One of the worst nights that restaurant had ever seen was during the Presidential inauguration of January 2005. The entire town had seen an influx of reservations in the days leading up to the big ceremony and our place in particular, because of its proximity to hotels and the fact that it was a Morton's, was just inundated with reservations like never before. Mind you our 2nd GM had just left a few months earlier to go open another Morton's in Maryland. We were operating with a brand new AM, an interim GM (who had been my corporate trainer), and me - the 3 month old captain who longed for the days when I was strictly a server. To put it bluntly we got hammered. We had so many reservations for the night before the inauguration I can't recall the number, but it crushed us. Everywhere I went things were going downhill- fast. We even had the GM from Reston (GM of the year) who was clearing plates everytime I passed him and being harassed by our very diligent but territorial and touched in the head dish room czar, Gerald. I ended up in the boardroom most of the night bailing out the water as fast as I could from a sinking ship. Loren had not been happy that he was in there with "rookies" Ashley and Kou so he just stopped working with them. So I picked up the weight. I was cocktailing, clearing everything I could and all the time pissed off that the 3rd assigned server was not in the room. This was a dinner party hosted by the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee so you can imagine who was in the room.
After the party had finished and was filing out at the coat check all hell broke loose. As it turned out our overly stressed hostess has mixed up two of the coat check numbers and given another guest a coat that belonged to a man from the Congressional party. Needless to say it was not pretty. It was brutally cold outside and as soon as the other members of the party realized what happened they all started talking very loudly exclaiming "He cannot attend the inauguration in the morning without a coat!!" What kind of operation are you running here?? What is he supposed to do, freeze to death?!" Mind you this was all happening at the front of a very busy restaurant. People were attempting to come in and be seated but the commotion was too great. The hostess felt so bad, she was apologizing profusely but our top in command that night had laid into her and she was beside herself. To make matters worse, in the midst of this crisis, others from the party were waiting for their valeted cars. As it turns out a car came up missing. An Audi belonging to someone from the same party "could not be located." It was absolute madness. The car belonged to the coatless guy who happened to have a wife with him that was 8 months pregnant. It was so ugly that I just stood there for a moment in disbelief, listening to the chaos and watching our acting GM try and compose herself as calls were being placed to our regional manager. He ended up calling every 5 minutes the rest of the night. I answered a few times and he sounded as icy and pissed as I had ever heard him. The car was eventually found- a valet had fallen asleep and the keys had fallen somewhere. The coatless man was compensated with an interim coat, a gift basket, and money. Later on that night the man who had mistakenly left with said coat called and the switch was arranged for very early the next morning. But the reverberations from that night were intense. I was there until 3 AM, and shit was still hitting the fan between the valet company, the regional, and writeups for several of the boardroom servers. That place just split in two that night and was not the same after. I am just grateful that I was there to witness it.
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