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.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Should I open the Woodford Reserve?
I asked myself this confrontational question as I contemplated the way the evening had gone up until this point. At half past midnight, I seemed to be the only person in sight who had spent his Saturday night completely alone.
Even though the waiter's schedule is entirely parallel with the shot-ripping, beer-guzzling party monger's social agenda, at no point in time is he ever guaranteed anyone will join him in drowning his sorrows.
In the absence of company, my loneliness gave way to linear philosophical thought. I pondered freely about the questions my guests asked me earlier on in the evening. Most guests aren't douche bags intentionally, but I get the questions "Where do you go to school?" and "What's your major?" almost fifteen times a night. When I answer, people unanimously seem so surprised, as if the combination of my well-spoken demeanor and self-declared bachelor's degree should have by now placed me ceremoniously atop the pile of money located in the executive office of the Boston Daily Monocle.
People don't often realize that the work of a journalist (or any other similar field it seems) is a negligible paycheck compared to the instant money of a classy waiter. In fact, the average news anchor makes less than the fat, hairy dude who handles your complaints at the McDonald's located in your neighborhood ghetto.
...not to mention the fact that journalism in particular is harder to get into than Michael Jackson's funeral.
I forget who said it first (or best), but a bachelor's degree isn't so much a passport as it is a lottery ticket. Just because you have one doesn't mean you have any inkling of entitlement.
Given the way things seem to be, it's easy for someone with great qualifications to get stuck in a one-year, two-year, or fifteen year rut as a waiter, limiting himself to the mercy of nuclear white families or lobster-eating foreigners until some "better" comes along. And someone involved in the business as long as I have may as well have begun to equate the adjective "better" with the noun "myth."
Even though the waiter's schedule is entirely parallel with the shot-ripping, beer-guzzling party monger's social agenda, at no point in time is he ever guaranteed anyone will join him in drowning his sorrows.
In the absence of company, my loneliness gave way to linear philosophical thought. I pondered freely about the questions my guests asked me earlier on in the evening. Most guests aren't douche bags intentionally, but I get the questions "Where do you go to school?" and "What's your major?" almost fifteen times a night. When I answer, people unanimously seem so surprised, as if the combination of my well-spoken demeanor and self-declared bachelor's degree should have by now placed me ceremoniously atop the pile of money located in the executive office of the Boston Daily Monocle.
People don't often realize that the work of a journalist (or any other similar field it seems) is a negligible paycheck compared to the instant money of a classy waiter. In fact, the average news anchor makes less than the fat, hairy dude who handles your complaints at the McDonald's located in your neighborhood ghetto.
...not to mention the fact that journalism in particular is harder to get into than Michael Jackson's funeral.
I forget who said it first (or best), but a bachelor's degree isn't so much a passport as it is a lottery ticket. Just because you have one doesn't mean you have any inkling of entitlement.
Given the way things seem to be, it's easy for someone with great qualifications to get stuck in a one-year, two-year, or fifteen year rut as a waiter, limiting himself to the mercy of nuclear white families or lobster-eating foreigners until some "better" comes along. And someone involved in the business as long as I have may as well have begun to equate the adjective "better" with the noun "myth."
Monday, December 7, 2009
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
