Cagney without Lacey is a terrible show…

We had a magician at work the other night, that's right an actual bunny producing, coin pulling, card guessing man in a bad suit magician. Well you can just imagine my reaction. Man, magicians are the lamest cabaret performers of the lot. God I'd rather watch plate spinners than have to endure a magician. Actually I'd  rather make my own face disappear than have to watch a magician.

Waiter Chum Number One had taken the reservation for a hen party and approved their request that they bring their own magic man for post mains entertainment. That's Waiter Chum Number One who doesn't even work in the restaurant any more.

Yes Waiter Chum Number One is dead. Well she is to me. Having waited tables for numerous years she has decided now is the time to retire from this most noble of professions. "It was time to kick back, relax and take life easier", says Waiter Chum Number One to me as she explained her decision to join the management team. That's right she has become a key carrying, coffee slurping, clipboard brandishing member of the management team. And fair play to her. But she's dead to me now, like all the management team are. They are all just blockages on the route home with their mop that floor properly and you cant swear at customers and their instance that I polish the last tray of glasses and not just leave them sitting in the glass washer for the next shift to deal with.

Blurgh.

The management's gain is my loss. I'm like Butch without the Kid. Dempsey without Makepeace. Batman without Robin. Or as some smart ass put it, Cagney without Lacey. I being Lacey, obviously. I will miss her unique ability to think exactly what I was thinking and react in the same way. We rarely had to speak during shift as we both just knew what the other needed. Now I am left with...well, best not to go there but there will be swearing for the next wee while and the position of Waiter Chum Number One may lay vacant for quite a while.

As she left the restaurant, dressed in the noble and proud shirt of a waiter (albeit with various stains and dirt on it) for the last time I assured her I would treat her with the same respect as all the other managers and supervisors that clutter up and delay my daily escape. That is to say with very fucking little. Heh. Obviously I manned up and didn't show any emotion as she wandered off into the night looking for a bar stool with her name on it.

I never thought she'd make it as a waiter let alone become one of my bosses, especially when she blubbed like a wee kid who had just got their legs slapped for no reason on her first bank holiday weekend. This was her first mention on WDF,

"But I ask you, the great unwashed of the bloggosphere, what the fuck goes on in a customers head that makes them think it’s acceptable to shout and mess themselves over a late bread portion or wrongly ordered sweet? I mean really lose it in the worst sort of way. Making teenage girls cry is the job of teenage boys, and Justin Timberlake. Grown adults should know better and act accordingly."

She was that teenage girl! In was a story titled, "Why did the customer cross the road? To verbally abuse the waiters!" Good times. I reminded her of this and the last line of that post just before she left, "Why did the manager cross the road? It wasn't busy on the other side." Heh, I'm such an asshole sometimes.

But anyhoo back to the magic man.

In he arrived after they had finished their mains. He introduced himself to me.

"Hi, I'm Conor the Magnificent"

I snorted."Of course you are." He was entertaining me already! And off he went with his ever so gentle comedy and jokes about where people come from. But I couldn't help but think that this was a sign of things to come as he tried to produce a fork from my ear. Stiffed by my one time friend, waiter and all round good chum. She is so dead to me now.

She'll need a new name now too....hmmmm.