Football: Hallowed Be Thy Name

I don't talk much about my football passion, but now that there's no football I'm depressed. Somewhere down the line, I became an avid fan of the sport. I mean, I didn't grow up loving the Packers or watching college ball. But I'm totally, absolutely, devastatingly in love with football now. And no team more than the Green Bay Packers and my team's football icons.

Of course, the Pack has been more exciting with Brett Favre at the helm, sure...but I was there when it was "Majik." I remember Dickey, Brunell, Hasselbeck, Whitehurst...so mark me down as a blooming fan in the mid 1980's. I've had my favorite receivers and RB's too. Workman, Jervey, Levens, even Edgar Bennett (who coaches for the Packers now). Gimme Lofton, Ferguson, Rison, Brooks (YES!), Driver, Freeman, Schroeder, but most of all gimme DON BEEBE! He vies for my all-time favorite Packer against the omnipresent Brett Favre. I've always been a fan of Frankie "bag of donuts" Winters, Henderson, big Gilbert Brown (his Burger King burger was to die for), Doug Evans, LeRoy Butler, Ken Rutgers (I met him!), Keith Jackson, Bubba Franks, Desmond Howard, Chuck Cecil... Well, you get the idea. I love football and the men who play on my team!

So now that I've flung enough Packer names out there for you to believe that I really do love my team, let's talk a little about Brett Favre. Oh man! This guy is amazing. Us fans have been incredibly fortunate to have this guy on our team! And he's earned our trust, even when he is in the midst of a bad streak and riddled with interceptions and bad choices. We don't call for him to be taken out of the game or replaced with the guy on the bench (poor Doug Pederson). We LOVE our Favre man, and no matter what other team's fans say, I know they are jealous that we got this bad boy. Sure, sure....the debate of the day is whether he should be coming back or not, but I assure you that even the fans of the Green Bay Packers who believe Favre should hang up his pads and clear out his locker will be sorry to see him do just that. I'm happy he's playing at least one more year because I did not take advantage of being an hour and a half away from Lambeau this year. My first priority of the new year is to get me some tickets, no matter what they cost, to see the legend on the Frozen Tundra one more time before he does exit stage left.

I don't love Brett Favre just because he's a football hero. I love Brett Favre for being real, for sharing so much of himself as he's played through the pain of his life. And you all know about that stuff. What you probably don't know is that in his autobiography, he is brutally honest about his Vicoden addiction and how it overtook his life. Writing that openly about such a horrible part of your life is gutsy. I also loved the part where he saved his own life after he was in a car accident. He'd been hospitalized, then released after surgeries, etc to heal him. He went back in and demanded that they open him back up, saying he knew there was someting wrong, still. The doctors fought him and turned him away, but he was persistent, so they finally did go back in to look at his intestines. Turned out, Brett was right. He had twisted intestines that would have killed him had they not been taken care of. The man isn't perfect, and I don't put him on a pedestal. I just really like what he stands for and the way he handles himself now that he's mature. I hope he breaks every record he's close to this time around, and goes down as the all-time greatest QB who ever played the game. He's already the all-time greatest "down home boy" in my book. :)

Don Beebe is another Packer I've always admired. He got into the NFL on a quirk of fate. The scout was at his college and he got wind of it, but didn't have his running shoes with him. He went to the tryouts and scored the best 50yd dash that day--in his bare feet! He's a Godly man, and his work ethic was second to none when he was on the field. I met him once when he had a book signing (another great book). The man had arms like an ape, even though he's only like 5'9"....unbelievable fitness about him. I wish the men in the NFL today were as classy as Don Beebe was when he played.

I miss football from the time the SuperBowl is over until the preseason games start in August. Training camp serves as a great warm-up, but I'm usually so busy with the summer tourist season that I can't pay attention to it all. At least Autumn brings the pigskin back. If it didn't, I'm not sure I could endure the waning light of the shorter days that descend on us in September. To help bridge the time from now til then, a fellow avid Packer fan friend and I have decided to have a little football party on Sunday. We'll be watching the last game of the season when we whooped on Da Bears. It'll be the feel good event of the winter! At the end of the game, we'll see the teary-eyed Brett Favre and listen to the speculation about his retirement with glee in our hearts because the verdict is in. The Pack is back, and so is Brett Favre!

V is for Victory

Ahhh, Valentine's Day! Normally a real bummer of a day for me, even when I'm attached. I have this thing about February, see? No matter how optimistically I go into the cold month of 28 days, it's never short enough for me. And the halfway mark is usually a heartbreaker because I always want more than I get. Today was a 10!

For me, I'm sensible enough to know that Valentine's Day is a manufactured holiday to boost those sagging gift sales that retailers live for, but I'm still enough of a romantic to wish for some grand gesture that will blow me away by the man I love. Today that happened. I had the wake-up call from 2000 miles away to tell me "Happy Valentine's Day, honey," which I totally expected. My gift to him arrived in my usual punctual fashion, so I was pleased. Then, after my shower, and a few hours before work, the jaw-dropping, "ohmygod" moment occurred when my doorbell rang. I thought it might be the DHL guy with my Barnes and Noble order. It wasn't. It gloriously was not! My local florist stood at my door proclaiming, "These are for you!" I swooned when I opened up the covered treasure. The most beautiful dozen roses I have ever seen sat on my kitchen table while my heart pounded and my head swooned. Add the fact that this particular man has had horrible past experiences with being the nice guy who gives flowers, so he's never given me flowers of any kind for any reason before. This was that quintessential grand gesture that women secretly hope they can brag about. Normally, I'm against roses in general,and especially on Valentine's Day, but today...well, today this just seems really cool.

I worked tonight too. It's a great night to be in the restaurant business. We haven't had that civilization-stopping weather, so nothing impeded our progress in wining and dining our guests. Tips were great! I did get reamed out by a woman who was peeved that so many people beat her to our dining room by 5:10. "Why do you take reservations at all then? What's the point of them?" (We only take reservations for holidays). Explaining to her that it "held" a table for her was no consolation. All I could do was apologize. When their ticket never printed in the kitchen, well, my night with them was over. The one good thing to come out of her railing at me is that my other tables tipped me extra well after seeing me survive the deluge I didn't deserve. I can live with that. ;)

The capper to my victorious day is that we've had an appetizer contest running for the last two weeks. The winner got a crisp one-hundred dollar bill. In a neck and neck race, I came out ahead. There's nothing like being rewarded with a greenback. Sweet! Maybe I'm moving out of those February blahs that have been chasing me for so long. Could it be? Might it be? Maybe this is just a one year reprieve for all the difficult February's I've endured in the last several decades. Hey. They say life begins at 40. I say let the games begin.

Hope you all had someone tell you they loved you today. And if you didn't, don't worry, someone really does love you.

I Got a New Job!

Yep, I got a new job and I didn't even leave my current employer. You see, we've finally stepped into the 21st century with an updated POS system. For those of you not in the hospitality industry, that does NOT mean Piece Of Shit. No, this is what's known in the modern day as Point Of Sale. And I readily admit that this blog may only be of interest to those of you actually employed in the restaurant business. (Both of you)!!! So read on if you aren't in the business if you'd like, but accept my apologies if it bores you.

My restaurant has been doing a fantastic job of serving customers in our old fashion way for decades upon decades. The place has entertained(I bet)millions of diners in our old way of doing things, and truth be told, it ran like a well oiled machine for most of those decades. But time marches on, and we were overdue for this upgrade. And so with much grumbling, we have implemented modern technology to our pack of old dogs who don't want to learn these new tricks. I think most of the staff feels like the management put an invisible electric fence around our yard.

I confess that when the business consultant came in and asked our opinions a few months ago, I heartily begged for POS. I do not regret saying it then, nor am I disappointed that it has finally arrived to our little corner of the world. Having said that, let me tell you, it has caused great confusion and some pretty bad service to our stellar customers. Thankfully, we had plenty of support staff on during the first week of using the new system, which was a stroke of brilliance by management. We are dealing with the omissions that we knew would surface as we began to actually use the computers. A programmer can only foresee so much when putting together such an extensive system. We are handling the training of those who don't use computers in their personal lives. Wow. To my "online boys" I say thank you for teaching me so much about computers so that I have the understanding of what our new system can and cannot do. Then there's the glitchy shenanigans of a system that doesn't allow for some of the actions we wish it would carry out for us. It's been a ride.

Let me give you some examples of the fun times we've had with our new POS. We learned the hard way what happens when someone accidentally bumps a printer off. Salads will print in the chef area where salads aren't made and entree orders will print in the bar! If you try to punch in a salad dressing on the side, it will probably be understandable to the salad girls, but if you have TWO dressing, both of which need to be on the side, it will probably prompt the girls to make TWO salads with one dressing on the side and another with the salad directly on the lettuce. Yeah. Few salad orders are actually correct these days, and it's not the salad makers' faults. The kitchen has had to relearn orders because our old system of writing up tickets is a lot different that what the computer printout gives them these days. And I think our bartenders will be blind by the end of the year with the tiny writing they have to decipher in the dim lights.

We've found that we actually have to hit "exit" from some screens to get to the potato choice, the desired garnish, the tiny modification the customer has asked for on his meal. But we are learning, and things are getting easier. I admit the first time I completed an order on the screen, it immediately jumped into my head that I needed to get back to the kitchen to write up that order. When I realized I didn't have to do that, I really couldn't figure out what I needed to be doing. All of us servers have had this feeling of confusion. The most surprising consequence of having this slick program for all of the waitresses has been the way it has completely thrown off our sense of timing. That probably doesn't make sense to anyone who doesn't do this work, but there's a very intricate alarm clock in our heads that tells us when we need to be doing certain tasks. It probably looks like your server is just cruising along taking care of your needs as you dine without a thought to anything else. Kudos to your server if you think that because it's really a finely tuned symphony that plays each note in our head in a very specific timing pattern. Making the job look easy is the sign of a great waiter. Without going off on the tangent we've all heard about the validity of serving food as a "real" job, I can tell you that it's a demanding job, and one that the bubbble-headed blonde will not be able to carry out. Finding our timing has been the biggest challenge with the POS system. Who knew? The great benefit there is that we realize we actually DO have more time to spend with our customers now that we aren't doing paperwork in the kitchen. It rocks!

One other totally awesome side to our POS is that there's no longer any room for error in not adding a bar tab or an appetizer onto the bill. We used to pay for these mistakes out of pocket. We can't punch out until all of our tables are closed, so we will never miss a tip because we forgot to finalize a credit card bill. I can only imagine how easy the bookwork in the morning for the office has become! Inventory is practically done on the machine. Everyone in the building punches in on the POS, and managers can send out messages to all employees on the punch in screen. This has streamlined so many things for us. It's a wonderful tool, and I can see my coworkers beginning to enjoy the benefits.

About a week after we started the POS, we started wearing our new uniforms. 2007 is a brand new world for our restaurant. We look sharp, tickets are perfect... We're finding our rhythm. By the time our summer crunch is upon us, these old dogs will have that computer stuff down to a science. It was a stressful few weeks as we all learned to march in this new direction, but the gang is starting to see how much time this will save us all. I'm pumped about the modernizing we are exchanging for the pen and paper methods that served that place so well for so many years. We've had to work as a team to learn the new system. I hope that newfound teamwork stays as we all become proficient with our big scary changes.

Superman Returns!

My hero is coming back for another season. God Bless the Packers! :)