Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [43]
Bigfoot's bar customers had every reason to love him. There was a house-approved buy-back policy. Bartenders were chosen for their personalities as well as their ability. A television was always readily at hand, football pool a must, and Bigfoot made regular visits to the bar, handing out box seats to Knicks, Yankees, Giants, Jets, Mets and Rangers to favored customers. On Super Bowl Sunday, if you'd plunked down a C-note for the Super Bowl pool, drinks were free, and food was brought in from the Second Avenue deli - a kosher smorgasbord replenished throughout the game.
As one might imagine, living under the thumb of such a micro-managing control freak could be tough. Most downtime among employees was spent talking about - you guessed it - Bigfoot. Stories swapped, theories floated, gripes exchanged. But Bigfoot knew. He had a near-supernatural sense of exactly when, at what precise moment, one of his employees had had enough. He could tell when the bullying, the relentless sarcasm, the constant, all-encompassing vigilance had become too exhausting. When one of his people was fed up with staying awake at night anticipating his likes and dislikes, was sick of charting his mood swings, was tired of feeling demeaned and beaten down after being asked, for instance, to clean out the grease trap, was ready to burst into tears and quit, then suddenly Bigfoot would appear with court side seats for a play-off game, a restaurant warm-up jacket (given out only to Most Honored Veterans), or a present for the wife or girlfriend - something thoughtful like a Movado watch. He always waited until the last possible second, when you were ready to shave your head, climb a tower and start gunning down strangers, when you were ready to strip off your clothes and run barking into the street, to scream to the world that you'd never never never again work for that manipulative, Machiavellian psychopath. And he'd get you back on the team, often with a gesture as simple and inexpensive as a baseball cap or a T-shirt. The timing was what did it, that he knew. He knew just when to apply that well-timed pat on the back, the strangled and difficult-for-him 'Thank you for your good work' appreciation of your labors.
And there was also the knowledge that Bigfoot could help you if you asked. Need an apartment? He could help. A dental emergency? No problem. Lawyer? He could hook you up with the best. Need a nice ride to the beach? Maybe Bigfoot could lend you his Corvette, which he never drove. Or his vintage Caddy ragtop, which he never drove either.
But his greatest gift was the Bigfoot System, which I use still. My inventory sheets, for example, are set up like the master's: in clockwise, geographical order. Instead of hopping back and forth, counting and weighing vegetables alphabetically - or by type, like most sheets - I have my sheets laid out the way the food is laid out, allowing me to pass through my inventory in a comfortable, one-directional order, ticking off items. I know if an order has been called in, and if a particular item was, in fact, ordered - the telltale Bigfoot-Style notations appear. Nothing is left to chance. I can tell a Bigfoot restaurant from the street: the waiters are in comfortable clothes - 100 percent cotton oxfords or same-colored T-shirts, blue jeans or khakis, road-tested aprons for their order books, and multiple pens (God help you if you don't have a pen in Bigfoot land); the cooks are in restaurant-owned and washed whites, the porters in telltale blue coveralls. The phone is always answered in the same way, whoever picks up. All pots and pans are scrubbed down to bare metal; I remember some