens that are fully furnished with the glassware, utensils and kitchen equipment of many a restaurant. And a guy who knows where to buy a Green Card and a Social Security number for thirty bucks probably knows what to do with a hot credit card or where to fence a used Burberry raincoat. Nobody minds - much. Besides, the guy is probably stealing less than the bartender.
The Bartender: The Chefs Friend
There has long been a happy symbiotic relationship between kitchen and bar. Simply put, the kitchen wants booze, and the bartender wants food. The bartender, seeing himself (rightly) as a more exalted creature than the waiters, would like to eat a little better than the employee gruel hardening under the heat lamps between four and five. By the end of his shift, he's hungry, and chicken legs and day-old pasta don't fit with the bartender's image of himself as raconteur, showman and personality. He wants to be treated as special. And he usually is. The chef wants to drink anything he desires, anytime he wants it, without upper management being fully informed of the extent of his alcoholism or his taste for premium liquors. And the bartender is usually happy to help - if handled correctly.
The bartender, being the guy every employee gripes to at one point or another, is also useful for gathering interesting tidbits of intelligence. He is also privy, at times, to the high-level maneuverings of upper management and ownership. He knows - in dollars - how well or how poorly the place did on a given night, who is getting petty cash payouts, and for what purpose. And he's heard plenty. Everyone, sooner or later, forgets that the bartender is not really like a doctor or a priest and obliged to keep confidences. They forget that yes, he is listening while you bitch about the boss to a friend at the far end of his bar. Hopefully, he's going to tell the chef all about it.
Earlier, I rashly implied that all bartenders are thieves. This is not entirely accurate, though of all restaurant workers, it's the bartender who has the greatest and most varied opportunities for chicanery. The bartenders control the register. They can collude with waiters on dinner checks, they can sell drinks out of their own bottles - I've even heard of a bartender who brought in his own register, ringing a third of the drinks there and simply carrying the whole thing home at night. But the most common bartender hustle is simply the 'buy-back', when he gives out free drinks every second or third round to an appreciative customer. If you're drinking single malt all night long, and only paying for half of them, that's a significant saving. An extra ten-or twenty-dollar tip to the generous barkeep is still a bargain. This kind of freewheeling with the house liquor is also personally good for the bartender; it inspires that most valued phenomenon in a regular bar crowd: a 'following', folks who will actually follow you wherever you work.
Chefs, naturally, love this kind of bartender, and