A few years back, I was hired as a hostess at an indoor outdoor Italian café on Melrose Avenue in LA; I really wanted to waitress, but they told me that first I must pay my dues because apparently, many people wanted to waitress there. I probably should have kept looking for another restaurant, but I didn’t. Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite get the hang of the seating chart diagram; I kept filling people up in the same two waiters’ stations. The rest of the staff was not happy with me.
One afternoon, Melanie Griffith drove up with Antonio Banderas in a fancy convertible sports car. They hopped out; she looked up and down the street and gave him a cinematic smooch and he whispered something Spanish to her. They seated themselves in a dark corner. I was told to ignore them; which was easy because no one even knew who he was at the time.
When my shift was over, the waiters were supposed to give me a percentage of their tips, but none of them did. Not even the two waiters I blessed with so many customers; I figured that Melainie Griffith must tip well, but I got nothing.
So I asked the manager if I could stay, because I really needed the money; in fact, I was broke until payday. He turned me down so I asked him again if he was certain he wanted me to leave, because I walked to work and wouldn’t be returning later if he called.
Sure enough, the minute I got home, the phone rang and he asked me to come back. I said something like, “You shouldn’t turn a lady down when she’s offering.” He didn’t like that, or maybe it was my Mae West imitation and he told me not to bother coming back the next day, if I didn’t want to work again that night. There goes another twenty five dollar paycheck that I’ll never collect. Son of a gun, I’ve been fired from so many minimum wage jobs and not gone back to collect my paycheck, that Oprah could do a whole show about finding my lost money. And just a side note-every restaurant I have ever been let go from, have closed their doors within six month; especially those in business for twenty-five years or more.
Including this one; stew on that!