Amateur Night

“Ali,
I found this an interesting paper; informative. However, as I said before about this particular paper, the burden is on you to convince me that you have demonstrated theoretical sophistication in your approach. I don't neccesarily see a lot of that here.”
Dr M – Emailed comments on the rough draft of my final paper.

This is a verbatim quotation. I decided to keep the spelling error intact. Yeah, it’s kind of petty, but my irritation level feels it’s warranted. Let me just do a brief rant here – How the fuck does his reply help me? It’s a fifteen page paper. What does he mean by theoretical sophistication or how I’m lacking it? I don’t have the first fucking idea. Oh yeah, and the “as I said before” – he didn’t. It was a different paper he made that comment about. I told him what I wanted to do for my final and he said “I think that’ll work.” Dumbass.

Let me qualify – In his description of what he wanted in our final papers, he said “Three different critical approaches, stay away from jargon. I should be able to tell what you’re talking about without it.” Okay. So, I took that to mean that instead of saying “Now I’m going to take a Marxist perspective,” I should say, “One central theme that is illustrated through dialogue is the economic, and therefore class, differences between the characters.” Apparently, that’s not sophisticated enough. Why? Fuck if I know, he sure isn’t saying.

Of course, I thought it’d be more helpful to talk to him in person about my paper anyway. However, when I stopped by his office during his office hours yesterday, he was not to be found. I sat down and waited for nearly an hour, doing critiques for my writing group to kill the time. He never showed. Ditto that when I checked back a few times later. I had to resort to e-mail, because the man himself was nowhere to be fucking found. Notice the plethora of F-word, eh? I like it when I’m frustrated and angry.

My reaction, after the expletives, was a general “screw it.” I went back to my paper, added a few sentences to make things more blatant, and called it good. It’s now printed and ready to be handed in. I’ll do no more to it for his benefit. Sorry, I’m just not going to.

In related news, last night at the bar was what Dave called “Amateur Night.”

I really wanted to start this post off with a Dave quote from last night, but I couldn’t remember anything exactly. The closest I can get is him remarking on the urge to break faces. Dave is a fifty-three year old bartender. He is very laid back, makes a lot of jokes, and doesn’t get riled that often. He also is very big on courtesy. So, when Dave makes a comment about wanting to maim people, you know it’s no ordinary night.

For some reason, shit heads flocked to the bar last night. Mostly they were my age folks who didn’t know how to tip – or were asses enough to just not. Some tipped poorly, some didn’t tip at all. My favorite example: A very obese gal sat down, had a drink, had some dinner, and when her friends joined her, had another drink and more food. She gave me a credit card, and the slip looked like the following:
Subtotal: $20.00
Tip: $0.00
Total: $20.00
Adding to the bitchiness, and generally topping things off, was a note at the bottom. It read: [No Tip]. What the fuck? I didn’t ignore her. I didn’t make fat jokes. I was pleasant and gave her the shit she asked for. Her friends paid for their own drinks and an appetizer each, both left me a few dollars tip. Did she just figure they were tipping me for her? I mean, what the fuck?

It wasn’t just the youngsters, either. Later in the evening a large group of middle aged folks came in. Some had food. They mostly tipped like shit too. One couple had drinks and hot wings, I got them a box to take the extra home.
Subtotal: $15.00
Tip: $0.00
Total: $15.00
They left a dollar on the table. Do people realize how insulting it is to have a less-than-%10 tip? Or are they just being assholes?

For a good three or four hours straight, I was running from one table to the next, to the bar, and back again. My total sales for the night were $912 and change. That is the most I’ve ever done in one night. Somehow, I got enough decent tippers to almost balance out all the assholes. So, even though it was a pain-in-the-ass night, I made okay money. The fantasy football guys helped, they’re pretty nice and leave a good tip. So did the gal from the Christmas party and Rob and Melissa. Rob and Melissa are regulars and Melissa’s a student at the university. They’re nice and I usually chat with them a while when they come in. It was good they came in yesterday, because by the time they did, I was getting very pissed with everyone else.

*Deep Breath*

Okay, I think I’m better now. Really. It helps when I remind myself that, since I made extra cash last night, I’ll let myself spend more on Sunday when I go up to The Bead Gallery in Springs before the writers group meeting. I’m hoping The Bead Gallery proves worth the trip to the north side of the city.