Meatball Dialect

Like most broke creatives, I have a part-time survival job in a restaurant. I won't give any identifying details about the place, because I don't want to somehow get in trouble, and I must make the disclaimer that almost all of my coworkers are lovely people. That said, there's a lot of funny shit to write about when you work in the industry. 

I've always loved in-jokes, jargon and slang, the particular words or technical terms that only certain people in a certain place or profession will understand. Restaurants are a prime example. 

Eighty-six: nothing left. We’re out. It’s done. No more. Someone ordered the last lobster. Kaput, forget it, fuhgeddaboutit, stop listing it in the specials.

I haven’t the slightest idea what the innocent number 86 ever did to become associated with privation, deprivation and emptiness, but there it is. And there, in the kitchen, it isn’t. The guest who overhears one waiter calling to another, “Eighty-six meatballs!” might start salivating at the thought of such a bounty, such an overflowing cornucopia of juicy, savory meatballs. But there aren’t 86 of them anywhere, my poor hungry carnivore. There isn’t a meatball to be found in the whole house.

In my own place's dialect, the term has taken on a broader metaphorical meaning. It has come to stand for a lack of hope, a renunciation, a defiant out-storming. The reflexive form, “to 86 oneself,” means to clock out early.

“Bro, she has a boyfriend already, I saw it on Snapchat.” “Aw no really? That’s it, eighty-six me, I give up.”  

“He treated me like shit all summer and he’s STILL messaging me!” “Oh come on, just eighty-six him already!”

“It’s nine PM and the reservation book is empty. I got here at noon, somebody tell the closing manager I’ve eighty-sixed myself. Peace.”

Deuce: a table for two. Sometimes called a two-top, but why waste your breath on two syllables when one will do?

One of our coworkers is quite good at the actual work part of their job but cannot spell to save their life. We always wince when this person is on the phone taking reservations, because we know that word salad is the usual outcome. My own mother once had her name, Kathleen, put down in our reservation book as Trampoline. Trampoline, I swear to all the gods.

One night, this person was setting up the night’s floor plan, and leaving notes in the map of the restaurant in the computer system. Most of our tables are fixed-number, it’s a table for four and so it shall remain, it’s a two-top and can’t be anything else. But we have a good amount that are flexible, can be taken out and put back in, expanded, contracted and shoehorned. On one of such tables, the night’s setup required that it be set for two instead of four like usual. So they wrote a note. And they meant to write “deuce,” but what came out in big bold letters for the whole network to see was DUCE.

Mussolini on Table 70. Got it, boss. Want us to send him some free prosecco or just call the partigiani to take care of him when he’s done?

Fire: not only the simultaneously worst and best thing that can happen to you in this industry. To fire a person is to liberate them to go get better tips somewhere else and come back a month later to sit at the bar and gloat about it. But to “fire” a food item means to send an order in to the kitchen to be made.

A server takes two orders at once: the table will ask for their appetizers at the same time as they order their main course, so she puts them in the computer at the same time. She then has the appetizers brought out right away, and must keep an eye on the table to see when they’re finishing up. At that point, she goes to the computer, fires the entrees, and the kitchen receives the order and gets to work.

I first learned this term by looking over at a server’s station at one point during my first week as a host. We use two different computer programs for the two different positions, so it was like trying to count to ten in Greek – easy enough to learn, but completely unfamiliar. And there, on the table’s ticket, emblazoned in red: FIRE ENT.

Fire Ent? I had visions of the Battle of Isengard from The Two Towers, Tolkien’s army of wise, slow-marching living trees advancing on the evil wizard Saruman’s tower, two hobbits riding shotgun on the leader, and some poor sap getting his upper branches set on fire and running around frantically until the dam breaks and the Fire Ent is able to dunk himself under the rushing water to put out the flames.

I swear I didn’t make the connection until I overheard a manager bellowing at a server for having forgotten about a table. “How could you forget to fire their entrees?”

In the Weeds: The state in which a server might be driven to forget to fire a table’s entrees. Overwhelmed. Behind schedule. Flustered. Table 5 is demanding colder ice water, Table 12 wants you to bring new water with no ice. Table 30 is taking forty-nine years to decide what appetizers they want. The host just sat a ten-top in your section, you barely slept last night, Table 7 doesn’t speak English so you’re reduced to sign language and onomatopoeia, the cranky old man on Table 8 has sent back his steak three times, and you need to pee. It’s too much. It’s just all too much. You’re not lost in the woods. You’re past the woods, stumbling through quicksand into a desolate, mosquito-infested swamp full of weeds. The weeds are getting higher and higher, reaching all the way up to your chest, tendrils reaching out to wrap around your lungs and slowly strangle you. You can’t do this anymore. You need a new job. But where? How? You’re a 28-year-old bohemian who can’t program computers and instinctively laughs at corporate jargon. Maybe you could try retail, or work on your typing speed and become a secretary. Can secretaries swap shifts with someone when a rehearsal gets changed at the last minute? Oh god, do secretaries even get free food? Never mind. Skip it. No time to worry. Table 5 wants three more ice cubes apiece – measured with an architect’s compass, sanded into perfect Pythagorean solids.