The Tale of Baked Potato Man

When you work for a period of time in a restaurant, you tend to get better and better at sharpening your wits in situations that require excessive damage control. Just last week alone, I called a woman with short hair "sir," I mistakenly brought a Diet Coke to a morbidly obese woman who had asked for regular Coke, and even went to hand a guest a pen to sign a receipt, but ended up accidentally flicking it end-over-end until it smacked him in the face. These situations can be fixed with a few well-placed words and a free dessert, but nothing can compare with the great mistake of letting a regular guest order something that isn't on the menu.

Pretty anti-climactic, huh?

Well then. Cue the "Baked Potato Man."

This is perhaps one of the most odd people I've ever met in my restaurant career. Although there's nothing immediately wrong with him (or requiring rapid medical attention), you can just tell that when this man walks in with his uncombed Bob Ross hair, enormously thick 70's era rapist glasses, and a canvas sack that he wears around his neck, that there's no way he can be allowed within 500 feet of a playground.

After his last visit to my restaurant, a friend he was dining with told the waitress privately that she "hadn't seen him in about ten years, and he's apparently developed a....thing."

Included in that is this man's ever loosening grip on the world around him. Here's why I think that.

At my restaurant, we do not offer baked potatoes. At one point in time (a few years ago), baked potatoes were a viable option where I work for people who decided that they didn't want their potatoes mashed or "french fried." I suspected that because the potatoes were made in batches of 20-30 and were selling at a rate of about 1 per hour, it became economically unfeasible to continue to leave them on the menu.

What people don't understand is that when you order a baked potato, you're ordering a specific kind of potato. It's usually a darker russet potato, a root vegetable which takes well to a convection oven and is usually not much bigger than your fist. These kinds of potatoes don't typically do well to mash, and fries are usually pre-made in 99% of restaurants. So when someone insists on being served a baked potato, I take absolute hedonistic delight in how the next 45 minutes plays out.

I usually explain a more concise version of this to the irate guest, and let him or her know that they're going to have to wait just under an hour (in addition to the time it takes to prepare the meal) for an individual Yukon Gold potato bigger than a college football to be cooked all the way through for them. And I usually mention as an afterthought that it'll taste like shit.

Usually this is enough to not only deter people from straying from the menu, but from severely inconveniencing the kitchen. But not the Baked Potato Man.

Instead, he just sits there and gives you what my coworkers and I have deemed the "Unibomber Stare."

I feel that whatever trauma this man suffered through rendered him unable to process that baked potatoes were nearly impossible to put in front of him. So he eventually wins every standoff with something like.

As a restaurant server, the absolute WORST thing you can do for your career and the well-being of your coworkers is to simply give into what I've deemed "Restaurant Terrorism."

So I did. The first time it happened, it all played out exactly the way I described. Baked Potato Man was overjoyed that his baked potato arrived an hour after the rest of his meal. He spent another two and a half hours eating it.

The next time he came in, I was determined to hammer the lesson home. I explained once again that we don't offer baked potatoes and told him that since the kitchen was exceptionally busy tonight, baking him a new potato would take perhaps over an hour. He reacted accordingly.

I went into the kitchen and spoke with the chef, who was a recent addition to the team. I let him know that this guy was a repeat offender, and to take as long as humanly possible to fulfill his obnoxious request. After that, I returned to the table to reiterate that I went completely out of my way to make sure his order was tended to with all of the care and determination we could muster. What I didn't know was that the new chef's pride was going to be a problem.

A moment later, he interrupted me with a tap on the shoulder. I turned around, and he was holding a fully-cooked, regular-sized potato, adorned lovingly with butter and sour cream. A mere eight minutes had passed, and already here was the baked potato.

Baked Potato Man was ecstatic. He dove into that potato like it was a sandbox at a playground. I took the chef off to the side and had a private discussion with him. Not only had he just encouraged this man to continue to order things we don't offer, he had undermined my authority at the side of the table and reduced my credibility to nothing (which probably didn't matter--this guy is deliriously obstinate). I bet that the next time this guy comes in, he'll bring all of his strange friends and will have briefed each one of them on how easy it is to get a baked potato at my particular restaurant.

And I fear that if one day we decide to put our collective foot down and tell him that he can't have what he wants, I suspect I'll have a package in the mail the next day that will blow my arms off and may just kill me.

Stuff I drew at Work (Vol. 3)

I've been really lazy. For those of you who still hold me accountable for updating this project of mine, thank you. In many ways, I'm really proud of you and humbled by your constant encouragement. Simultaneously, I'm bewildered that you haven't yet capitulated to the modern era and started picking up vampire novels.

I'm working on a couple new stories for you to read (and suspend disbelief at), but while I do that, I figured I would show you a couple of things I drew while I was supposed to be working.

The first one is a movie idea I had.

Text: INGLORIOUS LOBSTERS ...They just came to kill some Nazis.

It seemed like it could be a legitimate movie.

The next one had me thinking about borderline inappropriate things a lobster could be doing. What's with all the lobsters you ask? I simply find it really morbid how lobsters are prepared for our dinner. I'm convinced that Darwinism will eventually come full circle, and lobsters suddenly won't be so defenseless anymore. I've seen 70-year-old lobsters that were over 16 pounds alive and in front of me. What's to stop an army of lobsters from growing to human proportions (or bigger!?), taking up arms, and storming the beaches against us? Nothing. That's where the idea for this next one came from.

Text: LOBSTER JIMA ...A MONUMENT TO UNDERSEA PERSEVERANCE.

This last one was a request from my sister.

Sister; "How about you draw you and me running from zombies holding strange objects?"

Me; "Okay."

The strange objects are in fact a rolling pin, a stapler, and a menorah.

Anyways, I have a couple big stories planned for the next week or so, stay tuned!

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.

The Transition from Waiter to Salesman

Every successful waiter knows what it's like to be under-appreciated.

That feeling of knowing that you'd do anything to please a total stranger is something that a career waiter can't just extract from his psyche like a skilled neurosurgeon. Many waiters find that they are able to make their living selling, but what is it that keeps a skilled waiter from making a respectable stipend as an actual salesman?

Salesmanship is a logical next step up from the base floor of "Occupational Order Taker." It seems that anyone who can establish him or herself as a waiter could have potential as a salesman, and what waiters do (if they enjoy being tipped) is make alluring recommendations to enhance their guests' experiences. If you suck at recommending dishes and beverages, you become an order taker. So in essence, what makes the occupations of seller and salesman different?

I've taken a long hiatus from regular restaurant work to actually DO sales, and I've since found it relatively unrewarding. The fact that family men, scholars, public servants, and circus folk can serve people and make a menial living and be treated similarly is both fantastic and comforting, but completely sucks balls. We all keep doing it however, because we find enough comfort in providing strangers dinner because it seems preferable to any other time-consuming, emotionally limiting professional endeavor.

That's why people with decent jobs still keep a couple shifts waiting tables on the weekends.

When a guest sits down at your table, he or she kind of understands that you are there because you HAVE to be, and that servitude isn't ever glamorous. When a person complains about a dish you didn't cook for them, they're generally innocuous about it because in essence it's not your fault.

I once knew a great lawyer who studied and worked hard to dominate her profession. She kept five shifts a week waiting tables because it was good money, and because it was comforting and equally tormenting. It ended up ruining her social life because the effort she put into selling was dominating her life as a good person in the legal profession. When an implacable ass-clown at one of her tables yelled at her on a busy night for messing up a slightly intricate order, she broke down in the back of the restaurant and swore she'd never come back. I remember asking her why she never cried in a courtroom for defending a family from the crazy heart-breaking rantings of a drunken father lying to save his shitty life, and to this day never got a comprehensive answer. Having left the waiting profession for good, she is doing much better.

Life sucks as a middleman. The true power of it is that you find a way to make your customer's experience worthwhile. When a customer complains, you tend to establish yourself as a professional when you empathize with them and work to fix their every trouble. Either that mentality drags you into a deep dark hole, or it lets you believe that eventually you will find redemption as a "good person."

Sales contains none of those ideologies. When you're selling a product, you're promoting value, gaining trust, and easing someone's mind. If you're falling short of any of these tasks, you're probably just a waiter.

Stuff I Drew at Work (Vol. 2)

Here's the next installment of "Stuff I Drew at Work."

I have a morbid fascination with lobsters. Because I find that they resemble giant undersea cockroaches that have mouths that look like vaginas, I find them quite terrifying. Despite that, they seem pretty defenseless. Their claws aren't that hard to get a rubber band onto, and they just sort of flop about until their undeserved fate as someone's dinner. Watching people eat them is another story--their shells and limbs are cracked and shattered while people suck the meat from inside their steaming carapaces.

All I'm saying is that if lobsters can't really defend themselves by means of having some sort of evolved ability to fire laser beams out of their antennae, they should at least grow large enough in size to be able to wield firearms and combat armor, stand on their tails, and stroll up onto our beaches to kick a little ass.

At least then I wouldn't feel so badly about eating them. It's this mindset that inspired my picture of the "Lobster Commandos."

Text; "Did someone order the surf n' turf?"

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.