"...Ask yourself, 'Is this good for the company?'"

Here's a list of just a couple of changes you can expect at what used to be a really cool bar:

• Uniforms: Gone are the days of individual expression, creativity, etc. Say hello to black shirts with no lettering. We'll look like The Liffey, only not nearly as cool because they at least get t-shirts from Finnegans. No more bar t-shirts, no more beer t-shirts, just sweet, sweet assimilation.
• Kid's meals. KIDS MEALS!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have kids, they're great. THEY DON'T BELONG IN A BAR. One of the main selling points that this bar had for me was the lack of a kid's menu. Now we get to have them running around all over the place--but the 9 o'clock rule still stands, apparently.
• I have terrible memory, both short-and long-term. But one of the things I can do is take an order without writing it down and not fuck it up. I've worked long and hard over the course of seven years to perfect that craft, thinking it will increase my efficiency. Now? Spiral notebooks for everyone. I write really slow. And its borderline illegible. I'll fuck up worse now than ever before. And that's just me--everyone else will be able to adapt because they're pros.
• Expect a mild amount of pressure to sign up for our generic eClub--just like Friday's! According to Stuart, our presenter last night, "electronic marketing is the wave of the future--you won't see companies wasting money on $.39 junk mail anymore because with the push of a button, they can send it directly to your inbox! Isn't that exciting?" Well, actually, no--instead of tangible mail clogging my mailbox that I can physically throw away, I have spam slowing my computer down. Cool trade. And by the way, he should have made this pitch 10 years ago, when this was all new frontier. Now? Commonplace. And thanks for explaining the basic principals of email--never was quite able to figure that one out. So while we'll claim that we're "building a customer database to recognize birthdays" and such, what we'll really be doing is using target-market advertising via email that most people will automatically delete without second thought. Telemarketing, via email. Great.
• We have four signature items. From a menu that's been out for three weeks. Isn't that impossible? (For what it's worth, they are the Chicken Wings, Nachos, Chili, and Eggrolls. Three of the four are items that almost every restaurant in the country have. But ours are special.)
  

We learned all of this wonderful information at a staff meeting hosted at the bar, put on by a company cleverly named "4Remarkable Service". As mentioned before, our presenter was a man who used a Britney Spears-style over-the-ear microphone to talk to the 12 of us, openly stated that when he goes out to eat he brings a stopwatch, and will answer the question "how is everything?" with such clever answers like "well, gas prices are too high, my back is sore", etc. The kind of guy I would either a.) interrupt mid sentence to find out what he wants to drink, or b.) walk away and come back later to. We got to sit for 3 hours in the banquet room so we could find out that we're all doing a bad job and that things will change in corporate fashion. Less neighborhood bar, more Joe's Crab Shack. It was insulting. And the best part is, this coming Monday we all have to be back for 4Remakable Service II: The Sequel. Three more hours, baby.