Pat is the manager. He is an English black guy. He might be the lead singer of Bloc Party, but in my initial interview in the basement office he said that he wished he learned to play an instrument. Whenever he needs something he says 'Check this out,' and he wears a different jacket every night. He called me Mark for the first night, Mike the second night, and then Bus Boy for the third night.

Joan and Isaiah work on the floor with me. When I ask them where they're from they say 'California' and get really quiet or change the subject. No one actually knows how to say Isaiah's name. Pat says Eye-Saya and we all say Ee-siya.

There was another waitress who put in her two weeks notice before I started. She didn't put in a slip one night that I was there. The customers waited for a little bit, but had to go, so she was fired in the middle of the shift. Before she walked out the door she took a big swig of wine and shrugged.

Roger is the dishwasher. He is a huge black guy with a deep voice. Whenever he goes downstairs he yells 'Coming down, coming down,' and when he leaves the kitchen he says 'Coming out, coming out.' His voice reminds me of playing Starcraft, when you make a selection onscreen that calls a character or class into play, they respond to you and your command with the same sound clip. When I hear him saying 'Coming down' that's what I think of. I also think he wants to kill me. I don't think that because he's black, I think that because when I put a dirty, oversized jug in his sink he looked at me and said, 'Are you fucking serious?' like forcing it into the cup rack was the obvious solution. I dumped my dustpan into his trashbin and he just looked at me and said 'Really?' Then when the machine didn't clean the silverware enough, he thought that I had been throwing dirty silverware in with the clean ones. He washed everything again, then two hours later the same thing happened. Chef came out of the kitchen and said Roger was about to 'go apeshit.'

There's a prep guy named Lazaro and instead of showing me how to cut oranges and grapefruits correctly, he just did it for me. I was kind of happy he did that.

There's another cook who calls me Greg, because I look like Greg from Everybody Hates Chris. I do kind of look like him, and the cook is friendly enough when he says it, so I don't mind it.

Chef is an odd duck. He's a large orthodox Jew with a big bushy beard. He's in his 30s, and he has the voice of a man that sounds like whiskey and cigarettes. Lots of both. They told me to mix the sangria fruits, so I took my cues from the other workers around the restaurant and used my hands. Chef said not to do that, use a spoon. When I asked Roger where to put the dirty dishes, and Roger rolled his eyes, Chef said 'It's his first day' and Roger pointed at the dish bucket a little bit more discretely.

Wednesday, my second night, I went downstairs to get my coat and I heard Chef growl my name from the office. He was in there with an assistant drinking and he asked me my last name. He asked me if the restaurant was crazy enough for me, and then said 'Welcome to New York.'

Thursday night, my second to last night, we got done at 2am. Haley and I shot the shit and drank beer with Chef and his two assistants until 3. It was fine, and I relaxed and laughed, and I thought that this was what I really wanted out of a job, so it might work. Then I remembered that I'd hated almost every second of the night up to that hour, and that hanging out with your coworkers and being happy can happen at any job, especially ones where you enjoy your work.

I called Pat the next day and told him I was too hasty in jumping into the restaurant business, thank you for taking me in with no experience but I have to go.