Dave Mancuso dot Com

Working at Denny’s means everyone deciding to go out after our shift to have a drink or two, and rolling out of the restaurant after our side work is finished to find a local bar that’s open. This is a tougher task than you might think, because you’re working graveyard shift and “after work” is 7:30 in the morning.

Sadly enough, there are establishments open to serve liquor that early, and we tended to congregate at the Secane Station tavern by 8:00 am when we went out.

I can tell you from experience that a drink hits you harder at 8:00 am regardless of the shift you’re working.

Working at Denny’s during graveyard shift means that you sleep from 8:00 am to 4:00pm, if you’re lucky. Sleeping becomes a desperately craved yet torturously elusive concept.

You pull down the shades. You close the door. You even try one of those weird sleeping masks. You isolate yourself in every way possible.

Then the world makes itself known to you.

Do you know how many lawns are loudly mowed daily, even on weekdays? Do you know how many children scream happily in play? Do you know how many street construction repairs go on outside your window while you’re trying desperately to sleep? I am not making this up–I’m talking jackhammers not thirty feet from me going on for hours.

And then the phone. You could take it off the hook, but what if it’s an emergency, or work needs to call you? Eventually you do take it off the hook, but not before sanity has lost it grip on you. I used to answer the phone in my sleep and agree to work shifts without a single conscious thought. I would vaguely remember the call when I woke up, and I’d have to call in to work to see if I’d really talked to someone and what I’d agreed to.

I learned at Denny’s that human beings aren’t meant to work graveyard shift. I don’t think anyone at work in the present knows how much I savor each and every day–how truly precious it is to work a weekday job with weekends off. I came away from Denny’s firmly believing that businesses should be closed late at night–it’s just not a fit life for anyone. This is a hard thing to say, especially for me, but just because we can do something doesn’t mean that we should.

When I was at Denny’s in City Line (yep–another one from there–do you begin to see why we called it City ‘Nam?) our district manager made a huge push to “restart” the unit. He hired a fifth manager to staff the place and we hired a slew of employees. We had a huge amount of training going on. We knew that a number of people would drop by the wayside in time, but we didn’t know who.

We had a huge meeting with all the employees in the back room with the district manager (Ed Grocholski) and the general manager, my boss Jim Mendez. They began a talk about new beginnings, and then Jim launched into an explanation that things had changed. Expectations were high. People had the chance to succeed or fail. He finished by summarizing his views: “If you don’t make it, I won’t fire you. You’ll fire yourself.”

Then Grocholski got up. “I want to contrast a point Jim made. He said he wouldn’t fire you, you’d fire yourselves. I’ll be even more clear. I wouldn’t hesitate to fire any one of you at any time. Got it? Good.” Silence. Everyone was in shock.

Maybe you had to be there, but it still makes me chuckle. Jim made sense, but Grocholski was dead on and taking no prisoners. Events proved him right, too. I had to fire a bunch of those people later, earning me the dubious nickname “The Terminator.” Hey, I’m not hard to get along with, but when you pull stuff like the grandmother/girfriend calling out sick for you, you tend to have a problem with me. Grocholski taught me that management isn’t personal–it’s whatever the business requires of you.

Working at Denny’s means reporting to work for an 11pm to 7am graveyard shift just as Live Aid in Philly at JFK stadium lets out, and knowing that all the people flooding out of Philly will go to your Denny’s and swamp you for 8 hours, steamrollering you flat with sheer numbers until you cry for your mommy.

It was truly a night of hell. What sucks even worse is that I got a speeding ticket coming to work that night from State College, PA, trying to get back to Philly in time to get slaughtered by the aforementioned Live Aid customers. Definitely a strong candidate for the nadir of my restaurant career (but not the winner, believe it or not).

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Managing Denny’s means coming into the unit at 7:00am and finding a potato in the back of the employee break room with a hole drilled deep into one end that meets a second hole drilled into the side. The side hole contains a piece of tin foil fashioned into a bowl-shaped filter with pinpoint holes, making the potato into–yes, you guessed it–an elaborate and stylish pipe.

Something tells me that this masterpiece of innovation was not created solely for tobacco use. If only they’d put as much innovation into the job they were hired for (sigh).

Managing Denny’s at City Line meant designing a beautiful and vibrant chart to track the number of grandparents and relatives who died for each employee within a two month period. You’d be surprised how many grandparents some of my employees had, and how many of them passed away suddenly, necessitating a bereavement day minutes before (or after) someone’s shift started. A word to the wise: it’s unusual to have all seven of your grandparents pass away within six weeks of each other.

Also, don’t have your grandmother call you out sick if your grandmother sounds amazingly like your 17 year old girlfriend. If you do, expect me to thank her and let her know that if you don’t report to work within 20 minutes, don’t expect to have a job to return to. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

It seems like my mind wants to purge this stuff. The more I write about Denny’s, the more I think of. I’ll try to restrain myself somewhat.

In 1988 (if I remember the year properly), Denny’s closed for Christmas for the first time. I was back at Denny’s in Clifton Heights, and we began to be a bit worried. We didn’t know if we could actually lock up, since no one seemed to remember where a key to the front door might be. The restaurant had been continuously open, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, with someone always there since 8 years before on November 5, 1980.

Someone resolved the situation. Either they found the key or they brought in a locksmith (I can’t remember). We managed to close on Christmas Day, angering hundreds of people who for some reason wanted to go out to a restaurant for dinner that day.

A true Denny’s moment: Going into the walk-in refrigerator to pull out your last case of Reddi-Wip spray dessert topping, only to find that all 24 cans are dead. Your busboys have been doing “whippits” with the nitrous oxide in the cans again (if only you could prove it) and you’re now completely out.