"The Restaurant Manager's Scam Bible?"

There's an idea, huh?

Managers? Wha?... Oh yes. Not only can they be cunningly exploitative and simultaneously dim, but peculiarly so. Dostoevsky described it as a special self-serving form of stupidity-

"...a type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless...one of those senseless persons who are very well capable of looking after their worldly affairs, and, apparently, after nothing else."

Frankly, I think he's being generous. The ancient pre-Bolshevik restaurant manager he describes sounds highly developed compared to his modern western cousin, "Floordick".

Perhaps what we have here is a rare example of de-evolution. Still, although dulled considerably, the basic observation remains true. For example, I recently crossed paths with a particularly stingy FloorDick, who had adopted the age-old angle of scheduling "mandatory" (and extremely long-winded) meetings, yet not allowing his employees to punch in while in attendance.

I piped up, "Hey FloorDick, shouldn't we all punch in?"

"Grumble, mumble...I bought you guys free donuts, for Christ's sake!", he affected an innocent smile "..grumble, grumble...and free coffee!"

Let's do the math: coffee and donuts = $10. 20 employees at an average of $5/hour = $100/hour (and it went well over an hour, as this guy really liked to blow his own horn. Plus he made everyone wait 45 minutes to start the meeting, while every last employee straggled in the front door). Sounds like a good deal.

I waited for my companeros to pipe in...tick, tock, tick, tock...nothing. They all stared dolefully at the filthy floorboards of that shit-hole dive, waiting for the confrontation to pass. Classic. I was new to this place, but it didn't take me long to figure out the protocol. This was par for the course. Needless to say, I didn't last much longer.

Now I knew for a fact that many of these same spineless employees were shaking the place down like a gang of privateers, so I didn't feel too bad for them. But it illustrates perfectly Dostoevsky's point and the uncanny ability of FloorDick to scheme and implement petty parsimonious minutia while remaining stone deaf to the blatant ransacking of his restaurant and bar. It's hard to feel sorry for a jerk like that.

I'll have to report this to New York's prolitariat website, Shamelessrestaurants.com.
Although I'm sure they see this kind of flim-flam all the time, especially in the Big Apple.

But all that brings me to a recent question from one of our readers, which was-

"Why not write a Restaurant Manager's Scam Bible?" -Nell, Jersey City

Good Question. Indeed, they are always working some dastardly, albeit typically simplistic, angle, and they have more than enough to fill a book. We did include a chapter in the Scam Bible, "Our Man in Amsterdam", which describes the proper manner in which to exploit a dirty manager and how to handle him, or her, as the case may be, without getting burned, but a full length novel on the subject? I don't think so.

Honestly, their game is too mean spirited for my palate: bullying employees, shorting paychecks, keeping people late when it's dead, secretly declaring high tip percentages on the tax records of waiters they don't like and so forth. The Sticky-fingered Waiters, or "Pump Handles" as we call them down here, have an heroic Robin Hood quality about them. Their repertoire is jam-packed with creativity and flair. Who wants to read a book about the Sheriff of Nottingham? Besides I wouldn't want to give them any ideas, nor inadvertently glorify the species.

Thanks for the question, Nell.