A Higher-Than-Thou Health Inspection

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

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

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



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

Talking points;

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No no, I want to sit over THERE."

If there's one thing all servers and hosts/hostesses hate more than anything, it's when people refuse to sit where you put them. In every restaurant, there's not one shift that goes by without some obnoxious twat waffle proclaiming loudly that she "would rather sit at that booth over there."

She is usually referring to a sitting area which is indescribably dirty, reserved for someone else, or is in some way incredibly and inconveniently out of the way.

The peculiar thing about this phenomenon is that of all of the crotchety old bitch bags who demand to sit where they want is that they have a variety of indirect ways of telling you. Here are a few examples, including my rebuttals;

-"I want to sit someplace quiet." (points to booth)
The restaurant is almost always either completely empty and ENTIRELY quiet, or totally full and there is no chance that there is a soundproof VIP suite available. People who say this are just too chickenshit to openly defy you, and if you tell them that the noise level is relatively consistent, they will point to where they want to sit and say something extremely fucking annoying like "that booth over there looks quiet." It probably is located right between the table full of drunk college students and the party comprised entirely of screaming infants.

-"I don't like that table."
Granted, it's probably located near something like a central causeway or possibly another table, but there's nothing wrong with it. You're the picky kind of table racist that isn't happy anywhere and will lead the host all over the god-damned restaurant until you find something that suits YOU. You don't care how many toes you step on, cuntbag.

-"Can I have that booth right there?"
No you can't. This question reminds me of this lovable repeat patron at one of the restaurants I've worked at. The staff and I gave her the name "B.C." I'll let you guess what this stands for, but my hint is that it's not a Johnny Hart reference. This lady with a French/German accent would always come in by herself (inferred that she has no friends), demand a specific seat, and immediately ask for water, sugar, and lemons so that she could make her own lemonade at the table and not pay for one.
BC stands for "Booth Cunt." In the words of one of my former fellow employees, "Man. I don't know where she gets off being such a bitchy booth cunt. I should give her a piece of my mind."

Also for the record, I fucking hate it when people make their own lemonade at the table. It just says you're too fucking cheap to spend three bucks. And that you're a cuntbag extraordinaire.

You know who makes their own lemonade? Ten year olds. And they sell it on the street for twenty-five cents a cup.

Tangent, sorry.

Now, there are times when it is acceptable to make your preferences for seating known, but those times are never. You sit where you're told to, and here's why;

-Servers have sections. If you ask to go to a different section, you are depriving a waiter of tip money and giving more to another server.
-The hosts plan to seat reservations. You might be fucking up where they're planning to seat people, and in turn, causing other people to wait longer for their dinners.
-You're wasting time if the person has to check back to make sure the table you want isn't reserved. Waiters earn money only when they move quickly enough, and you're doing a great job ruining everyone's lives when you ask to get put somewhere else.

Sit where you're told to sit. This includes people who walk in, ignore the people at the front saying hello, and sit wherever they damned well please. If you are a person who does this, you will burn forever in a special place in hell.