The End of the World at TAIKO Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi Bar
Some of you R aware of the scattered external existence I've maintained trying to lead this Power Yoga Movement, not excluding the time here in Dubuque/Iowa all of 2012.
Some of you R aware that I finally left TJS&SB at the tail end of October after a major sexual harrassment incident with one of the leaders, after which he did everything except weep at my feet to not sue him. So I chose not to, even though Spirit said I should.
But when all you see in some of these places is drama, get your pure energy pulled into that drama, have it used to amplify & add color splashes to all the drab and ugly ick that fuels other people's lives, it's not far from saying U'd rather not than be "helped" by these places, if helped at all.
After one too many power trips by Eddie Hwang & Rose Chuang, the husband and wife team who own it, especially when so many patrons, as usual, assumed I was the owner--or at the very least 1 of their kids--and going Urdhva Dhanurasana for them whenever possible, only to have my schedule slashed for shady reasons, I told her by phone to go screw herself, basically, when she told me, "Not on the schedule next week! Call next week!"--("Wow, I'm really quitting.") There was no hesitation when I said, "I don't think I'll be back."
I accidentally called there once, months later, and Eddie answered the phone. I thought he was going to cry, "It's good to hear your voice."
Apparently. Because the week after I left, the cops busted in there & arrested the dishwasher--a woman. And either before or after that, the rockstar chef who has a violent, stalker girlfriend/wifey, was arrested for some kind of assault on her, which was probably self-defense, being that she also used to work at TJS&SB & was thrown out of there for ranting and raving about something, which continued down the road when the chef started sleeping with everyone else, including stalking people in the parking lot during business hours, slapping one of the waitresses at a bar downtown when she saw her with aforementioned dude, & threatening to kill her. In between rumored drug deals. Classy. And classic for where I've found myself trying to find my imaginary mountain to climb back up on.
Well, after I walked, I guess everybody quit. Like everybody. But the place has a high rate of returning quit/fired employees, so who knows? I guess everyone misses the wild stripper stories from half the wait staff who migrated over after East Dubuque shut down or watching everyone else have a screaming match with Eddie or Rose and then quit because of one of them--likely Rose.
You know, during Power Yoga Teacher Training, Bryan shared with us that he bussed tables when he first started teaching in L.A. I don't know if he went to college, but I do know that he was a rising star at YogaWorks before, reliable WOM has it that he didn't get along with leadership at YogaWorks or had his own way of wanting to do things (There might be 1 or more other well-known yogis of his generation who actually had the same experience there). Enter Optimal Enchantment/Randall Cooley and Bryan's interesting cast of characters who helped him have and maintain the space now known as Santa Monica Power Yoga East, where 130+ people (still?) line up on Santa Monica Blvd. to do any one of Bryan's classes on Love Offering basis, dropping their money in an ornate wooden box before they leave.
Even though that track has opened to help me, as well, unfortunately, it's during these head-shaking times where restaurants all over the country have bombed, and continue to bomb. Not only has the "finding my own corporate job back to back myself" idea not worked at all thus far, but the supplementary income track hasn't been working for me for a while. In fact, when I was living down in Phoenix, & after I returned to IA, joking had turned to half seriousness when I said, "I think I need a bodyguard." After yesterday, the consummate anti-gun leader spent most of today wondering if investing in a piece wouldn't be a good idea.
So fast forward to mid-December--just a mo. ago. Rose's son, who helps run the restaurant when he's back on break from U of IA, freaked! when he found out not only that I quit but also that, mass exodus-style, kind of like my first job out of college in IT, so did everyone else--and I mean everyone. So he begged, and I set certain expectations in a short-term agreement to return to help over the holidays FOR HIM. After all, Rose had left for Taiwan (It wasn't clear if it was spontaneous because everyone hated her or planned) again, & he & I had a pretty solid way of teaming up to run things smoothly as silk, when allowed.
Helping over the holidays turned into being seduced into helping beyond the holidays, so I reached a crucial juncture where I was looking at, "Hmm. Am I 'going back' to this, or should I draw a line?" Some cool people I liked working with had all come back, too, so I played it one week at a time and was offered whatever nights I wanted next week. I was supposed to say what I wanted yesterday.
Instead, Eddie (as the kid at Kwik Stop in Key West said best) went "PSYCHO" on me. I could spill a lot of people's desires at that restaurant out on the street, but instead, I'll say that it was a power trip. At least getting reamed this time wasn't about something he was flat out WRONG about, like usual, after which he doesn't even apologize, and had increased in frequency before I quit the first time as I became more comfortable and carrying authority not only as the in-house yogini but as the overqualified Front of House Manager/possibly something more, being taken advantage of as a Hostess.
I mean, there were 2 tables left before we had a closed book--one for 10, one for 8. I set up the last 2 reservation tables of 7 & 8 at those two tables, respectively, and after he had taken the risk earlier of power tripping (again) by telling me to put all reservations at separate tables, instead of together, as usual--to which I questioned it but just did it, even though I thought it was risky, he has the gall to come out and SCREAM at me, "Why did you put the 8 at B1 and...[the other party at the larger table]" "What? It's totally arbitrary. They're the last 2 reservations, & now we're full, as planned--It's 1 person difference. It doesn't even matter." SCREAMING!!! Slammed his fist down 2 inches away from my body on the Hostess stand, while I stood there in heels, staring into his soul. Grabs the phone violently out of my hand--hurts my hand as he does so--"GET OUT!!! GET OUT!!!!!!"
You know, it was rumored that I was a "favorite" of the restaurant's--leadership included. And so, I couldn't help but smile, for some reason, after he stormed away, even though I'd just been attacked for absolutely no reason.
Maybe it's that I was told by the bartender's girlfriend last weekend that all the guys at the restaurant "want to marry" me.
Maybe it's because there was clear speculation that the son back from Iowa liked me and, suddenly, I wasn't there because of my connection with Eddie but my bond with his somewhat contentious stepson.
I thought about leaving after I'd grabbed my things in utter disbelief, but instead, I Kali-style'd back in, rounded the whole restaurant, before finding him standing like a Chinese soldier in the main dining room. I grabbed his arm, looked him in the eyes and said, "If you EVER come at me like that again, I will call the police." He yells, in front of his whole, full dining room which, ironically, happens on nights when I'm working, "Go ahead! They're waiting for you!" "No, they're waiting 4 U, Eddie," I yelled back.
So I went over to Kwik Stop where 2 kind of squirrely guys, possibly in a mildly disrespectful way, were working in a pretty empty store (This was a little after 6P) and told them what happened and called the cops.
We had to call Dispatch 45 min. later? to make sure they didn't get lost. I told the now compassionate, cool Stephen guy who offered me a drink on them & had asked for the whole story, that I hoped this wasn't the Dubuque Police Department's way of expressing their priority on violence against women in professional environments. A stream of conversation about my life, my travels, Power Yoga, places in the country he'd like to see (He had never really been outside of Iowa except to go to Chicago once!), my torture in overqualification, etc., which turned into him trying to recruit me to work for Kwik Stop! I laughed, "I don't know. I don't think I can do this anymore. I've seen this [meaning the Eddie situation] way more than I can say, and I can't do it anymore." He was totally encouraging, so I promised I'd touch base with his GM & ask about Marketing or what they had available, but, if nothing else, tell her that Stephen was a rockstar. "You even say my name right," he said excitedly, "No one says my name right!"
The cop shows up an hour later? I become acutely aware of how freaked out I've been about almost everything bad that's happened to me in the past several years but that I've never been "home" when it's happened, nor had I ever been as perfectly aware how literally no one cared. Not a single person. Other than caring strangers.
I remembered angrily how some of my closest friends and family members yelled out, possessed by the Devil, via E-MAIL--when they hadn't seen or touched base with me for years--how I'd made it up!!!?!??? and when that proved itself completely asenine, that I DESERVED IT--my former best friend/teammate/roommate from DePaul going so far as to use the Law of Magnetism--something I illuminated for her and her husband--a partnership I encouraged into being! to tell me off!!!?? about racial discrimination, bullying, and wrongful termination (in multiple, strung-together incidents). Insane. Like Newtown, the gang rape victim over in India, and both of them when they also lost their corporate jobs in Peoria, IL at Caterpillar, not too long after I left mine. They deserved it. Not only did they deserve it--they CREATED IT.
That's about the time any normal person starts softening to the idea of purchasing multiple guns.
The cop was actually awesome, albeit ridiculously late. He said he would go over & "have a talk with Eddie" since, technically, I could have him arrested for what's called "simple assault." That means the person doesn't even have to touch you, just get violent in your direction/personal space. "Disorderly conduct" at the very least, he said. That would've been helpful when Sarah-Mom, the lady who raised me, actually did attack me when I came back under similar circumstances in 2010, but that time, when I called the cops here in Asbury, one of the responders was Harley Puthoff, I believe it is, whose creepy wife baby-sat when the parents went on vaca when she worked with the Sarah-Mom at Dubuque Internal Medicine. So diseased corruption and backwardness, ignorance, bigotry, and injustice persists, oftentimes because people don't do what's right but help their so-called friends and neighbors with their cover-ups.
It came to me in Spirit the other day during a walk that "there's no one left to enforce." That Spirit meant the law. Because so many have fallen to disgrace. So what we'll be left with is a society of lesser evils? What bothers me is "that has no desire to change or be led another way?"
Allen (the stepson) had called more than once. I finally talked to him--heatedly on my part--and it's not good for them. Having said that, if you feel like some blood for supper, you might be able to find the next Hostess' in the sashimi since the only thing left is for him to jack her if she takes off from her Hostess stand with her left foot, not her right.
TAIKO Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi Bar has officially joined Amy Jin's "American Wall of Shame." I've chalked them (both--Eddie and Rose) up as a waste of an Asian checkbox.
Do or die,
*Image of Amy Jin as a happy baby in a cute little pink dress, sitting for a cliched-but-requisite baby photographer because pink is the best color, other than black.*
"My first experience with talent recruitment was when two farm(-turned-city) kids from Iowa picked me from all the other South Korean babies who needed mothers and fathers and said, 'We'll take this one.' Then, following my engagement of the United States of America as I grew up, I was thrown into all the 'Talented and Gifted' programs and sent to all the youth leadership conferences, kind of in a whirlwind. Some call it destiny. Either way, it is so written." -Amy Jin
Love Yoga: The Movement
www.WhatItIsPowerYoga.blogspot.com
Dubuque, Iowa
Temp.-563.556.3524
*To be removed from the Love Yoga: The Movement Database, simply respond to this e-mail and say that. This Database is reserved for Love Yoga: The Movement Love Offerers/donors, paid healing/Spiritual Illumination clients, V.I.P. colleagues, my connections in related industries, regular practitioners of the work itself, and others in the moment becuz I say so.*
