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."

A Long Time Coming

If you’re wondering why I haven’t posted any new restaurant tales in the last three weeks, you are probably reading this now for one of three reasons. Either you;

A) Think I’m a fantastic writer who deserves the leniency and undying devotion of an anonymous audience in order to support his craft
B) Live with your parents, are unemployed, and really have nothing else to do
OR
C) Really hate me and are wondering whether or not this next post is a device being used to announce or predict my own untimely death (such as a suicide note)

Great news, everyone!

I’ve just been injured and unable to work. I’m not dead after all!

I returned to work in the restaurant after ALMOST dying, and almost immediately found myself able to pick up where I last left off!

Here’s the next installment. Oh, and for those who picked letter ‘C,’ I’m really sorry to have disappointed you.

Disgusting, Unsanitary Vermin

If you’re a regular human being, you probably have a restaurant or bar (or even two or three of them, if you‘re me) that you really enjoy going to. These places are typically somewhere where you go to relax; you trust the cuisine, the atmosphere is ideal, and you are probably on a first-name basis with the people getting you loaded.

That said, there are certain things you may see when you are there which you are more likely to overlook.



Depending on your tolerance for the locale, you may adjust this particular preference to taste.



If you’re an established regular at that place, you probably wouldn’t send the whole meal back. After all, you’re on a first name basis with Hugo the owner, and his feelings would be pretty hurt if he knew you weren’t happy with your croque monsieur.

The situation changes however, when you’re not a regular patron of a particular restaurant. Not only will you look at everything under a microscope, you’ll be more encouraged to be critical (especially if you’re at a function on someone else’s dime).



In one particular instance, I was helping a fellow waiter of mine clear the tables at which his party was sitting. One of the patrons abruptly grabbed me by the arm.



Oh boy, here it comes...




Mice are nothing new to me. Mice tend to sneak into homes and restaurants all the time. They whiz around at lightning speed, constantly terrified to be discovered by humans. They’re the very reason why all restaurants are required to store their food at least six inches off of the ground at all times.

But most folks don’t know that.

Most people will see a mouse and then immediately classify the restaurant they’re currently in as a dilapidated cesspool of rank filth, unworthy to even be judged by 3rd ½ world standards.

So I decided to ease this woman into the realm of restaurant reality. Our conversation ensued as follows;

Woman: “Aren’t you going to do anything about it?!”
Me: “I don’t think so. That mouse is way too fast for me to even attempt to catch it. Best we can hope for is to let management know, set out a few more traps, and hopefully we’ll catch it by morning.”
Woman: “That’s not good enough. Do you pass health inspections here?”
Me: “Ma’am, not only do we pass government health inspections, we ace our monthly company inspections, which are much more rigorous than the FDA requires. I suppose if you had to wonder about the occasional mouse, let’s just assume that the mice conveniently hide when the inspectors show up.”
Woman: “That’s ridiculous.”

At this point, I decided that I should at least make the faux play at placating her. So I feigned concern.

Me: “Did you happen to see where the mouse went?”
Woman: “Yes! It ran that way.” (Points somewhere)
Me: “So you’re saying it ran away from you?”
Woman: “Yeah…”
Me: “So in that case, we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

With that, I turned and walked away with my stack of dirty dishes. I had a feeling this lady was infuriated with me and my color commentary, and that my incendiary words had inspired her to take her complaints to the next level. To my surprise, she didn’t mention the mouse to anyone else. The managers never caught wind, the server at her table was never told and as far as I know, the secret stayed between us.

This outcome could have been for several reasons. The first one that jumps to mind is that restaurant guests are fairly used to being placated. If they complain about something, restaurant staff are all pre-programmed to make sure that person gets whatever they need to buy their silence. When that doesn’t happen, the fragile illusion the customer has comes crashing down. When the realization surfaces that his or her complaints are falling on deaf ears, the customer will begin to take a tally of what they like about that establishment, knowing that the restaurant staff are not necessarily motivated to bend to the whims of the customer’s grievance terrorism.

Beringer - White Zinfandel

In many instances, there's a wine on every restaurant's list that doesn't really deserve to be there. It's like warning someone that the knife you're about to hand them is sharp. You know it could cut you if you misuse it, but that's the only thing its meant to do.

In this case, I have spared you all a decent post because I've been attempting to start the newest ongoing joke in the restaurant/service business.

In case you're curious, take a look for yourself and invite your happy self on down to the facebook group I've created to tout this new mockery of culinary libation.

...if you have the guts.

The jokes begin with "Beringer - White Zinfandel" and end in a slogan that you, as the potential VP of marketing, have designed. The catch - you know your product is mediocre. Have fun!

Would THIS Surprise You?

On a regular busy Wednesday in the city, not too many requests fly over your head. Customers making absurd inquiries is pretty much par for the course, but this one request in particular actually caught me off guard.

I had a table of four, and the guest of honor had just finished being nominated as a Nobel Laureate in economics. He himself was in good humor, but one of his female counterparts (after her meal’s completion of course) had asked me to do something rather unorthodox.



Being a seasoned server, I pondered her request as I brought her wine bottle back to the kitchen.

Should I have;

A) Attempted to remove the label and presented it to her through the application of my own talents?
B) Brought the bottle to the kitchen and hoped they had the time/patience to remove the label with expensive kitchen equipment?
C) Lied to her about our restaurant’s inability to fulfill her request and sent her home with the original bottle and a polite single-handed birdie?
D) Bludgeoned her in the face repeatedly until she stopped moving?

For those of you who selected D, you’re the worst two dozen people I’ve ever met. Please consider a job at your local post office.

For those of you who selected A, imagine you don’t have fingernails.

For those who chose B? You might have to figure out how far you’d need to cram said wine bottle the rest of the way up your pussy. That lady just told you how to do your job. And you let her get away with being ridiculous.

For everyone who chose C, you’re normal. You’ve selected the outcome that required not only the most tact, but the least amount of effort necessary to satisfy both involved parties. You are an ambassador to the restaurant community.

For the B squad, you clearly have no idea what it is to approach the kitchen with a ludicrous burden. Cue the absurd request;



Here’s what line cooks typically think of your request.



So let’s make sure we have the right answer.

I pretended like I brought the bottle back into the kitchen and argued with the staff for fifteen solid minutes. The truth is, any waiter who isn’t hated by 100% of his or her coworkers would know better than to ask an absurdly lofty favor of people who are like family. So I came out with the wine bottle and handed it back to her.



…and just as I was bringing the full arsenal of reasons I thought her request was ridiculous, I realized that none of it was necessary.



I could have ended this 20 minutes ago.



It made me realize that for even considering this ridiculous request, I was being as dumb as she was.

The Rapture Approaches

Throughout the neighborhood, plenty of people have been rather adamant about the notion that the rapture is a real thing that will destroy us all, we sinner scum. But has that stopped people from coming out to eat and being compassionate?

It did not.

At every table I purposefully introduced myself thus;

“Welcome. I am Devon. As opposed to what you may have heard, we will be serving dinner throughout the duration of the rapture.”

If further silence pursued;

“…want to get lit up?”

Oddly enough, people bit. Old ladies got cocktails, young men got draft beers, and middle-aged people drained the reserves of Campari and soda water. With their parents in tow.

It led me to wonder--do religious deadlines make an important enough sales opportunity for hard working service staff?

It probably helped when Y2K was a huge deal. It probably will help me for the coming 2012 debacle.

The rapture became a point of humor at every opportunity.








The amount of impious mockery I was making on a day when the earth was predicted to end probably wasn’t smart. If for some reason the rapture were to happen, I was doing enough damage to say to the powers that be “please strike me down first.”

I was actually a bit relieved when the power didn’t fail and the earth didn’t start quaking at my feet at 6pm.

Greener Pastures

In the service industry, there are one of two paths - You can remain in its throes and ultimately try to improve it, or you can quit and get a ‘real’ job.

I spoke with one of my bartender friends tonight who dropped a 900 megaton bombshell on me.



After I sat in awkward shock for a few minutes, I began returning to life proper by using things like adjectives to express my emotional disposition. I was taken aback by the notion that someone in the service industry that I knew, trusted, and formed a relationship with was suddenly not going to be there anymore. Although I tried to sound as not gay as possible, I let him know that he was the only reason I came to his bar in the first place.

It got me thinking about how my shift went that evening.

The first table I waited on was a thug date. In my heart, I knew that assuming how patrons were going to tip me based on their outward appearances was how one ends up reserving a space in hell. But I did it anyway. As servers, we all do. I reacted from afar accordingly.



As a rule, I don’t let it affect my service, but the sad truth is that stereotypes wouldn’t exist if they weren’t fueled by some sort of truth. I felt myself giving up inside as I brought over their tap water.



They got a whole lot of food and amassed a significant check. It totaled perhaps 80 dollars.

After his meal, the gentleman grabbed my arm and handed me the book containing his payment. He shook my hand and said “I left you a 20 dollar tip. You’ve been great, player.”

It floored me. I had had no premonition of this situation, but I continued my shift as usual. It was actually by percentage one of the best tips I had all night.

My last guest was an older, well-dressed black gentleman who looked very familiar. He was by himself, and was generally in good spirits. I put in his order for dinner and chatted with him for the last hour the restaurant was open. Turns out he was a World War 2 veteran who on D-Day charged up the beaches of Normandy. He went on in his life to work several low-paying jobs scrubbing floors and serving people. After that, he quit it all and moved on to establish the first syndicated African American bank chain in the country. He developed real estate and became a developer for some of the most prestigious office buildings and high rises around. I googled him after my shift, and it completely checked out.

The one thing he wanted to impart upon me as my last customer of the night was that there was nothing you couldn’t do if you simply worked hard. After seeing my bartender friend that evening telling me about his hard work paying off, I began to wonder when my time would be.

It gave me a small epiphany. Since people can get stuck in the service routine doing the same thing for years, the hard work that you do isn’t entirely without advantage; you gain the knowledge it takes to transcend where you are and perhaps apply that knowledge to a higher pursuit. It might be towards opening your own restaurant, or it might be so that you take sales knowledge to a different line of work. You might even leave altogether and go into real estate or piñata manufacturing because you’ve learned that you can no longer tolerate serving.

I recently took on another full-time job, and will be applying myself on multiple fronts until I completely burn out. Or get super rich.

Time and hard work. Seems fitting that those two concepts came together for TFTR’s 50th post. Thanks for reading!

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.

The Restaurant Gemini

A restaurant is a business where you are required to market your personality. Although this is true in many jobs, one distinguishable trait about restaurant employees is that the personality they market to strangers drives them to become the opposite of the person they portray.

I’ll clarify.

A slick businessman might find that his success in his job is credited to the same traits that make him cunning and shrewd in his personal life.

A waiter who goes into restaurant work with a shining and upbeat personality may find himself trying to escape that personality in his off-time by being miserable and emotionally taxing around others.



It can also go another way.

I remember last summer, a group of my coworkers and I were having a particularly bad evening. There had been large parties right after big functions, there were lots of mistakes made, high-strung management figures had been laying down the discipline, and in general, nobody was in a very good mood. The whole lot of us (totaling about fifteen people) had just been asked to leave our favorite after work watering hole for a combination of reasons, and we proceeded to drunkenly stand outside of the bar, continuing to gripe and smoke cigarettes like a discombobulated group representing every role ever played by Clint Eastwood.



Before long, some Irish girls randomly walked by and asked us for directions to a bar that was nowhere near that location.



Because I was drunk and hazy, the above picture is the only memory I have of what the Irish girls looked like. They probably were not walking stereotypes as I portrayed them, but I do remember them telling me they were from Dublin. I do not remember them singing loudly or talking about Guinness, but I think I might have made an inappropriate IRA joke. My friends and I decided to direct them to a form of transit where they could get home (or wherever they were staying), but we were very drunk. And I don’t think we helped them very much.

Suddenly, a gang of punks walked by us to interrupt our being “helpful.” They started being more “helpful” by flirting with the Irish girls better then we were. Since we were all still kind of angry and their “help” was being better received, we became irate.

We squared off with the group of kids who were raining on our international flirting parade. They had tight clothes, jean jackets, and weinery haircuts. We liked our odds.



Needless to say, being outside of the restaurant after it robbed us of our patience, personality, and clemency, we weren’t an agreeable bunch of fellows. Our Nepalese food runner ended up swinging a chair around like a battle axe, one of the crazy female waitresses shoved one of the people over a poorly-placed flowerpot, and our Northern Californian hyphy-gangster bartender damn near dropped someone with a head butt.



At some point, the Irish girls left in terror, never to be seen again. The staff of the bar came out to tell us that the police were on their way. We took off, and so did they. Strangely enough, a few of the opponents were parked right in front of where we were parked. We approached our car, and they stood ready.

Instead of a fight (which we fully expected in rebuttal), we squared off again while my buddy reached into his pocket. He pulled out his keys and unlocked his car. As soon as it happened, both parties entered their vehicles and left. It was incredibly anti-climatic.

We left. I guess both parties just needed to blow off some steam. After all, we were all probably working doubles tomorrow at different restaurants.

A Happy Medium

I was reminded of something as business in the restaurant wound down late last night. I was waiting at the front, thanking restaurant guests as they left. One woman in particular left and then re-entered about ten seconds later. She looked to be in her mid fifties, had grayish hair, and probably wore a fanny-pack. Or didn't, I don't know. Even if she didn't actually have one, something definitely made her seem odd. She stared at me for a few excruciating seconds.



After a prolonged stare, I decided to re-break the silence.

Me; "Coming back for a second dinner?"

Her; "No....there's someone smoking right outside and I don't want to walk by him."

In situations like this, I realized that sarcasm is not only a necessary way to cope with odd people who go out to eat, but a fantastic security blanket. I let the conversation progress naturally.





Instead of offering her a sensible solution, I decided to push against the boundaries of her ridiculous needs with equal and opposable force.



I knew there was something off about this woman. She even continued having a conversation with me about how to solve the cigarette-smoking problem after I proposed that she instead take a fire elevator that smelled like fish instead of just walking out the front door. Then I remembered that I had waited on her before...



Granted she probably didn't react as drastically as I portrayed her in the dramatic recreation posted a half-inch upward, she definitely freaked out about having to touch receipt paper.

Me; "Now if you'll just sign your credit card receipt, we'll be all--"

Her; (Disgusted look) "I'm not touching that."

Me; "Why not?"

Her; (Throwing her hands in the air) "Haven't you heard the news? There's a chemical in receipt paper called CHT that gives you cancer!"

Me; (Audience participation--choose your favorite line)

A - "I don't watch "Hippie News."

B - "In that case, I probably have 8 cases of cancer in my index finger alone."

C - "Then why did you use a credit card? Or is that same chemical even more abundant on American currency?"

(Please post your vote in the comments)

The truth is, I don't remember what I said to her on that particular occasion. All I know is that on both occasions, I employed subtle sarcasm to help keep me from rolling my eyes and saying something that would inevitably get me fired. With most people older than 40 who have little else to worry about than hypochondriac cancer, your best bet is to feign some kind of concern while subtly implying that they are overwhelmingly easy to make fun of.

When you go out to eat, you'll do well to notice if your server is making fun of you. If you have a request that is extremely particular but are mildly afraid to ask it, see how your server reacts. If he or she reacts with an extremely acute attitude of concern but offers grandiose solutions, you're probably being made fun of but don't realize it. Joke's on you.

Valentine's Day - A Dynamic of Love

Valentine’s day means something entirely different to a service industry employee than it does to a person who has never waited tables. It’s for that reason specifically that I’ve never had a successful relationship with a non-waitress.

The woman I’m seeing now is a server, and we sat down together and had a conversation about Valentine’s day. We both decided with little debate that we were not the type of people to celebrate the festivities of the occasion. In a heartbeat, we unanimously made a decision that would make most women throw a violent tantrum.

We both wanted to work instead.

This is how the average person sees Valentine’s Day;



This is how a seasoned waiter sees Valentine’s Day;



It’s really very simple; There are precious few holidays where you can show up to work for a full shift and leave afterwards with an entire month’s rent in your pocket. Let’s analyze all of the reasons why this happens;

Reason #1 - The restaurant is busy.

The fact that it’s a holiday means that people want to celebrate it. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule (Flag Day, Labor Day, Kwanzaa), but Valentine’s Day is one of the major reasons that people take each other out to eat. There are countless couples that come in, and they all need people to do very basic things to give them what would normally be an unacceptably mediocre dinner--they are enjoying each other’s company, and could very well not give a damn if you actually served them a plate of kangaroo testicles in lieu of an actual dinner.

Reason #2 - The first date dynamic.

Let me illustrate this one;



For many people, Valentine’s Day is an opportunity to take someone out and not be alone. For these people, the rules of rational expenditure tend to fall to the wayside. They will buy things like expensive wine, dangerous flowers with sharp points on the stem, and Justin Beiber concert tickets. For a server, this mindset makes it much easier to ring up higher check totals.

Reason #3 - Good tips are a guarantee.

At the end of each couple’s dinner, the server’s tip is generally given with regard to the sliding scale of ‘How much I want to impress my date.’
The very least you might be given is around fifteen percent, but at that rate, the man paying the bill could care less if he were on a date with a bearded manatee. Furthermore, he’s probably not even expecting a post-date hand job.
At the other end of the tipping scale, I’ve observed gross over-tipping to the tune of 50-75% of the check total. The kind of guy who tips this well is on a date with a girl whom he is convinced makes Kim Kardashian look like an accordion-playing hobo. He’s hoping to somehow involve incense and candles into his post-date sexual encounter, and his friends will eventually grow tired of hearing about how great his date went.

Knowing all of this, I was pumped to go to work on Valentine’s Day. I even called ahead to see how many reservations there were at the restaurant I work for. This is what my boss told me;

Boss; “Devon, you’re not on the schedule.”
Me; “There must be some mistake.”
Boss; “Nope. We have a full floor, and you’re not on it.”

I reacted accordingly.



I hadn’t had a Valentine's Day off in four years. I didn’t know what to do with it.

So I went out to eat.

Yuppies and High Maintenance--An Issue Forever Unresolved

A waitress friend of mine passed a story along to me recently that I couldn’t pass up an editorial on. When you have been blessed by the bizarre circumstance of having to wait on a weird family whose minds have been poisoned by paranoid America, then God help you.

As servers, we all fear those who have way too much to fear.

She brought her family into the restaurant and instantly summoned her waitress.



Instead of listening, she immediately made a few demands. She asked specifically for bizarre vegetables for her children that most restaurants don’t have. She wanted things like cauliflower, asparagus, green beans, and (wait for it) “Steamed kale.”

She was the kind of hippie that made regular hippie’s highs come down. Imagine a 40-year-old artsy old bag who wished she had a hand in planning Woodstock. Now imagine the kind of dominance she had over her husband. Note - He was wearing a toupee that looked like a cross between Nick Nolte and a barrel of illegal fireworks. Within five minutes of entering the restaurant, he left suddenly to accept a phone call. Presumably from his wig sponsor.



As my waitress friend approaches, the mother is inconspicuously throwing her family’s belongings into a trash bag.



So besides being extremely needy right off the bat and having a husband with weird fake hair immediately accepting phone calls, there weren’t too many warning signs. But the fact that she immediately started putting her family’s coats and gloves into a trash bag underneath the table that she brought into the restaurant with her was a bit odd. That’s something homeless people do.

We have to assume she wasn’t homeless however. How do I presume to know? I am fairly sure homeless people and their families don’t have three distinct sets of allergies. And judging by the trash bag? She was probably a paranoid germaphobe.

My waitress friend found out about all of the allergies when the health-conscious mother of the family asked that there be no salt, pepper, seasonings, garlic, oil, butter, gluten, or anything that results in there being a flavor of any kind. At this restaurant, if anyone gives any indication that there may be hazards with any of the food, the servers are required to ask if anyone has any food allergies.

Now the children (who were around 12, 8, and 6) then started shouting out of turn what their allergies were.



The mother’s response to the question was that “there were too many to name.” In my opinion, if you are a halfway responsible parent with children that have life-or-death food allergies, you wouldn’t leave something like that to chance. Unless you’re just an overbearing hypochondriac health nut.

Before my waitress friend could even ask about a basic beverage order, the hippie woman interrupts to introduce herself and her children to the waitress. According to my friend, she had “some yuppie name like Bridget, and her kids were like ‘Flower‘, ‘Zodiac‘, and ‘Starship’ or some shit like that.”

By this point, my waitress friend had given up on the idea of suggestive selling, and resigned to bringing them iced tea or lemonade. In typical hypochondriac fashion, the woman grilled her for all of the ingredients in both of those things (I’m betting there isn’t another person on the planet who doesn’t already know what two ingredients compose ‘iced tea’). After shooting those down, the woman decided she wanted water instead. Simple enough?

Wrong.



After resolving it with a round of bottled water and a couple reassuring lies, they finally get around to ordering dinner. They didn’t hold back--appetizers, enormous lobsters, filet mignon, very nearly the entire menu. Prepared with careful regard to all of their individual allergies, of course.

By the time the food arrives, the husband with the indescribable hair is still on the phone somewhere in the restaurant. The woman asked my waitress friend to “go retrieve him,” and that it didn’t matter if she interrupted his conversation.

Sure enough, the woman started complaining about her food and sending things back. After eating half of a lobster, it was “too tough.” The salad dressing which she was enthusiastic about ordering was suddenly “terrible” and didn’t “go with the lettuce.”

In keeping with her bizarre demeanor, the woman pulled my friend aside and said "look at those ladies over there. they look so wise and refined, do you think we'll look like that one day when we're old?"

(My response would have been; “If you live that long. You’re depriving your body of countless essential nutrients you claim to be allergic to. They‘re ‘wise and refined‘ enough to know better.)

Besides being flabbergasted (and probably nervous), my waitress friend was getting uncomfortable. The woman wanted the names of the people sitting at the next table, because she “thought she might know them.” My waitress friend actually decided to go bother them and ask who they were, but the real surprise was that she didn’t actually know who they were. I could have called that one too.

When dessert rolled around, she ordered desserts for her family that contained many of the things she claimed to be allergic to. She ordered a piece of cake for her daughter’s birthday, and as we may publicly acknowledge, cake often contains gluten, dairy, sugar, eggs, and all sorts of other things. Because as a birthday present, I would want my parents to give me death through anaphylactic shock.

It turns out that she wasn’t actually allergic to most of those things; she was just “a little sensitive.”

The whole ordeal took about three hours. To those who think that restaurant work is easy or undignified, imagine a day where you’re taking care of party after party just like this one.

The Secret Shop - Another reason to act awkwardly

In many restaurant chains, there is a well-known tool that is used to guarantee uniformity throughout all of the branches. Since every member of the faceless corporate entity can’t be in every restaurant location at once, they hire everyday people to come into each restaurant on a regular basis and act like a regular customer.

As a method of keeping servers from acting too creatively, there are long lists of things each server has to say or do to guarantee the same monotonous experience for each person at every restaurant that bears the name of the parent company.



If you get a waiter who asks a question like this, there’s an equal chance that it could be one of two things; Either he has Asperger Syndrome, or he’s terrified of secret shoppers.



Restaurant owners and CEOs want their restaurants to look, feel, and function a specific way. If it means your server has to sacrifice his personality or make painfully awkward requests, so be it.

At my restaurant, there is a list of approximately twenty things that each waiter must do in order to score perfectly and not be punished (should a secret shopper come in and sit at his table). Although I will not list exactly what they are, I will give a brief list of examples that are strikingly similar.



The problem with a specific list of things that you are required to do for each restaurant guest is that not every person who comes in to eat at a restaurant is the same. Each person is not waiting with bated breath to hear what you have to say, nor are they even remotely interested in you running through an entire checklist of things some corporate jack-offs drew up with the bottom line in mind.

If your server is required to refill your beverage, he will do so whether or not you actually want one. That’s a sure sign that it’s a talking point on a shopper report agenda.



Let’s say you come into a restaurant and sit down at the bar. It’s one of your favorite restaurants and you already have an idea of what you want. The bartender approaches you and says hello. You, without looking at the menu, reply with;



Let’s assume this is what you hear back;



If you were a shopper, the bartender would be doing exactly what the company demands of him. If you’re not a shopper, there is a good chance that you’d be annoyed at your bartender for completely ignoring you.

Personally, I try to achieve each one of the objectives on the shopper report for each guest I serve as non-awkwardly as possible. I was shopped recently, and would have received a perfect score. Instead, I was marked off on one of the questions which I was certain I had passed.

After clearing away the two corporate witches’ meals, I asked if I could get some dessert menus for them to look at. They seemed keen on the idea, so I brought the menus over and offered them some coffee and a peanut butter cookie sundae, which was an off-menu item. I found out later on that I had failed that part of the shopper report. The question I failed;

“Did your server offer you a specific dessert and after-dinner beverage?”
The reason I failed;

“Our server offered us menus, and then only after bringing us menus did he begin to talk about a specific dessert or beverage.”

Sure enough, I was furious about having been spoon-fed a heaping mouthful of bullshit. If you are that painfully specific about an objective which WAS carried out within seconds of when it was supposed to, you are overlooking the fact that two or three seconds worth of time will not upset a guest so much that it will lose the company a paying customer.

If I do everything I am supposed to and excel as a waiter, don't correct me for something I didn't do wrong. That's how you force good employees to quit and find other employment.