The Chicago Pizza Pie Factory

Chapter Ten - Laura

Laura and I began our long-distance relationship through letters but soon it was tested once again. There was a postal strike in England so she did not hear from me for weeks and she had no idea why. There was no email in those days and as international calling rates were exorbitant, I couldn’t afford it. She was wondering if I had abandoned her.

When I got back to London, I signed up with a temp agency doing jobs where they sent me each day. When the postal strike ended, they sent me to work at the post office to help sort out the backlog. Someone on the ship mentioned to Laura,

            “I bet you’re happy that the mail strike in England has ended.” 

Then it all made sense. 

For a little while, she started getting about a letter a day from all of the ones that I had written before the strike had held them up. So our long-distance communication commenced.

I was still trying to model but in the meantime, I needed to find something to make money. I found a restaurant in the classifieds that was looking for a busboy. The restaurant was called The Chicago Pizza Pie Factory which was part of a chain of restaurants owned and run by an American in Central London.

I went for an interview with two of the managers, a man and a woman. The woman’s name was Sally and afterwards, I found out that when she heard that I was trying to model she did not want to hire me. In the past, she had run a restaurant in Paris and had hired an aspiring model who had been very unreliable. If he had a casting, that became more important than showing up for his day job. 

But for some reason, the other manager managed to persuade Sally to hire me. Sally and I ended up becoming good friends because I proved to be very reliable. It may have had something to do with the fact that I never did get any modeling work.

The Chicago Pizza Pie Factory was in the basement of an office building. You had to descend two flights of stairs to get to it. It was a very hip place, having a cool American vibe with abundant Chicago memorabilia. It was usually hopping. 

Busboys clear tables of empty dishes and reset them when people leave. We were paid a small salary, relying on the waitresses to round out our income by tipping us a percentage of their tips. I always say every person should do some kind of restaurant or retail job at least once in their life to understand and appreciate what they have to deal with.

As with any people who are grouped together, the restaurant scene is whole subculture unto itself with its ongoing personal dramas, who’s doing what with whom between wait staff, busboys, kitchen staff and bar tenders. Friday and Saturday nights are the busiest times, so you’re often competing to get those shifts. And busboys compete with each other to bus the tables of the waitresses who tip the most. 

Sometimes you work really hard and get along really well with a particular waitress so you anticipate a big tip. Then the waitress stiffs you. So then you wonder if she just forgot or if you did something that made her mad. Your waitress doesn’t technically have to tip you so then it’s awkward. You feel jilted but how do you bring it up? I would usually try to get it to come up in an indirect conversation and, inevitably she had just forgotten.