Why I Laminated Room Service Menus on Tuesday, or, The I'll-Quit-Before-You-FIre-Me Bartender

So there I was - Tuesday evening and I'm in Dawn's (oh what the hell, she couldn't think of a name she liked anyway) office, methodically laminating a stack of 120 copies of our new room service menu. Why am I back here when I should be in the front, taking care of customers and chatting merrily with bar guests?
Because Guy hates me. Not just the 'I don't like you so I'll make snide remarks around you' or 'I'll sit in stony silence and try to make you uncomfortable' kind of hate. I'm talking full-on, leaves the room when I enter, no words spoken whatsoever kind of hate.
Let me explain why.

Because we are not the biggest of restaurants, we often have only one waitress and one bartender on at a time. The bartender handles the lounge and bar, which is almost always busy, and the waitress handles any tables, to go orders and room service orders that come in. This way, the money is well distributed and everyone goes home happy.
Waitresses have a serious amount of sidework each night - they have to soak, polish and roll a bin of silverware, roll silverware for the breakfast server (because she's almost 100 years old and can't quite do it correctly herself), fill all of the sugarbowls and salt & pepper shakers on the tables, set the blinds, dust the windowsills and bottoms of the chairs and tables, break down the beverage station at the end of the night, break down the server station and clean the front of house. That's a lot for one girl to do.
Conversely, the bartender has sidework, but not much. He should soak, polish and roll his own silverware at the beginning of the night, clean out the chill chest for the beer, stock the beer following FIFO, check and fill his mixers and ice, disassemble and soak his bar gun each night, wipe down counters, set out his liquor display, stock his wines & liquors, handle the cash machine and set out the bar snacks each night. At the end of the shift, his bar should be sparkling, with all of the liquor and beer locked away.

Now, before I go any further, please understand that I bartend three nights a week. And every night, I do all of my sidework and the work that wasn't done the night before. I don't set any policies or requirements that I can't (or won't) do myself. Also, all of the sidework lists and lists of responsibility have been checked and endorsed by Dawn, and she occasionally comes out and checks how I'm handling things in the FOH. So it isn't like I'm throwing heaps of madness on this guy.
That being said, here's the problem: Since he started working here, Guy has only shown an interest in two things. 1) Making money, preferably more money than anyone else. 2) Being a complete and utter asshat.
If you are not paying attention, Guy will do the following:
Steal your tables
Steal your To-Go orders
Steal your rolled silverware (I think he's rolled his own twice, ever)
Never follow FIFO in the chill chest
Never clean out the chill chest
Leave things to rot in the bar fridge
Let mold grow in the bar gun holder
Never set up his bar display
Never set out bar snacks
Cut customers off who are not intoxicated
Let the bar trash overflow
Make waitresses run his dishes to the pit
Make waitresses stock his glassware
Forget parts of his uniform
Make waitresses run his desserts, dressings and condiments
Never marry ketchup and mustards
Never restock and just tell customers that we're out
Put red wines in the fridge
Open multiple bottles of the same wine or liquor
All of these things are problems that Dawn or I have spoken to him about before. These things drive me crazy because they make our bar (and restaurant and hotel, by association) look crappy and second rate.

On one memorable occasion, I discovered how little Guy cares by pure accident. I spilled some strawberry syrup (I had been making daquiris) onto the floor of the bar fridge. So what do I do? Grab a bottle of sanitizer spray and a rag and climb halfway into the fridge, of course. In a classic instance of me giving someone too much credit, I noticed that everything I had asked Guy to clean out and restock (the week before) appeared to be done. Wow, I thought, good job. Until I moved a container of pineapple garnish and noticed that it seemed to have dark splotches on the plastic. I tried to wipe them off for a moment before I realized - the pineapple was growing black fuzzy mold inside the container. And still, I gave Guy the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was just a bad pineapple to begin with.
And then I delved further into the fridge, and noticed that NOTHING HAD BEEN DONE. The carafes of simple syrup and maraschino had strings of slime floating thru them, there was uncorked wine in the back, the mixers had mold growing in the pourspouts and on the threads that screw the cap on, underneath the fresh fruit in the garnish bowl there were whole limes and lemons that were soft and growing white mold, there was soured half & half in the chill chest... the list goes on. I had not checked these things because I (mistakenly, obviously) trusted him to complete them. He's an adult, and I assumed that he had the sense of personal responsibility and lacking that, pride, to run a clean bar.
On the upside, that whole experience has taught me an important lesson, and one that Dawn has been trying to teach me from day one: YOU are responsible. People are inherently lazy, and will avoid hard work whenever possible. This means that I must go behind them and check their work, as though I were a kindergarten teacher, and sometimes guide them thru it step by step. That sucks, but it is part of life.

So it happened that last week I was working one of my waitress shifts with Guy bartending. As I return from running a room service order, I see an older gentleman sitting at one of my tables with a menu. Now, it is common practice for the bartender to seat a guest if the waitress is running room service, so I'm not bothered. I start over to the table to take the guest's drink order when Guy stops me.
"I've got it," he says.
"Okay. What did he want to drink?" I'm thinking maybe the guest just told Guy what he wanted to drink (some people don't wait for us to ask) so I'm still not worried.
"Don't worry, I've got it," Guy says, a little more forcefully.
"Okay, but he's my customer, and I need to know what he's ordered," I respond in kind.
"You need to calm the hell down!" He's doing that thing where you yell without raising your voice, and it really pisses me off. I'm having a slow night, and I'm not about to let him take this one from me. I'm also pissed because we're standing on the restaurant side of the kitchen window, where every customer at the tables and bar can see us, but Guy is blocking my path to the server station. I'm also also pissed because this is the second time I've had a problem with him this night, and I have stood up for him too many times before. If he screws with me on this, I'm going to make sure he doesn't work with us anymore. Weeks and weeks worth of frustration and indignation come spewing out of me and I yell:
"Guy, you are about THIS close to not working here anymore!!"

He hasn't spoken to me since. I went straight back to Dawn's office to tell her what had just happened. I have never lost my temper like that in front of customers before, and I was embarrassed and ashamed of myself. Dawn assured me that it happens to everyone at some point, so better I got it over with in front of customers who know me and understand the situation than new ones who might not come back after seeing someone yell at a co-worker like that.
Later that night, Guy went back to Dawn's office and put in his two weeks, and let me tell you, they are going by like molasses. Dollars to donuts, the next problem he had at the bar would have been his last if he hadn't quit. I just can't handle that sort of disrespect and ineptitude.
And you can bet your ass that I'll be training the next bartender from scratch, and I'll be their training wheels for as long as it takes; I'm not going thru this crap again. Until then, I'm enjoying the quiet.

Happy Molding