L'Absinthe. French for disaster.

I've been working every night at the restaurant since Tuesday. This adds up to be entirely too much time with Maurice and Ricardo. Which then equals out to, Lauren almost quitting her job. Lauren and pretty much the entire staff.

It also is then multiplied by the fact that Lauren feels she needs to find a very interesting balance between respect and telling them to run their obnoxiously rude, little European butts back to wherever they came from where it was ok to talk to people the way they do.

So its parents weekend at CU in Boulder, which means there are thousands upon thousands of excited little undergrads running around with their parents in tow. We were warned that L'Absinthe would be extremely busy, and that we were all required to be working all weekend. We were not warned that the managment would be totally unprepared and completely useless during the time that we were extremely busy. We had parties of 15, parties of 11, 7, 8, tons of 6s. Pretty much all at the same time. Fact number one; L'Absinthe...is not that big. Fact number two; both bosses are so desperate for business that the actual size of the restaurant must have totally escaped them while taking reservations. Then the hostess was told to not turn away any walk ins.

I said to Lindsay in the very beginning, "I don't want to be negative right off the bat, but, I think there's most likely going to be a lot of really pissed of people here tonight." And, Lauren wins.

Leo made the first, and possiby only, smart move of the night by collecting money from all the staff, to stock us up in Sam Adams which we shoved under the coffee station in the kitchen. So when about 10:00 rolled around, we were all slugging "foamy tea" out of coffee mugs. Because at least then, when you're told more than once throughout the night that "the service if awful", or that "this is the worst entree I have ever had in my life", or "why is my steak raw?" or even "Hey! Where is my f*@%ing waiter?!"...you can laugh about it because you know you have a beer in a coffee mug behind the scenes. Sometimes you just need to focus on the positive.

So the chaos was supposed to start around 8 p.m. At 7:45 p.m. when I had all my tables sat within the same 5 minutes, and the staff was whizzing by each other, already teetering on the edge of control, I turned to Todd as he's flailing past, and say "Hey wanna know the best part? It's not even 8:00 yet." And he goes "oh no, there it is" and I turn to see about 15 to 20 people walking in the door. So I laughed.

Then I got yelled at for laughing by a flustered, red-faced Maurice in the kitchen. "Lauren, what did I tell you, cut it out!" Inappropriate meanness, is what I woud file that under at the Shelter. So I stuck my face under the 150 degree kitchen lamp and yelled back "Maurice, laughing is the ONLY thing keeping people in this restaurant right now!"

Somewhere mid-evening, I'm pretty sure I heard every staff member there grumble "I'm quitting after this" under their breath at least once.

There was one point where Maurice belligerently yelled from the kitchen, "Stop taking food orders!" Todd and I laughed, and he followed up with an even less coherent, "I'M NOT JOKING!". Sure, because I'm sure my customers who have already been waiting a lifetime just to get their water, will completely understand that at this restaurant, we have actually stopped making food for the evening. Maybe some bread would smooth that over?

One table left me a $100 tip on what should have been MAYbe $60. I'd like to chalk that one up as a pity tip. And that was the first and last time I will openly accept and appreciate pity. Except for maybe tonight, when all this chaos shall repeat itself, any and all pity will be welcomed whole-heartedly.

When the night did finally slow down, and my body felt like it got hit by a stampede of mack trucks, and we swtiched over from "foamy tea" to straight up Corona bottles, it still didn't come to an end. I walked over to the front to do my check-out and Pascal (member of the band) comes in and says to me, "Um, there's a pretty nasty fight going on out here, you might want to call the cops." I look out the window and there are at LEAST 15 to 20 guys pummeling one. From the sidewalk into the middle of the street, just absolutely attacking this kid. So I call 911 and tell the cops and an ambulance to get over there immediately. They do, and they clear it up...but that kid was not getting up. They got him out on a stretcher and took him away, taped up the area and blocked off the streets. Nothing makes me angrier or more sick to my stomach.

Needless to say, the staff of L'Absinthe decided to retreat back to our place and share our stories of slow-food torture and tipless tables until 4 a.m. and laughing put us to bed.

This is just round one folks. Putting the gloves back on for round two tomorrow.