Seedling 31: Meeting with Mike
I was there early, as requested, clean-shaven, waistcoat almost-buttoned, and looking like I’d just stepped out of the clown car, front and centre of Sandown House. You know, a normal shift. The office level was pretty quiet between services with the rest of the circus troupe yet to arrive, but the downstairs prep-kitchen was buzzing away. Perhaps there was another external event Melody was hosting. Her celeb status(or former celeb depending on who you asked) brought more than a few requests to Seedling’s doorstep and you could hear a collective groan every time a new pitch was introduced at the ops meeting, even through those glass walls, and even if nobody in management made a sound.
Mike wasn’t in the office. Melody was at her computerless desk, tapping away on her mobile and drinking kombucha. Omar sat at the FOH terminal, uploading new menu items into the overly-complicated and stroke-inducing POS system. Jean was at the far end, her own, personalised computer station(never to be borrowed), her floral-printed chair slightly inclined as she pushed off the glass work top with her patent leather boots. And at the conference table in the middle of the room was Marcos, decked out in his white caballero jacket, stripey green and white shirt, and inexplicably tasked with sorting paper clips? Every so often he caught his faint reflection in the fourth glass wall of the office and stroked his short beard; ran his fingers daintily along the chest hair just escaping the top of his jersey.
But no Mike.
I trotted downstairs to the wine cellars, Marty and Oliver giving me a wave as they stood discussing some pressing matter on the mid-landing. Baz was taking inventory on a stack of Bonnotte potatoes and mumbled something as I walked by. But a quick pass through both cellars and still no Mike - and no other somms for that matter.
It was after three in the afternoon, so I couldn’t imagine he’d still need to be on the floor, that was, if he was even working a service. Would he be?
The compressor rattled away in the red cellar, nothing more than a giant walk-in refrigerator outfitted with a long wall of wooden wine racks and a tiny table stacked with faulty bottles and a small spittoon for tasting. I laid down on the cool floor, stretching one leg and then the other, getting a crucial snap and crack out of my lower back. Then, I pulled my knees in and began a series of crunches. This was a safe place. Only somms could access the red cellar, no sounds entered the thick, stainless steel walls, and no mice could penetrate the rubber piping around the door. With Cosmo on mopping duty this week, I could flop myself down on the cold concrete - for both crunches and plotting.
What is it that Mike wants to talk about? Oh fuck. Maybe he’s letting me go. Business is not what it was; pretty shit for a new restaurant, really. Last in, first out? Or has there been a complaint? Vassily. Fucking Vassily. Who knows what shit he’d make up. Nah, not Vassily. Mike despises Vassily. He wouldn’t believe a word he said. The Sniper. Would have to be The Sniper. He’s not been torturing me, as of late, but Eoin did say he’d gone to Mike to complain I wasn’t ‘fast enough’. So, maybe it was Kamil. Fucking sharking my tables half the time to make me look like I wasn’t hustling. I just need to listen to Mike, don’t interrupt, ingest it. Or, appear to ingest it. Look very concerned. Then apologise, own every criticism, pledge to improve. Get it over and done within as little time as possible.
It wasn’t completely lost on me that, in that moment, I was strategising on how to keep a menial job I despised. Hiding in the wine cellar, rehearsing contrition and doing crunches to better fit into my whimsical, ‘male candy-striper’ uniform, one might wonder if I couldn’t make better use of my time. But, for me, this was part of a journey. Not only did I have that handshake deal with Mike, but a five month stint on a curriculum wasn’t going to help me return to the top of the wine trade. I had to have something substantial on paper.
Did I mention I worked at a strip club for ten weeks? VIP waiter. They liked how I handled Champagne service, but the ‘girls’ liked me much less.
All of this was why I took Omar’s early interference in my job as the serious threat it was. As fucked up and insane as Seedling was, sadly, I needed this plan to work. I wasn’t interested in writing off half a year of my life for no goddam reason. But as I lay back, my stomach now fully knotted, and gazed up at the cold, grey ceiling of this oversized icebox, I had to agree with Cosmo.
There was definitely something ‘strange in air’.
*
Bud was wiping down the pass as I fobbed into the dining room. He gave me only a half smile since he’d knocked four of his front teeth out in a bicycle accident, last week. Oliver was behind the bar, picking away at mint leaves. Cosmo was at the somm station, changing out glasses from the reverse osmosis dishwasher and quietly humming to himself. I hated coming onto the floor when it wasn’t yet my shift. Oftentimes there was a nervous energy that you felt as soon as you exited from the pass and turned the corner, the full dining room in view. It was invariably a combination of diners looking for a server, coffees dying on the bar, or a floor staff unable to keep up with a brisk service. The butterflies and panic would begin to set in before you’d even interacted with one other Seedling. One afternoon I came upstairs and asked Omar if Lindsey Lohan had enjoyed lunch.
‘Lindsey Lohan?’
She was on table twenty-one with a phalanx of hangers on, but the only manager on duty that day, Omar, hadn’t even noticed. Nor had Diana, ‘Head of Reception’, nor the server assigned to them. Just, classic, all-around Seedling failure.
But there were no stumbly starlets, today; no customers’ hands in the air, no Hannah hair spiralling into the ether. No, it was quiet, serene and all in hand.
It was five minutes before my scheduled ‘meeting’ time with Mike.
‘Hey. You seen Mike?’
Cosmo popped his head up from the dishwasher, his 1D hair flopping boyishly, a quick smile, ‘Afternoon! Yes, Mike he is in the garden’.
I passed Vassily along the wall by the oversized mirrors. We acknowledge each other. Barely. And when I entered the garden I found Mike fussing with some moulding details on what appeared to be a glorified mail-slot in the wall between the small conservatory and the kitchen. He looked up as I crossed towards him.
‘Hiya. What do you think?’
‘Nice. New pass?’
‘Yup, for the tapas cafe’.
‘It’s not too small, you think?’
‘Nah, it should work. I mean, we don’t really want the guests having to look at the chefs, now do we?’
‘Suppose’.
Mike whispers, ‘they’re all posh kids, anyways. What kind of restaurant hires all posh kids?’
‘Not something I’ve seen much of, before’, I responded. And, it wasn’t.
‘Workers are coming back to sort it out, tomorrow, anyways. Right. Let’s go have a seat on table three’.
Diana passed us on her way back to reception, a lollipop sticking out of her blood red lips. She removed the candy, smiled and said ‘hello’ to me; gave Mike a rather more curt greeting. And, as we started to slip into the cushioned banquette on table three, I could just make out Vassily surveilling us from the main console between the bar and kitchen.
‘You know that when you first came to interview in that suit, I thought you were interviewing for manager or something’.
Vassily had let his observation slither into otherwise normal pre-shift conversation, clearly insinuating he’d mistaken me for someone potentially important - while here I was a mere somm dressed a lonely goatherder from a community theatre production of ‘The Sound of Music’.
I was nonplussed.
‘Funny, Vassily, I don’t remember noticing you, at all’.
Now, here were Mike and I, sat in that very same booth where I’d interviewed, some five months ago. It was pretty much hard to fathom. I almost didn’t make it through that first week. The constant harassment by Omar(now replaced with something akin to friendship and appreciation); it nearly drove me out. Then came The Sniper, chasing me down entire shifts, barking non-sensical instructions and critiques in broken English and menacing me with his tiny, dagger teeth. This was in tandem with the daily roadblock that was Erich(nearly forgotten about him). And in that time, the sheer madness of Seedling from day-to-day had been exhausting. Melody’s swings from vacant stares to benevolent queen, to toddler in tantrum; dinner services careening out of control and bookended by Hannah’s instructions on pie crust from scratch, or reiki massage. Diana’s constant bungling of the order of seating, Rene blowing her top, Vera spinning in nervous circles, Eoin gassing up the somm station and 1D sporting ever more precious ribbons on his perfectly pressed waistcoat.
Based on our handshake deal, I owed Mike seven more months - seven more months before he pulled his London strings and got me back over to the sales side of wine. But! I had yet to use any of my twenty-eight holiday days. So, this brought it down to six months. Done five. Six remaining. Out by the holidays.
I could do this
Provided I wasn’t about to be sacked.
Last in, first out.
Mike crossed one leg over the other and rested both hands on his lap, sitting back. His dirty-blonde curls looked slightly more relaxed than when we’d first met. And, I think he’d skipped shaving, that morning.
‘So, how’s everything going?’
‘Fine, fine. All good’.
‘How’s Canary Wharf?’
There was that twinkle in Mike’s eye, a knowing nod to my new hood not being the ideal spot in London.
‘Uh, yeah. Not a huge fan. Not loving the DLR. But, I’m taking the room. Definitely gonna have to buy a bike for getting in here’.
‘There’s a good cycle route right by you. CS3. Comes right up to the courtyard and the service entrance. That’s how I come in’.
‘You cycle to work’.
‘Yah, mate’.
How had I missed this?
‘At any rate, thanks for coming in a little early’.
‘No problem’.
‘So, this isn’t a formal review. Department managers do those every six months, so it’s a ball ache, but we’ll have to sit down again when we do that four weeks from now’.
‘OK’.
‘Reason we’re here is that I’m pleased to inform you that you’re being..promoted’.
Mike inclined his head back, eyes wide and mouth open as if he was doing silent ‘rock star cheers’, thunderous applause in the background. I didn’t really know what to say - completely taken by surprise and a bit confused, as well. Promoted to what? I knew I should smile; that’s customary. But I had the distinct feeling I’d failed to smile and instead furrowed my brow.
‘It’s “Assistant Head Sommelier”. Yes, Kamil is assistant, but since we have this whole other dining room coming on board - different menu and concept - it made sense to expand management’.
‘Well that’s amazing. Thank you…I really don’t know what to say’.
Mike was smiling. It was obvious he enjoyed this. He enjoyed being the kind, generous manager vs. the hardass he was mainly known to be. I was pleased, yes - great for my CV - but this was Mike’s moment, really, not mine. It was one of the few interactions that betrayed how much of a newcomer he was to management.
‘Of course there is a salary rise to twenty-seven. I hope that’s satisfactory. I’d say we could revisit it at the formal review next month, but there’s not a lot of wiggle room’.
‘No, that’s great, thank you’.
‘What I want, really, is for Kamil to handle the admin that I don’t - well, don’t have time to do, anymore. So, he can do inventory and weekly ordering as needed; faulties that need reporting. You -‘
(and here he pointed his pencil at me with narrowed eyes)
‘...you I want working with staff. So, training, maintaining the Wine Bible, tech sheets - all that. Because I have a girl coming on for the garden and she’ll need trained. Junior somm’.
‘Absolutely’.
‘Getting a new general manager, too. Poached this guy I worked with at The Ledbury’.
This didn’t seem completely relevant, but Mike was on the verge of giddy with this wave of new developments, particularly as he was the architect.
‘Weren’t you a teacher?’, he continued.
‘Yeah, I have a teaching degree’.
‘Excellent. So, think of some ideas, some activities that we can do during briefings for educating the floor staff, as well. These lazy bastards need to have some working knowledge of the list. We can’t be at every table at every minute of the day’.
‘No problem’.
‘We’ll formally announce at briefing next week, when the new girl and Casper are introduced. So keep it under your cap’.
‘Will do’. I paused. ‘Thanks again’. This time I was genuinely smiling. Something about Mike’s excitement and optimism had been magically transferred over to me. But the butterflies I had in my stomach were eerily similar to the butterflies I had when I entered the Seedling dining room, not knowing what calamity might be about to ensue.
‘Any questions?’
‘Yes. Does Kamil know?’