Waiter to the Rich and Shameless: Confessions of a Five-Star Beverly Hills Server by Paul Hartford Page A

account, and
partying with Jens on a regular basis. Yet in my gut I felt something essential
was missing. I hadn’t written a single note of music in almost five years.  I
realized I wasn’t quite ready to give up that dream of being a recognized
songwriter.  Though I might have successfully turned off the creative spigot, I
couldn’t hold back the flow forever.  The artist inside of me was yearning to dust
off my microphone and howl again.
    I
loved my job but grew to hate my schedule because the day shift was so tiring. 
No real time to do anything before work and by the time I finished and got home
it was eight o’clock and I’d be too drained and uninspired to write any music.
As a musician, I had found I could be most productive by working at night and
using my days to compose my music.  I liked that schedule; it always worked for
me.  I felt I needed to make a change and tried to figure out a way to work at
night again.  Unfortunately, it didn’t seem that Don, the crotchety old night
bartender, would be leaving anytime soon.  He really didn’t make that much more
than I did, maybe about two-fifty a week, but it was his schedule I was after. 
I didn’t see much hope, but then one day, like my arriving on the perfect day
to apply for the job, things fell into place.
    One
otherwise normal week, three night-shift waiters all dropped out within a
ten-day period.  One waitress, Ann, took a job working as a stewardess for a
private charter jet company.  Another younger guy, David, went to work for a
financial investment company downtown.  (“Yes, sir, I’m qualified to manage
your billion-dollar portfolio. I’m a waiter. I know all about responsibly
managing vast sums of money.”)
    And
then there was poor Álvaro, a hardworking immigrant from Spain, who had a heart
attack in the middle of a busy night shift.  Oh boy, did that ever cause a
scene!  He fell to his knees in the middle of the dining room, loudly yelling
out in pain.   The tray he was carrying crashed to the floor, baptizing several
horrified guests with wine, pasta, and our then-famous blue cheese bread. His dramatic
collapse seemed more like an actor in a bad movie than a heart attack victim.
    Two
other waiters picked him up and took him downstairs to the changing room.  He
sat on the sofa for a while looking quite pale but refused to be taken to the
hospital.  Once he seemed to stabilize, they left him alone to rest and went
back to work.  When Mr. P wouldn’t allow Álvaro to resume working, fearing
liability, he tried to go home and collapsed again on his way to his car. 
Luckily, William in the security booth saw him on one of the surveillance
monitors and called an ambulance. 
    Álvaro
ended up recovering fully after a peripheral arterial bypass but he was out of
commission for almost eight months.  He was our most senior waiter, in his
early sixties back then, and I know for a fact that he still works there.  He’s
a small man with glasses, built like a skeleton, and sporting suspiciously
strangely colored hair.  It’s a shade of burnt orange not seen in nature.  He
used to wait tables in his high-heeled Euro boots mostly because he was so
short.  At least with the boots he could almost reach five-six.  I guess he had
a complex regarding his height because even though the heels hurt him he
wouldn’t stop wearing them, not until after the vascular leg surgery, when the
doctor explained that he not only needed orthotics but he also needed to wear
special shoes from then on. With regular shoes, he was nearly face to face with
guests seated at tables. It was comical but customers loved him. Every night he
worked was like an episode of Little People , showing him overcoming his
height, age, and medical challenges. Little fucker worked hard, I’ll give him
that.
    So
there it was before me:  a clear opportunity, my big chance to not only go on a
night shift schedule but also to begin working as a waiter in Los Angeles’