HI's and Lows - Part Deux

I arrived at the club about 10 minutes late for my shift and subsequently had to sneak in the back and quickly start the routine to prepare for the lunch crowd that would be arriving in less than a half hour.

I started chopping the fruit and doing a little housekeeping at the bar. I always have to rearrange the well bottles as I hate to start the shift without a few spares so that I can keep my rhythm going during the first rush. Of course, my efforts to “sneak in” didn’t go completely unnoticed and the manager, a portly, generally cheery German fellow named Karl (with a ‘K’) paid my station a visit after I had pretty much caught up and was simply waiting for the first of the tourists to get themselves acclimated and begin drink orders. There usually aren’t too many customers that opt for bar seating this early in the day so I didn’t have any folks that I had to be attending to directly at that point.

“So, I saw you arrived a little tardy this morning… a late night?”

“No… just had a little difficulty getting going this morning. “

“That’s okay, you recovered nicely.”

“Thanks.”

“So, do you have any plans for Memorial Day weekend?” He asked with a slight air of trepidation in his voice.

“No, nothing in particular.” I responded

“Well, it appears we are going to be a little short on Saturday. Can you stay through that evening?”

“Let me check my busy social schedule here… yeah, no problem. I have no life.”

He chuckled. “Well, I’m hoping the college kids don’t over run us that night. We had a real mess last year if you recall.”

I grunted a reply as I started to get some orders piling up and had started pouring. The impending rush of college youth meant several things. No parking in town, a lot of business and unfortunately, they usually didn’t tip well. On the upside, it also meant that there would be a lot of great looking young women that had only a few goals; Get some sun, meet other young people, get intoxicated and have fun.

Last year, I recall that the visitor’s center was trashed and became an impromptu hostel because the influx of kids was too much for the local hotels to accommodate. I made a mental note that I needed to secure the boat so that I didn’t wind up with some unwanted house pests.

A commotion began at one of the tables. It seems that a couple of “Q-tips” (Elderly northerner tourists) had a beef with the way one of the dishes was prepared. I watched the middle aged waitress, Aimee, attempt to apologize and rushed to bring the dish back to the kitchen. This failed to fully appease the Male Q-tip and he was quite vocal about it. I did a check of my short term memory and tried to figure out if I had received any drink orders from that table thinking that potentially the outburst was somehow alcohol induced but, I couldn’t recall any. It appeared he was just the difficult type who was maybe having a difficult day and this alleged gaff having pushed the wrong button with him.

Aimee passed close to the bar and I tried to give her an encouraging smile but she wasn’t having any. We had dated a few times when I first arrived on the island. It didn’t lead to much (her choice) however we remained good friends.

Mr. Q-Tip was apparently appeased by a concession on the bill (which meant that Aimee was going to lose money on that interaction). I’m sure it seemed the only way to shut him up though.

This job has certainly been a learning experience as it pertains to learning to gauge a person’s demeanor and also the validity of what a customer might be trying to tell you.

I had to get pretty good at judging people when dealing with mostly folks that would be passing through. College kids, young adults, preppies, beach bums, folks having mid-life crisis…. we got all types coming to the HI for a good night out on the town.

Karl was kind of a shrewd businessman. The HI started out as a typical gin mill but, once he got a little more capital, he put in some smart improvements back into the business. The HI featured the best deck of all the clubs on the island. We had a great view of the bay and the marina. We always got a great crowd around sunset time.
We also featured live music most every night. Karl even managed to coax some of the more regionally known acts to the island with a promise of free booze and some time in the sun. He always kept a few guests rooms in the loft mostly for the acts and visiting family or friends.

The job was amusing most nights, tedious on some but, the combination of the great weather, relatively easy money and a place to dock my sailboat kept me in the area much longer than I had originally envisioned.

I was in town no more than a week when I caught wind of some folks that were looking to sell off a Catalina Morgan. After a round of 4 nights of negotiation and a lot of Scotch, we arrived at a selling price that almost completely depleted my savings from the sale of my house in New York. I rationalized this as I was buying a replacement house (my boat) and have been living on her for the past four years.

Continuing....

---Jim