Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Stop. Please, Just Stop.

The secret to eternal happiness is to never wish to be anywhere but where you are. Wherever you are, embrace it fully. Say yes to it unreservedly. For there is nothing more foolish than fighting the reality of what is.

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If you do not like something, change it. If you cannot change it, change your attitude. Do not complain.

--Maya Angelou

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For me, one of the single most annoying things about being in the service industry – more annoying than bad tips, rude guests, or loud children – is holiday music. Specifically, being forced to listen to holiday music six to eight hours a day for a month and a half straight. The normal music is bad enough; many years ago at one of my old jobs (before satellite radio) we had those cassette tapes that run on infinite loops, just replaying the same hour, hour-and-a-half of music over and over and over. One summer they replayed the same one tape for over a month straight; to this day I still can’t hear “Ironic” by Alanis Morisette without getting nauseous. But holiday music is in a class by itself. Part of it might be because I was raised Jewish, and so I really don’t have any fond memories associated with Christmas music (besides Vince Guaraldi's jazz score from “A Charlie Brown Christmas"). But I think the main reason is because Christmas music is almost universally shitty. “White Christmas,” “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” that awful, awful Paul McCartney song (“Simply, having, a wonderful Christmas time….”) and worst of all, “Jingle Bell Rock,” they all make me wretch. (“Jingle Bell Rock” I think deserves special mention just because of the way it lodges itself in your head, like a parasite burrowing underneath your skin, and you find yourself singing it – over and over). And the less said about that Barbara Streisand monstrosity (Jingle bells, jingle bells, jing, jangle! Jingle bells, jingle bells, jing, jangle!) the better. In my mind, there have really only been three good Christmas songs ever written: “Christmas in Hollis” by Run-DMC, The Jackson 5 version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and Prince’s “Another Lonely Christmas” (which, if you’ve never heard it, is beautiful albeit immensely depressing). Even the reliably cynical John Lennon could not withstand the Christmas schmaltz – “So This Is Christmas” is one of his most annoyingly cloying songs (a children’s choir John? Really?).

So, every year, between the day after Thanksgiving and the end of the first week of January, I bitch. I bitch relentlessly, over and over -- “Not Jingle Bell Rock again!”, “God I hate Paul McCartney!” and so forth. But what can I do? The Christmas music certainly isn’t going anywhere (and, for the time being, neither am I), and the end result of being constantly annoyed is pretty much that I'm walking around feeling constantly annoyed. It’s really not a good feeling. So why do I bitch? What’s to be gained? If I'm completely honest with myself I think on some level I like being annoyed; having something to bitch about is a nice little boost for the ego, it's the ego's way of saying, “I’m better than this music,” or "If I was running the show things would be different" (we’d only be listening to ‘A Motown Christmas’ for one). But it still doesn't feel good. So, as an experiment, the other night I just stopped bitching. I stopped bitching and accepted unreservedly that awful, awful Christmas music that could not be escaped. When “Jingle Bell Rock” got stuck in my head, I sang it and let myself sing it – I made myself really get into it, just belted it out. And you know what? I wasn’t annoyed anymore. I actually found myself in a good mood – whistling “Rudolph” and everything. Like a lot of things in life, it was a trade off. I had to trade in my temporary feelings of superiority for being in a good mood, and I found being in a good mood is vastly more enjoyable. Now we'll just see if I can keep it up when Streisand comes on.

Thanksgiving at Bennigan's: A Holiday Story

The following is a piece I wrote for Chicago's Newcity magazine. It's a little longer than my usual posts, I hope you enjoy it. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

There's an odd sort of camaraderie that develops in certain work environments, not unlike between soldiers during times of war. It's a camaraderie born out of shared suffering and hardship; you don't find it in every job, but I've definitely found it in waiting tables. Part of it comes from feeling banded together against a common enemy (the customer). Another part is being separated from "normal" society by the nature and hours of the job. For the majority of waiters (and bartenders, and restaurant managers), our living is made at nights and on weekends, i.e., the times when the rest of the country has off. Our weekends are Mondays and Tuesdays; our after-work drinks don't start until 1am. But the real separation is felt during the holidays, when everyone else is enjoying the heart and hearth of home and you're sharing your season with your co-workers, not your loved ones.

Don't get me wrong, I've had some wonderful holidays with my various crews - Near Year's Eve parties that, technically, didn't start until a couple of hours into New Year's Day, Christmas Day dinner in Chinatown followed by Karaoke - but one that stands out was the Thanksgiving I spent at Bennigan's in 2003.

Like with most restaurants at the chain-level, our staff was a diverse and somewhat motley assortment of individuals: musicians and college students, druggies and alcoholics, working moms and career servers. Chet was the lead singer of a not half-bad power pop/emo group (I think they were called "The Effect"); Jennifer was a recent journalism grad from U of I writing part-time for a leftist internet zine; Viktor was a part-time drug dealer who may or may not have had ties to the Hungarian mafia (he would later be arrested (and deported) for scamming customers' credit cards - he showed up to work one day and the FBI was waiting for him, I shit you not); Tom had been behind the bar for over half a decade with no plans beyond tomorrow night's pub crawl; and Maria, our manager, was a single mom who made a 3-hour roundtrip commute everyday from Rockford.

The good people at corporate, in their infinite wisdom, had decided that not only would we be open for Thanksgiving dinner that year, but that we would also be serving our very own "Bennigan's Thanksgiving Platter," "platter" in this case being used only in the loosest sense of the term. For $12.95 you got a processed turkey breast (white meat only) with something resembling gravy, powdered mash potatoes, stuffing (which had both the consistency and taste of a chopped-up cardboard mailer), frozen vegetables, and cranberry sauce straight from the can, which was pretty much the only thing about the meal that felt right.

You might be asking yourself, who exactly would be eating out at a Bennigan's for Thanksgiving dinner. The answer? Foreign tourists, and lots of 'em. Turns out Thanksgiving isn't as big a deal in Germany or the U.K. as it is here in America. Who knew? It wasn't like we were crazy busy or anything, but we weren't dead either - we had enough business to keep us occupied and keep our minds off of all the places we'd rather be. Of course, with foreign tourists come foreign tips, which are usually on the lower end of the spectrum (tipping 20%, like Thanksgiving and Monster Truck Rallies, seems to be a uniquely American practice). So no one's really making any decent money, we're all just stuck there, and we're pretty much spending every spare moment bitching incessantly. And then, after the dinner rush had died down, Doc came in.

Doc was one of our regulars. To be more specific, he was my regular. He was, as his name suggests, a doctor - now retired - around his late sixties, early seventies. He came in several times a month; not every week, but thereabouts, always alone. Like many regulars, he had a "usual," a somewhat complicated special order that was uniquely his, pretty much a dinner of his own creation made up of various bits and pieces of the menu put together. I'd be lying if I said I still remembered it (I think it involved the Pan Seared Tilapia, sauce on the side, with plain steamed broccoli and shrimp skewers no spice, side of 3 slices of lemon and two sides of butter, but I might be making all that up), the point is that I was the only one who could keep it straight at the time, and as such I was the only one he trusted with his dinner, so he would sit in my section every time. He was a good tipper and nice enough guy - a little demanding and, shall we say, specific - but at least he appreciated the service.

I hadn't been expecting to see him; I would have thought (had I bothered to think about it) that he would be with his family. I said hello, and wished him a Happy Thanksgiving. He responded in kind and it was clear, as the words hung in the air, that we both thought better of it too late after the words had come out of our mouths. A little embarrassed, I went to our usual routine: me asking him what he was in the mood for tonight and him pretending to hem and haw before ordering the exact same thing he gets every damn time he comes in. This time though, he asked if we were doing anything special for Thanksgiving. I mentioned the "Platter," and immediately followed up with "But Doc, it looks awful, you really don't want it." He said that he was in the mood for turkey and, what the hell, he would give it a try.

Things had slowed to the point where I could hang out for a bit. It's something we would do sometimes if it was slow, we'd shoot the shit a little before I went on to the next thing. I don't usually like to get too personal with my tables, even my regulars. It's such an awkward dynamic; I'm not completely free to be myself and I'm still in a subservient position, I'd rather just stick to surface politeness and keep it at that. But it was Thanksgiving and there really wasn't much to do, and the man just seemed so damn lonely. He asked me what my family was doing for dinner and would I be seeing them - I said I'd be getting the leftovers tomorrow. I asked him in turn if he'd be seeing anyone and he replied that, no, his children were both in California and he hadn't spoken to them recently. As the conversation was turning in a somewhat uncomfortable direction, I excused myself saying I had to check on something in the kitchen.

I did have a couple of other tables to tend to, which provided me with a distraction while Doc waited for his food and read the paper, like he usually did. I went out for a smoke and when I came back he had gotten his dinner.

"How is it?" I asked.

He looked glumly down at the plate and poked at the turkey with his fork.

"It's shit," he replied.

"I told you," I said, not really surprised. "Do you want the usual?"

"No," he said. "Thanksgiving you should have turkey. My ex-wife couldn't cook for shit, and I ate her turkey every year. This actually kind of reminds me of it."

I laughed, and told him all right then; if he needed anything let me know. He ate the whole thing, including the mixed vegetables - which surprised me since I'd never seen him eat any vegetable that wasn't plain steamed broccoli. He read his paper and finished with his usual dessert of two cups of half-caf coffee and an Apple Sizzler. He left me his usual $8 on $35 and said goodnight.

Things were winding down and I was getting hungry myself - it was getting to be dinnertime for us, i.e, around 10 o' clock. That's when Maria, the manager, came up to the front and told us not to order any food for ourselves but to meet up in the back in five minutes. We went to the back of the restaurant and saw that she had set up a little buffet with several casserole trays covered in aluminum foil.

"I know how much it stinks that we all have to be here," she said, "So I brought some stuff from home to share, and some others people pitched in some things in too."

To her end there was jalapeno corn bread and arroz con gandules (rice with pidgeon peas); Charlene, from the A.M. staff, had brought in a huge tray of homemade macaroni and cheese earlier that day. George, our senior manager, had contributed a couple of Jewel-brand pumpkin pies. There were also a whole bunch of unsold "Bennigan's Thanksgiving Platters."

And so we sat, and ate our crappy turkey alongside some really good mac n' cheese, and joked and bitched, and made lewd comments about what the gravy looked like, and had bad coffee and store-bought pumpkin pie. And it was actually a lot of fun. In retrospect, my favorite part about it was that the company didn't kick in a single thing except for the unsold turkey dinners. It was that Maria had taken it upon herself to make corn bread and rice for her staff while her sons were having their Thanksgiving at her mother's house, or that Charlene had brought in the mac n' cheese for a meal for her coworkers that she wouldn't even be at, or that, as I found out later, George (a somewhat surly gay man in his late fifties who could at times be incredibly, dryly, hilarious) had used the office's petty cash to buy the pies. It was a weird, quasi-family atmosphere, the kind that can only come about between people sharing in a uniformly shitty situation and trying to make the best out of it.

A coda: I worked at that Bennigan's for just under another year. Near the end of that time, Doc had started to come in less and less, and the last few times I saw him, he did not look well. And then, nothing. I never saw him again. Months after I left I heard from a friend of mine that was still working there that his children had actually contacted the Bennigan's wondering if we had seen him recently; they hadn't been able to get in contact with him for awhile and somehow knew that he had frequented there. The idea that in what may have been the last two years of his life I, just some punk kid waiter at a Bennigan's, may have known their father better than they did (and I certainly didn't know him well), it was just one of the saddest fucking things I could think of, and I still don't quite know what to make of it.

Harmony, Counterpoint, or Discord?

All of nature is song. Sometimes the song is in a minor key, with purple tones that stir the soul, bursting the heart with pent-up emotions. Sometimes it is joyous, full of rich melodies and grand chords that bring electric thrills. Sometimes it descends into strange modes, guttural chants, and obscure dissonances.

It is up to each of us to sing as we feel moved by the overall song of life. Do we harmonize with it? Do we sing a counterpoint? Do we purposefully sound discordant tones?

Perhaps a student first encountering Tao endeavors to harmonize with it, but that isn't all that there is to having a relationship with Tao. Tao gives us the background, the broad circumstances. It is up to us to fit into it, go against it, or even flutter off on oblique angles. Don't look at Tao as one big inexorable stream in which we float like dead logs. What could that lead to except logjams?

No, let us be like the birds. Who sing when Tao sends them rain. Who know what to do when winter comes. Who embroider the sky with their own unique paths. Who will sing a counterpoint when they need to. Who will sing poetry that is discordant when it must be and rhymes when it is proper.

--From 365 Tao: Daily Meditations by Ming-dao Deng

Time is money, but sometimes it's worth a lot more then that...

Do or do not. There is no try.

--Yoda

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I realize it's been awhile (a long while) since my last post, and that's kind of what I've wanted to talk about it. I got a new job, at a much, much nicer restaurant - I used to work at an "upscale casual" chain restaurant (think Bennigans, but with marble), I've moved on to a high-end steak house - but it's been kind of a mixed blessing. The money is better (like, really better), the clientele is (vastly) better and, once they kick in, the benefits (401(k)!) are better.

But I'm working a lot. Like, 8 shifts a week - usually about 3 doubles, a lunch and a night. It's over 50 hours a week waiting tables, which is a lot. I'm used to a workweek of about 32-40 - at my old job they wouldn't let you go into overtime. I realize for a lot of non-waiters, 50+ hour workweeks (or 60 or 70) are not uncommon, but for waiting tables it's a lot. First of all, waiting tables is physically demanding - I'm basically on my feet for ten to twelve hours a day (and, unlike some jobs, I don't get to break for Farmville or ESPN.com). I've been so drained that in my off time it's really hard to get motivated to do anything except sleep in and waste time on the internet. Secondly, I'm not moving up any company ladder any time soon. To be a waiter is to have a job where the only real advancement is better sections and priority in scheduling (unless you want to work your way up to management, and I have zero interest in doing that). There are no raises and no promotions. So to sacrifice 50 hours a week is to do so with no carrot at the end of the stick - it's simply for the money made. And granted, the money is good. But is it a trade off I'm happy to make?

One of the reasons I've always liked waiting as a profession is because it allows you the time to do other things (like write blogs and promote e-books, for instance). So when you take that away, you're left with just this job, and it's looking less and less appealing. It's a real catch-22: I've taken this job to make more money so I can have more freedom (and God forbid put together a savings, retirement fund, and pay off my credit cards), but because of all the time spent at the job I have less freedom than ever (I'm sure this scenario is not unfamiliar to many of you).

The whole thing has got me thinking about the trade-offs we make in life, the sacrifices we're forced to make in choosing one thing or another. There's only so much time in a day (or in a life), and you can only divide it up so much. At my old job I had free time and flexibility, but I was also not saving anything and continually paying the minimum on my credit cards. So it was limiting my future free time and flexibility.

One of the main things I've learned from Buddhism is to try to see the situation as it truly is, without fear or desire or regret or prejudice getting in the way. We have to look at our lives and ask ourselves, time and time again: is this working? And if it's not, what's to be done about it: is it something I can change, or is it something I need to accept? If my current path is preventing me from living the life I want, I have the responsibility for figuring out what I need to do to get to the other place - and then do everything in my power to get there. I've said it before: Buddhism is not about passively accepting everything that comes your way; it's about seeing reality as it is and acting accordingly. If you're absolutely powerless over a situation and acceptance is the only thing you can do, then that's all you can do - that's reality. However, if there is something you can do about it, you have to commit yourself to that action fully and without hesitation. If you do make a mistake, or take a wrong turn, at least then you can learn from that experience and redirect yourself. If you never take any chances, you'll never learn anything and never move from where you are.

Has worrying ever changed the future?

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.

--Charles Spurgeon

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So, for the last few months I've been involved in a job search; a process that, as I'm sure you'll all agree, can be very frustrating. I was very fortunate that I was not job-hunting out of necessity - I've been gainfully employed the entire time and I can only imagine that the frustration of not finding the right situation would have been magnified a thousand-fold otherwise.

Still, sending out resume after resume and going on interview after interview has been a learning experience to say the least. It seemed that, much like that great line from Seinfeld, the ones I liked didn't like me, and the ones that liked me I didn't like. I began to despair that I would ever find the right job and find it in time. In the restaurant industry there's a definite hiring window (especially in the Midwest): the ideal time to come on is between March and May so you'll be there for the start of the busy summer season, then you'll be slightly established to carry you through the slower fall, you'll be busy again for the holidays, and then when the dead zone of January through March rolls around hopefully you won't be low man on the totem pole anymore and you'll have a decent enough schedule to make a living while it's lean. If you miss the summer and get hired for the holidays you'll make money for those two months but you'll be kind of screwed come the New Year.

The whole process taught me a lot about letting go of attachment to outcome. I'd go on interviews, think they went well, then sweat it out waiting to hear back. I had a lot of promising leads that looked like they were headed in a definite direction and then abruptly wouldn't pan out. A couple of times in particular were especially frustrating - on one occasion I made it through three interviews with a hotel restaurant and was sure, absolutely sure, that I had nailed them. It was the perfect situation: an ultra high-end luxury hotel that also got an extremely well to do clientele from the tony neigborhood it was located in. Expensive menu, nice wine list and, since it was a hotel gig, great benefits (unlike the rest of the service industry, hotel staff are unionized). When I didn't get the job I was crushed - mostly because I was so sure that I had it. In my mind I was already hired and writing my resignation letter (okay, I'm a waiter - we don't really do resignation letters. Still, you get the point).

It was becoming a seemingly endless chain of getting my hopes up only to see them dashed just as quickly. To add to the frustration I was getting job offers - but all from places that for one reason or another I didn't want to work at (on the other hand, I guess it was encouraging that I was getting any offers at all). I was beginning to understand very clearly the Buddhist axiom that desire and attachment are the causes of suffering. It's not because you might not get what you want (though that doesn't help): it's the desire and attachment themselves. It's the obsessing: wondering whether or not they'll call back; the constant replaying of the interview over and over again in your head - a question you mishandled, an opportunity you missed, that one key thing you forgot to say; the worry about what's going to happen if you get rejected again, the feeling that if you don't get this one you may never find anything.

And then, last week, it happened. I got the call back. This was, of course, after days of fretting and worrying and obsessing. So I got the job. I was thrilled, absolutely thrilled. I felt amazing, like a thousand pound weight had been lifted off my shoulders. And then what happens? Almost immediately I start to worry again. What if I can't hack it? What if I f up in my first week and dump a plate on an important guest or drop a three hundred dollar bottle of wine? What if I have to come crawling back to my present job with my tail between my legs?

I saw that it is the nature of the mind (at least my mind) to be constantly worrying about something, it doesn't matter what. I worry and worry and worry, what I'm worrying about doesn't happen or ends up working out in my favor, I'm okay for an hour, then my mind moves right on to worrying about something else. And worry is hands down one of the most useless (if not harmful) thought processes. Think about it - have you ever successfully worried your way into a solution? You can sit down and map out your options - but worrying isn't ever going to change anything. But the mind sees worrying as somehow helpful, like it will help you prepare for or even affect the outcome.

Going back to my discussion last week on the power of choice, I understood that worry too is a choice. Buddhist philosophy states that upon seeing clearly the suffering caused by a thought or choice you will simply let it go, as naturally as you would drop a hot coal - but first you have to be absolutely clear in your head that the thought or action is not beneficial in any way shape or form. First is the understanding: This is not helpful at all. This is 100% harmful. Then you're free to make the choice: Breathing in I see clearly that worry is not helpful, breathing out I see clearly the suffering worry creates. Breathing in I know that worrying is a choice I make, breathing out I choose not to worry. The next time you find yourself obsessing about something, give that a try. The freedom is indescribable.

...and then the Buddha said, "Put up or shut up."

Dealing with the guests is only half the matter; the other half is dealing with your restaurant. Maybe the problem is a particular jackass of a manager, maybe it is a bar that is constantly weeded, or hosts that routinely triple-seat you. Understand that the law of restaurants is that no restaurant is perfect (and the ones that actually are, are not actively hiring, since no one in their right mind would ever leave there). Know that the only choice you really have is which particular pain-in-the-ass you will have to deal with. It could be a large tip-out, ridiculously belabored side-work, an inflexible schedule, incompetent co-workers, a constant lack of plate and glassware, etc, etc. No one has put a gun to your head and demanded you wait tables for a living nor that you do it at your particular restaurant. You are free to leave at any time. The question you have to ask yourself is: do the pros of this job outweigh the cons? If the answer is no, seek other employment immediately. If the answer is yes, than cease your bitching – odds are it would be no better anywhere else. As the poet Maya Angelou has said, “If you do not like something, change it. If you can not change it, change your attitude. Do not complain.”

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How many times have you found yourself stuck in a situation that you're continually not happy with - job, relationship, your own bad habits, whatever - but you haven't stopped it because it's not that bad? You just maintain a low level of discontent: you gripe about it, you complain to anyone who will listen, but you don't actually ever do anything about it - you just keep repeating the same patterns and the complaints day in and day out.

I think it's part of the human condition that one our biggest fears is change. We can be miserable all day long, but so long as that misery is tolerable we really won't do anything about it. Things usually have to be really awful to snap us out of our routine and force us to do something different - it's why recovering alcoholics talk about "hitting bottom." We usually don't change unless the situation gets so bad that we don't have any choice.

Why is this? Why when faced with a choice between the known and the unknown, we choose the known ninety-nine times out of a hundred, even when the known is awful? Maybe it's because even if we're unhappy now, we're afraid that if we change anything we risk becoming more unhappy. That even if we're in a bad situation, at least it's a situation we're familiar with - we're prepared for it. With the unknown we just kind of have to trust that we'll be able to deal with whatever happens when it comes. And I think a lot of us are afraid we won't be able to do that. But think about it - haven't you really dealt with everything that's happened to you in some form or another? You're still here, right? And even if you've made bad decisions - haven't you learned from them in one way or another?

But that's the thing - how much of our lives are the results of actual decisions, good or bad? Isn't most of our life the result of not really deciding anything - of just kind of going along without offering much resistance, until you find yourself where you are? How much of our life is a result of conscious choice, and how much is stuff that just happened to us?

We may not always have the power to change a bad situation, but we always have the power of choice. It's a power that we don't really believe we have, it's a power that we're often afraid to use, but it is our power. If we can't change something, we can choose to accept it, and upon accepting it life seems to open up different avenues. But a lot of times, those things we're complaining about are things we can change, we just don't. Zen is not about passively accepting everything that comes your way - if you can change something that needs to be changed, then do it quickly and without hesitation. It's usually the hemming and hawing that's more destructive than the decision itself. It's a lesson I'm very slowly learning: how to change without having to hit bottom first.

A brief thought on attitude and compassion...

Not to pat myself on the back, but it always feels great when I actually succeed in putting these principles I talk about into practice. The other day I was dealing with this woman who, from the very get-go, was giving me serious attitude. She was immediately demanding and antagonistic - combative, like she was expecting to get screwed over, expecting to hate her meal, and generally getting ready for a fight. I noticed that I found myself with a slight attitude back to her; my responses were suddenly becoming more and more curt, with a slight harshness my voice doesn't usually have. It occurred to me that this woman probably doesn't realize that she's the one initiating all this negative energy out at people, an energy that creates an equally negative response in kind. So, in her world, everyone is negative towards her - she's the victim - so she gears up in anticipation of the conflict and immediately takes a combative stance from the very beginning, not realizing that it is this attitude that is creating all the hostility in the first place. It really is a vicious cycle, and on understanding it I suddenly had compassion for her, not anger. I saw the only way to break through would be to be as kind and gracious as I possibly could - to give her extra attention, to really make her feel like I cared about her and whether or not she enjoyed her meal. So that's exactly what I did, and by the end of the meal she was smiling and full of thank-you's. The checks for the table were separated, and out of all the other guests she left the best tip.