Entries from February 2008 ↓

Kleinheider blows me away sometimes. If you want to know what is going on with the TN GOP/Obama controversy then this perfectly encapsulates it. The linking, plus the insightful commentary, makes this one of the finest political blog posts I’ve seen in a long time. The man rocks his job. Hard.

(I miss Adam pretty bad, but this has nothing to do with that. Just wanted to acknowledge a job well done.)

“Yelp is proof that there are approximately 400,000 Lit majors in San Francisco just waiting for the opportunity to pull their metaphorical dick out to each other.”

Check out the TN GOP. Shameless! I don’t know why I continue to be surprised by the lows those yahoos will sink to, but I am aghast at every turn. Even all these years later.

You stay classy, Hobbs.

OTHERS:

• “I used to think a little better of Hobbs than this… I guess being a party apparatchnik has changed him some.”
• “I really believe it is time to take the Repub party back from the 10 year olds that hijacked it.”
• “Bill Hobbs, you can keep talking all you want about how Jews should vote for the Republicans because they’re “better on Israel” (even though what they are is better on the Likud vision for Israel, not Israel as a whole), but I’ll vote for Obama because he’s better on ALL issues of importance to Jews. He proved that with his answer on the civil rights movement.”
• “I don’t think this will play well with a lot of Republicans either. When even Karl Rove is concerned about the reputation of the party, you know its a problem.”
• “Whoever is responsible for this should be fired. Publicly and immediately. Period.”
• “Courtesy of the Tennessee Republican Party, long-time friends of religious tolerance.”

Let’s talk about those two servers who were shot at, one grazed by a bullet to the head, after chasing restaurant patrons who skated on their Joe’s Crab Shack bill in Fisherman’s Wharf. The report from CBS 5 states:

[A] group of four people were eating at Joe’s Crab Shack at 245 Jefferson Street around 10 p.m. on Sunday. Two women in the group got up and left, followed shortly by the man and a 17-year old male. All left without paying.

The SFPD said two female servers followed the two males for several blocks before confronting them in the 600 block of Bay Street. That is when police said 36-year-old Marcel Waldron allegedly turned around, brandished a gun, and shot at the workers.

Two female servers pursued to male customers for several blocks? Then confronted them? Does this seem unequivocally dangerous to anyone?

Please note that these servers worked for a chain restaurant, Joe’s Crab Shack. I point this out because I spent many years working for chain restaurants as I put myself through college. It was a soul-sucking experience in many regards. I felt my spirit crushed when I was working those jobs because, despite being paid $2.13 an hour by the company, servers were expected to do things like clean off the clock on their day off or work for ten hours without a break. I was also told, by more than one chain eatery, that if anyone “dined and dashed” on their tab that I was responsible for the bill.

Restaurants say this for a reason. It would be very easy for any server anywhere to pocket the cash left by a table of four then claim that the diners skated on the tab. The managers informed us that those diners were our resposibility, and that if they managed to take off without paying then we were not in control of our sections and did not deserve to work on the floor. And people did skate. It didn’t happen very often, but sometimes. It was mostly kids. Or the occasional con artist. But every time I saw it happen the server from that table would bolt out the door looking for the cheapskate. Rarely did they catch up to them, but sometimes they did. Personally, I confronted a man who skated on his tab and he acted as though it totally slipped his mind, then he paid up. But he could have reacted any number of ways, which is made obvious by this account.

So, I have to wonder if the managers at Joe’s Crab Shack encouraged those servers to confront the diners who dashed. It was pretty much a mandate at the places I worked. And I can’t help but think that asking servers to take on those people–off the premises–is dangerous. (There was always debate amongst the server staff as to whether making servers pay for meals that went unpaid was even legal.) I thought of calling the restaurant to ask if they ordered those servers to confront the guy who shot at them, but I doubt I would make much headway.

Any of you ever work in restaurants that encouraged this behavior? It’s not something the public at large would know about, but ex-servers are plentiful. Speak up in the comments and let me know your experience with this, if any.

[cross posted at Eye on Blogs]

Apparently if you ever decide to take your clothes off for money, then go on to achieve anything notable, you will always and forever - - and usually right off the bat - - be described as a stripper.

Also, good for Cody. Always nice to see a blogger get an Oscar. [Always? Perhaps that was a first. Anyway…] But could we all please shut the fuck up about her now? She is clogging up my tubes.

• Headline of the day: Oakland trade school teaches how to grow pot (Slideshow!)
• This is what I want for dinner.
• Tennessee Helpless Against New Basement Tornadoes:
  

  “All we can say for certain is that unfinished basements are twice as likely to develop tornadoes,” said Allan Boyer, a controlled meteorogist at the National Storm Prediction Center in Norman, OK. “Also, when residents leave their washing machines and dryers running it creates the ideal environment for tornadoes, because of the extra spinningness it causes in the air.”

• Yes, sir. I mean you.
• My friend is a badass copywriter for woot.com. Glad to see him get the recognition he deserves. His work is consistently brilliant.
• Plants that Twitter when they need to be watered [via molly, who needs a blog. nahtzee.com is available.]
• Narcissism of small differences:
  

  The term describes the manner in which our negative feelings are sometimes directed at people who resemble us, while we take pride from the “small differences” that distinguish us from them.

• Not what it seems cam
• Star Wars according to a 3-year-old:
• Been raped? They take cash or credit.
• “In other words, Eastern Market is kind of a magical place.”
• Heh:

I have no idea who won the Oscars. I don’t even know who was nominated.

Eight years ago I would have asked off work to be sure to watch it.

“CBS5 has an awesome new blog page. And clearly, they also have great taste.”

Aw yeah, they are coming around. You just gotta dabble in the drama.

Amy Sedaris on David Letterman. They crack each other up, which makes me laugh and laugh. She’s on all the time, just because. She’s on right now, and not even promoting anything. She just said she wanted to get a monkey, so she got an imaginary one first so she would know what she was getting into.

If you want to see some of her appearances, here is a good place to start.

There is only one semicolon in the entire piece, and it is not in the sentence about which this article was written. Delightful.

Thanks to Laura Creekmore for the link.