Servitude(2011)

During his last shift at the Ranch Steakhouse, Josh (Joe Dinicol) finds himself serving Chase (Aaron Ashmore), Jenny’s (Kristen Hager) ex-boyfriend, and Chase informs Josh that – unbeknownst to him – he had dinner with Jenny the previous Tuesday, and the way Jenny talked about him, he has him pegged for a real loser. He then orders Josh to break up with her because he wants to pick up where he left off with her.

Josh goes to Godfrey’s (Dave Foley) office to tell him he’s quitting, but before he can fully say it through the door, Godfrey – who has gotten very drunk – passes out, and he wrecks the restaurant’s computer system in the process. With the help of Tommy (John Bregar), Simon (Jeigh Madjus), and the new girl Alex (Rachel Skarsten), Josh gets into the office via the skylight, planning to check on Godfrey and fix the computer system. Godfrey soon regains consciousness, and after Josh sees that the system is fried, he asks Godfrey what is going on with him, so Godfrey has him read a memo he received from Franz (Enrico Colantoni), a visiting auditor who works for the restaurant’s new owners, Heindschlap Industries. It states that, in two weeks, Heindschlap will be shutting the restaurant down for renovations, and when it reopens, all of the employees will have to re-interview for their jobs, Godfrey included, and they might not all make the cut. As he reads this, Godfrey tells Josh that he had dreams of opening his own restaurant in the past, but he got stuck as the manager of this joint after his wife suddenly got pregnant. After telling Josh to not get stuck himself, he passes out again.

Josh then bails on the restaurant to attend his birthday party at the Halo Grille that Jenny arranged for him. He lies to her and says that he quit his job, and when he asks her what she did this past Tuesday, she states that she doesn’t remember. Over the next short while, she also says that she knows about his blog where he talks about his experiences in the food service industry, but can’t be bothered to read it because it doesn’t pay the bills, and she also scolds him when he defends the waiters after she criticizes them for being slow. His father Sam (John Boylan) gives him a present for him to open, but he replies that he needs to head to the bathroom to cool off first, and while in there, he becomes conflicted over where he belongs. Ultimately, he sneaks out of the Halo Grille and returns to the steakhouse, and he confronts Franz just after he has told the staff that he has fired Godfrey and has assumed command. Josh informs everyone about the plans Heindschlap Industries has for the restaurant before declaring that, if they are going to be fired, they should go out with some dignity by not putting up with any crap whatsoever from the customers for the rest of the night. When Franz protests this, Tommy locks him in the liquor room, and then Josh gets everyone on board with his idea.

All of the staff come at the customers with unbridled honesty, humiliation, abuse, and neglect. In the midst of it, Barb (Linda Kash) develops a spine when she screams at some parents who won’t do anything to control their undisciplined kids. Also, Tommy pulls a prank on Mrs. Crank (Margot Kidder), an elderly woman who has been hostile with him all night, but when she stands up in fright at the prank, Tommy notices that she possesses certain physical traits that has been drawing him to middle-aged mothers lately. As she is leaving, Tommy stops her and showers her with compliments on her features, and the two of them wind up having sex in his car. Josh also converses with Alex, during which he finds out that she recently left a job with a big investment firm because she was unhappy with it, and she returned to waiting tables in order to ponder her next move because this job made her happy when she did it while putting herself through school. Josh then secures her and Simon’s help in staging an ambush on Chase in the men’s bathroom, where Josh knocks him out and then they throw him into the dumpster out back.

While Josh, Alex, Tommy, and Simon are chatting about possibly getting employed at another restaurant, Alex casually mentions that Josh is going to law school after tonight. When queried by Simon about this, Josh admits that he is done with the food service industry and the only reason he came in tonight was to quit. Tommy and Simon chide him for getting them to jeopardize their jobs and then walk away from him. When Josh talks to Alex later on, she doubts his claims that he wants to be a lawyer and presses him to finally admit that he wants to be a writer, and she encourages him to pursue this path or else he will regret it. Josh says he doesn’t want to for fear of failing at it, and then says that he finds it hard to take advice from her since she quit a high-paying job to become a waitress. She replies that there is nothing wrong with waiting tables, but he sharply tells her that being a waiter equates to being a flat-out failure. Hurt, she shuns him as well.

Soon after, Jenny and Sam show up, and after Jenny lambastes Josh for walking out on the party, he brings up her dinner date with Chase and how she apparently told him that he was a loser. Jenny clarifies that she told Chase that he was nearly 25, didn’t own a thing, and worked as a waiter, so she can’t help that he got “loser” from that. Chase then storms in and punches Josh, but Sam and the other waiters come to Josh’s defense. Before things can escalate any further, Godfrey appears, having awoken again. Chase insults him and then tells him about how the waiters have been humiliating the customers all night and had assaulted him, and then takes out his phone to call the cops. However, when Godfrey questions him about the assault, Chase admits that he never actually saw his assailants, nor does he have any witnesses. Based on these answers, and on finding Chase to be unpleasant, Godfrey tells him that he can go to the police with his story, but he and his staff will stand together and deny it. Defeated, Chase insults them all one last time and departs.

Jenny then tells Josh to come along, but she finds out from Godfrey that Josh still hasn’t quit and tells him that Josh wants to leave and get a real job. Godfrey accepts his resignation, but when Jenny again demands for Josh to follow her out, he hands her the LSAT scores he received without her knowledge. He then tells her that he has decided against attending law school and is going to pursue a writing career instead, and until it takes off, he will keep on waiting tables. Jenny dumps him and leaves, telling him that she wants to be on the arm of a guy who gets served instead of a guy who does the serving. Sam then gives Josh his present, which turns out to be a book filled with his blog posts, and the foreword is from his biggest fan “Trubleever”, revealed to be Sam himself. He tells Josh that, as his father, he could never just tell him to pursue writing, so he decided to encourage him anonymously and hoped that he would figure that out for himself.

When the staff count their tips after closing time, they find that they all did better than any other night they’ve worked there (except for Simon, who says he makes good tip money regularly because, as a gay man, he can get away with saying rude things to people all the time). Barb takes a phone call from her nightmarish kids, where she continues exercising her newfound confidence by yelling at them to go to bed or else they will get a spanking from her when she gets home. Franz is freed from the liquor room, and after having a talk with Godfrey, he takes his leave. Godfrey tells the staff that they all still have their jobs – assuming that they still want to work here. He then explains that he read the many customer comment cards filled out that night, and it turns out the customers actually liked all of the abuse and neglect they received, believing it all to be some kind of theater show. He says that this is a great concept for a new restaurant he wants to start up that will be independent of Heindschlap Industries, and the gang will all get to own a piece of it if they join him. Everyone readily agrees to be a part of it.

Six months later, the gang are moving some things into their new restaurant, which is called Surly’s and lies next door to the Ranch. Josh narrates an online message he wrote to Sam where he says that he is glad he didn’t go back to school, and he has already self-published his first book and sold a few copies. Surly’s is days away from its grand opening, and its creation was made possible by Mrs. Crank, who is the investor. He and Alex are also in a relationship.