person
the engineer
also: инженер
A decrepit old man, once a genuine engineer and wealthy in his own right, who squandered his fortune and ended up managing the restaurant's footmen and singing girls; groveling and obsequious toward Frolov, he is mocked and degraded (made to sing solo, eat mustard for a ruble) throughout the night.
Reading notes
- Drunk §12 "the engineer"
The old man is called "the engineer" (инженер) not as an actual job title at the restaurant but as a mocking survival of his real former profession and lost fortune -- Chekhov's recurring figure of the ruined gentleman reduced to servility among the very class of nouveau-riche patron he once might have looked down on.