The Little Employees.

They don’t get paid and you don’t see them that often, but when you do, look out!  I’m talking about mice.  Every restaurant in NYC has them.  Don’t fool yourself in thinking they don’t.  They come out early in the morning when it’s quiet and late at night even if we still have guests.  I had never even seen a mouse in the wild before until The Store.  It was one day at 9:30am.  I heard Dina scream!  She screamed because one of the Mexicans launched a mouse across the floor with a broom.  He clubbed it right at her!  She ran out of the store.  The poor mouse ran under the cart in the corner of the store.  Three of the Mexicans were trying to get it.  The creature ran out and ran down the side of the cabinet.  One of the Mexicans cut it off, smacked it with the broom and then hit it against the counter.  Mexican hacky sack occurred quite a bit here.  The mouse was dead.  The Mexicans thought these “playtimes” were hilarious and all mice were referred to as “Mickey”.

Another day I was sitting at one of the desks in the store about 6:30pm.  The store was quiet and no events were scheduled.  Everyone was gearing up to go home at 7pm.  It was the day after Thanksgiving.  Two of the female store associates were huddled in the kitchen.  I turned around and saw them staring intently at me.  What?  One of them said that a mouse just ran past my feet and under the desk.  EEK!  That mouse lived to see another day.

One time, I was standing in the cold event space talking to my diners.  I was facing the store and they were all intently looking at me.  Thankfully so.  As I was talking to my diners about wine I saw a mouse run across the store floor.

One time I was working a bigger sit down dinner in the kitchen.  Off the kitchen is a small walk in pantry with a door.  After the pantry is a second door that leads to the walk-in refrigerator.  As I came out of the refrigerator to get another bottle of water for the guests, I came face to face with a mouse.  The door that led to the kitchen was closed.  I almost screamed!  I had to get out without letting Mickey out.  Except, he escaped when my colleague opened the door and he ran down the kitchen behind the counter so that only the chefs could see.  Thankfully the diners were drunk and oblivious. 

As clean as Chef kept the pantry, walk-in refrigerator and kitchen, the mice were always there.  We had exterminators in all the time, but the mice always returned.  When we saw them, we always said to each other, “Did you see Mickey?”  As in Mickey Mouse.  It was code for, “don’t scare the guests.” 

But if we did find one, you just had to call the Mexicans who came up with their brooms for another game of hacky sack.

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