The Waiter Test

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

I've got some news, however;

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





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



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



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

How bad could it be?



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



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

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



I was so definitely boned.

…Or so I thought.



What the hell...

...They believed me.

And I'm still employed.

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!

The Meal Schedule

While in any given restaurant’s employ, your dietary schedule will inevitably change. When your job consists of either cooking food for thousands of strangers or carrying meals to people at times when society suggests meals should be taken, you tend to become immune to the callings of traditional human hunger.

According to the undisputable law of Wikipedia being right 100 % of the time, most Americans typically have breakfast between 7-8 AM.

In direct comparison, restaurant work has convinced me that the first meal I should have every day should be no earlier than 2:30 PM. A solid craving for a full dinner usually hits me at about midnight.

So in some restaurants, there’s something like a bowl of candy or a some fruit or mints for the customers near the entrance that the host staff and servers usually snack on when nobody is looking.

My restaurant doesn’t have that.

It’s actually for this very reason that I had such disdain for this random drunk lady leaving my restaurant at standard dinner hours this evening.



My nearby host friend placated her by attempting to rummage through the desk drawer looking for someone else’s Altoids. After he encountered mild difficulty (and by mild I mean major), I decided to cut in briefly.

In an effort to placate her by offering an alternative something-for-nothing deal, I asked her this;

“Would you like a free toothpick instead?”

She seemed unmoved by my offer.



I tried to make the toothpicks seem more candy-like.



This woman then looked at me as if I had just told her I was planning on raping her grandmother.



I laid the sarcasm on thick, as I imagined that any sane person would do when confronted with a preposterous request.



Ultimately, I got away with it. Using sarcasm or subtle shaming of the target is a great way to get people in the restaurant setting to leave you alone. I’m proud of myself for being able to delicately pull lines like that off. It can get you out of something, or in my next post, IN to something. Like a room with the Stanley Cup in it.

…But that’s a story for another time.

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.

A Waiter's Passion

Most waiters aren’t career servers. It’s a duality ever present in the service business--the money is instant and just good enough so that you can spare a little cash to fund your true passion. But the fact is that the longer you lean on that crutch, the more dependent you become at the waiter’s job. In a perfect world, the more time you spend honing your craft becomes inversely proportionate to your dependence on your waiter identity.

…which makes you very vulnerable to the whims of various clueless assholes.

A good friend of mine (who is a very good waiter, but a much better musician) was taking diligent care of a party of 5 middle-aged business types.



These five were having the kind of inebriated fun normally reserved for those who feel they’ve earned it.



My friend resigned himself to cleaning up their drunken mess, housing the same dignity he put forth since the beginning of their interaction. Suddenly the apparent leader of the group, at the peak of his hedonistic tirade, decided to indulge himself just a little further. He asked my friend what he did for a hobby outside of his waiting career.



So the patron did what he thought would keep a dominant sway over his cronies. He mocked him.



To someone who has tasted the fruits of his own labor, nothing could have been more insulting. My waiter friend just then was prompted to show the kind of restraint that would have blown Job’s soul out of his chest.

He took a deep breath and let him know as tastefully as he could, what he felt.





It’s easy to mock someone who looks like a pepper shaker who brings you your free refills. If you think you’re in a better place then someone who is starting from the bottom, then you’ve forgotten where you’ve surely started. Some servers are the kinds of people who chase pipe dreams for our amusement. Others of us are the kinds of waiters and waitresses who take that kind of off-the-cuff smarmy comment and use it as fuel for the rest of our lives.

I personally can’t wait to see what kind of road trip my friend will fuel with that one comment alone.

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!