oaky.

originally written June 3, 2003

Mark called an employee meeting today. I hate employee meetings, and I'm not sure about Mark. He's the new manager, and like new managers in the past, he's trying to turn Vintner's around, to make it the money-making venture Joe, the owner, started it to be but has always been too inept to make it himself. New managers never last long, driven away for one reason or another. Joe being one reason, his wife Lynn being the other.

So we went over all the things we already knew at the meeting. Teamwork, friendliness, ironing shirts, etc., etc., and so forth. We also heard the spiel on upselling, which I hate. I'm not a good upseller. I hate having a server try to sell things to me, therefore I hate having to do it to someone else. Generally, everyone is bad at it, so I don't stick out too much. Bryon is fabulous at it (I swear I never said the word "fabulous" before I became a waitress.), but that's because he lies to his customers. "Just so you know, gang, in case you're thinking about appetizers, we just got the calamari shipped in this morning. I had one for dinner, and it was amazing," he says, with some eyebrow jiggling here and there for emphasis. Suckers.

All that took about an hour, and I was ready to head home. But then Mark made a surprise move. He pulled out some wine, and announced we were going to have a wine-tasting. Everyone agreed that this was a good idea. We sell tons of wine, and most of us know very little about it, though Bryon lies his way through his ignorance to sell a couple of bottles. We are handed two glasses of chardonnay, when the question I had been dreading is finally asked.

"Okay, how many of you are underage?"

Charlie the busboy and I raise our hands meekly. There are more of them, I know it, including Bryon, I realized later. I figure the game's up, maybe they'll let me go home now rather than watch them stick their noses in these glasses. Then Mark hands Charlie and I styrofoam cups and tells us not to swallow. Oh good. I'd been looking for a opportunity to spit in public.

We go through the process together. We look at the wine, talking about color and long legs vs. short legs. We smell the wine, in which case a few people must have had a different wine altogether, because theirs had apples and pepper and soft pears and oak in it. Mine smelled like wine. Finally, we tasted. I tried to taste the oak or the fruit, but never found it. I'm hoping it's an acquired skill. While everyone else talked about oak or fruit or whatever, I spit into my styrofoam cup as discreetly as possible, trying not to look at the swirling colors the combination of different wines and my spit made.

Afterwards, Mark asked me which of the wines I preferred, and I mumbled some excuse about not knowing enough about wines to know. Because, really, they had all pretty much tasted the same to me. Then I realized that for the most part, I had been so preoccupied with having to spit the wine out that I had paid little attention to the taste. Curse the evil that put my birthday where it is.

Finally, we were finished, and I threw the offensive cup away. At some point, Mark actually looked in it to make sure I was not sneaking a sip. (Although, with as little as I had eaten and as many wines as we tried, it was probably good that I, Low Tolerance Girl, did not swallow. Otherwise, I would have contributed much more to the conversation, probably insisting that I definitely tasted mashed potatoes with garlic in this wine.) He told us that we would be having more tastings in the future. I can't wait.