Rape in the 'straunt

In the past two weeks, I've failed at a couple of crucial things at the restaurant where I work. Whilst some of these infractions were less severe (showing up for a shift with a slightly wrinkled shirt, not using tongs to retrieve a food item, exhaling casually onto an authority figure while severely hung over, etc.) some of them have had lasting ramifications that have made me wonder whether or not quitting my waiter job of three-plus years was a smarter decision than merely showing up for my evening shift.

My first mistake was relatively innocuous; I responded sheepishly to the brand of questioning that the line cooks had devised for the evening.

I did something waiters should never do with back-of-house staff. I used self-deprecating humor.

I thought nothing of it until the contagious leper of a rumor I had kept at bay for a long time ironically turned around to embrace me. You see, one of the line cooks reached out towards me again a week later with a “genuinely concerned” “how come?” style of questioning. They wanted to know more about it. Instead of actual honesty, I proceeded to facetiously respond in a careless fit of unbridled ignorance. Observe;

At that particular moment, I had unknowingly committed restaurant suicide.

The two Hispanic line cook brothers have since then been using every opportunity possible to wage pseudo-homosexual warfare on me every time I’ve entered the kitchen. I walked in two weeks ago and bent over to wash my face only to hear seductive whistling coming from behind me. I’ve leaned over to scoop ice for a beverage and felt an open hand smack my out-thrust ass. I’ve placed dirty dishes into the bus-bucket and immediately felt an unmistakably horny member grazing my goose-bumped femur. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next time I humbly asked the pantry for a side of caesar dressing and received a shallow dish full of human semen sprinkled with ground pepper. If I were to reach up for something on a high shelf tomorrow evening, I might very well experience full-on rape in public. But as a joke.

That's restaurant humor for you.

I might as well just quit at this point.

Stuff I Drew at Work

So I decided that when things get slow at work and I find myself standing around with my whole fist up my own ass, I'll do something productive for my awesome blog. Every so often, I'll be doing installments of "Stuff I Drew at Work."

Here's the first one!

Lobster - "No, YOU get in the pot."

The Stanley Cup Story

I've been putting off telling this tale for some time, so I figured I'd better publish it before it got too late/I forgot it.

A friend of mine who works in the kitchen at an undisclosed restaurant told me about some relatively inhumane conditions he once experienced. He regaled me with the intricacies of slaving away in the unfurnished armpit of "Satan's Ass, Indiana" where the Fahrenheit temperature rivals Stephen Hawking's IQ.

In the restaurant business, food is typically required to be cooked. As a restaurant owner, you would do well to understand that factor and then take care of your kitchen employees...unless the nearest air conditioner was further away than the nearest alternative form of employment. If that was the case, you’d have nothing at all to worry about.

But if your employees were melting (And you hadn’t happen to have Frosty the Snowman working the grill or the Wicked Witch of the West on the steamer), you’d take action to ensure your kitchen’s steady success. As a kitchen supervisor, you would do this by granting your kitchen prospects their minor wishes!



One of the line cooks at my place of employment had caught wind of a rare and secretive moment; the Stanley Cup was being presented for a private party in the next building over.

Because the local hockey team had recently won this highly coveted trophy (and being the die-hard hockey fan that my cook friend was), there was simply no way in this plane of existence or the next that he was going to let this opportunity slide right by him.

So he nonchalantly asked for a ten-minute break.





So my cook friend left on his pilgrimage. He would not fail.



Now I can’t really imagine what lengths someone would go to in order to get the one thing he or she wants more than anything. I wasn’t particularly clear on the details of how my cook friend was able to gain entry to a private event and lay his hands on something that less than 1% of the population of the Unites States and Canada get to ever be in an enclosed room with. So I decided to fabricate everything after this sentence.

My cook friend approached the door man in his greasy apron and told him flat out he was here for the event. The doorman asked for his name so that he could look it up on the guest list. My cook friend gave him a fake name, and when the doorman looked down at the list to search for it, my friend whipped out a concealed frying pan and bonked him upside the head.



As soon as the doorman fell to the floor unconscious, my cook friend proceeded to step over his body and make his way into the room.

Upon entry, my cook friend spied a foreign dignitary with a monocle and holding a fancy cocktail, chatting with other well-to-dos about how barbaric hockey was. My cook friend walked up to the dignified gentleman and made a wildly inappropriate comment about his grandmother’s cleavage, causing not only several old-timey exclamation such as “well I never!” and “I do say, good sir!” but also for the gentleman’s monocle to fall dramatically into his drinking glass. In the ensuing confusion, my friend grabbed a bottle of exorbitantly expensive champagne which had been displayed prominently at the small table’s center and made a wild dash toward the Stanley Cup.

After roundhouse kicking a security guard out of the way, my friend uncorked the champagne with his right eyelid and without haste, emptied it into the Stanley Cup. In one smooth motion, he hoisted the cup over his head and dumped its contents directly into his face.



And that is how my cook friend was able to hang out with the Stanley Cup and somehow not get arrested and fired.

If you don't know dick, don't complain.

In the restaurant business, there are far too many people who come in, order something, and then complain because what they received didn't resemble/taste like/smell similar to their concept of the dish.

This is incredibly annoying to everyone else because often enough, the people who made the dish have probably made it hundreds of thousands of times before. The restaurant staff of any decent eating establishment probably knows more about the food you are ordering than you will ever know.

In hospitality, it is implied (and sometimes explicitly stated) that the guest is always right.

Thus, the paradox.

I have found throughout my restaurant tenure that this overly popular notion has emboldened many a guest to complain, often without warrant, and even get some free food and a few ounces of sympathy at the expense of the server, the chefs, and the organization.

Some time ago, I had a group of business-type-ladies from Tennessee. One of them ordered a dish (of which Cajun-style-salmon was the centerpiece), and received it cooked through (medium well). She immediately complained to me, saying that "It looks all burnt and tough."

Despite my reassuring her that it was merely the Cajun spices that she was observing and that she received it cooked through, she insisted that I remove it and bring a new one back that was "a little more medium."

In the food world, "Medium" denotes something cooked through, but with a slightly warm center. This pertains to fish, steak, etc.,.

Upon receiving her salmon medium, she instantly complained to the management that her fish was "raw in the middle." The management again reassured her that her dish was in fact medium, and that she had received exactly what she had asked for.

Needless to say, she had it taken away, had half her bill complimented, and went away feeling like the people charged with her dinner for the evening were incompetent.

I'm all for speaking up about your dish, but only in the following scenario;
You did not receive specifically what you had asked for, and you've confirmed the inaccuracy with your server.

If you don't know a damned thing about what you ordered, it's ok to ask what you should expect. But don't complain if you don't know what the hell you're talking about. It's that simple.