under a certain number, because over that number there's no profit, and they've got loans and investors same as everybody. My comp budget, the money I'm allowed to give away, for burnt steaks and cold eggs and birthday sundaes and the lady whose kid threw up in booth six, is a hundred and fifty a week. In September, Moira's waste numbers started climbing. Eighty a week. A hundred. A hundred and twenty some weeks. I saw it in October. I knew what it was. I know what wrong temp looks like when it's not wrong temp, I've been doing this thirty years." He rubbed his eyes. "I should have called her in and told her to stop. That's the job. That's the whole job."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because I used to be her." He said it flatly. "In 2008 I fed half of Local 180 out of my own walk-in for three weeks during the strike. I ran a tab on the wall for guys who were laid off. I had a jar by the register, people put money in, people took money out, I never counted it. I lost a restaurant, and it wasn't because of the jar, but I'll tell you, the jar didn't help. And I looked at that waste screen in October and I thought, if I call her in and tell her to stop feeding hungry people, I'm the guy. I'm the guy with the tablet who says no. I didn't want to be him." He shook his head slowly. "So I started ringing manager meals under my own name. Forty, fifty bucks a week. Comes out of my paycheck. I figured I could soak it up. Keep the comps down, nobody upstairs asks questions, she keeps doing what she's doing, I keep not being the guy."
"But it wasn't enough."
"It wasn't close to enough. Food cost still ran hot, because the manager meals still count as food, they just don't count as comps. Prime cost went red in November. Rena called me and said fix it, and I said how, and she said the way everybody fixes it, labor. Find hours." Abe touched the legal pad with one finger, right on the word FRITZ. "You cut a server, the floor slows down, the guests feel it, the reviews feel it. You cut a cook, the tickets back up. You cut the dishwasher's closing shift, and the cooks wash their own pans at the end of the night, and nobody out front ever knows. So that's what I did. Thursday nights. I told him it was the season, slow winter, we'd get his hours back in spring. He said okay. He said okay, Abe, I understand. He thanked me for telling him in person."