-You Droopy.
…
-Yeah, you Droopy. You a sad dog.
…
-Why you always look so sad?
-I don’t look sad. I’m not sad.
-You sad-looking. I’m namin you Droopy Dog.
Maybe he said it like: I’m namin you Droopy, dog. But I don’t think so.
I didn’t work much with Ant, but I’d sometimes come in for a day shift so I could have a weekend night off later in the week. He typically came to the restaurant around 7 am to do prep and take in shipments. At 7? I was usually still up from the night before, having gotten off-shift around 2 or 3 am and then doing some sort of bullshit that may or may not have involved some sort of substances and/or trouble, usually getting to sleep or passing out around 9 am or so.
He wasn’t a manager, so I thought of him as a sort of a lieutenant at the restaurant. He pulled some of the admin work like signing for the shipments that managers didn’t always do and some of the kitchen scheduling. I was definitely a grunt in this restaurant’s army. But I wanted to keep it clear in that I wasn’t his grunt. I wanted him to know that I was working hard and didn’t need any input or direction from him. Often, if you look like you’re always rushing around and super busy, people don’t give you more shit to do. But I guess the serious and contemplative work-mode look I was trying to project just came out looking sad. Rushing seemed to be bumbling. Busy was doing something wrong. And to Ant, I always needed corrections.
I was prepping the fry station when he walked by and said
-You ain’t never spray that shit down.
pointing at the wall behind the grease bins.
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-Why you ain’t spray that shit down?
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-Droopy, get you some new spray and a rag from the dry and spray that shit down.
I’d sprayed that shit down the previous night until it gleamed. It was pristine. Stainless steel became platinum.
I drooped over to the dry without a word.
The dry was the walk-in pantry closet where we kept anything non-refrigerated. On the left wall were the cans and plastic tubs of secret, trademarked sauces and bags of flour and spice mixtures. On the back wall was a locked cage holding liquor bottles and mixers. On the upper portion of the right wall were cabinets housing napkins, printer paper, and other front of the house stuff. On the bottom were some unopened cleaning supplies and new rags, all stashed away from the food. I grabbed a bottle of concentrated all-purpose cleaner and a new rag.
The previous night there had been a nearly full bottle of concentrated cleaner already open in the mop and hose area, a recess at the back of the kitchen near the door leading to the dumpsters. It’d been opened only once before I’d prepared the last dilution to fill the spray bottle. This morning, though, Ant had poured both out.
Ant liked to run up the waste costs for the restaurant in different ways, mostly by writing off “spoiled” foods, but also more subtly (or absurdly?) by throwing out half of a slice of cheese for every whole one that he used or tossing every other slice of a cut onion. He checked off boxes of tomatoes as “not fresh.” Frozen meat: “freezer burn.” Bugs in the flour. Pouring out cleaning supplies. Whether it was his protest against low wages or whether he was just pathologically destructive, I don’t know.
I poured concentrate into the cleanest-looking spray bottle I could find all the way up to the drawn-on black line. The small 4 oz notch on the bottle wasn’t as concrete as the sharpie-drawn line, clicking a few ounces higher than the real notch. Ant always carried his black marker, forever checking and striking this and that. And as per his suggestion in a previous declaration on cleaning
-That notch don’t mean nothin. Anyways everybody use my line.
I filled the rest of the bottle with water from the dual-nozzled spigot in the mop nook, and took the new spray and new rag over to the fry station.
I half-heartedly sprayed a short burst of the all-purpose onto my shining grease backsplash wall and wiped it around. Ant came by while I was in mid-burst ahead of a second pass and said
-Boy you done good. Good. Put that down n come over here the sink. Let’s do the lettuce.
I started walking to bring the bottle to the mop nook before I was to wash the lettuce and Ant was to look on and not wash the lettuce but tell me everything I was doing wrong. He said
-Nah, don’t go back there. Put that there on your sink. Might need it later on.
…
-Or no, wait. You goin smoke? Let’s take a break.
I was following Ant to the back door when he stopped short and turned back
-You got a menthol? I only smoke menthols.
He had a pack of Newports in his back pocket.
-I’ve got Kools.
-Good man, Droopy. Good man. You got one for me, too.
(Not a question.)
I handed him one as he opened the door and pushed out with his other hand.
I sat down on a milk crate by a dumpster and lit my Kool with a disposable mini orange lighter that I’d named Chris’s Boat. I felt that I’d lose my lighters less often if they had names. Ant pulled out his pack of cigarettes where he had a lighter in the empty space from a few missing cigarettes. He noticed my glance and said
-I’m saving these for later.
We smoked in silence.
db 