Make the most of whatever situation you are in

Five minutes into my Sunday shift, and I had already spilled a quart of Bloody Mary mix all over my clean white shirt.

“Dang it, Billy. You have to screw the tops onto these things,” I said.

Billy was far too busy to care, if in fact caring is something Billy ever did. He was one of those “I do everything” guys. You know the type, the ones who actually don’t do anything, or at least they only do as much as necessary to avoid being fired.

I wrung out my shirt as well as one could under the circumstances. In the bar business, there are three particularly obnoxious things to spill all over oneself: tomato juice in any fashion, pineapple juice and raw egg. The first two are smelly, sticky and staining. The last one can be dangerous, especially when handling food.

The brunchers didn’t care. They often never do. Anthony Bourdain once opined that brunch was the worst shift to work in the restaurant business, saying that it was a “horrible, cynical way of unloading leftovers and charging three times as much as you ordinarily charge for breakfast.” Bourdain also acknowledged that no matter how much he had failed in the industry, he could always get a job working brunch. From a bartender’s point of view, it only takes one bad ingredient to spoil a drink, and that’s two. Bourdain’s book hadn’t been published then, so we only had personal experience to go on. And my own personal experience then was such that I, in my now slightly pink-stained shirt, looked up right into the eyes of a couple sitting at the bar.

It’s funny how in the restaurant business you can literally be patting out the flames of a just-extinguished fire only to have someone else light another one.

“Dude, hook me up with a shot,” said the new fry cook off to my side through the drink service window.

I waved him off annoyedly and stepped up to my Sisyphean rock.

“We’ve never been here for brunch,” said the couple.

Funny because I had never worked there for brunch.

Irresistible force meets immovable object? Maybe.

“In fact, we never go out to brunch,” said the woman.

“Yeah, we really don’t,” replied the man.

“Dude?” said the fry cook to the back of my head, still hanging around hopefully.

I waved him away. If you bartend in a restaurant long enough, sooner or later, every employee there will ask you for a free drink. As a journalism professor once told me, “You cannot do anything about the ethics of the asker, but you must absolutely be responsible for the ethics of the one being asked.”

Once the couple had worked their way through their avocado toast and lemon ricotta pancakes, we started talking. First, about food. Then about drinks. Then about Sundays. Finally, we moved on to other more interesting topics.

“What do you guys do?” I asked, seeing how they already knew exactly what I did.

“We’re editors,” they said.

“Editors of what?” I asked.

A further discussion about writing, books, magazines and authors ensued.

A cappuccino was served, as were beignets. There might even have been a custard or two.

Billy had long since disappeared, as had the fry cook. Probably not a coincidence.

Meanwhile, brunch dragged on, which in fact is exactly what brunch is designed to do. If you’re going to add cocktails to breakfast, then a productive day is probably not part of your overall plan. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Sunday, I’ve heard, is supposed to be a day of rest and relaxation. Maybe not for the restaurant worker, but for everyone else.

Eventually, it was time for the bill. And ironically, Billy wasn’t there for that either.

It took the couple a few minutes to process what breakfast had cost them. The mimosas probably weren’t helping, and in that interim, one of the editors gave me her card.

“Send us something that you wrote,” she said.

I did. They never published it. But they introduced me to someone else, who then introduced me to someone else. And they published it.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• Opportunity can knock at any time, even on Sunday brunch.

• I actually love eggs Benedict, no matter what Bourdain says.

• Those people who crow all the time about “doing everything” are often not doing anything at all. Just ask Billy or that fry cook.

• No matter where you are, there you are; it’s up to you to make the most of it.

• “On any given Sunday, you’re gonna win or you’re gonna lose. The point is, can you win or lose like a man?” said Tony D’Amato, played by Al Pacino, in the 1999 movie “Any Given Sunday.”