One of the most resonating images from last week (and believe me, there was quite a few), was curtesy of one of Lytham Festival's chaperones. Somewhat reminiscent of Zoolander, this slim and muscular man had his hi-vis jacket slung over one shoulder, long curls blowing backwards. Head up high and with a graceful stride, he was walking- no, parading down the high-street. It made me chuckle at the time, thinking: "We’re all getting paid minimum wage here, mate. You’re not special".
But that's Lytham for you, a classic promenade town.
We’ve had some absolute belters from customers recently. One lady sent a drink back because her watermelon and basil spritz tasted ‘too watery’ (as if that’s not the essence of a watermelon, which is made up of 92% water). A personal highlight, was when another couple sent back a tempura seafood basket because, and I quote, it was ‘too fish-y and too battery’. Excellent. I wonder what malevolent description, what false advertising, from the menu tricked those poor, innocent people. The deception is insipid.
Another annoying habit some clients have picked up this week: settling the bill. Customers will ask for a card machine when I, quite clearly, already have on in my hand (or is it that we’re so used to seeing people with phones in their hands that it seems baffling that it could be any other technology? Discuss). One customer had literally just typed her pin in, holding the card reader in her hands, looked up at me and said “has it done it?’”. Unfortunately, I’m not interconnected with the card reader, so I cannot understand its mythical ways and whether it has paid your ginormous drinks tab. Other supernatural expectations which are launched on waitresses is that they know the intricate details of a table’s bill and exactly what you ordered. Or that we’re telepathic, one or the other. Sometimes a good memory serves us well in recollecting orders, other times, we have merely taken over a colleague’s job and have no clue what the total is. I was patiently standing at the end of the table as a group confused themselves over the bill: who paid what, cash or card, I owe you, how much is left etc etc. After several minutes of the ladies going back and forth, one of them light-heartedly accused me, saying “isn’t this your job?”. I, as much as anyone, love being told what is or isn't 'my job'. I jovially retorted back: “well, maybe if you let me look at the bill I can help”.
I have written before how some customers don’t think you exist. One gentleman kindly moved the back of his chair into me when he was trying to vacate the table. After knocking me once, undeterred by the physical obstruction, he proceeded his ambition of shuffling his chair into me. I was trying to take an order from a table at the time, so the effect was quite comical: the customers just watched this elderly gentleman persist in banging into me, without noticing or apologising once.
Thursday was a quiet day. Elbow were playing so clearly this was a more sensible crowd. It gave me the opportunity to chat to the bouncer more; normally I’m busy taking orders and running drinks. I asked him about the other events he does Bouncer work for (what is the verb for Bouncers? Surely not ‘Bouncing’?). He talked about working at football matches in Blackpool and Manchester raves etc., saying there was always a good vibe but you do see some odd behaviour. But, he maintained that when it’s a quiet end to the night, when there’s nothing going on, no drama and no one about, that’s the sign of a good night and a good job done. I asked what time he normally finished, it was earlier than I expected (around 2am). What took me by surprise was when he mentioned he would get up at 5:45am for his other job. Turns out, he was a Bus Driver full-time then did Bouncer work in the evenings to make ends meet. He wasn’t the only one: a younger Bouncer came round to say hi, and he talked about his day-job working as a Plasterer. These were long days for the guys, and it made the cost-of-living crisis very evident. The physical and mental strain of having to work two jobs must be exhausting. Whilst everyone else is out having a good time, spending copious amounts on alcohol, the Bouncers are just trying to get their family to the end of the month.
On Friday night, Wet Leg and The Strokes were playing. After listening to a lot of music ‘before my time’ from the festival, finally, there was my sort of indie/alternative tunes playing. It was such a different crowd this time around- lots of younger people from Manchester with an edgy vibe. Think 2022’s answer to some of the first pictures of Oasis: messy hair (ironically styled to perfection) and supposedly 'casual' clothes which are actually extortionately priced vintage designer ware.
Other audiences were people in their 30s and beyond, trying to be cool in ‘The Strokes’ band merchandise t-shirts. Band merch is only ‘cool’ in theory; the second it becomes a physical object and traded on the market; it is not ‘cool’ at all. It merely reads as someone using liking a band as a substitute for a personality.
I had naively hoped we would get some performers from the festival dropping into the restaurant. Sadly, this was not to be.
We did, however, get two guys who were members of a different band. Eyes glaringly pink and pupils a bit dilated, a guy who looked like a slightly edgier version of Shaggy from Scoobie Doo, was drunkenly informing me that he was in a band. Feigning interest, I ask which band. The Flying Eagles (or something of that kind, I can't remember). He then got out his Instagram page and started showing me blurry videos of, someone who could possibly have been him, performing on a stage. I joked that it was like showing your mum videos of yourself, “look at me, mum!”. He asked where I was from and how old I was, and that if the guy who had just walked in the bar with was my boyfriend. I replied, “No, he’s my dad?”, joking again. He said he lived in Cambridge near the Cotswolds and said he’d take me for a weekend, and his mate (who, as Kate Nash would say, was much fitter) started taking the piss. ‘Shaggy’ leant over the bar and pointed at the ladies drinking champagne near the window, beautifully dressed in pink and all blonde (someone say Barbie?), and said "I bet I could say anything to them and half of them wouldn’t believe me and the other half would lap it up". Apparently, 50/50 chances seemed to be this guy’s equivalent of a good opportunity. What a telling character trait.
Some guys roughly my age had tried to coax me a couple of hours before to go to Marvin’s (a notorious bar/club round the corner where the music is too loud for talking and yet nobody is dancing) after work. Knowing it would be late finish, and calculating I could probably make better choices than going to a sketchy night club with two guys I had just met, I declined. A sensible decision for me is a rare but golden one.
We finished work about 2:30am and helped ourselves to a drink. I had a large red wine and talked to M (one of the bar tenders) about tattoos and why he wants to join the Navy (He says the RAF are for private school kids, the Army is for the less academic kids and so the Navy is like the middle ground). We then went over to The Deacon for another drink, meeting up with the staff there as well as Barrique, and talked some more. It's strange how time is a concept: suddenly it's acceptable to drink wine in a closed pub at 3am. I don't have a drink after work but I really enjoy the camaraderie of finishing a shift with everyone.
One of the jokes I’ve learned since working here is the insult ‘part-timer’. Since the hospitality industry has famously long and rogue shifts, as well as being on your feet constantly and working, ‘part-timer’ basically means you’re slacking. It's an ironic term of endearment, since a lot of hospitality contracts (including mine) are zero-hours. You rarely get any choice in the hours you work. But I guess it's a sort of machismo self-aggrandisement of hard work, in a seemingly looked down upon profession.
*Occasionally I feel guilty of having it easy in terms of work. But I have needed the recovery time from graduating, the pandemic, struggling with mental health illness, and just being a somewhat directionless 23-year-old. Still, I am a slave to productivity. I manage to schedule working often 12hr days or night shifts from 4pm-2:30am, as well as going to the gym, digesting the news, applying for jobs, interviews and keeping up with mates (I try) and writing.* I ended up getting home at 4:30am, the sun was starting to come up and I was a bit delirious at the thought of starting work the next day to do it all over again.
Lytham is all about being seen. Occasionally we do get clients who are influencers, or just rich people with social media, to some extent or another. A lot more regularly, we get customers who think they influence (or even, can). We had two gentlemen who ordered a bottle of Champagne. One of them kept filming himself whilst drinking it, bobbing up and down slightly to the music. You’re not in Ocean Beach Ibiza, you’re just south of Blackpool hun. Later, he was giving the impression he was on the phone. Bearing in mind there was several decibels worth of tunes coming out of the DJ decs, at 1am, it was questionable who he could be talking to, about what, on the phone. On closer inspection, you could see his apps on display on his screen. He wasn’t talking to anyone; it was just a performance again. He was clearly mimicking behaviour from someone rich and successful in attempts to project that image. I’m not entirely sure who he was acting for, perhaps just for his own self affirmation.
*Disclaimer: I wholeheartedly believe in the mantra of ‘fake it ‘til you make it’, but have a bit of grace and style with it, alright?*
In the same group, there was another guy who was flirting with a lady in a Kardashian-esque outfit: blonde hair, tanned and a figure-hugging pink dress. He asked if he could buy her a drink, and she accepted. He nonchalantly told her to order whatever she wanted, so the lady ordered a bottle of LPR, Laurent Perrier Rose Champagne, at a mere £100. Ladies Aim Higher.
M quipped that he hopes the bloke doesn’t get any.
What is it with wealthy clientele buying entire bottles of spirits? Another gentleman bought a bottle of Grey Goose and several cans of Red Bull (I mean, he started out classy) to share between him and his comrades, or henchmen? They were both smaller than him and would most likely do his bidding. The same guy came up to me later when I was polishing wine glasses. He said he’d not paid £400 on trainers to stand in a floor of piss in the men’s toilets. Oh, I really tried to sympathise. I truly did. I even made apologetic eyes. Imagine spending a single mum of 2.5 kids' entire food budget for 5 months, for a pair of ugly black trainers. Poor thing. You can’t buy style.
On Monday we had a work social at the new Revolution in Preston to mark the end of Proms. To thank us for all our hard work during the last 10 days of Lytham Festival, the owners of the cluster of drinking establishments in Lytham had put forward £500 towards drinks for approximately 35 (ish?) of us. I thought this was very generous considering they weren't obliged to provide anything. However, M pointed out that each wicker lampshade (from the local Interior Design shop of course) on the outside terrace costs £100 each, claiming the owners are willing to spend more on lampshades than appreciating their Staff. Still, as money talks so much, it’s the thought of the wealthy that counts.
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