Why everyone should work in the restaurant business at least once in their lives

Now that I have hit middle age (gulp), I have noticed that I have a lot of criticism for the 30 and younger set.  It's a rite of passage, those who are a bit older and have more wisdom under their muffin top belt, talk about how the youth of today have no manners, no work ethic and how we are  doomed since these younger generations will take care of us (or not) in our golden years.

So, woo- hoo, I am now one of those kind of people.

I've been thinking a lot about this recently and thinking back to my own youth.  Certainly kids learn manners from their parents and their youthful surroundings, but it goes beyond manners and courtesy.  It's about learning how to think a couple of steps ahead, to avoid difficulty and how to read people.

Sure, I learned a lot of this from my parents and other role models, but mostly I learned this by working in the restaurant business.

I spent a total of 11 years working in some aspect of the restaurant business, I've been a server, bartender, cashier, manager.  It's where I went when I dropped out of college in my junior year and I stayed there until after I finished my Master's Degree.  I stayed because it was a helluva lot of fun.  Seriously the restaurant industry is like no other for the fun, the parties and the kind of people the industry attracts, truly weird-in-the-most-wonderful-sense kind of people of all different types and backgrounds coming together, bonding and brawling over bread baskets, dirty dishes and  the garlic and coffee tinged air.

The restaurant business gave me much more though than just learning how to blow half my tips on shooters fun.  It prepared me for life.  It prepared me to be successful in a corporate career, it taught me how to deal with people, how to treat people and how to deal with stress.

In short, it taught me so many of the skills that I see lacking in our youth today.

Before I go spouting off my list, let me say that when I mean restaurant business, I don't mean European restaurants with your guaranteed salary and benefits and goal of one full seating an evening.  I mean the US restaurant business that makes it's profits by turning tables, where in a typical lunch/dinner sitting you are turning tables 4-6 times a night (sometimes more), where you are working to put actual drinks down your throat food on the table, where hustling is a job requirement.

Here's what the restaurant business teaches you:

1.  How to work hard
You work your a** off.  The simple fact of life in the business is that in order to earn money you have to work.  You work either for tips or an hourly wage and considering the turnover, the amount of people that work part time and the (somewhat) unpredictable nature of the business (getting slammed on a Monday lunch comes to mind), to max out your earnings, you need to be picking up extra shifts or staying for a double. In one restaurant I worked on Saturdays and Sundays they had a shift that was considered a single shift but it was really a double shift.  You started a little later, say 1.00 or 2.00 and worked until the end of the dinner rush which meant you were so freaking tired from running a solid 9 hours without a break, that you'd end up dragging yourself through your clean up and still only get out at 11.00.  But if you want to earn a decent living in the business this is what you have to do.  You think management is the key?  Well they work 70-80 hours without overtime.  They are earning less than a lot of the waiters and bartenders.

2.  How to multitask
In a busy American restaurant, the place might be chugging out up to 200 main courses an hour.  As a cook, you have to be monitoring probably no less than at least 15-20 dishes on your station and also timing it to make sure a complete order comes up at the same time.  So the guy on the grill has to know not only how the steaks should be cooked, but because steak usually takes the longest to cook, he has to know when to signal the guy to drop the pasta or the vegetables which have to go out for the same order and he's doing that for all 15-20 orders he's got going.  As a waiter, you have multiple tables going and you're not just delivering food, you are bringing and refilling drinks, bread, you have to get salads out to another table while someone else wants to pay.  And just for the hell of it you might need to run someone else's hot food to a table (and then bring more iced tea to those chowhounds).  You have to pay people, give them their change and run their credit cards, all the while your other tables are demanding more bread and  you just know that a-hole at table 12 is holding up his glass waiting for you to appear so he can have his 5th iced tea. (note:  free refills does not mean make a pig of yourself).

You learn how to not walk back in the kitchen without full hands or a full tray.  As a bartender on a busy shift, you are making drinks not just for your customers at the bar but also for the waiters to bring to their tables in the restaurant, you have to wash all your glassware try and keep the place reasonably clean and  you may even be coordinating the to-go orders.  You have to make sure you don't run out of ice or booze or those adorable little apple garnishes that go on your idiotic sour apple martini.  Busboys have to clean tables and usually help out the waiters and bartenders by keeping drinks/food areas stocked, but they have to get the dirty tables ready as soon as possible so that the host/hostesses can seat people and keep the waiting time down.  

People that can't master the skill of multitasking don't usually last two weeks in the business, although ironically,  it is usually these very same people who have *zero* self awareness about this and keep trying, it's usually a pretty painful lesson.

3.  How to anticipate
There is no place better to learn than a restaurant how to think a couple of steps ahead.  This one takes a little background info to understand so please bear with me.  It's worth it.

If one thing goes wrong, the place goes down.  Restaurants operate on anticipation, they anticipate how much food they will need at any given shift.  This is determined by business trends, how people tend to order, the time of year.  Restaurants prepare as much of the food as possible in advance and usually just do the final cooking when the food is ordered.  So for instance, take lasagna.  When you order lasagna in a restaurant, chances are they don't go in the back and start making sauce and pasta from scratch.  The more likely scenario is that a determined number of  raw lasagnas are assembled that morning or the night before and stored in the fridge.  The manager determines how much they need for a shift and that number of whole lasagna's is cooked about half way through and cut then brought up to the line and held on a steam table, not to cook it the rest of the way, but to keep it hot enough so that it remains bacteria free.  When you order it, they take out the piece of lasagna, cover it with tomato sauce and cheese and put it in an oven/broiler to cook it the rest of the way.

So, this means that if the restaurant had an unusual run on lasagna, they might run out, which means that they have to assemble more (which takes time and under pressure it takes longer).  This means it takes longer for any order with lasagna to appear, which mean tables that order lasagna wait for their food longer and end up consuming more bread, drinks and whatever else is free (and perhaps become dissatisfied), this means it takes them longer to eat and to leave, all the while the people waiting for a table grows and the wait becomes longer.  Meanwhile all the drinks and bread they are consuming are running out faster and waiters and buspeople have to take attention away from their primary duties to stock up on drinks, make coffee or get ice.  And usually it's the poor bread guy that is stuck making the lasagnas (which isn't his usual job so he/she might not be that good at it), so now you have a wait on bread and servers hanging around the bread to make sure to get it because it's going to go fast when it finally gets out there because you just can't appear again before your tables without something.  So everyone else's service goes down too.

So, yes, a whole restaurant can be taken to its knees just because two ladies decide to share a lasagna.

And you think it's just about food?  Well it's not, any area of the restaurant can bring the whole place down.  Dishwasher calls in sick, you're down a dish guy, that means dishes get washed slower, which means you might run out of clean dishes on the line, which means you have to wait to plate your food, the cooking time goes off, food gets over cooked, customers complain, food has to be recooked, the line gets overwhelmed and there you are again.

You're short a busboy, it takes longer to clear tables and the hostesses then help out, which means that not only are the tables not turnng faster, but your hosting staff is seating people slower, which means the 200 dishes an hour turns into 20 minutes with nothing to do and 40 minutes to chug out the 200, everything backs up.

I think you get it now.  If you don't, forget my advice and don't work in a restaurant, ever.

Now of course a good restaurant manager learns how to keep their eye on the ball and anticipate a problem before it happens to avoid the aforementioned nightmares but as cooks and waiters you have to learn how to do this too, you anticipate what's happening, you see that the food is taking a little longer because it's busy so you put the order in 10 minutes earlier or you see that the ice is half empty and it's busy, you run and get more ice before you run out.  You try to bring drink refills before they are making slurpy noises with their straws.  You just figure out how to think 5 steps ahead of the game.   A restaurant employee worth their salt, whether manager or busboy can recognize and head off these problems before they become problems.  Those who are really gifted in the business (and I like to think I was), can walk into a dining room, a kitchen, bar or the lobby and within 20 seconds know exactly what is happening.  So, it's not only anticipation, but you learn keen powers of observation because nobody is telling you a thing.

4.  You learn how to deal with people
Unfortunately most of the time you learn this lesson because loads of people treat you like shit so you learn what not to do.  People can often be at their worst when they are hungry and most poeple who have never worked at a restaurant are pretty clueless about how things work and make a lot of stupid requests.  Plus, in the US people feel particularly no shame about bossing around a service person.  They will speak to them in ways they never would a colleague at the office.  Sure, you're never going to see this person again and you are getting a divorce, your boss is an a**hat, you're broke and you don't have a date for your 20 year high school reunion.  Yep, take it out on your server.  I won't lie to you, dealing with people on this level on a daily basis is tough, it's really the toughest thing about the business and it jades you.  You can lose all your faith in humanity on a Saturday lunch shift or a holiday which is about the worst time ever to work in a restaurant..  But the flipside of this is that you learn how to not take people so seriously and you learn how to not react to every little thing and let stuff roll off your back.  You also learn how to deal with people, how to keep a jerk happy and how to appreciate those that add value in whatever way they do.

Besides the customers, as I mentioned earlier the restaurant business attracts a cast of characters like you have never seen.  Working mommies, students, drop outs, druggies, ex-cons all under one roof dealing with enormous (but not lasting) pressure.  Plus most people in the business are fairly young and shall we say, morally open minded so there is a lot of hooking up going on and a lot of gossiping about it the next day.  Walks of shame turn into shifts of shame (often next to the cute busboy's girlfriend), you learn real fast how to (1) develop the best poker face EVER and (2) deal with all kinds of people.

Not that I have any personal experience with that whole shifts of shame thing, but I heard about it.

Now, this list isn't to say that if you work in a restaurant you will develop these skills, because let's face it, you can't cure stupid and some people are just too clueless to learn a lesson when it is in their face, but the restaurant business offers a great learning ground which will prepare you well for wherever your life takes you.

I highly recommend it.

Tales from the darkside, Part II (Special Valentines Day edition)

In honor of Valentines Day I thought I would go back to telling some of my restaurant tales.  Why, in honor of Valentines Day do you ask?  Ahhhhh, the question shows you have never worked in a restaurant.  Valentines Day is one of "those" holidays.  The ones that people working in restaurants live to loathe.   These are the holidays which bring people out in droves but have their own unique awfulness to them. You'd think that would mean that people working in restaurants love those holidays, ahhhh wrong! 


Valentines Day goes on your list of holidays which are hated and dreaded in the restaurant business, why?  Well because they bring people in whoare often not people who go out to eat regularly and non regular restaurant diners are more likely to be way more demanding and demeaning and not tip much, because they just don't get the whole concept of tipping in the first place.  These people come on the busiest days/evenings of  the year, wait for hours (usually at a place which doesn't take reservations) and then are annoyed a expect their server to not only bring their food out at the speed of light, but run your keester off with the free bread and drink refills because they feel if they are paying for it, they might as well eat and drink as much as possible (and I mean stocking up for winter volumes here). 


Valentines Day is the "best" of these terrible holiday experiences.  The benefit of Valentines Day is that you get mostly couples or groups of couples (read, no kids and no single diners to bring those check prices down), plus in at least your higher end joints, they mostly have special "Valentine themed" menus which means you are paying 10-20 percent more for your New York Strip then on other days.  Also a lot of Valentines diners will opt for the entire dining experience do the whole drinks, appetizer, entree dessert, although I have had my 2 Lasagnas/Water with lemon folks on the day of love too.   The downside (besides the Lasagna/water people) is that you still get a lot of people who are not seasoned restaurant diners, which means even if they know how to order, they still don't know how to tip, so often you find yourself averaging less than 15% on Valentines Day, even though your sales are through the roof.  And the people around you that you need to tip-out (busboys, bartenders, expediters, etc.) expect more than the usual because things are so busy and they just figure as a waiter you are raking it in and therefore you need to pay them in kind (and don't forget these people always know who are the good tippers and if you are not a good tipper, you often do not get service from them).  Having yourself on the shit list of the busboys means that they will let your tables sit dirty for as long as possible, which means it takes much longer to clean your tables, which means they take longer to have new guests seated at them which means you make less money. It's a delicate ecosystem of it's own.


On holidays the kitchen 'goes down' (meaning that they cannot keep the orders coming at a good pace and you invariably end up waiting a much longer time for your food).  When the 'line' (the people who make your food) goes down, then invariably everything else in the kitchen goes down with it and that bleeds out into the rest of the restaurant.  The kitchen going down puts pressure on prep, which means they are also not putting out bread, salads, sides of vegetables, desserts and other stuff, which means everything starts taking a long time. It just turns into zillions of little fires that need to be put out by the person standing closest to them.  When this happens all the extra people they put on to prevent just this get put on other jobs (making salad, helping prep, rolling silverware), so the well oiled machine gets turned into a chop shop where servers need to do everything themselves.  Need coffee? You run to the server's station and guess what, no cups and all the coffee pots are empty.  You put on coffee and run to the dish area to get clean cups and you bring them, then you get your coffees and guess what, no cream, you run back to the walk in and you can't find the cream so you go to the prep guy and he stops making bread (which you also desperately need) to go and comb the walk-in for creamers.  You can't wait so you run to another wait station and take their last 5 creamers.  Then another server comes by and says that table 23 needs another two ice teas and a diet coke with lime.  Yeah, there are glasses and iced tea, but the ice bin is empty.  Back you go to the kitchen to hurry and grab two buckets of ice and run them out (and if you are really really busy, you say screw everyone else and you just selfishly taske your 3 glasses back ot the ice machine.  You bring them but don't have time to run the buckets back, because you notice that bread has finally arrived and you go and get 3 baskets, because WTF, might as well refill it now while it is there rather than run the risk that you will get back to your table after 4 coffees taking more than 15 minutesto find out they need bread.  This is the holiday rhythm.




Another crappy holiday to work, much crappier than Valentines Day is Easter.  Easter brings out the ladies in pastels and they are usually toting at least one grandma and a whole bunch of kids, who are hopped up on sugar from biting the heads off their chocolate and marshmallow bunnies but all wound up from having to try and sit still in Church all morning. They are just bundles of pent-up energy, whose parents want to get them busy eating (read: quiet, sitting and off their parents' last nerves).  So, you wait on lots of larger parties but because of the high ratio of children to adults, your check average is extremely low.  People tend not to drink much on Easter, because of the faimily setting and forget appetizers, the kids cannot sit that long, so usually it is an entree-beverage type of day.  Also large groups of people with lots of kids just means you are going to run your ass off for a family of 8, but the check is going to be really low meaning you make very little.  Even if you work in a fancier place which adds automatic gratiuity for parties of 8 or more, it is still hard to make out well on Easter.  Plus you probably run 5 times as much getting refills (I kept count on one particular Easter where I shlepped out 98 Shirley Temples on an Easter Shift where I served 64 customers (and guess what,  the bartender has the cherry syrup and ginger ale, so I have to tip him out for all of those, even though I don't get a nickle extra for them because they are covered by the all inclusive free refill). Techinically since they don't go on your bar sales, you could stiff the bartender for those, but if you do, guess what, on a busy night when people are drinking, your drinks will take forever.


Another sucky holiday to work is new year's eve, but this only sucks because you are stuck working rather than out yourself.  Actually New Year's eve is a good holiday to work, it's pretty adult focused, people drink and are usually pretty jolly and therefore generous.  Plus there is still the tiniest bit of that goodwill left over from Christmas.  Often people feel sorry for you having to work on New Years Eve and particularly if you can work it into casual conversation that you will be ringing in the new year cleaning out the soda machine without sounding like a used car salesman, that is usually always good for an extra 5-10%.  Still, usually you are cleaning out the soda machine, or worse at midnight. 


A lot of servers will always tell you that Christmas eve is awful to work too, but I always loved working on Christmas eve.  Being one of the few Jewish kids, I always volunteered for Christmas eve and it was always a blast. Christmas eve is typically not a very busy day, around lunch time you can get a rush, but things really start to wind down in the afternoon and a lot of restaurants close early, like at 8.00 PM.  I always volunteered to close Christmas eve and I always raked in a lot of cash.  Here's why.  Like I said at lunch there is a rush and Christmas eve gets you the "I'm sorry you have to work on Christmas tips" but around 3 or 4 in the afternoon things slow way down and what happens is management cuts the staff way down too (in the place I worked, there were only two waiters on after 4 which means we basically just split the dining room down the middle for the rest of the day.  If there were 5 waiters on, it would be a very slow shift, but because there are only two of you you get lots of tables, most of whom tip well.  You get a lot of people without big family gatherings to go to who are just grateful to find a place which is open and welcoming and like I said, you get the mercy tips.  Now, don't get me wrong, because it is just two of you and maybe a busboy, it is really, really busy.  They basically just seat the whole dining room so you can be waiting on 7 or 8 tables at a time.  But the cool thing is that a lot of your customers are cool about it, because like I said, they are just grateful to be eating at a place that's open on Christmas eve.  Normally I would work from say 12-close (which was 8.00) and I never walked with less than $175.  The downside was that when the place closed it looked like an autopsy and it took a long time to clean up everything. 


The absolute worst holiday to wait on tables (by leaps and bounds) is mothers day.  I have never found anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant that didn't have a special loathing for mothers day.  It just sucks like nothing else.  It is the busiest day of the year for most restaurants and in every restaurant I have ever worked in, it was not possible to ask for the day off on mother's day.  Even if you normally don't work Sundays, you're working mother's day.  It was easier to get out of the draft in the 1960's then it is to get out of working a mother's day shift.  They pretty much staff everyone on mother's day.  There is no lull, it is busy from the second the doors open until they close.  They put most people on a sort of swing shift where you work from like 11-5 and then 2-close and you just run, run, run.  Plus they put extra staff on mother's day.  Extra busboys, hosts and bartenders to keep things moving quickly out front.  Extra cooks and expediters and extra waiters to run food and refill ice bins and make coffee.  You'd think with all this extra staff it wouldn't be so bad, except that it is busy, you don't really get a break and you spend a full 8 hours just running back and forth.  And despite all the careful planning and prepping, all those extra people to ensure that things go smoothly, the restaurant goes down at least 3 major times and is on the verge of going down the rest of the time.  The place is like an ER for food all day long. 


If that's not bad enough,   the worst thing about mother's day by far are the customers.  I don't know what it is about this holiday, but it brings out the most backwards, rudest, crabbiest people.  We're talking rejected extras from the movie "Deliverance" here.  They are angry, hungry mobs all giving mom a day off from cooking (and by the looks of mom it is the only day off she gets all year) by going and waiting for 1.5 hours for a table and by the time they sit down all their good will toward mom gone and all they are is mad.  They order lots of fu fu drinks for the moms while their husbands guzzle draft beers.  They order appetizers, desserts and so forth, but they tip for shit.  They figure becaue they had to wait for a table, wait for bread, the 12 refills on their iced teas and everything, that you gave them shitty service.  I cannot remember how many times on Mother's Day I got a $5 or $7 tip on a $100 check. 


So, let's hear it for Arbor Day!

Tales from the darkside.....Part I

I don't know why I am on such a restaurant kick these days, maybe it is the nostalgia that the end of the year brings but I have been thinking a lot about my restaurant days, which I must say were some of the funnest years of my life.  Restaurant culture is like no other, totally unique and sort of an island of its own.  

I worked a lot of restaurant jobs, I've been a hostess, a cashier, a bartender, a cocktail waitress, a waitress an expediter and a manager.  I have had jobs for one day, 6 months, a year, 7 years.  I have quit by not showing up for a shift and I have definitely faked being sick to get out of a shift on more than one occasion.  

By far my most treasured memories from my restaurant years are the friends I have made and kept, now for decades.  Very many of these friends like to razz me about what a crappy employee I was since my cynicism and contempt for authority was completely unchecked during all the years I spent in the restaurant business.  Now in my current work, my colleagues still think I have unpacked all my cynical baggage, but they have not even scratched the surface of my evilness.  That's another unique thing about the restaurant business, there is no need to really have a whole lot of decorum.  Sure, with your customers, yes, you are playing a role, but the restaurant business has a huge underbelly, beyond that kitchen door and once you walk though it, all decorum is gone.  

OK, I have gone a little off topic, because I was talking about how my friends like to razz me about what a horrible waitress I was (and not horrible in that I was not a good server but more my utter contempt for anything corporate or happy, etc.).  When I see these friends, invariably we always go down memory lane and my husband (who didn't know me back then) gets a huge kick out of hearing my horror stories.  Still, even though I was a good waitress and actually made decent money at it, I did a lot of contemptous things while in the restaurant business, most of them when I was a waitress for a large corporate American chain. 

So, in my effort to come clean in the new year (why the hell I am making that effort, I don't know), here are just as couple of my dastardly deeds (or at least the ones I am willing to publish).  Here they are:

Doggie Bags - another restaurant friend of mine and I once had a contest to see how much food we could cram into one to-go box.  From that shift onward I sort of held the contest with myself.  You would not believe how much left over pasta can fit into a box the size of a Big Mac..  And one of those clear plastic containers that they use to make to-go salads?  I could fit leftovers of at least 3 dinners in there, plus bread.  My customers used to always thank me for being so thoughtful to put their stuff in a bag for them to carry.  I used to go so far as to put some empty to go boxes in the bag to make it look like everybody had their own container.  Little did they know (until they got home that is) that my kind act of thoughtfulness was only a way to cover up the evidence.  

You really can increase your tips with the Dessert Tray - I worked in a restaurant where they had a dessert tray.  Granted, a dessert tray is probably one of the very best ways to sell dessert, but I must admit I hated the hell out of having to show that stupid tray.  What bugged me about it is that this particular restaurant, which was a family restaurant, was one of these places that didn't take reservations and the idea of the whole concept (despite their advertising) was to turn tables, turn and burn.  They made money by turning tables and we made money by turning tables.  Now true, dessert added a premium amount of money to a check, 4 desserts was easily an extra $20 on the check (by 1990's standards) which meant an extra 3-4 bucks for me per table.  The problem was that dessert puts everybody in slow motion.  They want coffee with their dessert, which means most likely they are going to linger, so yeah, I have an extra $4 in tips, but guess what, they have just sat for extra half hour.  In that half hour, another table could be eating salad and waiting for their entrees.  When I added it up, I figured the best way for me to make the most money was to turn and burn as fast as possible, so I often skipped showing the tray and that always earned me a lot of flack from my managers.  I didn't give a crap about my add on sales, after all I don't make commission, I make tips.  Plus, on principle, the Dessert Tray seemed out of place to me in this particular establishment whose sole purpose was to feed as many covers as possible and turn and burn.  Dessert means linger, relax, have another cup of coffee, it totally went against the principles.  A dessert tray belongs in the kind of restaurant where there is maybe 2-3 seatings a night, where you are supposed to linger, with coffee and after dinner drinks and the rest of it.  

Anyhow, there were times I would show the damn tray, like for instance if they ordered coffee, therefore they are lingering already  or if they asked for it.  Or on those occasions where I was sick to death of my manager busting me for not showing the tray, I would show it just to shut him or her the f*** up.  

So, on one particular night, it had to be a weekend when we were so busy that we ran from the second we walked in the door all night.  One of those nights where you had to wait for eveyrthing from bread, to salad to your friggin veggie side.  This is one of these nights where the kitchen just looks like an operating room in a war zone.  One of my last tables told me that they were interested in dessert (I was interested in getting my ass over to TGI Fridays to knock back some Absolut and cranberries at a deep discount).  I drag out the tray which also looks like it has been though an autopsy, after so many times being taken in and out of that little dorm fridge.  And my customers settle on our seasonal dessert which is this 6 layer chocolate cake, served with vanilla icecream and whipped cream.  Yippee.  I go in the back, thinking I am never getting out of there and already deciding how much extra am I going to tip the busboys to clean my tables and do my sidework.  I get back to the dessert fridge where all the desserts are already plated and of course......fridge empty. SHIT.  I trudge onto the back walk in cooler, already determined that I am not going to fill up the fridge by bringing a whole damn tray of chocolate cakes to put in the fridge, but I am going and getting my one crappy piece.  I go back to the tray cart that has the desserts and guess what, no f-in chocolate cake.  I go to the prep guy and he tells me, we're out.  And I say, are they frozen, and he says, nope, we're completely out.  SHIT.  So, now after I have invested 5-7 minutes in this dessert, I have to go out there and tell them we're out, they probably won't want anything else which means I will have invested all this time for them and I will get zippo for it.  

But wait!  I've got an idea.  I run out to the little dorm fridges where the dessert trays are, the first fridge, the cake has a big gash at the end where the icing is, that's a big fat no.  I go to the other side where the other fridge is and I take out the tray and on first inspection, it looks okay, no gashes, no little piece that fell off the end.  I touch the layers a little with my fingers to see if it is too stale and it pretty much feels like a cake that has been exposed to the elements for about 8 hours and I think, all is lost.  But wait!  I have brain wave.  The cake gets half covered up with ice cream and whipped cream which can make the cake a bit soggy.  Soggy + Stale = fresh cake!  I am a genius!  I'll just turn the piece over, so that the side exposed to the air is down, throw ice cream and whipped cream on top of it and voila!  So I run with a tray to a closed dining room where people aren't lurking around (because I can't do this in the kitchen, I'll get caught).  I run in the kitchen to get a dish, I flip the cake onto the dish and run back to the kitchen (because this dessert is really taking a long time).  I cut back in and walk back to the walk in fridge and come out as if I am carrying this cake from the fridge the whole time.  I go and put the ice cream and just as I am about to squirt the whipped cream, and here comes my frigging manager, saying "don't tell me you showed the dessert tray" and I just laugh and then he says, we sold out of that cake.  I say, yeah I heard but I checked back in the walk in and there was one plated on a tray with chocolate mousse, so this is the last one. This idiot (who I not very secretly used to call Ferret Face because he reminded me of Frank Burns from MASH) congratulated me on my resourcefulness and I serve the dessert and not only do I apologize for taking so long but I  tell them the delay was because we were sold out, but I checked in the fridge in the back anyway and tell them how lucky it was that I looked on the chocolate mousse tray and found their cake.  And of course, because of the inconvenience, my manager insisted that their coffees be on the house.  Victory.  Free anything will keep anyone from complaining.  That three top ate every bite of that cake and ended up leaving me a $20 tip on a $45 check.  It does pay to show the tray.  Lesson learned. 

These are some of my tamer stories, I've done worse, believe me, but you will just have to stay tuned!

Anyone feel like going out to eat?

Copycat, Copycat!

OK, well I spent a lot of my day reading one of my new favorite blogs (www.servernotslave.wordpress.com) and I must say that writing about the years I have spent in the restaurant bizz has always interested me a little.  Mostly because it is a very unique business, which attracts a multitude of truly funny, strange, messed up people (including moi apparently). 

So, I am not going to to go into my whole restaurant history now (maybe in another post) but I just got done reading some rauciously funny stuff on this blog about the restaurant business and it got me thinking.  Now, I have always been a firm believer that no one should really go out to eat unless they have spent about a month working in a restaurant.  While I think that there isn't a business out there that doesn't have an 'underbelly' (which is not visible to those not working within that business), I think the gap between the illusion and the underbelly in the restaurant business is huge, vast, continental and if you have not ever worked in a restaurant then you probably don't have a clue about what really goes on in a restaurant, or how annoying even the most likable person can be as a diner.  

My list of all the annoying aspects of restaurant life (because it is not a job, it is a lifestyle unique to itself) is very very long but right now, for the sake of anyone reading this who wants to learn how to go out and eat successfully (and for my own ranting jones), I am going to give my own personal list of situations which pissed me off when I worked as a waitress, bartender or hostess in my 10+ years in the restaurant business.  These are definitely situations that you as a diner should try like hell to avoid and if you must, you should tip extra and be gracious about.

These are in the order that they popped into my head:

1.  Separate checks - one of the biggest pain-in-the-behind requests EVER.  Separate checks always adds a whole lot of time consuming work with no benefit for a server (they HATE you), even though today's technology does allow for it, it is still organising a bunch of little pieces of paper and having to make change or organise credit card receipts.  Invariably the same people who want separate checks are the same people who order only an entree or a salad and nothing else (no drinks, appetize rs or desserts).  I hate to say this but it is usually the ladies who do this and it is usually the type of ladies who are not good tippers.  I could forgive it for senior citizens because let's face it, they lived long lives, fought against the Nazis to give us our freedom, etc. But if you are under the age of 60 don't ask for separate checks! Split the bill between you or bring a calculator but don't make us go through an extra minimum 15 minutes of work (which slows down your service).  And if you must ask for separate checks, do us a favor and pay for the extra effort by leaving a more generous tip.  

2.  Campers - people who sit for ages after their meal has concluded.  Do you not realize that the whole way a server makes money is by turning their tables over and by you sitting there to talk or read your newspaper or book, you are depriving them of their ability to earn money and pay their bills or to finish their shift and get the F out of there?  Seriously, once the check is paid, you should not sit for more than 5 or max 10 minutes to get your stuff together.  If you want to sit and talk leisurely and linger over coffee or a drink, go to the bar (that's what it is for) or head to Starbucks. If you must camp, this is definitely something you should pay your server for via extra tippage, because he or she has to wait there until you are finished.  

3.  Gobblers and Suckers - people who run your ass off for more bread and drinks everytime they see your face (particularly when there are free refills).  Many restaurants nowadays offer free refills on drinks, that doesn't mean that you should do your best to drink 17 cokes during lunch.  I always appreciate free refills because I am someone who usually wants a second drink when my meal comes and I appreciate that I don't have to pay extra for it.  So, as a server, I was always prepared to refill drinks just before or just after the entree arrives but, believe me when I say that if you were on your 4th iced tea when salads were over, I was hanging out in the back, firming up my post-working plasns, which uasuaslly involved drinking at a local bar with other waiters, bartenders, cooks and the occasasional manager.  All the while letting you slurp ice cubes and taking my time about it.  Restaurants offer free refills as an incentive, it doesn't mean that you should drink 2 liters of coke during lunch (your mom never would have let you do that at home).  

4.  Large parties - large parties can sometimes be good (and I am talking about 10 or more people) but more often than not, particularly during the lunch and dinner hours, large parties are the kiss of death for a server.  The group ties up all their tables, you run your ass off filling up drinks, bread and bringing dressing on the side and usually only get the bare minimum tip.  It is way easier and more profitable to wait 5 tables of 3 people then one table of 15. Everything takes longer because there is just more of it (drinks, food, clearing).  If you are a large party you should be tipping a little extra (20 percent minimum) and even more for good service (25 percent), because believe me your server is running much more for you as a group.

5. Kids (and I am a bit loathe to put this down since I am a mom and I do go out to eat with my child).  It's not kids per se, but kids at a table can be a lot of work, particularly if the kids equal or outnumber the adults at the table.  Kids meals are really cheap compared to regular entrees and include drinks which means that if you are a table of 3 adults and 3 kids, your server is working 3 times as hard for you but making less than they would on a table of  4 adults.  Many times, kids need special orders (no sauce, no ice,), they spill and make a mess (which we need to clean up) and many parents let their kids run the roost or run wild at a restaurant.  Now granted, I know how difficult it is to make a toddler sit for an hour, but please if you let them out of their chair, please get up and go with them and don't let them run around (even around the table).  We are carrying hot things, they can get hurt and they just get in the way.  If your kid is crying (and I have been in that situation many times with my own child), please get up and take your child out of the dining room (if the weather is warm you can try going outside) or just walking to another part of the restaurant might help.  I appreciate while haivng kids should not prevent you from going out and enjoying yourself at a restaurant that it is a lot of work to serve kids and be generous.  

5.  Snapping, waving or interruping.  Nothing used to make me run into the kitchen crankier than when someone would try to get my attention by snapping, waving or much worse, interrupt me when I was at another table.  I know you are there and believe me, everytime I walk past you, even if I don't say anything, I look at your drinks, bread, etc. to see if I need to bring you something more. And when I am not sure I stop and ask and if I don't and I run off, it is likely that I need to bring food out of the kitchen to you or another table (and therefore you will need to wait for more coffee anyway).  Now I realize that there are probably some servers who don't do this, but the majority are attentive. At least wait until you have been ignored before you begin the grand gestures.  The most elegant way to do this, is to remember your server's name (he or she introduced him or herself to you when they greeted you) and to say, 'Dana, we'd love some more bread'.  Always a winner.

6.  Ask repeatedly where your food is - admittedly this is a difficult concept for non restaurant employees to grasp but your server has nothing to do with how fast your food is prepared.  That is done by the cooks and there are a zillion things going on in the kitchen.and once your server orders your food (by entering your order into the computer or POS), they have nothing to say about it and they are waiting for it the same as you.  It definitely happens that food can take longer than it should, but please don't take this out on your server.  Their bugging the chef/cooks about it only slows things down.  If it is taking a while, a good server should come and say something to you about it (because they have already checked) and will tell you, that it is delayed but should come up now (or in a few minutes).  If it still doesn't appear, a good server will usually send the manager over to your table either then or just after the food arrives.  If none of these things happen ask your server politiely what is happening and if you do not get a satisfactory answer, ask to speak to the manager, as they are the only person who can do anything about the situation.  

7.  Take a million years to order.  If you say you are ready to order, then be ready.  Read the menu and know what your choices are and make them in advance.  If you have kids with you who are shy about ordering, know what they want and be ready to step in should their bashful sides take over. 
If you have questions, then ask questions but unless you can make an on the spot decision, ask the server to come back in a few moments while you ponder your choices.  He or she has other tables and other things to do and you are just slowing things down for everyone including yourself.  People mistakenly think that if they ask questions and don't keep the waiter there it will slow things down, but just the opposite is true.  Question, ponder, then order.  

8.  Ask the hostess a bunch of times if you are 'next' or when your table will be ready.  If you have to wait for a table, most restaurants will give you an idea of how much time you have to wait.  If that amount of time has not elapsed, don't go and check with them.  First of all, the time they have given you is an estimate, if people don't leave their tables or the kitchen or busboys are behind, it can take a little longer (particularly if you have 6 or more people in your party because then they need more than one table in the same area).  The more you ask the hostess to answer questions they cannot answer, the longer it takes you to get to your table. 

9.  Complain about the food after you have finished eating.  This is a sure way to piss off everyone.  You eat half the entree (or all of it - and believe me this happens all the time).  If there is something wrong with the food or if you don't like it, please say something to the server right away.  First off, then there is a good chance to fix whatever the problem is.  But if you ate it and then complain about it, then you just look like a jag-off (excuse my Pittsburgh vernacular) who is trying to score something for free.  If you do get something for free, you should factor the cost of that into your tip, becaue even though you are not paying for it, your server still had to get it and serve it to you (ditto if you use a coupon).  And if the problem was that the food wasn't good, you shouldn't take that out on your server, he or she didn't prepare it.  If it was really not good, then you should take it out on the restaurant by not eating there again but not on your server.