I had just punched in one order and turned around to take another. Picking up a bottle of house chardonnay, I raised the bottle in the universal signal of “would you like another?” to the businesswoman sitting at the bar. In mid pour, I noticed a slightly too-thin thirty-something woman fidgeting in that nervous fashion that usually indicates a dire need of something. She had that “stop the waiter from putting in that order”, “I need change for the valet”, or “I spilled something on my shirt and I need a splash of soda water” look. Still pouring the white wine, I nodded in her direction.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“I need a straw,” she said, shifting from foot to foot.

So much for the emergency.

I handed her two small sipping straws and began to turn back to my other seated guests.

“Do you have anything bigger?” she asked, shifting back to the original foot.

I handed her a larger black straw that is the standard equipment for soda pop everywhere. Instead of heading back to her table, she made a beeline for the bathroom. I looked after her puzzled. Why would she need a straw in the bathroom?

“That was so 1985,” said my white-wine receiving guest, who had just watched the whole episode unfold.

Suddenly I knew exactly what was going on.

The White Witch has returned. And much like the character in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe books, she is bringing no joy with her. When I first started bartending in the 1980s, cocaine was everywhere. The customers were doing it, the waiters were doing it, the managers and owners were doing it—you could not work in a restaurant or bar without seeing the busboys huddled in the back, the waiters exchanging matchbooks, or the manager making multiple trips to his car. It was just the way that it was: too many people living for the moment.

The consequences were devastating. I remember finding a night manager passed out face down in a pile of money in front of the safe at the end of one shift, a rolled-up dollar bill still in his hand. Another time a bartender sprung out of the employee bathroom like Superman from a phone booth (with white powder circling both nostrils) only to blow up at a customer over a simple request for more water. He then took a swing at the manager before being wrestled out the door, sobbing, by a security guard. If you think you have troubles at work, try showing up at your place of employment only to find 20 police officers searching the premises while the handcuffed owner sits crying on the floor in a corner with his jacket over his head. After being briefly cuffed myself, I was searched, questioned, and finally let go. This led to a quick updating of my resume and several applications tendered before that story could hit the local papers. But by the late 1990s it seemed that cocaine had fallen out of favor. Sure, there were people who still did it. But they were a small and isolated few and most interestingly, they always seemed to be on the hunt for new employment.

I guess that each generation must make its own mistakes, because lately I have begun to see the Witch’s telltale signs once again, both in other restaurant employees and our customers. Hand-to-hand transfers, too-thin women making multiple trips to the bathroom, black-circled eyes, uneaten entrées, and fits of mania don’t go unnoticed by someone who has lived through it once. Yes, the White Witch has indeed returned and with her comes a long cold winter. And unlike the fictional Queen Jadis, we don’t have four plucky royals and a lion there to save us; just common sense and perseverance. Which reminds me of the saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” sometimes with devastating consequences.