Dishwasher Confidential: The Mike And Rose Show

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Eric Renderking Fisk | July 2011

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Everything You Need To Know Is Right There At The Door

I’m not saying anything you shouldn’t already know. You’ve heard Gordon Ramsey talk about this in “Kitchen Nightmares,” Anthony Bourdain wrote about this in “Kitchen Confidential” and if you’ve ever read a restaurant review then you know the the first quarter or one third of the column is spent on this aspect of the restaurant. If anything, it’s as important as the menu. I’ve seen restaurants stay open for far too long because they have lousy food but the décor of the establishment is what keeps customers coming back.

I’m obviously writing about The Front Of The House.

According to one website; “The Front of the House is any place in a restaurant where customers might be. This includes the dining room, bar, even the rest rooms. Strong management of the front of the house includes customer service, training staff, the design of the dining room and bar as well as various restaurant promotions. Understanding how the front of the house operates is important to overall success of any restaurant.”

Restaurants live and die by their appearance first and food second. If you walk into a place and the dust has been allowed to collect on surfaces, your feet sticks to the carpet, there’s the overwhelming smell of some cleanser that obviously being used to mask something worse, or duct tape is used to hold anything together; get out.

Don’t even be polite about it. Walk or run and don’t be afraid to say “this place is disgusting.” You’ll be doing them a favor.

Right now I have a picture in my mind of some fat headed bully from another website yelling at his monitor; “Don’t judge a book by its cover! That place might have great food and service.” Bull -  I know exactly what I’m talking about and it’s not pretty. As everyone else before me has said, if the place looks bad in the front of the house, you can just imagine what crimes are being committed in the kitchen. If you want to shovel food into your mouth in a greasy spoon dive, be my guest; but it’s so rare that the quality of the food makes up for lack of cleanliness it’s hardly worth mentioning.

Even if you don’t think you deserve better, I do.

Everything the restaurant owner wants you to know about him or her, the food, the staff and you the customers is being told to you at the front of the house. Imagine for two minutes you’re a detective and you arrive at the scene of the crime. Take a look around for clues, because if you eat there the next victim might be you.

While some owners say that their restaurants are like their children and I might come off like a prick picking on someone’s fat teen age daughter who can’t shut up about “Twilight” or “One Tree Hill,” nothing could be further from the truth. A building is not a person. Sure, they have “character” and “take on lives of their own,” but if the owner let’s his place turn to seed he might as well have a sign out that says “Screw You, I don’t need your patronage. Just leave your money and go!” If a restaurant owner can’t take care of the front of the house he’s practically begging me to treat him like a dog so I can rub his nose in his mess that he left on the carpet.

This is from my own personal experience, if an owner says he doesn’t have the time or the money to take care of the front of the house, he’s either an idiot or a liar. The money it costs to have someone take care of it for him is nothing compared he’ll lose if he doesn’t. Also, everything you need to know about the owner and manager is also told to you by watching the people he hires to get the job done.

What proceeds is another anecdote from my experience working at “The Valdez Fields.” While I’m sure it’s a bit lengthy (almost 8 pages according to “Word For Windows”) for a rant about something as boring as “cleaning,” it perfectly demonstrates how something so simple and fundamental can be twisted into something else. It’s not just about me complaining, although I’m sure some people will take that way; this about inter-restaurant politics, favoritism, and other aspects of a owner cutting off the noses of the people to spite his own face.

It’s A Filthy Job But Someone Has To do It

Once a week my tasks was to clean the front of the house the morning before it opened. This usually meant that I would arrive around 6AM and open the doors, disable the alarm (and failed to do so the first dozen times as the whole town would see thanks to the bright blue lights and the squad car,) and do the best job I could under the horrific circumstances.

Often times I had to clean up the bar, the lounge area, and the dining area the morning after “Flip Night,” where a waitress would literally flip a coin to see if a round of beer was free or not. Obviously this drew a huge crowd on Wednesday nights and must have caused real headaches for the local colleges and professors Thursday morning.

If I was a member of a team, that wouldn’t be a problem at all; but for a scrawny twenty-something doing it all by himself and get it done before 11AM when the lunch crowd would start to arrive was a Herculean task. This is a job that should not have started a couple of house before sunrise, rather it should have been started a half hour after closing time. If one person was to do between 2:30 and 11:00 AM then there’s no doubt that one person could have had that restaurant cleaned sufficiently. I can proudly say that I tried to do it in less time while worked my hardest those mornings for a handful of reasons.

Not getting fired was the biggest reason of all.

Around 9 AM the kitchen staff would arrive and they would give me pointers on how I could do this better or that, what I missed and what looked great. For this guidance, I should be forever grateful. Mr. Hazelwood would show up much later and inspect my work. No matter how hard I worked the place would not meet his standards. He expected more from me because I was a smart guy, and he was depending on me to make up the difference.

“Making up the difference?” one might ask. This is when I introduce the name sakes of this article.

The Circus Is In Town, And It’s Never Going To Leave

It doesn’t make me feel better about myself when I cut people down or make remarks that might make me sound superior. I hope I’m not one of those people who elevate myself by pushing people down but sometimes that might actually be what I am sometimes. I’m guilty and at fault and I admit it. I get this sick feeling in my gut knowing that I might betraying my own villainous nature when I accurately describe how I view other people, proving to others that I’m a bit of a snob or elitist.

I used the words that I use because they’re precise, and sometimes the precise words harsh so that there’s no ambiguity. When I say something to the extent that Mr. Hazelwood was a cheap degenerate it’s because I can’t think of anything words more accurate. He was cheap because he could find the money to go to New Orleans to see “The Sweet Sixteen” or “The Final Four” college basketball championship games but he couldn’t find the cabbage to fix or replace vital equipment in his own kitchen, fix the open sewer contraption in the back of the basement, or give his loyal employee cost-of-living raises. Hazelwood was a degenerate because he didn’t take the time or effort to remember the names of his own staff and would hire some waitresses based on their willing to screw him during their interviews.

I choose my words carefully to make sure that they aren’t over used or diluted. Words actually mean something. Specific words have specific meaning.

So when I say that Mike and Rose were two of the most disgusting people I had ever met, that should hold some weight. The two of them always had some of the worst rashes, blisters or pimples on their faces, necks and hands with white or yellow puss in the corner of their eyes and lips. The two of them were swapping the same disease back and forth and in this condition it was hard for anyone to carry on a conversation with them while looking them in the eye. “What is that goop?” we would all ask when they were out of earshot but nobody knew for sure. Even some of the local students who were studying to be nurses or physicians assistants wouldn’t venture a guess.

The smell was even worse. The combination of poor hygene, unlaundered clothes and the fact that “soap” seems to be an illegal substance to them made it hard to be in the room with this couple. The colorful language and steady stream of the word “fuck” coming out of Rose’s mouth were just added bonuses.

Mike was this tall lumbering ox with this dim, constantly confused expression on his face. With his head occasionally shaved and the stubble never exceeding more than an eighth of an inch and his grubby over-alls he seemed to be the perfect stand in for “Sling Blade” or for Lenny in the local summer stock theater production of “Of Mice And Men.” For the most part, other than his incredible laziness and sloth, I can’t say too much bad things about this character.

Mike did have a huge problem with spouting off non-sequiturs, though. For whatever reason he would just share this anecdote about how he and Rose used to work for “Amusements Of America” and tell you the same exact story as if he was telling it to you for the first time. Intrupting him only made him start again from the begining. Out-of-the-blue he told us about how he had an argument about someone calling Rose a 'whore.'

There would be silence and then suddenly; “If anyone calls Rose a whore, I’m going to have to tell them that she isn’t. Then if they kept it up, I would have to kill them.”

I once responded, “No, Mike, I wouldn’t think of saying that,” while trying to contain my sarcasm.

“What do you mean by that?” Mike asked.

“Just what I said, Mike. The thought would never cross my mind.”

“You saying Rose isn’t good enough?”

“Good enough for what, Mike?” I asked, bracing for the lumbering ox to cross a hoof across my jaw but Mike just looked at me like I was speaking in Greek.

While half as tall as Mike, Rose seemed to weigh almost as much as he did. She had long stringy greasy hair with an expression on her face that signified that someone once fed her a dozen lemons before smashing her face with a shovel. Her good looks were complemented with a graveling voice that was the by-product of chain smoking cheap cigarettes and swallowing broken glass for the past few decades. Rose didn’t think anything of telling anyone else to “Get the fuck out of my way, asshole” as she moved in slow motion. Her charm was enhanced with the perpetual cigarette that hung from Rose’s mouth regardless of where she was; especially in the kitchen where they were strictly forbidden according to the health code. Rose would have this long ash that was as long as the pre-lit cigarette was, and it would fall on her sagging breasts and blend in with the other ashes that fell there before. Then without missing a beat she would let the butt fall where ever she was standing and light another one.

All the while, these two would stand around and talk about the years they worked for a traveling circus. I’m not kidding, that’s what they bragged about. Through their limited vocabulary they regaled us with legends about who they knew, what they saw, and how someday they hoped to buy a mobile home and return with the traveling road show. Ridiculous as that sounds, I actually envied their clarity of purpose.

Preserved Filth and Sandpaper Floors.

If I ever passed these two walking down the street I might never have given them another thought, they were just two poor people just trying to get by working for minimum wage by cleaning a local restaurant first thing in the morning. I would have felt bad for them and would have lived out the rest of my life oblivious to the fact that these two were actually symptomatic of the bigger problem of The Valdez Fields.

Claiming that these two cleaned the restaurant’s front of the house would be generous. In fact, the best way to described what they did was to just say that they wet the filth before spreading it around to dry. The two of them would simply take a mop of water and spread around the dirt, sand and salt that was tracked it by the patrons of this “fine” establishment, then before the filthy slurry had a chance to dry they poured down the floor wax. The mop with the grayish brown sealant with graduals would hit everything; the table and chair legs, the brass foot rests on the bar, the bar itself, the genuine antique bead-board on the walls, the cigarette machine in the alcove where customers hung their coats, the coats that still hung in that alcove, the wicker lounge furniture near the two entrances, the doors themselves.

This wax slurry caked everything touching the floor.

As they mopped, the rugs that were never moved were glued to the floor. When it was my turn to do the restaurant wide clean-up in a few short hours, I would literally have to try and cut the rugs off the floor and wedge them up with any tool I could find, sometimes ripping rugs or breaking the broom handle I once used as leverage.

Trying to actually clean the floors was an impossible task. As the years progressed, the natural color of the wood would be hidden by layers and layers of filthy wax and mud. I could mop the floor, but the dirt was still obviously there. Hazelwood would come by and start berating me about not mopping the floors as if I never did it. I showed him the facts, one time taking an old knife from the kitchen and scraping away the build-up. The dirt and the wax that came up should have been proof enough that all these two were doing were spreading the filth and preserving it in its place.

Facts were irrelevant to Hazelwood, Mike and Rose were his favorite charity cases and they could do no wrong. They did terrific work, why would I want to make them look bad? I think that this was one if the first times I was actually called a “douche bag” by an employeer and I did not quit or broken something afterwards because I was so stunned by this man’s blindness.

Because of the dirt and mud preserved in the floor wax, the restaurants appearance was becoming worse and worse. The floors and the bottom of the walls were simply filthy and was bringing what little positive vibe The Valdez Fields down. The grit would be like sandpaper; you could actually rub a piece of wood against the floor and smooth it out. The tactile responses from your hands or fingers was proof that what you were looking at was real, the swirl of filth was indeed perfectly preserved layer upon waxy layer.

I would have thought that if I was the only one to see this I would have been insane. There were a lot of people who complained about “The Mike and Rose Show” including Ray, the day manager for the kitchen. While I came over to talk to Ray about another issue one morning, we watched Rose take the wet bags of garbage from behind the bar and drag them across the floor leaving behind a trail of mixed cocktails and beer. Mike followed her with a mop, spreading out the filth and then pouring floor wax over it.

Ray and I were both stunned by this and said so, and Mike’s response; “You’re not the boss of me.” Fact was, Ray was indeed ‘The boss of me’ when Hazelwood wasn’t around. Mike insisted that he only answered to Hazelwood. Was this an out-right lie, or is that the only information his brain could process?

The entire time I was there at The Valdez Fields there were three bar managers; head bartenders who took care of every aspect of ordering the booze and beer, staffing the bar, and maintaining the counter and the taps himself. All three of these guys had a standing rule with Mike and Rose after witnessing what happened for themselves; "Don’t Touch!" Once a bar manager left the cleaning up for Mike and Rose to do and was then berated by Hazelwood for “leaving it a filthy mess” since the duo made the condition of the bar actually worse than they found it, each bar manager would re-instate the rule that if you left the cleaning to Mike and Rose you were fired. All three bar managers learned painful lessons that leaving anything to those two was just inviting problems.

One bar manager had a fight with Hazelwood just as the lunch crowd was showing up and Hazelwood was yelling at him for the condition of his station. When the bar manager – let’s call him Ed – said that he actually saw what happened because I told him he should come in early and see for himself, Hazelwood lost his temper within earshot of some loyal customers.

Ed made it clear, Hazelwood blamed everyone else for The Mike And Rose Show and their screw ups. This crap had to stop and he needed to remove his head from an orifice.

Somehow, this was my fault because I poisoned Mike and Rose for some other employees. This couldn’t be their fault, since they were good people who were the only ones who really adored Hazelwood. Someone needed to be blamed, why not me? Why not blame the lowest man on the totem pole?

By the time my first spring came around and I had been working at The Valdez Fields for almost a whole year, I was up in Hazelwood’s office that was above the clothing store he opened for his wife. He was sitting at his desk and I was standing, there were chairs inconspicuously missing from that side of the room for some reason. He asked me straight why I hated Mike and Rose so much. Hazelwood was convinced that this was all about me; the resason why the resturant was a filhty disaster was because of just one guy who did the clean-up of the front of the house one day a week, not the dynamic duo who did it the other 6 mornings.

Never mind the fact that everyone who worked the AM shift getting the kitchen prepped for lunch service saw things and reported them. Forget all about the ash butts that were left on other people’s stations when Mike and Rose were scavenging.

Also his mind drew a blank about the days the restaurant was closed and they stripped the floor to reveal it’s natural color and texture and how many of us who helped had to throw away good shoes that we wore because of the wax and solvents that soaked into the material.

Here’s a guy who claimed to have the best restaurant with the finest dining experience in the region and he trusted the appearance of his establishment to two other half-wits that he didn’t bother to supervise. The Valdez Fields looked dirty and grubby no matter how hard I or anyone else worked. No matter what I did on the Tuesday or Thursday mornings that I cleaned, nothing I did could make up for what those two circus freaks did the other 6 mornings out of the week. There was no way that one guy like myself could make up for the damage they did and do the regular cleaning up in 4 hours.

In retrospect, this was par for the course when it came to Hazelwood. While I never saw him actually cook in his own restaurant ever and the only time I actually saw him in the kitchen was when he was expediting during “Parents Weekend” or during the Graduation Day rush, he was an insane perfectionist when it came to some people’s work and turned a blind eye to others. If you were an average looking girl working the salad station you were called a “dumb cunt” for not making a Caesar exactly the same way every time but if you were a good looking waitress with a nice pair of lungs and dumped an entire tray of food on the way to a table it was no problem; accidents happen.

He demanded a fanatical attention to detail from some people and threatened to fire them if they didn’t deliver, while others couldn’t do anything wrong no matter how stupid the mistake. McDuff (who I’ll discuss in another rant) took home bottles of vodka every night without a word but when Shawn, another kitchen staffer turned bar tender did the same but left Andrew Jackson sitting on the bar in an envelope marked for Hazelwood, Shawn was 86’ed from the establishment forever.

Hazelwood could be the nicest boss and the biggest push-over to some, and the biggest hard-ass or unforgiving cuss to another. It was all arbitrary.

Then again, McDuff was rumored to supply Hazelwood with marijuana from Syracuse once a week and Shawn was the kind of perfectionist that would get in the face of any boss. Shawn made it clear on more than one occasion that The Valdez Fields should have been a better restaurant because of his own experiences elsewhere. He had a laundry list of things that needed to improve and the top of his list was the front of the house and its appearance. The Mike And Rose Show had to hit the road.

On The Road Again

In the end, that’s exactly what happened. The Circus came back to town and Mike and Rose left with it. I have no idea if they bought their dream mobile home or if they just returned to the carnie life they used to know.  Mike and Rose left Hazelwood high-and-dry with no one to clean the front of the house six mornings a week. For a while it was one of the best things that happened to the establishment since Hazelwood had to kiss a lot of bare ass and beg a lot of us to fill in. Taking my advice, we started cleaning a half hour after closing and did it in teams. Plenty of us showed up at last call, had a few glasses of beer or fingers of scotch before doing a proper cleaning job. We actually removed everything from the floor, mopped it down and then mopped up the excess water with the dirt. We made sure the floor was good and clean, we didn’t need the wax, period. The last stripping and refinishing the floor lasted a long time.

Sadly, things returned to normal when Hazelwood hired one of Ike’s cousins and he had to do the whole job in 4 hours. This was a cost cutting scheme he employed when College Basketball Season’s Championship Games were playing somewhere else or he had to go on a buying spree in New York City for one of his wife’s stores.

Before I left town after my final semester in school ended, I heard that Mike returned once more after Rose left him for another carnie. Hazelwood hired him back so that he could regale Ike’s cousin with the same story every night about how he found out that "Rose was a whore after all."