The ladies man . NOT !!!
Establishment: Cafe Paloma
Location: Seattle
Okay, I worked at Cafe Paloma for about 2 months when I first came to Seattle. The place is billed as "Mediterranean with a Turkish Accent". The food is generally good and fresh, although they don’t salt it enough, but the problem is the owner. A Turkish freak named Sedat Uysal. Now, SU thinks that he is a ladies’ man extraordinaire, talented, and worldly. Don’t get me wrong, except for the worldly ladies’ man thing, he is a talented creative guy. BUT he is totally insecure around women and WEAK and dishonest.
The problem is that he has created this parallel universe at the restaurant and filled it with friends and family members who think he can do no wrong. Not because the know he can do no wrong, just because they’re all pretty stupid. The entire staff except me was Turkish women (2 of them not dumb, 2 of them young and really irritating) who all felt like he owed them something, because apparently he brings people to the country and gives them jobs and places to stay. But I am convinced this is an effort to create an army of adoring fans who will make excuses for him and overlook his many short comings.
He spends most shifts drinking with friends outside and a quarter of the way through any given dinner shift he was wasted. He was always asking me if I liked him and why I didn’t want to be friends AND he had a policy of ’splitting’ tips with the waitresses. He got mad at me because I would not sit and drink with everyone at the outside tables or because I would not stay until midnight most nights and eat with him and his friends after working a packed house that included about 18 tables and huge numbers of people all by myself.
This could have been a great place to work, but because it’s the only place he feels comfortable, he spends all his time there and gets in the way, because he is generally incompetent and bumbling. Oh yes, and drunk.
I came to hate this man, really and I finally decided after a weekend of work that I would not return the following Monday. He had others talk to me about my ‘attitude’ because he was too weak to do it himself. But my attitude was just basically that I wasn’t sufficiently adoring of him and I expected him to act like a professional and not like we were serving dolma off his front porch in Ankara.
If you are a spineless lackey who doesn’t mind working like a horse and then seeing the owner take half of the tip money you make, screw up your order-taking system, bark ridiculous orders, and demand that you pay hommage to him on an hourly basis, Cafe Paloma is for you.
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