Norcross Servers On the Loose in Orlando

What some of you may not realize is that all of us “Restaurant People” in Historic Norcross are friends with each other. (You’ll find this to be true with “Industry Folk” around the world.) We all hang out together. Could be because we all have crazy hours; maybe it’s the fact that we can all relate to each others “horror stories”  but I’d say it’s that fact that it takes a certain mentality to enjoy working in the Industry as long as some of us do. A “tweak in the brain” that forms a kinship, perhaps.

Whatever  the reason you can rest assured the Dominick’s employees as well as Mojito’s  Jen, Omar and Luis will be at the pub after work; Jason, Mike and I will make many runs to 45 South  so Josh and Paige can pump us with caffeine; Craig is going to wander over when Paizanos closes on Sunday so that we may compare our days…and odds are good that if we aren’t working, you’re gonna find us all together somewhere. 

Now that you understand we are all "buddy buddy," let’s take a journey outside the doors of the Iron Horse and talk about a fun topic: 

NORCROSS SERVERS HIT FLORIDA

This past weekend I traveled with my favorite gals Leslie, Lauren, Lee and Sally (all of Dominick’s fame) to Orlando. Now there is plenty here that I just can’t share. Confidentiality laws and all (…well that and my Dad reads this) but what I can tell you are the various things you just tend to notice and QUESTIONS you just have to ask when you’ve been doing this for so long.

For example, at the first stop our bartender was wearing 4-inch spiked heels! What?!?! That’s insane! How can you do that? She was working it too, back and forth, strutting her stuff. When I got the chance I said “Honey, really? How on EARTH do you do this?” She started laughing and admitted that she had tennis shoes in the back and would have them on in 20 minutes. Apparently she is a 3rd grade teacher who doesn’t  get to sass it up much so she always starts work with a bang…but quickly fizzles out. 

Our next stop was a rooftop bar surrounded giant Tiki torches. Well there’s a brilliant idea; Drunks, Building Ledges and Fire...What could possibly go wrong?  Even as a customer I was on high alert monitoring the perimeter at all times waiting to stop the guy that thinks it’s a great idea to climb up on the wall and light his cigarette on a Tiki Torch mere moments before plummeting to his doom. How do the employees relax?

On the move again we headed to Orange Street where $5 gets you admission to 6 bars. I don’t have too much to say about these… one cantina was probably my favorite of them all, but overall, at this point we were so constantly on the move I didn’t have time to observe much.  No, I found myself busy staying on top of head counts….Certain members of our little group tend to “wander off” but that’s one of those things I can’t mention.

Safely back at the hotel, courtesy of our “Transportation Capsule” we cozied in at the hotel bar. Ok, actually, we spent a lot of time there and got to know one of the bartenders rather well. In one of our conversations me mentioned he gets annoyed by people’s “rush rush” attitude and wants to shake them while yelling, “Come ON Man, you’re on VACATION!”  but I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when he said the one thing he feels was brought to us by the Devil Himself was….WEDDING PARTIES! (You’ll understand this with my next blog.)

After Orlando I headed to Pensacola to meet up with some old friends. We hit the pier and across the board I heard bartenders say their biggest concern is the drunks that suddenly think night swimming is a great idea and their biggest annoyances are people who find themselves on vacation and completely forget how to function in polite society. (I counted myself lucky that they didn’t say they hated visiting bartenders who write a blog and feel the need to ask a bunch of questions.)

I don’t really know what the point of this is…I guess it’s just to tell you that I’m not crazy, all bars have the same problems and irritations. Maybe I just needed a reminder that I should count myself lucky, at least I don’t have to deal with giant flames and oceans…or maybe I just wanted to brag about the fact that I just went on vacation, who knows?

I guess if you want to take anything from this: "Be careful what you say in any given restaurant”….Remember, we’re all friends.