The Waiter Test

So it’s been a while since I decided to update this blog. I’m not okay with that. But here it is.

I've got some news, however;

Recently, the management at the restaurant where I work decided to implement a thorough test for all of its current employees. For many of the new hires, the test was significantly difficult.





For the rest of us, the test was incredibly easy.



Although it broke my heart to watch the newer portion of the staff racking their brains to find the complete compendium of ingredients in the lobster melt, I was infinitely appreciative that nobody actually asked me to take the test yet. Whether that was intentional or not, I was ultimately grateful that the management didn’t need to have documented proof that I had the ability and the know-how to sell a shitty bottle of wine to a throng of old ladies.



The saddest part of all of this was that someone eventually found out that I never took the test. So they sat me down and put one in front of me.

How bad could it be?



I was determined to bang the test out at quickly and exit the restaurant at my earliest opportunity. I trained dozens of employees throughout my tenure. I showed plenty of waiters how to operate terminals and serve food. I taught countless men and women about the inner workings of kitchen etiquette. How hard could this test have possibly been?



I was shit out of luck. I didn’t know the majority of the answers. The information would have come more easily to me if I had slept in that day and dreamt the answers up. So I scribbled in a bunch of subtly fictitious answers.

As if on 3-day cue, my manager approached me to screen the answers to my test.



I was so definitely boned.

…Or so I thought.



What the hell...

...They believed me.

And I'm still employed.

How Good Waiters Become Cats

Any good waiter has spent time developing a sharpened instinct and a way of moving that comes into play often enough in the daily grind. I was talking to a bartender I know recently, and she told me a story about how she was carrying glassware and managed to drop one of her easily-breakable objects while in transit. Instead of being able to catch it or somehow lessen the fall of her glassware, it simply bounced off of the floor and landed unharmed.



That could have been a one-in-a-million circumstance, but most service staffers usually muster a snap-second “Oh-shit-something-is-going-terribly-wrong” coping mechanism which prompts us to react in a very particular way before we even know what we’ve done.

In any restaurant, your trip through the dining room will have customers throwing out their chairs suddenly to go to the restroom, small children tearing around without looking where they’re going, people swinging coats on in grandiose manners, other servers racing around corners, people gesticulating wildly, and all other sorts of wild, unpredictable nonsense. And you’ll usually be holding plates of food and trays of drinks. And you’ll be making that trip forty or fifty times in an evening.

In this environment, you’ll eventually become what I refer to as a “Cat.”

You can tell when someone is new to the service industry. He will look like there is nothing more terrifying than carrying multiple plates. He will pace through the dining room at 3 feet per hour until reaching the table. And his eyes will have never left his payload.



Taking the story from the beginning a step further, I was carrying six pint glasses in a 6-rack formation back to the dish room. The middle glass slipped out from the bunch and hurtled perilously to the floor.





Without even thinking, I scrunched the remaining 5 glasses in my hands together for safekeeping and used my right toe to kick the glass back into the air.



I hopped about 6 inches off of the floor, and snatched the glass midair between my ankles.



After I landed, my brain caught me up on what I had just done on adrenaline-fueled instinct. Immediately after that, my first reaction was to look around frantically and say;

“JESUS LORD GOD TELL ME SOMEONE JUST SAW THAT!!”

It was an immensely satisfying moment. Probably made more intense by the fact that I had just prior been on the verge of failure.

Another cat I know had the pleasure of serving a mean, senile old man. I don’t know what it is about old people, but after a certain age most of them tend to want to interact through awkward close-range grapples.

When your server is carrying a tray of iced teas, you as a customer would probably think to get his attention with a wave or an “excuse-me” if the situation is somewhat urgent. If you need another beverage, any of the above methods may apply. This is a picture of the standard hand-wave.



This gentleman, who had been ill-mannered since his arrival, saw his server (who I will remind you was at the time carrying a tray of iced teas), and grabbed him by his tray-carrying arm.

My friend almost lost his beverages but because of his sharp reflexes, he was able to release himself from the death-grip and counter-swing his arm to stabilize the tray. Many of my server friends might have suggested that he accidentally “lost” the drinks all over this grouchy old man and let him get what he deserved. What was so urgent that he had to physically grab my friend and nearly caused a big accident? He just wanted to begrudgingly demand his check.

You can always tell when someone works in this business if they say "Behind you" whenever they walk by outside of your field of vision. It's because he or she is a trained cat.

Holidays; A Time of Good Cheer

When the holidays approach, it’s universally understood that they represent a time of peace, harmony, and unity. They are a part of the year when it is important to spend time with your family, and create memories of fun and happiness. You catch up on recent developments, you eat good food and drink good wine, and you share your happiness with those around you.

Except when you work in a restaurant.

Chances are that when you work in a restaurant or similar business, someone of the management clan has approached you to ask that you give up those loving, caring times in order to make an unequivocal sum of money just to provide the services of a skeleton crew in a trivial prison of monotony for the express purpose of further padding a CEO's pockets.

Anyone could tell you that they've had this happen.



If you're a sound person who enjoys spending holidays with your family, it makes you miserable.

Let me explain;
There's an explicit contract that you do anything but sign when you take a job as a restaurant employee which states that you voluntarily concede all of your celebratory holidays. You justify it by telling yourself that you will make a decent amount of money in the long run, because you'll probably have a few kick-ass Saturday shifts to keep you knee-deep in booze and not-being-evicted stew.

When the holidays roll around however, you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who isn't a tumbleweed or a chirping cricket who will help you spend time with your family.



You'll be scheduled for sure. You'll be promised an early cut so that you can leave and at least catch a few minutes of family time.

But in all reality, you'll be there the entire holiday, waiting desperately for someone sitting at your table to finish their unconventional celebration at a place far from home so that you can imagine what your own holiday would resemble.

So you get grouchy. By the time you've realized that the restaurant has stolen family time that you'll never get back, you will have contemplated murder by means of shoving an entire deep-fried turkey into an HR-Rep's eye socket.

...and no one will ever remember owing you a favor.

A Higher-Than-Thou Health Inspection

The pervasive cliche of the "Health Inspector" is a notion that scares restaurant managers into operating their kitchens as strictly as possible. It makes waiters, chefs, and other assorted employees do things like wear gloves when they touch silverware, not eat twizzlers while operating the deep fryer, and not serve chicken cutlets to guests that have since been accidentally dropped on the floor in excess of four times.

Some restaurants take this notion to the next level on their own volition, seemingly to make it seem like Jesus Christ sits down to dinner there every Sunday afternoon. These restaurants bring their own health inspectors, paid for by the company, just to come in and "make necessary health changes to the restaurant's operating procedure." Oops, that was a typo. What I meant to say was "fuck with everyone for absolutely no reason."

A health-inspector came in recently to one of the restaurants I work at. She wouldn't be worth her six-figure salary if she didn't come in and fuck with everyone and the fruits of their labors at completely fucking random.



They do this to reassure their mass market that they are completely perfect and would never put food in front of you that would put your health or well being at any risk.

Talking points;

-If you throw out hundreds of dollars worth of food that is one or two degrees warmer than specified temperature, the company is losing money. And wasting food. In a time when being green and non-wasteful is a selling point, potential customers will look down on you for committing such heinous acts of waste.

-By tearing apart a restaurant that you spend less than 1% of your time at, you are effectively tearing down and destroying the hard work that people who make 1/50th of your salary are spending their mornings and evenings doing. This creates unnecessary resentment, and could possibly endanger your life.

-Many of the issues that you are "circumventing" are trivial and uncontrollable, and should not be blamed on employees. They deal mostly with the poor functionality of equipment and appliances. Explained; if you fail restaurants and suspend employees for things like refrigerators not being cold enough, you are misdirecting blame and targeting the wrong issues to "resolve" the problems.
Try fixing the refrigerators and replacing the air conditioning in the sweltering kitchens instead of firing the line cooks.

-Instead of tying the management of the restaurant up in meetings to address problems during business hours, try remembering that there are people trying to have lunch who aren't getting their concerns addressed by the people who are paid to reassure them.

-Because the health inspector was yelling at various members of the kitchen staff, a 5-minute dish which was supposed to get to a table that was in a half-hour hurry took more than 40 minutes to arrive. Instead of having a quick lunch, they spent the better part of their lunch break thinking their waiter was an idiot and couldn't handle a simple task. And they left hungry.

If you don't work on the restaurant level, it isn't that hard to pay simple attention to the basic things that pay your salary every week. While breathing down the necks of people who are trying to provide a good evening to the everyman, you are ruining the experience(s) of the people who pay your overblown salary.

The Necessity of Micromanagement

The true telling factor of what life is like in any restaurant depends heavily on the competence of its management team. In privately-owned restaurants, managers are typically the friends of the head boss who can be quite demanding, but who are agreeable, sometimes fun, and actually have souls.

The managers at a chain restaurant have to adhere to codes and endless tirades of corporate propaganda in order to do things like "effectively govern" and "keep their jobs."

Due to the tier-based trickle-down effect of management wisdom implied by the latter example, many disastrous things can happen to the basic base-slave. Oops, that was a typo. I meant to say "waiter who has slightly fewer freedoms than an indentured servant with debts to the mafia."

Observe;



At this point, someone from management usually comes over to stifle your creativity and squash any impressions you have of any kind of utility by saying something non-confrontational like;



...but in reality, the manager in question has no idea what you are doing, why it is necessary, or even why he or she has to venture any form of commentary. But something needs to be managed, and at that point in time, that something is YOU.

You may even try to argue;



But in reality, no manager in a corporate chain will ever listen to a better idea, even if it would revolutionize the way the company does business. Paperwork would have to be filed, people would have to be satiated, credit would have to be due. All in all, the company's CEO would probably love the idea you had if you and the guy were face to face. The reality of the situation is that no matter what you try to do or who you try to subvert in order to create a better working environment, you'll be strangled with red tape from the lower management team to the very top of the pile of assholes running HR for the company.

So you do the only thing you know how;

You get wasted after your shift with your coworkers and bitch about how dumb everyone is. Then you wake up the next day and go right back to work.

Seven Words You Can't Say In A Restaurant

Hey readers. Just to curb any chance you may have thought this post would be a delightful spin off of everyone's favorite George Carlin routine, there will not officially be seven words on this list. In reality, I can't imagine there's more than three words I've ever used in any restaurant environment that have received more than a cocked eyebrow.

I guess I'm just a sucker for campy names when it comes time for a serious post.

Let's get down to brass tacks.

Despite the fact that the restaurant is the only professional forum where it is okay to talk about things like nipples, rectum massages, skullfucking, cauliflower, and Ronald Reagan, I've discovered the one topic which is completely taboo. Ironically, the only phrase you can't mention is "sexual harassment."

If someone feels "sexually harassed," the harasser's career at the restaurant is almost certainly over.



You see, in the restaurant, waiters, cooks, bartenders, and even the non-English-speaking support staff will constantly be quipping back and forth in the most perverse manner attainable. As mentioned in earlier posts, homoerotic suggestiveness and depravity are all but acceptable in the colloquial dialogue of the restaurant underbelly. This isn't to say that if someone on the staff were uncomfortable, that that person would not be accommodated. They rest of the staff would almost certainly spare the one affected person/lesbian/feminist/socially awkward malcontent/overly-conscious idealist if that individual were to publicly and knowingly isolate his or herself from the crude fracas.

If that one person decided to go to the management with his or her concerns, that person would be doing a gravely unacceptable and irreversible thing. That individual would be broaching a topic that would upset the very balance that helps keep the restaurant staff friendly, trusting, and above all, sane. That person would potentially get someone fired because he or she feels they have been SEXUALLY HARASSED.

The caveat in all of this is that the person affected doesn't necessarily have to be the subject of any of the things said or done. That would be too easy. The person can overhear a joke, read an obscure word, or even receive an incorrectly interpreted glance in order to retaliate and get someone fired. If the person accused happens to be a respected or well-liked employee at the restaurant, then the accuser will have made an enemy of everyone at the restaurant. That person will be retaliated upon in every legal manner capable by the restaurant's staff.

His or her tables will be repeatedly sat with destitute high-school students and families with screaming infants. That person's side work will become the most rigorous, often involving scrubbing toilets and counting toothpicks. Nobody will talk to that person without necessity.

The staff of the restaurant protects its own, and will quickly make enemies with those who threaten that sanctity. Forever.

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.