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!

A few tales NOT from the restaurant. Brace yourselves.

For those of you who have been following me since I began this God-forsaken husk of an alcoholic's excuse for a terrible skeleton of sense-making crap-ridden waste of magical dragon's unicorn barf of a blog, congratulations!! You've made it past my worst sentence ever.

I will now take a swing at rewarding your attempt at progress by providing you with some sort of reason why I've spent the last two and a half weeks not faithfully publishing readable material on a website which I still maintain the illusion that you are somehow a dedicated fan of.

I hereby promise you this;

I have worked harder than ever on creating a mural below which chronicles my recent adventure in the non-restaurant world. And if I could have possibly contemplated a better use of my time, I might have dismissed that very notion in favor of making my personal Iliad into a somewhat contrived YouTube video blog. The reason that I haven't done that is that I've observed individual strands of grass that have made photosynthesis seem vastly more interesting.

My tale begins thus.

It all started when I took a flight down to Cityville, State-Ohio to visit my slightly estranged brother. The week progressed somewhat normally; we met up and got hammered. I imagine that I made a bad impression on his friends.



While attempting to catch my own barf between my extended fingers, I briefly contemplated refraining from generally continuing to make a complete ass of myself.

By lunch the next day, I had thoroughly pulled myself together. But back to the main plot;

Being of slightly similar age, my brother and I found time to catch up on the many significant plights of our generation; we conversed about such topics as which kind of high-five was more effective (Top-Gun or dual-palm), argued about why Wisconsin deserved (or did not deserve) to be a state in the first place, debated the illegalities behind urinating on shrubbery, and refuted the idea behind spoons being a musical instrument. We ended up playing Roshambo for quarters, and vice versa.

...I don't quite remember the outcome of that particular event, but either way I went home sterile or with a fresh-cleaned load of laundry. At one point however, I decided drunkenly to make my way back to my brother's apartment where he so generously volunteered to quarter (and not Roshambo) me. Drunk I so very was.

Well, I wasn't so much "drunk" as I was "stumbling down the street with my dick hanging out contemplating where to put my urine."

In retrospect, it made me seem rather vulnerable.



I presumed the locals took the hint because at one point, a hostile black man began to follow me. He expressed his distaste for my presence through various unmistakable actions. He was very much armed, and offered up no shortage of racial epithets and profanities to further intimidate me.



"WHITEY GOT A DEATH WISH!! I' KILL YOU WHITE BOY!! GET OUT O' MY HOOD!!" he screamed, chasing after me with several people in tow (seriously not kidding).

After slamming the door on him safely and having him and several other black men (whom I presume he knew personally) politely express their distaste for my particular pigment (with added emphasis received bluntly on the front door of my brother's apartment for the better part of five excruciating minutes), I decided to try to take the edge off by getting some sleep for the next day's flight back to my home town.

I waited with my present company at the airport terminal for several hours. Two hours turned into three hours, which became four hours, which eventually evolved into an indeterminate length of time which likely rivaled the length of the latest "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie. The only decisive plot difference was that the mustache on the face of the overweight Hispanic woman sitting to my left substantially rivaled the one which belonged to Orlando Bloom. Compared to William Turner, the woman next to me actually resembled a conquistador.

Instead of boarding a plane back here to continue my restaurant blog, I was hindered by the announcement made by the relatively confused airline officials. Apparently, our plane was delayed, but on its way without flaw.



...until lightning struck it.



Because the airplane's damage was without repair, we had to be assigned an alternate flight which took off the next day.

In general, airports and airplanes turn average people into complete shlong-jockeys. If Mother Theresa's connecting flight was for some reason delayed, she'd probably find a way to twist your testicles into a bowline knot until you defecated an entire pterodactyl to carry her by her God-blessed neck hairs all the way to her glorious destination. She might have even had to utter an f-bomb while waiting in line.

I vastly prefer waiting tables to dealing with airport drama, but I digress.

Because my two cohorts and I were forced to wait the storm out in a nearby hotel instead of getting into another thunderstruck maladroit airplane upon a moment's notice, we collectively reasoned that MORE BOOZE was the only logical answer.

The nearest source of our precious alcoholic commodity was over two miles away, but I remained steadfast in my psychological pursuit to HAVE IT. So I volunteered.

In my coterie, I was the only male. I had the strongest muscles, the leanest figure, and the hardest resolve. Although I audibly reasoned that I was the fittest person to lead the expedition for more booze, I was ultimately ousted as the most sober. Reverse psychology is NOT to be trusted.

So I went for a 2-mile run to the nearest liquor store.

Besides the fact that my charitable booze run capitulated with me sprinting through the unknown swamp in the dead of night, my journey was devoid of necessary foot-travel accessories such as sidewalks, or any guidance in the form of visible light. Plus I actually witnessed wolves crossing my path. I shit you not.



Ultimately, I made it across the swamp. I had survived the better part of two miles devoid of civilization (though conversely packed with canine predators) and had turn around and run back with the county's finest Sobieski vodka and Fanta-brand grape soda. The promise of purple drank (minus the codeine) that I fully brought back to that hotel across the swamp empowered me as a heroic human male, and ultimately solidified my rank as a savior for those who would have only exerted slightly less by taking a nearby elevator to the downstairs hotel bar. By spending less, I was championed by the two over-traveled companions with whom I traveled.

And then at 4 AM, we boarded our non-lightning-tainted flight back home, where we slept for the better part of an entire day. And it was all worth not working in a restaurant for a whole blessed week. Strangely enough, being broke and chased by wolves and hostile locals was the strongest motivation for heading right back to the instant money of the alternate weekend/evening shift.

More to come.

It'll be restaurant related, believe you-me.

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.

A Few Points of Poor Etiquette

Recently I took a poll of restaurant servers and bartenders, looking for some kind of inspiration for my next installment. The question of the hour?

“What is your least favorite thing to hear from someone you’re serving?

I took the best five answers and put them here for you to enjoy. Brief disclaimer--I am aware that some of these have been discussed in previous posts. Deal with it.

#1 - Ignoring the greeting.



As a server, when you talk to somebody that just sat down you tend to open with a standard greeting like “Hello.” The response you give that instantly pisses a server off is any that carelessly dispenses with formalities, including but not limited to:
“I’m waiting for other people to arrive.”
“I’m doing good.”
“I’ll have a Coke.”

It suggests that the first thing you want your server to know is that you aren’t willing to pay attention. In a job where success is measured in alacrity and efficiency, little else could be more frustrating.

#2 - Complaining about the current quality of the appetizers (versus historically).
One of my bartender friends volunteered to explain this one;
“In our establishment the owner is named, let's say, "Dodger"... People will come in and say, "I'll have the fish chowder, but you know you should tell "Dodger" that the fish chowder used to be so good, but NOT anymore, it had lots of fish in it and was creamier, it was speckled with gold flakes and served with diamond silverware and he should change it back to that!"
Okay, let us dissect that. First off, if it is so horrible, don't order it. Furthermore, it tasted better in 1970 because you were 40 years younger and had more taste buds, maybe it looked a larger portion because you weren't as gluttonous as you now are. When you were a kid did everything seem bigger then too? Probably.. Second, I should tell who what? I get paid what per hour? My vested interest in the stocks of said establishment is what exactly? I'm on what board that speaks directly to the owner? My comments are then expedited immediately based on your suggestions how? Yes, dear guest, I am a high ranking official in said corporate restaurant chain, but am playing undercover boss, minus the cameras, you got me.”

-A Bartender

Come to think of it, it also irks me when people complain about the free appetizers. Rolls are bad enough to complain about, because they’re free. If you wish something was whole wheat or at least 57% millet or comprised primarily of organic soygrain, then shut up and don’t eat it. If we’re not making a tip off of it, we don’t care what it’s made of.

#3 - ”Are you in school?”
Many waiters I know hate hearing this question. The reason? It becomes a source of condescension because of the fact that people are wondering what you would be doing if you weren’t waiting tables. For some, it actually IS a career. If you put in the time, the money is decent. It’s just that not every waiter is a college dropout or struggling actor.

What about me? I’m a journalist. You’re reading what I’m doing. I’m probably also complaining about you on this blog, so I’m certainly not going to tell you about it.

#4 - ”We thought you deserted us!”
Many restaurant guests say things like this because they haven’t seen their waiter or waitress in a while. As a server, you make money only by attending steadfastly to every request that you can from each one of your tables. If one table is especially needy and takes up a lot of your time, that equates to less time you can spend at the other tables. If you need your server for whatever reason, you can’t always rub a magical lamp and summon them at an instant. Many guests don’t quite understand this and choose to interpret the situation as “My server abandoned me and is completely disregarding my needs.”

#5 -






”I need my food to have {X, Y, and Z…as well as the previous 23 letters).”
If you have one or two simple things you’d prefer about your meal, it’s perfectly understandable. If you are burdening your server with ten or fifteen particular things that you need to have in order to have a normal meal, then go into the kitchen and cook it your own damned self, or see a psychiatrist to address your ‘Type A’ personality disorder.

The last thing we really want is to have way more work than we need to while pissing off the kitchen staff. Reason it through. If you are allergic to 10+ things, I like to say that’s God’s way of saying “I’d like to speak with you face to face.”

What are your least favorite things to hear from customers? How about your least favorite things to hear from your servers?

A lack of compassion during the holiday season

It was a waiter's worst nightmare; The quintessential shift where everything went wrong. It wasn't a dream this time.

My shift started with an influx of tables. A fifteen-top here, a six-top there, a seven here, and a two-top in the last table open.

Normally, it’s not a big issue to have a full section. When each of the people you’re taking care of have specific needs and requests that change the amount of time you can devote to the others, it rapidly becomes a big problem.



My table of seven told me they wanted to catch a show in town in an hour and a half. That wasn’t a major ordeal, because I hear that all the time. I took a beverage order. The older women at the table told me they enjoy Maker’s Mark bourbon. Being a bourbon guy myself, I joked rather ironically that “we were going to get along great!”

Little did I know.

Cue the first real problem.



With a full section and a whole list of other things I need to prioritize, it isn’t easy to divide a large party into three or four separate checks. It makes it even more difficult when each person wants to pay for specific things.

During my attempt at sorting out this mess, I had asked a manager to present a bottle of wine to another table that had sent the first bottle back. The reason for that?



Now, I agree that 2008 wasn’t humanity’s proudest year.



Normally, most average joes aren’t sophisticated enough to be able to find unpalatable differences between two neighboring vintages of the same wine. The difference between an actual wine expert and a complete pile of dicks is that the expert won’t send back two different bottles of wine when he sees that his server is swamped with requests on a packed Saturday night in a restaurant.

He ended up sending back the second bottle as well. The reason?



The reasons that is an unacceptable answer are as follows;
-On a busy Saturday, requests inevitably take longer.
- In this particular case, the gentleman wasn’t even finished eating his appetizer course. His wine had arrived right on the cusp of transition between his appetizer and his dinner.
- Sending back wine twice is the trademark of a complete twat waffle. Especially when the only reason is because it’s arrived 3-5 minutes later than you ordered it.

In the meantime, my two-top table had multiple allergies. I, by the regulations imposed on me by the company itself and punishable by firing, could not take or send in the table’s order without discussing the allergies with the management and the chefs. The guests themselves (A middle aged married couple) were overwhelmingly patient with me and the time I needed to make that whole process happen, but I was interrupted twice by women from the original table (the elderly folks with multiple checks and a massive time constraint) so that I could be rudely reminded that they were not only in a hurry, but needed to settle their towering pile of checks that second.

This jumped to the top of my priority list -- I immediately started accepting the multiplicity of payment forms that only ONE of the ladies wanted me to process. I felt like I was accepting a feudal dowry.



One of the other old ladies in the party had found my manager and proceeded to tell him that “everything had gone wrong.”

When he asked what specifically had gone wrong, the grouchy old crone just shook her head and exclaimed, “EVERYTHING. Just--everything.” Which, to me, meant ‘in all reality, not that much.’

If I had to inconvenience a server by having multiple checks, I would give him or her the peace of mind he deserves by having an even split, and processing one form of payment each. These disheveled old women were outrageously particular in what they wanted to pay for, and used a combination of cash, credit cards, gift cards, and paper gift certificates. I absolutely couldn’t deal with it, so I handed them all to the nearest manager. You correctly guessed that any tip I had any chance of getting was forced through the cracks underneath the weight of all of those convoluted forms of payment.

All of a sudden, the six top with the wine snob wanted to leave. Another waiter had gone by while I was settling payments and swiped the man’s credit card. Apparently, I had forgotten to remove ONE of the bottles of wine from his check.

He angrily spouted to me about how he didn’t end up getting that bottle of wine, and about how he wanted his credit card transaction voided and then have his card swiped for the correct amount. The cherry on top of this sundae of polite requests?



When things started slowing down, I was able to catch up. I was so gracious to have customers who were treating me not only cordially, but with undue compassion that I became way too friendly. My service became exceptional--waiting nearby with beverage refills, offering warming hand towels after every course, inquiring fully about all of the little details of everyone I was serving, et cetera. I made more money in the last leg of that evening than I made in any normal busy Saturday, and I blame it completely on the contrast of the evening’s events.

When Christmas approaches, you would expect that people would be more lenient, show patience, mercy, and all kinds of positive emotions as they prepare themselves for the very holidays founded on the principles of the finest human graces. People eat with family members they haven’t seen in a while, they have time off of work, and they give gifts and take care of each other. Alternatively, do people tend to have shorter fuses when that holiday sanctity is even modestly threatened, even with a less-than-perfect dinner?

I’d like to know what you think.

Paying the Bill; A Duel of Honor

There are very few situations in the daily fray of serving tables that put you uncomfortably on the spot through no fault of your own. People usually don't go off on you if you've done nothing wrong, but very occasionally they do. Sometimes, all it takes for you to be put on the spot is something simple like dropping the check.

From here, there are a couple ways it can go down.



You don't even have a chance to let go of the check before the tug of war begins.



This situation is a bit awkward because people will try to steal the check from you before you put it on the table. If multiple people go for it at once, you could be in the middle of a violent scuffle. When one person tries to put his or her card in the book and give it to you, it's usually a combination of them smacking you with it and fending off the grabbing hands trying to supplant the card in the book with their own.

After getting the wind knocked out of you by a checkbook, you also get displeased grimaces and slow, patronizing head shakes from the others at the table who wanted to pay.

It could also go down like this;



If you get approached, someone (usually a foreigner) will discreetly hand you a card so that nobody else gets a chance to pay.

The problem is that when you go back to announce that someone else has already paid, you get the death stare from everyone else at the table.



The check drop can also be a bit perilous because of the pending hazard of samurai-like dueling between the restaurant patrons.



When people start fighting over a check amongst themselves, I find that it's best to back away slowly and without saying a word. They'll sort it out eventually, and hopefully you won't have to witness an actual decapitation before you go to process the payment.

The best part is, I do this when I go out to eat too. I have no idea why.

One of the things that stands to reason when people fight over the check is that they are typically generous. Since they have no reservations about paying for the dinner that their families and friends just had, they probably won't mind giving you a generous tip for all your hard work.

That's a myth--I've had people fight tooth and nail over paying the bill, but then left me maybe 5%-10% maybe about a third of the time. It simply doesn't make any sense.

The Rules of Booze

In the service business, there are guidelines. Not only are there rules you have to follow within the restaurant organization, but there are often laws which dictate how you are to do your job that are regulated by some level of government. Exactly how you have to navigate these rules varies when you’re confronted with restaurant guests who are not only ignorant, but irate becomes tricky.

First exhibit; An unruly old bag.



The woman of about sixty approached the bar from one of the tables in the restaurant, and in what was later determined to be her most polite tone of voice, demanded four glasses of champagne for her table. The problem? Everyone at her table had just received beverages, and they hadn’t been touched. The state law where this restaurant is located strictly prohibits having more than one alcoholic beverage at a time on the table.

Her response?



Of course she hasn’t heard of that law. So by no means is she obligated to follow it.

The woman kept crooning over and over to the bartender about how someone at the table recently got engaged, and that it was absolutely ridiculous that she couldn’t have the champagne. The reason she left the table and went up to the bar was because her server told her the same thing the bartender had just finished telling her. Instead of embracing this new knowledge (that was reaffirmed by two separate people nonetheless), she continued being irate.

If you've "never heard of a law," it doesn't make you exempt from obeying it. Just because you're celebrating, it doesn't give you a free pass to demand that a server risk his or her job to placate you. If an officer stops you in your car for running a stop sign, it wouldn't quite pan out in the field to say that you've "never heard of any law" that says you have to stop at a stop sign. You'd get a ticket.

The bartender walked away and proceeded to take care of his other patrons, because those were the ones who were paying him, and as an added bonus, not ridiculing him.

She shouted for him again.



So the bartender did what any level-headed server would do. He approached her again and greeted her as if they had never spoken.

Eventually, after complaining loudly and apparently ruining someone's engagement party, she returned to her table. The cranky bitch was approached by a manager, which is the next step in the issue-resolving process. Instead of four glasses, the manager suggested that he could bring over a bottle when they were finished with their current beverages (running the total number of people reaffirming the existence of this law to 3).

Her response?



....my God.

"Just give us the fucking champagne."

The fact that this woman sunk so low as to not only demand her needs be met, but to order someone to violate a state law, and then swear at someone who was trying to help her makes her in a class of her own. The type of evil bitch this person is deserves to be locked away in the deepest pit of special Hell to be tormented for all eternity. On a celebratory occasion like an engagement, you ruin everything when you get carried away forgetting that you are not the center of the celebration.

The rules and guidelines of the restaurant business as well as of the state and country leave you few options for dealing with scum like this. You simply have to placate them as they continue to scream, cry, and throw fits like infants until they get their way. Any retributive action on your part, such as telling her to "shut her pie hole," flipping over her table, or using violence to teach her a lesson would get you arrested, or more likely, even fired.

There must be something we can do. For those reading this? Don't be that lady.

The High-Horse Regular

In any restaurant, there are "Regulars." These are the people who come in semi-frequently, order the same thing, tip the same way, and who are either easy to take care of, or utterly impossible to deal with.

In the latter category, you have the basic type of person who wants to sit in the exact same seat every time, order the same thing with over six thousand guidelines for how to prepare it, and often won't tip generously, but assume that he or she is doing everyone a huge favor by coming back over and over again.

When something doesn't go right, they tend to become irate;



One of the bartenders I know had a great story for me about one of these crotchety old attention magnets. He sat down at his usual seat at the bar, and instantly began making demands;



Instead of conceding to the regular's demands, the bartender responded with care and concern for all of the bar's patrons. It went well.



As expected, the old fart didn't pay any mind to the offer the bartender made for another spot at the bar that had a television for his own personal viewing. He expected that he didn't have to move from his seat, and wanted the other people at the bar who were watching world cup soccer to lay down dead for him and his baseball game.

Now I agree that soccer is gratuitously boring. But I disagree wholeheartedly with anyone who comes into an establishment and demands that he get his way (no matter how unpopular) just because he's been there a few more times than the others. I will say one thing for soccer, though; it has the rowdiest fans in the world. I would have loved to have seen what would have happened if the bartender had changed the TV to the baseball game this guy demanded. The soccer guys probably would have kicked that prick's wrinkly old ass inside out.

Seemingly in an effort to convince the bartender that an extra ten minutes of equivocally boring baseball was worth an eternity of shouldering the identity of "complete fucking douche-bag," the regular demanded a pen and paper to begin mathematical calculations of his tips for the past year.



If he were trying to assert that he comes in enough to place a monetary value on his time there, it would mean that if the two soccer fans had tipped $201 dollars on their meal (not so unreasonable--people have left tips of this magnitude before), it would mean that they should now have a say over what everyone else at the bar watches.

If those two soccer fans were regulars themselves, the regular probably would not have had his way either because it would have devolved into a pissing battle between the opposing customers. There would be no civil way to determine who was more 'regular' than the other.

The only fair and sane way to determine who gets the TV is to simply allow those who arrived first to control what goes on. When they leave, someone else can request something to watch. Speaking of what to watch, the regular changed the channel after the soccer-viewers left just in time to find that there WAS NO BASEBALL GAME. It wasn't even on that evening.

Just goes to show you that just because you're a regular doesn't mean people there are forced to respect you, and it CERTAINLY doesn't mean that the people there LIKE you. Bear that in mind if you frequent a place you really enjoy going to.

The Worst...Table...Ever.

They strolled in five minutes before the venue closed. They walked up to a table they thought was theirs by default and sat themselves right down, paying no regard to anyone or anything that might have held their attention or needs. They proceeded to ask angrily for menus, assuming someone had seen them.

They were....the party from HELL.



By "Hell," I clearly mean "Eastern Europe."

It's not that people from a specific region did anything wrong, it's just that THESE specific people from this SPECIFIC region did EVERYTHING WRONG, and deserve a SPECIAL place in HELL.

I used enough capital letters in order to MAKE a POINT, and will STOP AT NOTHING in order to MAKE A CERTAIN SIX PEOPLE PAY for their CRIMES, REGARDLESS of the GRAMMATICAL FAUX PAS'S of the ENGLISH LANGUAGE. But I DIGRESS.

Imagine a group of six people, sitting down at a table right before the restaurant closes.

They order a bottle of fine wine;



...now, this ain't exactly a two-buck-chuck from the local Trader Joe's.
This might rather be an 80-dollar caviar wine designed to palate the tastes of the gentleman who wants to club a golf course manager to death who hasn't yet made the required connections with the people in charge of swaying his shot.

This guy has a chip on his shoulder.

He came to eat with his friends, and tried in vain to impress the living shit out of them. He sent back an important bottle of wine, and instructed his friends to order a new thing for every time his server reached the table, implying that a relay race was somehow afoot.

They asked for tartar sauce. They asked for lemons. They asked for cocktail sauce. The kitchen was closed, but one of them still asked for a baked meal, and complained that it wasn't prepared the way he was used to. The head honcho sent back a bottle of wine, and despite the fact that the bar had already closed, he asked that a different wine would be opened for his table because he simply "didn't like" the previous one.

This attitude would be somewhat easier to deal with if the restaurant weren't closed, but alas. The convenience of a couple of strangers will always come closer to the needs of the one person with a posse of internationally-inconsiderate dick-noses.

This man and his friends had no intention of going anywhere, and they each wanted to know why there weren't any complementary mints or dental floss.

All while the table persisted, you contemplated the very reason why you wouldn't have gotten home until 2AM, you couldn't find anyone in the kitchen to make your food, or why you couldn't possibly have pleased anyone for any reason.

And then Murphy's Law enters your mind.

...and you then wonder what it is you did to deserve it. And there is no logical answer.

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.

The Industry Standard

If I had to describe the way the industry standard in the US denotes tipping, I would say it is "inconclusive." I would then say "hand me a bunch of dandelions, because Ray Bradbury taught me how to make myself drunk with these. Also I'm poor."

What I'm trying to say is that the methodologies of tipping in the United States mean just as much to the layperson as the fundamental intricacies of "time travel," or "health insurance."

Take last night, for instance. I had a huge group of men (and one or two margarita-drinking-NOT-men) celebrating a birthday party. By "celebrating," I of course meant, "ignoring the person responsible for their libations."



After ringing up a significant check, I counted the money and was left with less than 6% of what I brought them.

This was upsetting, but most servers (pussies like myself) aren't comfortable with approaching a poor tipper to ask what the problem was. This is acceptable only if you have big enough balls to bring it up in the most passive-aggressive way humanly conceivable.

For example;



I was lucky enough to have a fellow worker looking out for me, casually mentioning that his buddy only got a few bucks for an hour's worth of serving beers and tactfully ignoring poorly-constructed penis jokes.

I was approached shortly afterward by a drunken fellow, apparently the Deanna Troi of the group, who handed me a few more dollars and apologized for the drunken misdemeanors of his rowdy and under-cognizant friends.

I was relieved that someone nearby had a true grasp of the scenario, but stunned at the notion that people who have never been formalized in the fine arts of tipping or basic mathematics consistently find that they have aged twenty-one years on this earth with no knowledge of the industry standard.

Yet, it happens all the time.

It's the subtle relationship we share which determines who of us make rent and whom do not.

The Restaurant; Home of the Homoerotic

In all of the restaurants I have worked, I have been constantly challenged to come up with newer, fresher ways of demonstrating a talent which no restaurant employee can complete a shift without;

Homoerotic actions and commentary.

For some reason, the restaurant environment is invariably the one place where it is not only acceptable, but encouraged by your peers to engage in these delightful same-sex behaviors;
-Pretend to come on to fellow males
-Proclaim loudly any and all made-up homosexual actions with other employees the night before
-Grab a coworker's nipples
-Craft clever analogies between menu items and fellatio
-Offer to trade evenings or day shifts off in exchange for depraved and humiliating sexual advances

It isn't uncommon for someone like me to approach a male coworker and say something like, "Hey man. Can you pick up my Friday night shift? I'll totally give you the best testicle massage ever. Please?"

The exact reason why this is acceptable isn't exactly clear, but the unspoken rule above all rules is that none of these actions can take place in front of the guests or restaurant management.

One exception to this rule comes to mind, in reference to the last restaurant I worked for. It had gotten to the point (after over a year of employment) that my managers and fellow employees had become so comfortable with me that each of them made passes at me at every conceivable opportunity. I distinctly remember bending over and attempting to scoop ice cream out of the freezer bin, and getting seven different people's hands grabbing my ass as they each went by (completely independent of each other, I might add).

The management of this particular restaurant didn't mind this at all. I remember that the last time it happened, the old Chinese lady who was running the restaurant had even laughed heartily as a coworker grabbed a huge chunk of my ass.

None of it is serious, however. If everyone at the restaurant were not only bold enough but also homosexually lustful, I would have probably been helpless as I held onto the red bean ice cream for dear life while seven different people violated my asshole.

It really is a bizarre anomaly that every restaurant ever is its own unique stadium for the world cup of gay, but a fact nonetheless.

Business people-the douchiest people to take care of.

There are some real douchy people who waiters are expected to take care of with a smile; foreigners, families with screaming babies, needy elderly folks who are angered by trivial things, etc.,.

Today's target will be at the top of the heap; business people.

I firmly believe there is a sliding scale of douchiness that most business people fall somewhere onto. They saunter in with their binders or laptops, ignoring everyone around them until it becomes convenient for them to listen to someone else, and just making it seem like there's an aura of entitlement surrounding them at all times.

There are many kinds of inconsiderate behaviors that these jerks indulge in, ranging from the mildly annoying (insisting on finishing a business-related conversation when the waiter or waitress shows up, sometimes in excess of thirty seconds), to the super-aggravating (leaving an open laptop on the table throughout the entire meal).

I once approached the table of a businessy pair, and began explaining their choices for beverages. Halfway through my list, the female business-type of the pair proceeded to answer a phone call while I was talking. Thinking nothing of it, I continued my list, and redirected it towards the remaining patron who was still paying attention. The woman on the phone douchilly put her hand over her phone's receiver, looked at me angrily, and said, "Excuse me! I'm trying to have a conversation!"

In a perfect world, I would have had the job security to not only make a crude and sarcastic comment ("In that case, why don't you familiarize your own-damned-self with our cocktail list, you pretentious cunt?"), but to take the phone from her, cover it in buttermilk batter, and throw it in the nearest deep fryer. And light her shirt on fire.

If you go out to dinner, don't be a douche. Leave your laptop at home, put your phone on silent, and please understand that you are not the only table that your waiter has. At most, a waiter can spend about thirty seconds at a table on a busy evening, so you should let him or her say or do what they came to do, listen patiently, and continue your conversation after your server leaves. It's not hard, it's just mutual respect.

Allergies and the Chain of Blame

Are you allergic to something?

You may very well be. If you go out to a restaurant, you have an established routine, something which keeps you alive when someone else is preparing and cooking your food.

As a server, you tend to hate people with allergies. You hear three or four people throughout the course of a twelve-hour work day profess their allergies (or slight intolerances) to nuts, beans, legumes, shellfish, bacteria, animals, pieces of vegetables, concepts, sour cream derivatives, colors, actors who resemble Jude Law, and of course, specific types of pollen.

White people (who are the only kinds of people who have these debilitating susceptibilities) will often require you to take these human weaknesses up to the management level. From there, the kitchen will require you to make everyone else blatantly aware of every aspect of nutrition that may render the subject vulnerable, including those who may be within twenty-four feet of the entree in question.

A co-worker of mine was charged with the task of identifying the correct dessert for a lactose-intolerant guest who wanted an ice cream substitute for dessert. The menu (and the ordering terminal with which the server placed the order) assured her that the appropriate dessert was the "Lemon Sorbet" (which was understood to be dairy free) instead of the 'Raspberry Sherbet' (which was understood to be GLUTEN FREE ((BUT UTTERLY POISONOUS TO DAIRY-FREE GUESTS)).

Needless to say, the guest had an allergic reaction...

...to the idiot nature of the restaurant's hierarchy.

After cleansing the men's bathroom of gratuitous vomit, it became much clearer to the management of the restaurant that the menu's shortcomings had placed a lower-level employee at the mercy of whomever had legal right to file suit.

The flagrant error in the menu's edititation had escaped the awareness of the sous-chef, despite him being consulted before the dessert was served by the waiter who had brought the dessert to the table. The restaurant's management had glazed the order over after specific adaptation requested through the server's own mouth until the patron began 'calling RALPH on the porcelain phone.'

..yet the waiter was still reprimanded.

A $50 dollar entree was complimented on her guest's check (resulting in a significantly lower and possibly omitted gratuity) because of the allergic reaction. A week later, her 'mistake' was showcased for the restaurant to see as a part of the restaurant's 'focus' for the week, further embarrassing her in the eyes of her peers.

She had done her job perfectly until the her superiors gave a green light to a deadly dessert, but what could any one of them have done to repair this error before she was set up to take the fall?

I would respond, but I am 'allergic' to personal responsibility.

Someone else should have fixed this beforehand.

Chef's Placebo High

I came to work into the undisclosed restaurant I work for, returning from my hour-long break. Most times, it feels good to just get out of the place you work, even if all you want to do is sit down an relax. Because of this, a couple of things happened without my immediate knowledge.

The sous-chef's penchant for caffeine had gotten him hyper, using his somewhat legitimate high to inform half of the working force of the restaurant that he had pounded an exorbitant amount of espresso-based caffeine.

Most people typically have a single or double shot to get going, but this guy? He was claiming he had seven or eight. I laughed to myself, thinking it was going to be an interesting shift with a maniac at the helm of the kitchen.

Then I realized something; I had been in charge of refilling the empty espresso bean grinder at the end of my morning shift. It occurred to me (after confirming the contents of the trash) that I had instead accidentally filled the grinder full of DECAFFEINATED BEANS.

I glanced back at the chef, who was bouncing around the kitchen with a proactive sense of control and delegation, apparently unaware that his high was a complete placebo. It made me laugh quite heartily at his expense.

Later on in the evening, I had a guest who was a self-proclaimed "difficult one," the kind of person who makes lots of demands (but acknowledges his or her faults, somehow making it slightly more acceptable). She wanted her vegetable dish without any kind of sauce, fearing it would be too spicy. I communicated to the decaffeinated chef that she wanted her dish sans-sauce, to which he replied "OK, but it'll be quite dry."

After returning with the news, she asked me to make a sauce for her which was "maybe kinda sweet and maybe tangy."

I returned to the kitchen to ask if this was possible, but the chef instead told me to "make the dish regular and tell her it's special."

He insisted she wouldn't know the difference, and I agreed.

After all, he certainly knew all about the power of suggestion firsthand.

Racism and Overstaffing; A Recipe for Success!

On any given Monday, you typically don't see too many restaurants full to capacity. That luxury is only seen on weekends. This is common knowledge, and one doesn't have to be qualified in management or restaurant mechanics to arrive at this conclusion. The restaurant at which I am employed had over eleven people working a Monday night dinner. Let's just let that sink in for a moment.

Finally, after two and a half hours of pretending to punch in orders at a terminal (but instead playing Texas Hold 'Em on my cell phone), I was given a table of three Asian people, a young male student who was evidently taking his non-English speaking parents out for dinner.

If there's something that creates a stereotype, it's when certain people consistently do the same thing over and over completely independently of each other.

In this case, they ordered lobster...which is what all Asians who visit this particular restaurant do.

After a lobster between the three of them and God knows how many tap water refills, I dropped the check.

On the credit card device at the table, the options for gratuity are twenty, eighteen, and fifteen percent. Because of the fact that I assumed I wouldn't be tipped well, I left them the machine on this screen, but because of the grace of God and Murphy's Law (not to mention the tenacity of people who refuse to tip well), I was left under ten percent of the total.

Because this was my only table of the evening (and because of the fact that I had to tip out the support staff), I left my shift this evening with less than five dollars.

I would have made more money today if I had been making Air Jordan sneakers in a warehouse in Indonesia.

Such is the business I've committed my life to.