The Mother Plucker’s Ramblings

Now that I am older and wiser (well some would say that), I have a very clear understanding of just how demented the restaurant business truly is. There is no other respectable business that attracts a greater collection of misfits, con-artists, convicts, sadists, burnouts and debaucherists than restaurants. For anyone who has ever managed in the service industry and more specifically the restaurant business, I am sure you will be able to sympathize with some of the people I am about to describe that worked on our original staff and nothing here will shock you. For the rest of you, here is a little peek into the life of a 22-year old restaurateur and what went through on a daily basis all in the name of opening Pluckers. Names will be changed to protect the not so innocent, no matter how much I would like to provide their dates of birth and Social Security numbers.

Now I do want to preface this story with the fact that none of these types of characters would ever be found working at a Pluckers anymore. Today, we have superior hiring techniques, a better understanding of the restaurant business and have incredible people working for us. Or maybe…we are just the bosses and no one tells us the great stories anymore!

Our original staff at the old Rio Grande store back in 1995 consisted of three types of people. Those on drugs, those who couldn’t hold any other job and University of Texas sorority girls. I don’t know what was more difficult to deal with, the fact our entire kitchen staff were burnouts or trying to convince a Tri Delt that she had to miss a Crush party and work a Friday night. Mark and I, being 22 years old, fresh out of college and basically naive to managing people just couldn’t understand why our employees that we paid $4.50 an hour didn’t care about Pluckers as much as we did.

To give you a taste of what life was like running our first restaurant, here are some fun bios on our original staff.

• The Jewish Cheech and Chong – these were two fraternity brothers of ours that were best friends. I also had the pleasure of living with these guys the summer we opened the restaurant and I figured if you can’t trust your fraternity brothers, who could you trust? I later found out that they had developed a complex scam where if you ordered extra jalapenos with your chicken wings that meant you wanted a “special delivery” with more than just Pluckers food. These two also thought it was a good idea to get my 8-week old puppy stoned every night while I was working until 5 in the morning. But hey, the puppy is now 14 years old so maybe the medicinal qualities of marijuana really do work!

• Jacob – In the first week of his employment, we recognized Jacob’s raw talent as a cook and gave him what was then a monster raise from $6.00 an hour all the way to the lofty heights of $6.50 an hour just to ensure his loyalty. We were constantly amazed that no matter how many orders were on the line, Jacob never seemed to let the stress get to him. He provided a calming effect on everyone around him. Unfortunately, we later discovered the secret to Jacob’s demure demeanor. It turns out Jacob was so whacked out of his skull that once when a chicken wing fell into the fryer, he thought it would be a good idea to stick his hand in the 350-degree oil to fish it out! Needless to say that once Jacob’s hand was out of the oil it looked like a piece of raw hamburger meat. Fortunately for us, Jacob didn’t realize there was such a thing as Workers Compensation because we hadn’t even thought to buy any. He ended his glorious Pluckers career when we heard rumors that Jacob was stealing giant 160-slice blocks of American Cheese out of the coolers. When we asked Jacob to open his bookbag which to find out if this was true, his only response was “Hey man, I really like Grilled Cheese sandwiches and I thought you owed this to me for my hand”.

• Nate – another incredible find as a cook. He worked for Pluckers for over a year which made him the Lou Gehrig of Pluckers employees at the time. Nate had abused his body so much over the years that he didn’t need tongs to turn the chicken and burgers on the 400-degree grill. He would just use his hands to turn the meat because he had no feeling from his shoulder down in either arm. Being restaurant neophytes this of course this impressed us and we promptly made Nate the daytime manager.

• Nate’s Uncle – This guy was the ultimate wild-card. His typical outfit to work was a wife beater, jean shorts and no underwear. When we asked him why he didn’t wear underwear, he told us because it was easier to bathe this way. Huh? We later found out that his daily bath took place during his shifts at Pluckers when he would either go swimming au natural in the pool of the apartments next to the restaurant or he would use our mop sink as a makeshift bathtub before anyone arrived to work. After hearing of this, the mop refused to return to work for 2 weeks.

• Eugenius – to this day, the best guy/worst employee ever at Pluckers. I mean this was the sweetest, nicest kid you could meet. Sure we knew he had the common sense of a toad, but you just had to root for this guy in life. Unfortunately, there literally wasn’t one menu item he could remember how to make. Being a cook on our staff, that was kind of important. Please keep in mind that no Pluckers item at the time required more than 3 steps to completion. His piece de resistance was when a guest called the restaurant complaining about a Chicken Parmesan Sandwich he had ordered for delivery. This was a fairly simple sandwich with fried chicken, mozzarella cheese and marinara served on a bun. Eugenius it turns out had sent the poor guy 4 mozzarella sticks covered in lettuce without a bun. When we asked him why, his only response was “I don’t know, that sounded Italian to me!”

• Our first manager – After working 18 hour days for a year and a half, Mark and I decided to hire our first official manager. We had found this great cook who was a ski-bum from Colorado and he quickly earned our trust. In fact, we liked him so much that he ended up living with both Mark and I at separate times during his employment. This guy was a rock…his integrity couldn’t be questioned….we 100% trusted him with our restaurant! Well, we later found out that during his employment he:

o Had relations with a female customer in the Pluckers bathroom after a shift. Not that unusual in our business, however her request included something to do with Saran-wrap and a spatula.
o Made our walk-in cooler his personal brothel with half of our cashiers.
o Eventually we learned our lesson about becoming friends with our employees. This was because our first manager stole our company checkbook and wrote over $6000 in checks to “Cash”. However, since a crook isn’t always the smartest person in the world, instead of trying to forge one of our signatures and get away with it, this mental moron just signed the checks with his own name leading to prosecution and jail time. Eventually he decided the prudent thing to do was to flee the state of Texas forever because he had previous warrants and we haven’t seen him since.

Everyone thinks owning a restaurant is a sexy business. What they sometimes fail to see is that if you don’t really know what you are doing, you can end up with people that make the cast of “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” look sane. However, this is the lot in life we have chosen and we wouldn’t change any of it for the world!