So it's been a while because I've been too busy with real life to care much about work, or writing about work, but I need a break from reality for the next ten minutes or so.
When you're dining out, at, say, my table, it's one thing to receive psychic service. For instance, yesterday a guest ordered a fried shrimp meal and was astonished that my next question wasn't, "Which side would you like with that?" but rather, "With fries?" because that was exactly what he wanted. He was outright amazed that I knew he wanted a Caesar salad, and wowed even more by the fact that earlier, I had pegged him as a cola dude.
It's an entirely different thing to expect psychic service. Do you go to the post office and stare blankly at the postman until he forks over some stamps or an envelope or reaches across the counter to snatch the package you want delivered out of your hands and send it to an address you haven't yet given him? Do you go to the electronic entertainment store and silently gape at the sales associate until she divines that you walked in hoping to find a copy of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman season one? If you answered, "Yes," to either of those questions, you're an intensely screwed up individual and it's probable that you rarely get what you want. Most people would answer, "No, of course I don't do that."
Then why, prithee, why, would you go a restaurant expecting that kind of magic. Yes, I'm sometimes able to judge a book by its drink order or attitude, but 1. contrary to popular opinion, I'm not always right, and 2. psychic waiter vibes are like good songs on the radio: sometimes they're right there when you flip the channel, and sometimes you need to sit through some routine ditties until they play your jam. So get with the program, folks.
Yesterday I decided to play a game. I compared what these ridiculous restaurant-goers probably wanted from me with how the conversation would normally have gone. You can play along! The first one's easy...
"Hi, I'm Calvin! How are you?"
"Uh, diet coke." (Didn't have to wait too long for that one.)
"Excellent choice there, sir." Not so excellent listening skills there, sir.
Note that any normal person, when asked how they are, would probably respond with a qualifying adjective, a description, maybe even a reciprocation of the inquiry. Imagine this exchange happening in the park while you're out for a walk. You say, "Hi, how are you?" to a stranger, and they reply, "Diet coke." Also note that the utter insanity of that scenario does not preclude, in this strange world, the possibility of it occurring. But it really shouldn't happen anywhere.
Let's try another one.
"Your meal comes with a side and a salad. What kind of side would you like with your meal?"
"Yes."
Language barrier? Nope. And this was a different guest from the previous example.
"We have your choice of mashed or baked potato, fries, vegetable, or rice."
"Okay."
"So you'd like fries, then?"
"Caesar salad." Whoa, skipping ahead there, buddy. I'm not up to salad yet. I'm still trying to get your side out of your mind, or at least your foot out of your mouth, because there is an issue at hand that we have not yet addressed and you're talkin' nonsense, partner!
"Okay, Caesar salad, but are the fries okay?"
"Sure." Score one for Calvin!
And.... my favorite.
"Hi, my name is Calvin and I'll be your server today. What brings you in on this fine afternoon?"
"..." Not even looking up.
"If you like I can get you started with something to drink and an appetizer."
"..."
"We have cola, diet, orange soda, lemonade... we also have some great drinks at the bar..."
"..." Hasn't even opened the menu.
"Do you need a few minutes to decide?"
Oh. Ohhhh. You're texting under the table, which I couldn't see from the other side of the table. So you're not just pointedly ignoring me, you're also being rude. A considerate person would have asked me for some more time from the get-go, to relieve me of the embarrassment, wasted time, and frustration of having talked at a wall for the past two-and-a-half minutes.
"I'll be right back." I began walking away.
"Hold up, man." I should have kept walking, but I didn't. "I want a pop." Oh, I'll give you a pop.
"What kind would you like?"
"Uh... what do you have?" Oh, you mean you didn't already know? Hmm. Backhand, knuckles, thrown brick...
"Cola, diet, ora--"
"Gimme a diet."
"I'll be right back with that," jerk, "sir."
Well, it's been fun communicating with you, readers, but alas, I must get to work again.
Next time, we converse with a tractor!
Surviving by serving seafood with style.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Saturday, March 5, 2011
On Not Tipping
I had a three-top come in yesterday and I worked really hard, as I always do, to ensure an enjoyable restaurant experience. They were set on being ornery and surly. I just kept doing my thing, and they didn't tip me.
Whatever.
I was having a decent night anyway, so I just let it go. Yes, I was somewhat disappointed; it's always unfortunate when people suck at life. In this country, going out to eat and not tipping at all is stealing. If you're doing that, you're receiving services and not paying anything in return. You've paid for the food you ate, sure, but you did not pay to have it prepared, brought to you, negotiated properly from the kitchen, to have your table kept clear of extraneous dishes and your drinks filled, etc. Effectively, serving becomes slave labor at that point.
When the table of unhappy people departed, I began busing that table and pre-bused my other two tables, who were in the middle of an enjoyable meal. When I returned, Blaire, one of the bussers, had finished busing my table. I thanked her and was about to go fetch some drink refills when she stopped me and handed me four dollars.
"It was hiding in the salt and pepper caddy."
"Oh, cool! Thanks!"
"Yeah, I figured I'd give it to you 'cause I found it. Don't forget to tip out the bussers at the end of the night!"
"I never do." I smiled and thanked her again and then continued on my merry way.
I had that same feeling you get when you find money hiding in the couch cushion or under your car seat. Yay! Money I didn't have before!
In the back of my mind, of course, I was considering what I'd just made. Their check was $67.00. They left me $4.00. That is roughly a 6% tip.
Six percent, before tipping out the bartenders and the bussers, is not enough to sustain me, people. The system into which we enter our tip information at the end of the day for tax claim purposes even automatically low-balls an estimation at 10%; if we enter anything under 10% we need a manager's approval to ensure we aren't trying to claim less than we really made. So to those of you who think ten percent is an excellent tip, please take that into consideration. Nutshell: it's not.
Servers work very hard - even the bad ones, really - and we don't get compensated enough by the establishment for which we work because they expect you to tip us. Not tipping a server at all is like saying, "I'm an ungrateful jerk and I want you to work for free and live on the street."
By the way - we may have a catalog in the back of all the guests who don't tip, or have left less than seven percent for their servers. So we know who you are, and you probably shouldn't come back. (I'm sure you can read between the lines. If you can't, watch a movie or two.)
Or maybe we don't.
Or maybe we do...
Whatever.
I was having a decent night anyway, so I just let it go. Yes, I was somewhat disappointed; it's always unfortunate when people suck at life. In this country, going out to eat and not tipping at all is stealing. If you're doing that, you're receiving services and not paying anything in return. You've paid for the food you ate, sure, but you did not pay to have it prepared, brought to you, negotiated properly from the kitchen, to have your table kept clear of extraneous dishes and your drinks filled, etc. Effectively, serving becomes slave labor at that point.
When the table of unhappy people departed, I began busing that table and pre-bused my other two tables, who were in the middle of an enjoyable meal. When I returned, Blaire, one of the bussers, had finished busing my table. I thanked her and was about to go fetch some drink refills when she stopped me and handed me four dollars.
"It was hiding in the salt and pepper caddy."
"Oh, cool! Thanks!"
"Yeah, I figured I'd give it to you 'cause I found it. Don't forget to tip out the bussers at the end of the night!"
"I never do." I smiled and thanked her again and then continued on my merry way.
I had that same feeling you get when you find money hiding in the couch cushion or under your car seat. Yay! Money I didn't have before!
In the back of my mind, of course, I was considering what I'd just made. Their check was $67.00. They left me $4.00. That is roughly a 6% tip.
Six percent, before tipping out the bartenders and the bussers, is not enough to sustain me, people. The system into which we enter our tip information at the end of the day for tax claim purposes even automatically low-balls an estimation at 10%; if we enter anything under 10% we need a manager's approval to ensure we aren't trying to claim less than we really made. So to those of you who think ten percent is an excellent tip, please take that into consideration. Nutshell: it's not.
Servers work very hard - even the bad ones, really - and we don't get compensated enough by the establishment for which we work because they expect you to tip us. Not tipping a server at all is like saying, "I'm an ungrateful jerk and I want you to work for free and live on the street."
By the way - we may have a catalog in the back of all the guests who don't tip, or have left less than seven percent for their servers. So we know who you are, and you probably shouldn't come back. (I'm sure you can read between the lines. If you can't, watch a movie or two.)
Or maybe we don't.
Or maybe we do...
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Points for Commiserating with Your Waiter
This is Calvin to the whole Scarlet Crustacean World: Shrimpmonger alert! Sound the alarm. We've got a two-top of raging Shrimpmongers on the lose. This is a code twelve - they are to be considered frustrating and ignorant, so maintain a safe distance. Over and out.
Ah, yes, I thought, striding up to my table at the back of the restaurant, here are some happy ladies. I was being sarcastic with myself - See? I treat everyone equally, myself included - because these ladies, if they can be called such, wore the most disgruntled frowns I think I have ever seen. It's like they had gone to plastic surgeons, and when asked if they wanted face lifts, they said, 'No you ***hole, I want my face dropped!' The surgeons undoubtedly figured it was impossible to make their frowns even deeper, and I'd be willing to bet they had to consult at least three or four more before finding someone to physically etch disgust into their faces for them so that they wouldn't have to continue exerting effort on showing their hate for the world; they could do it while sleeping. Such happy guests have I, this shall be a wonderfully simplistic, simply wonderful meal. I wished I'd had chain mail under my crisp white shirt.
"Hello, ladies. How are you today?"
"Go get me a strawberry lemonade. She wants an iced tea, no sweetener. And step on it."
You want me to step on your drinks? Not a problem. I'll be right back with the squashed, seafood- and dirt-ridden remains of your glasses and a random mixture of formerly safe liquids for your enjoyment. "Sure, I'll be right back with your drinks. Before I head over there, though, allow me to explain some of our newer menu selections." Oh, what? You didn't think I was going to just bolt over to get your drinks immediately, did you? I have things to discuss with you ladies. These menu items demand descriptions elegant in imagery and eloquent in delivery.
I ran through the promotions, taking care not to speak too quickly so they could savor every sensational word. Then I went to get their drinks.
"Here you are, " I said, laying their drinks in front of them. "Are you ready to o--"
"I want a make-your-meal deal with the salmon and the fried shrimp and the scampi." She frowned at me (purposely?) as I jotted down her selection. I think I'll call her Frowny. "How big is that salmon?"
"It's the standard half portion. The same size you'd get if you ordered the lunch salmon, for instance." I gave her the weight in ounces.
"Whatever that means. It better be big enough, that's all I can say." I sincerely doubt that's all you can say. She looked at her friend. "You go on, now."
"Yeah, um." The friend rubbed her second chin with a meaty hand. She shall be Chins. "I guess I'll get me the steak and shrimp. Make that steak well done. Very well done, I don't want no pink in my meat."
"All right," I said, and repeated their meal orders back to them to ensure I had written it correctly. They each ordered a Caesar salad with extra dressing, so I said I'd be back with those in a moment.
While they had been ordering (me around) I had had another party seated at the booth behind theirs, so I went to greet them before fetching the Shrimpmongers' salads. Three kind young women, probably in their mid-twenties, smiled back as I welcomed them and introduced myself. I took their drink orders, with which they were ready, and went off to get the salads and the new table's drinks.
"I asked for extra dressing." Frowny was glaring at me again.
"I brought you extra dressing; it's right here." I pointed to the two ramekins of extra dressing I had laid on the table.
"Oh. Well that won't be enough. Go get me another one."
Right away, Miss DeVille. "Of course. And I'll bring some more bread, too." They had scarfed all the bread on the table while we were talking. I couldn't be sure I had even seen them put it in their mouths, let alone chew it.
They nodded and ate, Frowny twisting the corners of her mouth down while she chewed her salad and Chins shoveling leaves into her mouth as fast as she could stab them with the fork. I turned away and stopped over at my new three-top. "Here are your drinks, ladies." As I passed the sodas around, I heard the girl closest to me on the left - we'll call her Smiles, for her personality seemed the exact opposite of Frowny - shushing her friend to her left. The friend, Shana, had been whispering something when I arrived.
"Oh, the diet was for her," Shana said, and passed the drink I'd given her to the third girl, Flirt, across the table. Flirt looked at me and blinked her big brown eyes a couple of times.
"You forgot my order already? I thought I was kind of memorable."
"I, uh..." Truthfully, I'd forgotten which of them had ordered which drink because the Shrimpmongers in the booth next to them had completely wrenched my attention away with their claws of doom as soon as I'd jotted the orders down. "I'm sorry. It won't happen again." I widened my eyes and put my right fist against the middle of my chest as a promissory sign.
She laughed. "No problem. But we are ready to place our meal order, if your memory's ready for that."
"Oh, no worries," I replied. "I have a pen and a pad."
I took their relatively simplistic order down - when Smiles wanted to make a substitution, she said she was sorry as if the substitution was going to ruin my day, though I assured her it was no big deal - and then I proceeded back to the alley. Once there, I retrieved drinks for my third table, salads and bread for the three-top of really nice girls, extra dressing and more bread for the Shrimpmongers, and punched in the three-top's order.
"How ya doin', Cal?" Pam asked me while I was traying up the salads.
"I'm okay, thanks. Just getting stuff together for my tables. These Shrim-- this one table has me running around something awful. You know how it can be." I stopped myself from saying 'Shrimpmongers' to my manager, simply to avoid that conversation. It's hard to explain, having coined a term with which to label unsavory, uncaring, selfish guests, that the label is applied retroactively rather than stereotypically. It's also a conversation I didn't have time for, if I didn't want Frowny DeVille to try to bite my head off and to use the blood for dressing since I didn't bring the second ramekin of Caesar in time.
"Yep. Well, you'll be all right, I'm sure."
"Thanks. I'm sure I will." I smiled brightly and whisked myself over to my tables again.
I performed what we in the waiting business call 'silent service' and simply left the extra dressing and bread on the Shrimpmongers' table as I passed. I, uh, didn't want to disturb their conversation. Proceeding to the next booth, I dropped the salads and bread for my three-top and asked if everything was all right so far.
"It really is, Cal, thanks!"
"Yeah, this is perfect!"
"You're awesome."
Oh, yeah. I aim to please. I promised to return with their meal as soon as it was ready.
Minutes later I walked the Shrimpmongers' food to them. "Here's your make-your-meal, and here's your steak and shrimp. Is the steak done all right for you?" I looked at Chins expectantly and she dutifully cut into her steak. She opened her lips to say something but was sharply interrupted by Frowny.
"What is this?!"
"What's... what, ma'am?" I can't read your mind, lady. Yes, I'm a psychic waiter, but if you recall, severe Shrimpmonger hate-radiation has negative effects on my psychic waiter powers.
"This." She pointed at her salmon.
"That appears to be the salmon, ma'am. You did ask for salmon, fried shrimp, and shrimp scampi, yes?" She's going to tell me, 'No,' that she didn't ask for that, that she had ordered lobster and I'm such a stupidhead idiotman with my dumbwaiter moronicness (and I will have to explain to her that, even if I was a stupidhead idiotman with moronic tendencies, there was no physical way I could also be a dumbwaiter). I thought wrong. That's not what she said. Instead, she said:
"This ain't no salmon. This is like a bite of salmon. This is not supposed to be this small, is it?"
"I'm sorry, ma'am; as I said when you ordered, the portions in the make-your-meal are standard half-portions designated by weight. Would you like to place an order for some more salmon or something?" I smiled daggers at her.
"No. This is ridiculous. If I'm paying sixteen or seventeen dollars I'm gonna get more than just a tiny piece of fish. I don't want to order anything else, I want you to fix this, right now."
I waved my magic wand and her salmon grew three sizes bigger. Her heart remained three sizes too small.
Okay, that didn't actually happen. Instead, I used my most reassuring, calm-inducing voice and said, "I'm sorry you're displeased with your meal; I'll go inform my manager and see what we can do for you."
"No, I don't want you to get a manager. I want you to fix it, and I want you to do it now. This is ridiculous," she repeated.
I bit back the diatribe about hierarchical structure in corporate society, about business protocols, about decorum when dining out, about personal hygiene... I just swallowed all the venomous words I felt compelled to vomit all over her and her meal, and rehashed the situation - "I will be right back after I speak to a manager for you" - before ignoring her commands to stop and striding into the alley to see Pam about the situation.
"Pam, I need to speak with you for a moment, please." She was in the middle of helping the A/C tray up food, but she immediately gravitated to a place out of the way of passing servers to hear what was going on. I briefed her on the Shrimpmonger situation.
"So what do they want?" she asked.
"I have no idea."
"What do you mean, you have no idea?"
"I mean she won't tell me. She said she wanted me to 'fix' it, but wouldn't say how, and then told me specifically not to involve a manager. Statements like that send up red flags for me. Don't you agree?"
"Yeah, definitely." She pursed her lips and furrowed her brow, as she does almost all the time. This time she looked thoughtful. Though, I might have misread thoughtful from implosive exasperation. "Well, I don't know what she expects, but I'm going to go find out."
"Thanks. I appreciate it." Truly, I did. Pam's a great manager - she gets things done, she works hard, and she cares about her employees. That, and she's got tons of experience in this business, so she's handled insane people like these before. Better her than me.
I took this respite from Crazytown to drop the check at my third table who had only wanted appetizers after all, and drop the three-top's meals.
"Hey, ladies! Miss me?"
"We sure did!" Smiles was smiling at me.
Shana laughed. "Well, we really were just hoping to see the food."
"It's right here. The seafood alfredo for you..." I passed her dish to her.
"The steak and shrimp for you..." I set the plate in front of Flirt.
Her eyes lit up. "This looks great!"
"Excellent - just cut into it and make sure it's done right for me, please." She did so and nodded.
"And... here you go." I set down the chicken entree for Smiles and asked them if everything looked okay.
"It's perfect, thanks, Calvin," said Smiles. I had set my hand on the table casually when I asked if the food was all right. I was about to walk away when I felt a hand come to rest atop mine. "Hey, Cal," Smiles whispered.
I raised my eyebrows and nodded. Yeah?
"Are they seriously still complaining?" She furtively pointed behind her with her thumb, right at the booth where the Shrimpmongers sat. Funny, I had tuned them out and not even realized, but now that she said something, I could hear Frowny opening her frown enough to issue forth a continuous stream of verbal condemnation.
I turned back to Smiles and nodded again.
"Wow. That's ridiculous." I didn't miss the play on Frowny's own words, and I smiled at Smiles. Shana elbowed Smiles and shushed her, clearly worried that Frowny and Chins would hear them. Smiles continued anyway. "Did they even look at the menu? They're complaining about how freaking small the portions are here. One, that's crazy; the portions are more than big enough. And two, the menu tells you exactly what you're gonna get when you order."
I could not have said it better myself.
"And," Flirt cut in, "You explained it to them, anyway. I heard you."
I'm glad someone was paying attention, I thought. "Heh, yeah. It's all right. But I'm glad your meals are all right. Let me know if you need anything else, okay?"
"We will," said Flirt. "But we're good right now, thanks."
I met Pam in the alley to find out what she had worked out with the Shrimpmongers.
"She wanted a steak."
"Oh. Well, that's not too crazy. I mean, she only ordered an entirely different meal originally. Of course she wanted steak, now."
"No, that's not so bad. But she wanted it for free. I'm not charging her for the make-your-meal since she decided she didn't want it, but I'm charging her for the steak. It's not your fault, Calvin; she just wanted to get a free meal out of us and she's going to do whatever she can."
"So what's the new order?"
"Steak and shrimp. Steak well done. Mashed potatoes."
"Oh, so exactly what her friend has."
"Yep." Pam narrowed her eyes at me. "It's not your fault. It'll be all right."
"Uh, Pam? I'm fine. Truly. Amused, a little annoyed, definitely exasperated, but I'm not all broken up over this. Some people are just..."
I struggled to find an appropriate word - appropriately descriptive and appropriate for the workplace. Pam saved me the trouble.
"Exactly."
I returned to my tables to bring drink refills and check in.
"Can I bring you ladies anything?" I directed my attention to Frowny. "Would you like some more bread while you wait for your new meal?"
"No, I just want my steak." She looked as sullen as a vampire and as angry as the Hulk.
"I'm sorry; I'll have that out to you as soon as it's ready. The kitchen wants to ensure that it's done properly and to your liking."
Chins slurped down another huge bite of her steak. Half her meal was already gone.
Frowny just kept looking down at the table in front of her. "I've never complained at a restaurant in my life. This is ridiculous." Not the most inventive motto, but I guess it works.
"I'm sorry," I repeated, "but if there's anything else I can do for you, please let me know."
"I told you what I wanted, and I didn't want you goin' off and gettin' your manager, but..." her voice trailed off, dissolving into a string of obscenity-laced tongue-lashings. Then she turned her head entirely to her left, away from me and toward the wall.
"If there's anything else you'd like, you just let me know, okay?"
She continued to face the wall.
"Ma'am?"
She remained turned.
Are you serious, lady? I haven't encountered immaturity and outright rudeness this thick since I was a teenager and my three younger sisters were on the same monthly cycle.
I shrugged and moved on to the three-top of girls who I knew were having fun despite these women, and with whom I knew I could share a much needed laugh again.
"So, I trust your food continues to taste good, ya?"
"Mmmh," Shana began, downing a bite she had been working on when I approached, "totally!"
"Uh..." said Flirt. Her voice had a low tone and a hint of hesitation. She raised her eyebrows and slightly tilted her head, in a subtle motion toward the booth behind them.
I covertly shifted my eyes and saw, in my periphery, that Frowny was actively making fun of Shana's enthusiasm. Making exaggerated faces. Waving her hands, mouthing the word "totally" over and over again.
"What are they doing? What is going on behind me?" Smiles was not looking exceptionally smiley.
"Don't look," Shana said. I could tell who the voice of reason was in this group, and boy, was I grateful for her. Smiles started to turn around anyway.
"Hey, we should totally say something to them. They shouldn't be so mean to waiters, or anyone. And they're offensive to other customers, right?" Stacy was clearly looking for retribution. Part of me wanted to see where it would go. The other part of me still enjoys getting paid.
"C'mon, Stacy, we don't wanna get Cal in trouble," said Flirt. So Smiles had a name, too. "Besides, they're just being stupid."
I helped Flirt out and switched gears. "So, you never answered me earlier - what brings you girls here today?"
"Well," said Shana, "basically, we were out using gift cards we still had from this winter and we thought we'd get some dinner here 'cause we all love this place."
"Oh, that's awesome! Glad you decided to come here," I said honestly.
"Hehe, us too." Flirt blushed.
As all of this was happening in hushed voices, I could hear the conversation the Shrimpmongers were having a few feet away from me, as well. The crux of it was this: Frowny was still ticked off that her steak wasn't already ready for her, though she had requested it be done well, and Chins had already finished her meal. Frowny was also bothered by the fact that I wasn't put off when she blatantly ignored me. Score one for Calvin, killin' 'em with kindness!
I smiled, reminded the three-top that they could let me or another server know if they needed anything, and went back to the alley. They were really nice to me the whole time they were there, and they get extra points for commiserating with the waiter. I was all over their table; they never had to ask for drink refills or extra sauce, and though I didn't interrupt them or hover around them while they did their thing, I managed to be in range whenever they needed me - which wasn't often, because they weren't needy, demanding Shrimpmongers.
My manager brought out the new meal for Frowny when it came out. She told the manager it was fine and waited for me to approach the table again to check on them before telling me she wanted it boxed up right now - she didn't want to waste any more of her time at this place.
When everything was boxed up, I left the check - which I had ready - on the table for them and returned to the three-top to see if the girls wanted dessert.
"No, I don't think I can fit another bite. But... I can't believe they're still b****ing about this. Like, why did you even go out to a restaurant if you're just gonna be in a bad mood the whole time, no matter what they do to please you?" Smiles -- ahem, Stacy -- really empathized with me.
"I'm glad you all are having fun," I said, changing the subject again. "Seriously, this table is a breath of fresh air. You can come sit in my section anytime."
"Haha, we totally will," said Flirt, "but maybe we could sit behind some different people. Or no people."
"And maybe you'll be a little more subtle about flirting with the waiter, Jamie," muttered Smiles a bit too loudly.
I courteously pretended not to hear that, thanked them again for being awesome, and thanked the restaurant gods that the Shrimpmongers were taking up the check I'd left and getting their money out to leave.
I thanked the restaurant gods too soon.
They weren't getting their money out. They were pulling the check out of the check binder and scrutinizing it with scientific intensity. "Calvin!" Frowny beckoned me.
I mentally hung my head in resignation and walked over to the table.
"What is all this about?"
It took me a full ten minutes to explain the itemized check to her - I had to physically do the math for her on a piece of paper before she'd believe me that the computer was correct in its calculations. No joke. And the whole time she complained about how she shouldn't have to be paying for any of it, anyway.
And I did all of that hard work... for free.
Ah, yes, I thought, striding up to my table at the back of the restaurant, here are some happy ladies. I was being sarcastic with myself - See? I treat everyone equally, myself included - because these ladies, if they can be called such, wore the most disgruntled frowns I think I have ever seen. It's like they had gone to plastic surgeons, and when asked if they wanted face lifts, they said, 'No you ***hole, I want my face dropped!' The surgeons undoubtedly figured it was impossible to make their frowns even deeper, and I'd be willing to bet they had to consult at least three or four more before finding someone to physically etch disgust into their faces for them so that they wouldn't have to continue exerting effort on showing their hate for the world; they could do it while sleeping. Such happy guests have I, this shall be a wonderfully simplistic, simply wonderful meal. I wished I'd had chain mail under my crisp white shirt.
"Hello, ladies. How are you today?"
"Go get me a strawberry lemonade. She wants an iced tea, no sweetener. And step on it."
You want me to step on your drinks? Not a problem. I'll be right back with the squashed, seafood- and dirt-ridden remains of your glasses and a random mixture of formerly safe liquids for your enjoyment. "Sure, I'll be right back with your drinks. Before I head over there, though, allow me to explain some of our newer menu selections." Oh, what? You didn't think I was going to just bolt over to get your drinks immediately, did you? I have things to discuss with you ladies. These menu items demand descriptions elegant in imagery and eloquent in delivery.
I ran through the promotions, taking care not to speak too quickly so they could savor every sensational word. Then I went to get their drinks.
"Here you are, " I said, laying their drinks in front of them. "Are you ready to o--"
"I want a make-your-meal deal with the salmon and the fried shrimp and the scampi." She frowned at me (purposely?) as I jotted down her selection. I think I'll call her Frowny. "How big is that salmon?"
"It's the standard half portion. The same size you'd get if you ordered the lunch salmon, for instance." I gave her the weight in ounces.
"Whatever that means. It better be big enough, that's all I can say." I sincerely doubt that's all you can say. She looked at her friend. "You go on, now."
"Yeah, um." The friend rubbed her second chin with a meaty hand. She shall be Chins. "I guess I'll get me the steak and shrimp. Make that steak well done. Very well done, I don't want no pink in my meat."
"All right," I said, and repeated their meal orders back to them to ensure I had written it correctly. They each ordered a Caesar salad with extra dressing, so I said I'd be back with those in a moment.
While they had been ordering (me around) I had had another party seated at the booth behind theirs, so I went to greet them before fetching the Shrimpmongers' salads. Three kind young women, probably in their mid-twenties, smiled back as I welcomed them and introduced myself. I took their drink orders, with which they were ready, and went off to get the salads and the new table's drinks.
"I asked for extra dressing." Frowny was glaring at me again.
"I brought you extra dressing; it's right here." I pointed to the two ramekins of extra dressing I had laid on the table.
"Oh. Well that won't be enough. Go get me another one."
Right away, Miss DeVille. "Of course. And I'll bring some more bread, too." They had scarfed all the bread on the table while we were talking. I couldn't be sure I had even seen them put it in their mouths, let alone chew it.
They nodded and ate, Frowny twisting the corners of her mouth down while she chewed her salad and Chins shoveling leaves into her mouth as fast as she could stab them with the fork. I turned away and stopped over at my new three-top. "Here are your drinks, ladies." As I passed the sodas around, I heard the girl closest to me on the left - we'll call her Smiles, for her personality seemed the exact opposite of Frowny - shushing her friend to her left. The friend, Shana, had been whispering something when I arrived.
"Oh, the diet was for her," Shana said, and passed the drink I'd given her to the third girl, Flirt, across the table. Flirt looked at me and blinked her big brown eyes a couple of times.
"You forgot my order already? I thought I was kind of memorable."
"I, uh..." Truthfully, I'd forgotten which of them had ordered which drink because the Shrimpmongers in the booth next to them had completely wrenched my attention away with their claws of doom as soon as I'd jotted the orders down. "I'm sorry. It won't happen again." I widened my eyes and put my right fist against the middle of my chest as a promissory sign.
She laughed. "No problem. But we are ready to place our meal order, if your memory's ready for that."
"Oh, no worries," I replied. "I have a pen and a pad."
I took their relatively simplistic order down - when Smiles wanted to make a substitution, she said she was sorry as if the substitution was going to ruin my day, though I assured her it was no big deal - and then I proceeded back to the alley. Once there, I retrieved drinks for my third table, salads and bread for the three-top of really nice girls, extra dressing and more bread for the Shrimpmongers, and punched in the three-top's order.
"How ya doin', Cal?" Pam asked me while I was traying up the salads.
"I'm okay, thanks. Just getting stuff together for my tables. These Shrim-- this one table has me running around something awful. You know how it can be." I stopped myself from saying 'Shrimpmongers' to my manager, simply to avoid that conversation. It's hard to explain, having coined a term with which to label unsavory, uncaring, selfish guests, that the label is applied retroactively rather than stereotypically. It's also a conversation I didn't have time for, if I didn't want Frowny DeVille to try to bite my head off and to use the blood for dressing since I didn't bring the second ramekin of Caesar in time.
"Yep. Well, you'll be all right, I'm sure."
"Thanks. I'm sure I will." I smiled brightly and whisked myself over to my tables again.
I performed what we in the waiting business call 'silent service' and simply left the extra dressing and bread on the Shrimpmongers' table as I passed. I, uh, didn't want to disturb their conversation. Proceeding to the next booth, I dropped the salads and bread for my three-top and asked if everything was all right so far.
"It really is, Cal, thanks!"
"Yeah, this is perfect!"
"You're awesome."
Oh, yeah. I aim to please. I promised to return with their meal as soon as it was ready.
Minutes later I walked the Shrimpmongers' food to them. "Here's your make-your-meal, and here's your steak and shrimp. Is the steak done all right for you?" I looked at Chins expectantly and she dutifully cut into her steak. She opened her lips to say something but was sharply interrupted by Frowny.
"What is this?!"
"What's... what, ma'am?" I can't read your mind, lady. Yes, I'm a psychic waiter, but if you recall, severe Shrimpmonger hate-radiation has negative effects on my psychic waiter powers.
"This." She pointed at her salmon.
"That appears to be the salmon, ma'am. You did ask for salmon, fried shrimp, and shrimp scampi, yes?" She's going to tell me, 'No,' that she didn't ask for that, that she had ordered lobster and I'm such a stupidhead idiotman with my dumbwaiter moronicness (and I will have to explain to her that, even if I was a stupidhead idiotman with moronic tendencies, there was no physical way I could also be a dumbwaiter). I thought wrong. That's not what she said. Instead, she said:
"This ain't no salmon. This is like a bite of salmon. This is not supposed to be this small, is it?"
"I'm sorry, ma'am; as I said when you ordered, the portions in the make-your-meal are standard half-portions designated by weight. Would you like to place an order for some more salmon or something?" I smiled daggers at her.
"No. This is ridiculous. If I'm paying sixteen or seventeen dollars I'm gonna get more than just a tiny piece of fish. I don't want to order anything else, I want you to fix this, right now."
I waved my magic wand and her salmon grew three sizes bigger. Her heart remained three sizes too small.
Okay, that didn't actually happen. Instead, I used my most reassuring, calm-inducing voice and said, "I'm sorry you're displeased with your meal; I'll go inform my manager and see what we can do for you."
"No, I don't want you to get a manager. I want you to fix it, and I want you to do it now. This is ridiculous," she repeated.
I bit back the diatribe about hierarchical structure in corporate society, about business protocols, about decorum when dining out, about personal hygiene... I just swallowed all the venomous words I felt compelled to vomit all over her and her meal, and rehashed the situation - "I will be right back after I speak to a manager for you" - before ignoring her commands to stop and striding into the alley to see Pam about the situation.
"Pam, I need to speak with you for a moment, please." She was in the middle of helping the A/C tray up food, but she immediately gravitated to a place out of the way of passing servers to hear what was going on. I briefed her on the Shrimpmonger situation.
"So what do they want?" she asked.
"I have no idea."
"What do you mean, you have no idea?"
"I mean she won't tell me. She said she wanted me to 'fix' it, but wouldn't say how, and then told me specifically not to involve a manager. Statements like that send up red flags for me. Don't you agree?"
"Yeah, definitely." She pursed her lips and furrowed her brow, as she does almost all the time. This time she looked thoughtful. Though, I might have misread thoughtful from implosive exasperation. "Well, I don't know what she expects, but I'm going to go find out."
"Thanks. I appreciate it." Truly, I did. Pam's a great manager - she gets things done, she works hard, and she cares about her employees. That, and she's got tons of experience in this business, so she's handled insane people like these before. Better her than me.
I took this respite from Crazytown to drop the check at my third table who had only wanted appetizers after all, and drop the three-top's meals.
"Hey, ladies! Miss me?"
"We sure did!" Smiles was smiling at me.
Shana laughed. "Well, we really were just hoping to see the food."
"It's right here. The seafood alfredo for you..." I passed her dish to her.
"The steak and shrimp for you..." I set the plate in front of Flirt.
Her eyes lit up. "This looks great!"
"Excellent - just cut into it and make sure it's done right for me, please." She did so and nodded.
"And... here you go." I set down the chicken entree for Smiles and asked them if everything looked okay.
"It's perfect, thanks, Calvin," said Smiles. I had set my hand on the table casually when I asked if the food was all right. I was about to walk away when I felt a hand come to rest atop mine. "Hey, Cal," Smiles whispered.
I raised my eyebrows and nodded. Yeah?
"Are they seriously still complaining?" She furtively pointed behind her with her thumb, right at the booth where the Shrimpmongers sat. Funny, I had tuned them out and not even realized, but now that she said something, I could hear Frowny opening her frown enough to issue forth a continuous stream of verbal condemnation.
I turned back to Smiles and nodded again.
"Wow. That's ridiculous." I didn't miss the play on Frowny's own words, and I smiled at Smiles. Shana elbowed Smiles and shushed her, clearly worried that Frowny and Chins would hear them. Smiles continued anyway. "Did they even look at the menu? They're complaining about how freaking small the portions are here. One, that's crazy; the portions are more than big enough. And two, the menu tells you exactly what you're gonna get when you order."
I could not have said it better myself.
"And," Flirt cut in, "You explained it to them, anyway. I heard you."
I'm glad someone was paying attention, I thought. "Heh, yeah. It's all right. But I'm glad your meals are all right. Let me know if you need anything else, okay?"
"We will," said Flirt. "But we're good right now, thanks."
I met Pam in the alley to find out what she had worked out with the Shrimpmongers.
"She wanted a steak."
"Oh. Well, that's not too crazy. I mean, she only ordered an entirely different meal originally. Of course she wanted steak, now."
"No, that's not so bad. But she wanted it for free. I'm not charging her for the make-your-meal since she decided she didn't want it, but I'm charging her for the steak. It's not your fault, Calvin; she just wanted to get a free meal out of us and she's going to do whatever she can."
"So what's the new order?"
"Steak and shrimp. Steak well done. Mashed potatoes."
"Oh, so exactly what her friend has."
"Yep." Pam narrowed her eyes at me. "It's not your fault. It'll be all right."
"Uh, Pam? I'm fine. Truly. Amused, a little annoyed, definitely exasperated, but I'm not all broken up over this. Some people are just..."
I struggled to find an appropriate word - appropriately descriptive and appropriate for the workplace. Pam saved me the trouble.
"Exactly."
I returned to my tables to bring drink refills and check in.
"Can I bring you ladies anything?" I directed my attention to Frowny. "Would you like some more bread while you wait for your new meal?"
"No, I just want my steak." She looked as sullen as a vampire and as angry as the Hulk.
"I'm sorry; I'll have that out to you as soon as it's ready. The kitchen wants to ensure that it's done properly and to your liking."
Chins slurped down another huge bite of her steak. Half her meal was already gone.
Frowny just kept looking down at the table in front of her. "I've never complained at a restaurant in my life. This is ridiculous." Not the most inventive motto, but I guess it works.
"I'm sorry," I repeated, "but if there's anything else I can do for you, please let me know."
"I told you what I wanted, and I didn't want you goin' off and gettin' your manager, but..." her voice trailed off, dissolving into a string of obscenity-laced tongue-lashings. Then she turned her head entirely to her left, away from me and toward the wall.
"If there's anything else you'd like, you just let me know, okay?"
She continued to face the wall.
"Ma'am?"
She remained turned.
Are you serious, lady? I haven't encountered immaturity and outright rudeness this thick since I was a teenager and my three younger sisters were on the same monthly cycle.
I shrugged and moved on to the three-top of girls who I knew were having fun despite these women, and with whom I knew I could share a much needed laugh again.
"So, I trust your food continues to taste good, ya?"
"Mmmh," Shana began, downing a bite she had been working on when I approached, "totally!"
"Uh..." said Flirt. Her voice had a low tone and a hint of hesitation. She raised her eyebrows and slightly tilted her head, in a subtle motion toward the booth behind them.
I covertly shifted my eyes and saw, in my periphery, that Frowny was actively making fun of Shana's enthusiasm. Making exaggerated faces. Waving her hands, mouthing the word "totally" over and over again.
"What are they doing? What is going on behind me?" Smiles was not looking exceptionally smiley.
"Don't look," Shana said. I could tell who the voice of reason was in this group, and boy, was I grateful for her. Smiles started to turn around anyway.
"Hey, we should totally say something to them. They shouldn't be so mean to waiters, or anyone. And they're offensive to other customers, right?" Stacy was clearly looking for retribution. Part of me wanted to see where it would go. The other part of me still enjoys getting paid.
"C'mon, Stacy, we don't wanna get Cal in trouble," said Flirt. So Smiles had a name, too. "Besides, they're just being stupid."
I helped Flirt out and switched gears. "So, you never answered me earlier - what brings you girls here today?"
"Well," said Shana, "basically, we were out using gift cards we still had from this winter and we thought we'd get some dinner here 'cause we all love this place."
"Oh, that's awesome! Glad you decided to come here," I said honestly.
"Hehe, us too." Flirt blushed.
As all of this was happening in hushed voices, I could hear the conversation the Shrimpmongers were having a few feet away from me, as well. The crux of it was this: Frowny was still ticked off that her steak wasn't already ready for her, though she had requested it be done well, and Chins had already finished her meal. Frowny was also bothered by the fact that I wasn't put off when she blatantly ignored me. Score one for Calvin, killin' 'em with kindness!
I smiled, reminded the three-top that they could let me or another server know if they needed anything, and went back to the alley. They were really nice to me the whole time they were there, and they get extra points for commiserating with the waiter. I was all over their table; they never had to ask for drink refills or extra sauce, and though I didn't interrupt them or hover around them while they did their thing, I managed to be in range whenever they needed me - which wasn't often, because they weren't needy, demanding Shrimpmongers.
My manager brought out the new meal for Frowny when it came out. She told the manager it was fine and waited for me to approach the table again to check on them before telling me she wanted it boxed up right now - she didn't want to waste any more of her time at this place.
When everything was boxed up, I left the check - which I had ready - on the table for them and returned to the three-top to see if the girls wanted dessert.
"No, I don't think I can fit another bite. But... I can't believe they're still b****ing about this. Like, why did you even go out to a restaurant if you're just gonna be in a bad mood the whole time, no matter what they do to please you?" Smiles -- ahem, Stacy -- really empathized with me.
"I'm glad you all are having fun," I said, changing the subject again. "Seriously, this table is a breath of fresh air. You can come sit in my section anytime."
"Haha, we totally will," said Flirt, "but maybe we could sit behind some different people. Or no people."
"And maybe you'll be a little more subtle about flirting with the waiter, Jamie," muttered Smiles a bit too loudly.
I courteously pretended not to hear that, thanked them again for being awesome, and thanked the restaurant gods that the Shrimpmongers were taking up the check I'd left and getting their money out to leave.
I thanked the restaurant gods too soon.
They weren't getting their money out. They were pulling the check out of the check binder and scrutinizing it with scientific intensity. "Calvin!" Frowny beckoned me.
I mentally hung my head in resignation and walked over to the table.
"What is all this about?"
It took me a full ten minutes to explain the itemized check to her - I had to physically do the math for her on a piece of paper before she'd believe me that the computer was correct in its calculations. No joke. And the whole time she complained about how she shouldn't have to be paying for any of it, anyway.
And I did all of that hard work... for free.
Monday, February 14, 2011
A Monday Night Encounter
Because I close on a lot of Monday nights, there is a certain Monday night phenomenon I've noticed. We get a lot of one-tops on Mondays, compared to other nights. You could say that a lot of people come to the Crustacean with a case of the Mondays.
This one particular Monday night, a few months ago, we were especially slow. I was working Zip, maintaining my tables without a problem and making decent money considering the infrequency of guests. At roughly 8:15, I brought out the tray of two Big Shrimp meals for my lone teenage two-top and stopped at my newly seated table to greet the gentleman sitting there, alone.
"Hello, sir, welcome to the Scarlet Crustacean. How are you tonight?" I stretched my cheesy-waiter-smile across my face.
By the lines near his eyes, the man looked roughly fifty, perhaps a few years older. He wore an expensive, dark gray business suit and a tie that contrasted well with his fully light gray hair. I guessed either lawyer or stock-broker; no, I thought, correcting myself, definitely lawyer. He doesn't look haggard enough for a stockbroker, these days.
Lawyer-Man looked up from the menu and smiled back. "Hi. I'm excellent, thank you. How are you?"
He actually paused for a response.
"I'm doing great, thanks. My name is Calvin; I'll be your server this evening." I asked him if he was familiar with our promotions and he said he was, so I cut to the chase. "What can I bring you to drink tonight, sir? We have some great drinks at the bar - the new Sam Adams is on tap."
"Hmm... I'd like a strawberry daiquiri, please. And I'm ready to order my meal, as well, if that's all right." He folded the menu properly and passed it over to me.
"Perfect," I said, "what would you like?"
I took his meal order and went to the bar to pick his drink up. The table with the teenagers was set, the kids thoroughly enjoying their meals by now, so I waited an extra second to ask him if the drink was to his satisfaction. Lawyer-Man took a polite sip of his drink, closed his eyes, savoring the flavor, and smiled kindly. "Yes, Calvin, this is fine." Before I could walk away, he was talking again. "So, Calvin, is it usually this... uh... busy on a Monday night?" His eyes danced around the restaurant to further make his point.
"It varies," I responded. "Sometimes it's busier, sometimes it's even deader than this. Sometimes it's just like this. It's comfortable, though, right? Coming into a restaurant when it's not busy, I mean." I was humoring him with the small talk, but I was serious about what I said. I've always preferred dining out when the restaurants I would visit were quiet. In most places the service doesn't change all that drastically, but the environment, the atmosphere, is entirely more comfortable. You're not as pressed for time, there isn't nearly as much ambient noise, and everyone -- the hosts, the servers, the management, even the other guests -- everyone is more relaxed.
"Oh, of course. But you'd probably prefer if you had more people here tonight, right?"
What a gentleman! This guy was not only polite when dining out, but he could fathom what it would be like in my position. "Yeah, I wouldn't mind if we were a little busier. The night's not going too badly, though, considering the light traffic. It's nice, every once in a while, even on this side of the table, to get an easygoing evening."
"Do you like working here?" He took another sip of his drink and kept his eyes up when he spoke to me.
"I don't dislike it," I cautiously admitted, "though it's not my career."
"Oh? What is your field of choice, then, if I may ask?"
"I'm in school getting my graduate degree." I filled him in briefly on my 'field of choice' and then asked him what his profession was, to be polite. I assumed that's what he wanted me to ask, and I'm in the business of making money. Some tables want food, some tables want small talk. This guy seemed to be the latter.
"I'm a lawyer. Corporate law, mostly, though I've handled some criminal cases."
"Ah, that's cool. I almost went into law. You must enjoy it."
"Yeah, certainly. I've been practicing for well over twenty years now. And it's still exciting for me." He grinned.
In my peripheral vision I caught sight of a couple of half-empty glasses at my other table. (When you're a server, the glass is always half-empty, until you fill it up.) The teens were still stuffing their faces full of fish and choking down bread like they might never eat again. They definitely needed refills. "Can I bring you anything else while you wait for your meal?" I asked Actual Lawyer-Man. "I'll have your salad and bread out in just a few minutes."
"No thanks, Calvin. I'm fine." He smiled earnestly and reached to his side, retrieving some formal-looking papers stashed on the booth's bench, between him and the wall.
I refilled the drinks I saw my other table emptying and then headed back to the alley to prepare the man's salad and bread. He'd asked for the light dressing and preferred it on the side. Not overly complicated, and not annoying at all considering that I didn't have anything better to do that night. I brought it out shortly thereafter.
"Oh, this looks great, Calvin. Thank you."
"No problem, sir."
"Call me Jerry. You're not a client, right?" He winked, I laughed, and as I started walking away he began eating his salad.
I had barely walked into the alley when I heard my name. "Hey, Calvin," said one of the managers, beckoning me toward the office.
"What's up, Pam?" I strolled over to her to find out what she wanted. Her eyebrows were furrowed in amusement. I'm still not sure how it's possible that people (myself included) can discern what she's feeling based on her expressions; they all look the same, with the same furrowed eyebrows and the same pursed lips. Sometimes it's amusement; sometimes it's confusion; sometimes it's impatience; sometimes it's rage. Only when she's genuinely surprised or happy do her eyebrows move up.
"The gentleman at forty-six. That's your table, right?"
"...Yes." I agreed suspiciously. "Why?" My eyes narrowed and I felt myself tense with the effort to perceive what she was getting at - whether or not I should be concerned (read: whether or not I was going to be in trouble).
"He's extraordinarily nice, isn't he? A very nice man. I stopped over to check on some tables and he was really quite nice," she repeated.
"That he is." I smiled, thinking back on the evening. "I've been getting great tables all night. It's a good Monday, so far."
Pam patted me on the back. "Great! Keep up the good work."
I brought Lawyer-Man Jerry's food out to him and laid it on the table. "Fresh trout, grilled as requested with vegetables and rice. Here you are, good sir. Please be careful, the plate may be hot."
Three... two... one. "Ow! Oh, yeah, right." It never fails.
"Everything look okay, sir?"
He stopped futzing with the plate, tore his eyes from the food, and looked back at me. "Yeah, looks perfect, Calvin. Thank you."
I nodded and walked off to cash out the teenagers. They were doing the Too-Much-Too-Fast Leanback. It's a restaurant-exclusive dance consisting of a single move. Everyone can do it, but teens are the only ones who seem to have perfected it.
I stopped back at Jerry's table a minute or two later. "Does your meal taste all right?"
"Mmmh!" he exclaimed, and swallowed the food he'd been chewing, "yeah, it's really good!"
"Glad to hear it," I said. "Just let me know if you need anything else from the kitchen."
"No, I'm all right for now. There's a lot of food here! Want to sit down and help me out?" He let out a good-natured laugh, knowing that wouldn't really be appropriate. It wasn't the first time a table had suggested such a thing; I think I'm a pretty likable server.
"Haha, thanks, Jerry, but I don't think so. Enjoy your food, though!"
"And you enjoy your, uh, waitering." Always smiling, this guy.
"I will." And at the moment, I meant it.
A little while later, I asked if he wanted dessert. He ordered the cheesecake (politely, of course) and I brought it right out. "Here you go, sir." As I slid the plate in front of him, I placed his check down on the corner of the table so he could cash out when he was ready.
"Oh, that dessert does look tasty."
"Agreed. Hope you like it."
"I'm sure I will."
I took one step, he took one bite, and then: "Yep, definitely good cheesecake."
"Great!" I smiled my cheesy-waiter-smile. Again.
"So, on a day like this, when you guys are clearly not busy, do you still get stuck here very late?"
"Nah, it shouldn't be too bad tonight. I'll probably get out earlier than usual."
"What's earlier than usual?" he asked between bites.
I shrugged, considering the timing and how long it would take me to get my work done. "Ten-ish."
"Oh, that's not bad at all. Plenty of time for a young guy like you to enjoy the evening."
"Heh. Yeah, except for the reading I need to do for class."
He slid down another bite of cheesecake. "Yeah, well, besides that. At least you get out at a decent hour, right? I've still got this--" he lifted a large stack of papers from the bench to the table next to his plate "-- to go through. I'm only about halfway through it. On the bright side, I can probably put it off tonight."
"Oh, well that's good, at least."
"Yes, certainly is." He grinned at me and finished his cheesecake, then slipped his credit card into the check binder. I walked away and ran it, returning it with the slips he needed to sign.
"Well, Calvin," he said, signing the slips, "thank you very much for a very satisfying meal. If you ever need a lawyer, let me know. Here's my card." He passed me a business card. "By the way, you're an excellent waiter." He put his hand out for a handshake.
"Thanks, sir," I replied. I shook his hand. "I try." It's true. I do.
"It's been a pleasure, Calvin."
The handshake seemed to extend a little longer than I'm used to, but I mentally shrugged, figuring he'd gotten distracted or something. He smiled again at me before standing up to leave.
I walked into the alley and opened the check binder to look at the credit card slip. He had left me a generous tip, and more. Seriously, there was more. On the itemized copy, he had jotted his name and his personal cell phone number, with the words, "Thanks for a great time, Calvin!" written beneath them.
I puzzled for a minute trying to figure out what had just happened. Still in the alley, I showed the slip to my friend Leon and asked him what he thought.
First he keeled over laughing. The only thing that kept him from falling down on the floor was that we were in the kitchen of a seafood restaurant, and that would be gross. "Well, clearly, Jerry liked you more than a little," he announced between bouts of laughter.
"You mean..."
"Yes. Why else would he have left you his personal cell phone number?"
Wow. Okay, well, that's a first for me. I laughed out loud. I was shocked, amused at myself for being so blind, and found the whole exchange hilarious. I ran through the events aloud. "The casual conversation, the smiles, the compliments, the clear interest in my vocation, the comments about when I would get out of work, the extended handshake, the phone number, the message..."
"The strawberry daiquiri he ordered when he sat down..." Leon raised both eyebrows at me. "Do you not have any gaydar?
"Guess not," I replied. "I've been given phone numbers before, but not from old lawyer men."
"Oh," said Leon, "are they usually from old men of other occupations?" He smirked at me. Damnit, Leon, I know you're sarcastic, too, but really, man. In the end, there can be only one.
"No. They're usually hot women. But I can understand why you wouldn't have guessed that, since it never happens for you."
"That's okay, Cal. You can have all the experiences with old men giving you their phone numbers. I don't need it to happen for me."
I rolled my eyes at him.
"So are you gonna call him?" he asked, patting me on the back.
"I'm going to treat that as rhetorical."
"Ah. Pleading the fifth must be special advice from your special lawyer-friend."
I walked away, chuckling. Leon was being a sarcastic jerk, but it's my brand of humor, so even on the other end of it I still find it funny.
And I still find it funny. He brings it up once in a while just to have something to laugh at me about, even though this happened months ago. I suppose, though, that if I can't take it, I shouldn't dish it. Waiter pun intended.
This one particular Monday night, a few months ago, we were especially slow. I was working Zip, maintaining my tables without a problem and making decent money considering the infrequency of guests. At roughly 8:15, I brought out the tray of two Big Shrimp meals for my lone teenage two-top and stopped at my newly seated table to greet the gentleman sitting there, alone.
"Hello, sir, welcome to the Scarlet Crustacean. How are you tonight?" I stretched my cheesy-waiter-smile across my face.
By the lines near his eyes, the man looked roughly fifty, perhaps a few years older. He wore an expensive, dark gray business suit and a tie that contrasted well with his fully light gray hair. I guessed either lawyer or stock-broker; no, I thought, correcting myself, definitely lawyer. He doesn't look haggard enough for a stockbroker, these days.
Lawyer-Man looked up from the menu and smiled back. "Hi. I'm excellent, thank you. How are you?"
He actually paused for a response.
"I'm doing great, thanks. My name is Calvin; I'll be your server this evening." I asked him if he was familiar with our promotions and he said he was, so I cut to the chase. "What can I bring you to drink tonight, sir? We have some great drinks at the bar - the new Sam Adams is on tap."
"Hmm... I'd like a strawberry daiquiri, please. And I'm ready to order my meal, as well, if that's all right." He folded the menu properly and passed it over to me.
"Perfect," I said, "what would you like?"
I took his meal order and went to the bar to pick his drink up. The table with the teenagers was set, the kids thoroughly enjoying their meals by now, so I waited an extra second to ask him if the drink was to his satisfaction. Lawyer-Man took a polite sip of his drink, closed his eyes, savoring the flavor, and smiled kindly. "Yes, Calvin, this is fine." Before I could walk away, he was talking again. "So, Calvin, is it usually this... uh... busy on a Monday night?" His eyes danced around the restaurant to further make his point.
"It varies," I responded. "Sometimes it's busier, sometimes it's even deader than this. Sometimes it's just like this. It's comfortable, though, right? Coming into a restaurant when it's not busy, I mean." I was humoring him with the small talk, but I was serious about what I said. I've always preferred dining out when the restaurants I would visit were quiet. In most places the service doesn't change all that drastically, but the environment, the atmosphere, is entirely more comfortable. You're not as pressed for time, there isn't nearly as much ambient noise, and everyone -- the hosts, the servers, the management, even the other guests -- everyone is more relaxed.
"Oh, of course. But you'd probably prefer if you had more people here tonight, right?"
What a gentleman! This guy was not only polite when dining out, but he could fathom what it would be like in my position. "Yeah, I wouldn't mind if we were a little busier. The night's not going too badly, though, considering the light traffic. It's nice, every once in a while, even on this side of the table, to get an easygoing evening."
"Do you like working here?" He took another sip of his drink and kept his eyes up when he spoke to me.
"I don't dislike it," I cautiously admitted, "though it's not my career."
"Oh? What is your field of choice, then, if I may ask?"
"I'm in school getting my graduate degree." I filled him in briefly on my 'field of choice' and then asked him what his profession was, to be polite. I assumed that's what he wanted me to ask, and I'm in the business of making money. Some tables want food, some tables want small talk. This guy seemed to be the latter.
"I'm a lawyer. Corporate law, mostly, though I've handled some criminal cases."
"Ah, that's cool. I almost went into law. You must enjoy it."
"Yeah, certainly. I've been practicing for well over twenty years now. And it's still exciting for me." He grinned.
In my peripheral vision I caught sight of a couple of half-empty glasses at my other table. (When you're a server, the glass is always half-empty, until you fill it up.) The teens were still stuffing their faces full of fish and choking down bread like they might never eat again. They definitely needed refills. "Can I bring you anything else while you wait for your meal?" I asked Actual Lawyer-Man. "I'll have your salad and bread out in just a few minutes."
"No thanks, Calvin. I'm fine." He smiled earnestly and reached to his side, retrieving some formal-looking papers stashed on the booth's bench, between him and the wall.
I refilled the drinks I saw my other table emptying and then headed back to the alley to prepare the man's salad and bread. He'd asked for the light dressing and preferred it on the side. Not overly complicated, and not annoying at all considering that I didn't have anything better to do that night. I brought it out shortly thereafter.
"Oh, this looks great, Calvin. Thank you."
"No problem, sir."
"Call me Jerry. You're not a client, right?" He winked, I laughed, and as I started walking away he began eating his salad.
I had barely walked into the alley when I heard my name. "Hey, Calvin," said one of the managers, beckoning me toward the office.
"What's up, Pam?" I strolled over to her to find out what she wanted. Her eyebrows were furrowed in amusement. I'm still not sure how it's possible that people (myself included) can discern what she's feeling based on her expressions; they all look the same, with the same furrowed eyebrows and the same pursed lips. Sometimes it's amusement; sometimes it's confusion; sometimes it's impatience; sometimes it's rage. Only when she's genuinely surprised or happy do her eyebrows move up.
"The gentleman at forty-six. That's your table, right?"
"...Yes." I agreed suspiciously. "Why?" My eyes narrowed and I felt myself tense with the effort to perceive what she was getting at - whether or not I should be concerned (read: whether or not I was going to be in trouble).
"He's extraordinarily nice, isn't he? A very nice man. I stopped over to check on some tables and he was really quite nice," she repeated.
"That he is." I smiled, thinking back on the evening. "I've been getting great tables all night. It's a good Monday, so far."
Pam patted me on the back. "Great! Keep up the good work."
I brought Lawyer-Man Jerry's food out to him and laid it on the table. "Fresh trout, grilled as requested with vegetables and rice. Here you are, good sir. Please be careful, the plate may be hot."
Three... two... one. "Ow! Oh, yeah, right." It never fails.
"Everything look okay, sir?"
He stopped futzing with the plate, tore his eyes from the food, and looked back at me. "Yeah, looks perfect, Calvin. Thank you."
I nodded and walked off to cash out the teenagers. They were doing the Too-Much-Too-Fast Leanback. It's a restaurant-exclusive dance consisting of a single move. Everyone can do it, but teens are the only ones who seem to have perfected it.
I stopped back at Jerry's table a minute or two later. "Does your meal taste all right?"
"Mmmh!" he exclaimed, and swallowed the food he'd been chewing, "yeah, it's really good!"
"Glad to hear it," I said. "Just let me know if you need anything else from the kitchen."
"No, I'm all right for now. There's a lot of food here! Want to sit down and help me out?" He let out a good-natured laugh, knowing that wouldn't really be appropriate. It wasn't the first time a table had suggested such a thing; I think I'm a pretty likable server.
"Haha, thanks, Jerry, but I don't think so. Enjoy your food, though!"
"And you enjoy your, uh, waitering." Always smiling, this guy.
"I will." And at the moment, I meant it.
A little while later, I asked if he wanted dessert. He ordered the cheesecake (politely, of course) and I brought it right out. "Here you go, sir." As I slid the plate in front of him, I placed his check down on the corner of the table so he could cash out when he was ready.
"Oh, that dessert does look tasty."
"Agreed. Hope you like it."
"I'm sure I will."
I took one step, he took one bite, and then: "Yep, definitely good cheesecake."
"Great!" I smiled my cheesy-waiter-smile. Again.
"So, on a day like this, when you guys are clearly not busy, do you still get stuck here very late?"
"Nah, it shouldn't be too bad tonight. I'll probably get out earlier than usual."
"What's earlier than usual?" he asked between bites.
I shrugged, considering the timing and how long it would take me to get my work done. "Ten-ish."
"Oh, that's not bad at all. Plenty of time for a young guy like you to enjoy the evening."
"Heh. Yeah, except for the reading I need to do for class."
He slid down another bite of cheesecake. "Yeah, well, besides that. At least you get out at a decent hour, right? I've still got this--" he lifted a large stack of papers from the bench to the table next to his plate "-- to go through. I'm only about halfway through it. On the bright side, I can probably put it off tonight."
"Oh, well that's good, at least."
"Yes, certainly is." He grinned at me and finished his cheesecake, then slipped his credit card into the check binder. I walked away and ran it, returning it with the slips he needed to sign.
"Well, Calvin," he said, signing the slips, "thank you very much for a very satisfying meal. If you ever need a lawyer, let me know. Here's my card." He passed me a business card. "By the way, you're an excellent waiter." He put his hand out for a handshake.
"Thanks, sir," I replied. I shook his hand. "I try." It's true. I do.
"It's been a pleasure, Calvin."
The handshake seemed to extend a little longer than I'm used to, but I mentally shrugged, figuring he'd gotten distracted or something. He smiled again at me before standing up to leave.
I walked into the alley and opened the check binder to look at the credit card slip. He had left me a generous tip, and more. Seriously, there was more. On the itemized copy, he had jotted his name and his personal cell phone number, with the words, "Thanks for a great time, Calvin!" written beneath them.
I puzzled for a minute trying to figure out what had just happened. Still in the alley, I showed the slip to my friend Leon and asked him what he thought.
First he keeled over laughing. The only thing that kept him from falling down on the floor was that we were in the kitchen of a seafood restaurant, and that would be gross. "Well, clearly, Jerry liked you more than a little," he announced between bouts of laughter.
"You mean..."
"Yes. Why else would he have left you his personal cell phone number?"
Wow. Okay, well, that's a first for me. I laughed out loud. I was shocked, amused at myself for being so blind, and found the whole exchange hilarious. I ran through the events aloud. "The casual conversation, the smiles, the compliments, the clear interest in my vocation, the comments about when I would get out of work, the extended handshake, the phone number, the message..."
"The strawberry daiquiri he ordered when he sat down..." Leon raised both eyebrows at me. "Do you not have any gaydar?
"Guess not," I replied. "I've been given phone numbers before, but not from old lawyer men."
"Oh," said Leon, "are they usually from old men of other occupations?" He smirked at me. Damnit, Leon, I know you're sarcastic, too, but really, man. In the end, there can be only one.
"No. They're usually hot women. But I can understand why you wouldn't have guessed that, since it never happens for you."
"That's okay, Cal. You can have all the experiences with old men giving you their phone numbers. I don't need it to happen for me."
I rolled my eyes at him.
"So are you gonna call him?" he asked, patting me on the back.
"I'm going to treat that as rhetorical."
"Ah. Pleading the fifth must be special advice from your special lawyer-friend."
I walked away, chuckling. Leon was being a sarcastic jerk, but it's my brand of humor, so even on the other end of it I still find it funny.
And I still find it funny. He brings it up once in a while just to have something to laugh at me about, even though this happened months ago. I suppose, though, that if I can't take it, I shouldn't dish it. Waiter pun intended.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Order What You Want, How You Want It
"Welcome to the Scarlet Crustacean! My name is Calvin, I'll be serving you this evening. What brings you in tonight?"
"Cranberry juice." The woman was engrossed. She was about fifty three with white hair, and her eyes were intensely focused. The menu absorbed all her attention; she clearly had no time for such trivial things as waiters and actual food.
Her husband interrupted. "What brings us in? Well, it's a nice evening to go out to eat, and... there's some kind of holiday coming up, right? Easter?" He smiled. I like this man already.
"Yes, which is why all the other guests dining tonight are in shades of red and pink and heart-shapes are everywhere. It's going to be a strange Easter, too, considering it's on a Saturday this year." I smiled back. "What would you like to drink, sir?"
"I'd like a diet coke, please. Honey, you want an appetizer?" He raised his bushy, brown eyebrows above the menu and looked patiently at his wife.
"Whatever you want." They always say that, don't they, man? His eyes totally agreed with me.
"All right," he said, "The calamari appetizer, Calvin. Thanks."
"No problem, sir," I said, "I'll place your appetizer order and be right back with your drinks."
I set down some coasters and strode over to the galley to get the drinks. Another table had just ordered somewhere between four and a hundred bar drinks, so I picked those up from the bar while I was there.
"Hey, Cal!" I looked up from the cranberry juice I was pouring to see Sonya the bartender's grinning face.
"Hiya," I responded, "busy at the bar, too, I see."
She cocked an eyebrow at me. She didn't have to ask me if I was serious. I was very obviously not; there were at least fifty people at the bar. "So," she said while she made some frozen concoction, "I read some very interesting material yesterday."
"Really?" I asked, knowing perfectly well where this was headed. "Science fiction?" I widened my eyes and directed my attention to a point a few feet behind her and to her left."
"Haha, no." Sonya began passing over my drinks. "A certain blog about a certain local restaurant." Her subtlety doth amaze the subtlest of beings. I had been trying to get her to realize that Stan, the manager, was standing right over her shoulder. For reasons that really don't need to be published, I'd prefer that my managers weren't included in my esteemed audience (though they'd probably get a laugh or two out of this, too, now that I think about it).
"Yeah, that guy who writes it is pretty funny," I agreed. "I read some of it, too." By now I had discerned that Stan wasn't even paying attention, so I stopped working at nonchalance. I started traying up my drinks.
"Hey, do you think he'll put me in his blog? What would my name be, because, obviously, he'd have to change it."
"You'll have to ask the author, Sonya." I smirked at her and started walking back to my tables. She rolled her eyes.
"Well, you can ask him for me!" she called after me. "I know you know the guy."
Having dropped their drinks, I asked if the couple was ready to order their meal.
"Yes," the woman answered. She picked up her glass and began eying it suspiciously. "But I wanted apple juice." I took a silent deep breath and looked at the husband. Dude, please, said the thoughts I projected at him futilely, help me out here. You know you heard her say she wanted cranberry, and I totally repeated it back to her.
"I thought you said you wanted cranberry, too, dear," he said.
The man can read minds! Or maybe I really am a psychic waiter.
"Well, I want apple. Bring me an apple juice, waiter."
"I'll get that for you in just a moment, ma'am. Would you like to order your meal?"
"Yes, thank you, Calvin," the husband said before she could say anything else. "May I have the steak and shrimp meal, please? Medium well on the steak, sir, and the standard side is fine."
Dear Restaurant Gods and Food Service Angels: Can this man sit at all of my tables? That would be awesome. Thanks! Love, Cal.
"And for the lovely lady?" I politely inquired.
"Give me the same."
I paused before jotting anything down, as is my habit whenever anyone says they want the same thing the previous person ordered. "You want everything the same?"
"Yes."
"So, you'd like the steak and shrimp, with your steak medium well, and the standard side. Correct?"
"Yes, give me the same thing."
"All right, ma'am, thank you very much. I always ask just to be sure. I'll have your order in and bring your salads out with some bread in just a few minutes." I smiled and swept myself away.
A while later, I brought their food to them.
"What is this?" the woman asked as she cut into her steak. "I wanted my steak medium well. This is not done enough for me."
I apologized and promised to have the problem resolved shortly. Taking up the dish again, I carted it off to the kitchen.
"Hey, Wheeler. I need this steak done a little more, please. Sorry, dude. Table fifty-eight." I passed the steak over the counter to the grill man.
"Yeah, Cal, sure thing. Fifty-eight, you said?" He started pulling up previous orders on his screen.
"Yep."
"This was ordered medium well."
"Yep."
"The steak is medium well."
"Yep." Gradually, my mental eye-roll had been infiltrating my vocal tone.
"So she ordered her steak medium well and said it wasn't done enough when it came out medium well."
"Yep." This time, I actually rolled my eyes. "You know how our guests are."
"Yeah," he said, his annoyance dulled by the simple fact that this was the billionth time this kind of thing has happened, "they order their food and don't say what they want. They ask for medium well when they want it well done, they ask for it medium rare when they want it medium. These people must live in tiny cages or something; they have no idea how food is prepared."
"Nah, I think they just like to add words to their preparation styles." He laughed and nodded.
It's the only conclusion I can come to. The more words in a preparation, the more exotic it must sound to them. Medium well has four whole syllables - much more exotic than either 'medium' or 'well' alone. It's why they ask for their salads with "ranch dressing, dressing on the side, extra onions, no tomatoes, and more croutons than usual." They know they sound like a higher class of being that way.
I brought their steaks back out. On my way I stopped at the bar to pick up another round of drinks for my table full of lushes.
"So, Cal," Sonya said, passing my drinks over the bar. "Your blogging friend needs more bar terms in his glossary."
My glossary, linked several times in this entry on restaurant-specific terms, is updated all the time to help you, the reader, follow along with all the silly seafood slang we sling at the Scarlet Crustacean. I don't work at the bar, so naturally I don't have to worry about a lot of that terminology. If I don't use it, you don't need it to read what I write, right? However:
"He's open to suggestions. If they seem apt enough, they'll make the cut. Or if I have some weird bar experience, it may come up. But feel free to comment." That goes for all of you. *shameless self-promotion* Feel free to comment and pass this blog on to your friends.
But, Sonya, for you, I will note that this one specific drink I had to cart away on my already-full tray was one of the most gigantic piña coladas you've ever seen. It's so big it comes with a sidecar, because we know if you order one of these drinks, you're looking to get buzzed. My table was beyond buzzed, for the record - a situation that worked for me, because at least one of them was sober and driving and the others were all so carefree that I couldn't make them unhappy, even if I tried to be a bad waiter and told them what was really on my mind.
To make a short story even shorter, the steak was (of course) fine this time around - she got it the way she had wanted it, though she didn't order it the way she had wanted it. Her husband continued to take my side until they finished the meal, and tipped me very well. Part of me wonders if he generally tips well because he knows what he's subjecting servers to when he takes his wife out to eat. In the long run, though, it doesn't matter. Everyone went home happy.
See, dear readers? Not every problem goes on forever at this place. Sometimes these things do just end.
"Cranberry juice." The woman was engrossed. She was about fifty three with white hair, and her eyes were intensely focused. The menu absorbed all her attention; she clearly had no time for such trivial things as waiters and actual food.
Her husband interrupted. "What brings us in? Well, it's a nice evening to go out to eat, and... there's some kind of holiday coming up, right? Easter?" He smiled. I like this man already.
"Yes, which is why all the other guests dining tonight are in shades of red and pink and heart-shapes are everywhere. It's going to be a strange Easter, too, considering it's on a Saturday this year." I smiled back. "What would you like to drink, sir?"
"I'd like a diet coke, please. Honey, you want an appetizer?" He raised his bushy, brown eyebrows above the menu and looked patiently at his wife.
"Whatever you want." They always say that, don't they, man? His eyes totally agreed with me.
"All right," he said, "The calamari appetizer, Calvin. Thanks."
"No problem, sir," I said, "I'll place your appetizer order and be right back with your drinks."
I set down some coasters and strode over to the galley to get the drinks. Another table had just ordered somewhere between four and a hundred bar drinks, so I picked those up from the bar while I was there.
"Hey, Cal!" I looked up from the cranberry juice I was pouring to see Sonya the bartender's grinning face.
"Hiya," I responded, "busy at the bar, too, I see."
She cocked an eyebrow at me. She didn't have to ask me if I was serious. I was very obviously not; there were at least fifty people at the bar. "So," she said while she made some frozen concoction, "I read some very interesting material yesterday."
"Really?" I asked, knowing perfectly well where this was headed. "Science fiction?" I widened my eyes and directed my attention to a point a few feet behind her and to her left."
"Haha, no." Sonya began passing over my drinks. "A certain blog about a certain local restaurant." Her subtlety doth amaze the subtlest of beings. I had been trying to get her to realize that Stan, the manager, was standing right over her shoulder. For reasons that really don't need to be published, I'd prefer that my managers weren't included in my esteemed audience (though they'd probably get a laugh or two out of this, too, now that I think about it).
"Yeah, that guy who writes it is pretty funny," I agreed. "I read some of it, too." By now I had discerned that Stan wasn't even paying attention, so I stopped working at nonchalance. I started traying up my drinks.
"Hey, do you think he'll put me in his blog? What would my name be, because, obviously, he'd have to change it."
"You'll have to ask the author, Sonya." I smirked at her and started walking back to my tables. She rolled her eyes.
"Well, you can ask him for me!" she called after me. "I know you know the guy."
Having dropped their drinks, I asked if the couple was ready to order their meal.
"Yes," the woman answered. She picked up her glass and began eying it suspiciously. "But I wanted apple juice." I took a silent deep breath and looked at the husband. Dude, please, said the thoughts I projected at him futilely, help me out here. You know you heard her say she wanted cranberry, and I totally repeated it back to her.
"I thought you said you wanted cranberry, too, dear," he said.
The man can read minds! Or maybe I really am a psychic waiter.
"Well, I want apple. Bring me an apple juice, waiter."
"I'll get that for you in just a moment, ma'am. Would you like to order your meal?"
"Yes, thank you, Calvin," the husband said before she could say anything else. "May I have the steak and shrimp meal, please? Medium well on the steak, sir, and the standard side is fine."
Dear Restaurant Gods and Food Service Angels: Can this man sit at all of my tables? That would be awesome. Thanks! Love, Cal.
"And for the lovely lady?" I politely inquired.
"Give me the same."
I paused before jotting anything down, as is my habit whenever anyone says they want the same thing the previous person ordered. "You want everything the same?"
"Yes."
"So, you'd like the steak and shrimp, with your steak medium well, and the standard side. Correct?"
"Yes, give me the same thing."
"All right, ma'am, thank you very much. I always ask just to be sure. I'll have your order in and bring your salads out with some bread in just a few minutes." I smiled and swept myself away.
A while later, I brought their food to them.
"What is this?" the woman asked as she cut into her steak. "I wanted my steak medium well. This is not done enough for me."
I apologized and promised to have the problem resolved shortly. Taking up the dish again, I carted it off to the kitchen.
"Hey, Wheeler. I need this steak done a little more, please. Sorry, dude. Table fifty-eight." I passed the steak over the counter to the grill man.
"Yeah, Cal, sure thing. Fifty-eight, you said?" He started pulling up previous orders on his screen.
"Yep."
"This was ordered medium well."
"Yep."
"The steak is medium well."
"Yep." Gradually, my mental eye-roll had been infiltrating my vocal tone.
"So she ordered her steak medium well and said it wasn't done enough when it came out medium well."
"Yep." This time, I actually rolled my eyes. "You know how our guests are."
"Yeah," he said, his annoyance dulled by the simple fact that this was the billionth time this kind of thing has happened, "they order their food and don't say what they want. They ask for medium well when they want it well done, they ask for it medium rare when they want it medium. These people must live in tiny cages or something; they have no idea how food is prepared."
"Nah, I think they just like to add words to their preparation styles." He laughed and nodded.
It's the only conclusion I can come to. The more words in a preparation, the more exotic it must sound to them. Medium well has four whole syllables - much more exotic than either 'medium' or 'well' alone. It's why they ask for their salads with "ranch dressing, dressing on the side, extra onions, no tomatoes, and more croutons than usual." They know they sound like a higher class of being that way.
I brought their steaks back out. On my way I stopped at the bar to pick up another round of drinks for my table full of lushes.
"So, Cal," Sonya said, passing my drinks over the bar. "Your blogging friend needs more bar terms in his glossary."
My glossary, linked several times in this entry on restaurant-specific terms, is updated all the time to help you, the reader, follow along with all the silly seafood slang we sling at the Scarlet Crustacean. I don't work at the bar, so naturally I don't have to worry about a lot of that terminology. If I don't use it, you don't need it to read what I write, right? However:
"He's open to suggestions. If they seem apt enough, they'll make the cut. Or if I have some weird bar experience, it may come up. But feel free to comment." That goes for all of you. *shameless self-promotion* Feel free to comment and pass this blog on to your friends.
But, Sonya, for you, I will note that this one specific drink I had to cart away on my already-full tray was one of the most gigantic piña coladas you've ever seen. It's so big it comes with a sidecar, because we know if you order one of these drinks, you're looking to get buzzed. My table was beyond buzzed, for the record - a situation that worked for me, because at least one of them was sober and driving and the others were all so carefree that I couldn't make them unhappy, even if I tried to be a bad waiter and told them what was really on my mind.
To make a short story even shorter, the steak was (of course) fine this time around - she got it the way she had wanted it, though she didn't order it the way she had wanted it. Her husband continued to take my side until they finished the meal, and tipped me very well. Part of me wonders if he generally tips well because he knows what he's subjecting servers to when he takes his wife out to eat. In the long run, though, it doesn't matter. Everyone went home happy.
See, dear readers? Not every problem goes on forever at this place. Sometimes these things do just end.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
On Sitting Too Long
I was supposed to work a lunch shift yesterday but management pulled me into a double. We had more guests than the suicide hotlines had teenage callers yesterday, which is quite a lot considering it's Valentine's Day weekend. Unfortunately, I had a table who refused to cash out for three hours and therefore prevented me from making the money I should have made.
Consider, dear readers, this fact (which, when elucidated, will seem painfully obvious): a restaurant has a very finite capacity. This capacity is considered, via prioritization by your servers, in the form of tables. Given that during a busy day, there must be a full staff, and that servers are (and sensibly so) assigned tables, each server may only have a specific number of tables. For those of you doing the math at home, the end result is this: the longer you stay at a table, the longer it will take before the next party (who takes your place at the same table) cashes out. Continue this line of logic and you'll note that sitting at a table without cashing out for an extended period of time drains the server of money. It's like you're taking the server's beating heart and squeezing one of the veins. You're cutting off my circulation, people.
For the Shrimpmongers out there who can't do the math: DON'T SIT AROUND FOR FOUR WHOLE F***ING HOURS WHEN THE RESTAURANT IS CLEARLY BUSY, YOU HEARTLESS IGNORANT BASTARDS.
I'm a nice guy. During a slow day, if someone wants to sit, relax, and drink coffee at one of my tables when the other tables I have are clearly not being seated more than once in an hour, that's fine. I'll cheerfully refill your coffees and bring you bread until you burst, even after your meal is through and you've cashed out. No, I won't hire a horse and carriage or pull a sleigh to carry your roly poly asses out of my restaurant, but that's just because it's company policy. If not, I might actually do it, and have a coworker videotape it so we can laugh at you on YouTube forever. Hell, if we're extremely slow, I might even stop over and join your lazy afternoon conversation, because I might very well be that damn bored.
But seriously, folks. Be considerate to your servers. We're people too. And some of us might actually carry hidden video cameras around just for our own sick, sardonic pleasure.
Consider, dear readers, this fact (which, when elucidated, will seem painfully obvious): a restaurant has a very finite capacity. This capacity is considered, via prioritization by your servers, in the form of tables. Given that during a busy day, there must be a full staff, and that servers are (and sensibly so) assigned tables, each server may only have a specific number of tables. For those of you doing the math at home, the end result is this: the longer you stay at a table, the longer it will take before the next party (who takes your place at the same table) cashes out. Continue this line of logic and you'll note that sitting at a table without cashing out for an extended period of time drains the server of money. It's like you're taking the server's beating heart and squeezing one of the veins. You're cutting off my circulation, people.
For the Shrimpmongers out there who can't do the math: DON'T SIT AROUND FOR FOUR WHOLE F***ING HOURS WHEN THE RESTAURANT IS CLEARLY BUSY, YOU HEARTLESS IGNORANT BASTARDS.
I'm a nice guy. During a slow day, if someone wants to sit, relax, and drink coffee at one of my tables when the other tables I have are clearly not being seated more than once in an hour, that's fine. I'll cheerfully refill your coffees and bring you bread until you burst, even after your meal is through and you've cashed out. No, I won't hire a horse and carriage or pull a sleigh to carry your roly poly asses out of my restaurant, but that's just because it's company policy. If not, I might actually do it, and have a coworker videotape it so we can laugh at you on YouTube forever. Hell, if we're extremely slow, I might even stop over and join your lazy afternoon conversation, because I might very well be that damn bored.
But seriously, folks. Be considerate to your servers. We're people too. And some of us might actually carry hidden video cameras around just for our own sick, sardonic pleasure.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Whoop Whoop! No Presents for You!
It's Monday. I've got the closing shift, so even though the restaurant is practically empty, I get the next table to come through the doors. A nice, middle-aged couple sits down in a nearby booth and, though they're regulars, they're not quite ready to order.
I bring them their drinks and appetizers. As I'm taking down their meal order, now that they've decided, another group is seated in my section. It's a family of four, and they're one of those unnecessarily unhappy tables. You know, the kind that, when greeted and welcomed and asked how they're doing, respond, "Coffee. Black. And bring me some biscuits." Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Mondays.
I get their order in and check on the nice couple - they're still enjoying their salads.
It's 9:22 PM. We close in barely more than half an hour. I'm standing in the galley, hoping against hope that the doors stay clos-- ah, crap. I envision banging my head against the bar, because actually doing so would result in a headache and I have to close tonight, headache or not. A rather large couple walks through the doors and is led to an open booth in my section. I'm busy taking the meal order for the ornery family, but that's okay because the big man in the plain white t-shirt, black sweatpants, and black baseball cap is entertaining himself.
Another family sits a couple of yards away, in the same dining area as the large couple. Two small children are chasing each other in the middle of the dining room. I refrain from telling them that this isn't Chuck E. Cheese, fearing that the subtlety of such an admonition would be lost on kids so young and adults so stupid. My imaginary self is interrupted; the large man at my table addresses the kids himself, thus: "Yo, you kids don't be listenin' to ya parents. You gotta be. You know I know Santa Claus."
The kids become wide-eyed. The big guy thinks it's because they are in a state of shocked admiration. I don't tell him it's because they've never been this close to a crazy person. But I should.
"I'll tell Santa not to give you anything if ya don't go sit down," he continues. He is loud, obnoxious, and careless of the other guests around him.
I make my way over to his table, if only to prevent him from continuing to corrupt other people's kids. He orders a margarita, decides he hates it, and asks for a soda instead. His wife orders a large appetizer, the salmon, blackened, with two side items, and a salad with extra dressing. She also orders a mudslide. I ask him what he'd like to eat. This gargantuan, obnoxious man asks only for a side salad. "Yeah," he assures me, "that's it, man." I don't allow the shock to register on my face, out of courtesy for him and a desire for his money.
I bring their salads out. It's 9:40. I'm praying they eat their food quickly because I really don't want to be at work forever tonight. I stop short of their table and set the tray down several feet away, unsure of how to proceed given the following scene: the children are at it again, chasing each other around nearby tables. The gentleman at my table has taken to tagging them with one hand as they cruise by his table. When he sees me coming with his food, he shoos them away. Their parents call them over, but they're having too much fun to just listen. So he resorts to the next most logical response.
"WHOOP! WHOOP!" he yells at them, "I'll make you sorry you talk to strangers if you get in the way of my food. And I'll tell Santa to leave you be this year." He notices the limited effect his words are having. "Whoop! Whoop!" he repeats, loudly, like a dog keeping the postman from breaching his territory. I can almost see the marquee across his eyes. <Whoop-Whoop is SUPER EFFECTIVE! Wild Children stop attacking!>
Meanwhile, the nice couple at my first table are looking at the lot of them as though they're insane, and cannot fathom how to continue enjoying their meal together in peace. They hurry up and leave, all the while casting nervous/disdainful glances at the parents of the ragamuffins and at the huge, self-absorbed whack-jobs.
It takes another half-hour before the obnoxious table is even close to finishing their food. Then, they ask if we (the staff) are in a hurry to get out. He is really just reveling in the fact that we have to answer 'no', because the guests are always given our full and fair attention, even after closing time. The glint in his grin says, "Haha, eff you, serverman! I get to stay here and make closing up even harder for you, and there's nothin' you can do about it!"
It figures that my last table would have the Frankenstein's Monster of the DNA of classic Adam Sandler, Al Bundy, Cartman, and Chris Rock, with the IQ of a crab leg. Get thee gone, please, thou unintelligible, classless, tasteless, self-amusing moron.
I just walk back to the alley and roll my eyes, comforted by the fact that soon I will go home and write all about these idiots.
I bring them their drinks and appetizers. As I'm taking down their meal order, now that they've decided, another group is seated in my section. It's a family of four, and they're one of those unnecessarily unhappy tables. You know, the kind that, when greeted and welcomed and asked how they're doing, respond, "Coffee. Black. And bring me some biscuits." Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Mondays.
I get their order in and check on the nice couple - they're still enjoying their salads.
It's 9:22 PM. We close in barely more than half an hour. I'm standing in the galley, hoping against hope that the doors stay clos-- ah, crap. I envision banging my head against the bar, because actually doing so would result in a headache and I have to close tonight, headache or not. A rather large couple walks through the doors and is led to an open booth in my section. I'm busy taking the meal order for the ornery family, but that's okay because the big man in the plain white t-shirt, black sweatpants, and black baseball cap is entertaining himself.
Another family sits a couple of yards away, in the same dining area as the large couple. Two small children are chasing each other in the middle of the dining room. I refrain from telling them that this isn't Chuck E. Cheese, fearing that the subtlety of such an admonition would be lost on kids so young and adults so stupid. My imaginary self is interrupted; the large man at my table addresses the kids himself, thus: "Yo, you kids don't be listenin' to ya parents. You gotta be. You know I know Santa Claus."
The kids become wide-eyed. The big guy thinks it's because they are in a state of shocked admiration. I don't tell him it's because they've never been this close to a crazy person. But I should.
"I'll tell Santa not to give you anything if ya don't go sit down," he continues. He is loud, obnoxious, and careless of the other guests around him.
I make my way over to his table, if only to prevent him from continuing to corrupt other people's kids. He orders a margarita, decides he hates it, and asks for a soda instead. His wife orders a large appetizer, the salmon, blackened, with two side items, and a salad with extra dressing. She also orders a mudslide. I ask him what he'd like to eat. This gargantuan, obnoxious man asks only for a side salad. "Yeah," he assures me, "that's it, man." I don't allow the shock to register on my face, out of courtesy for him and a desire for his money.
I bring their salads out. It's 9:40. I'm praying they eat their food quickly because I really don't want to be at work forever tonight. I stop short of their table and set the tray down several feet away, unsure of how to proceed given the following scene: the children are at it again, chasing each other around nearby tables. The gentleman at my table has taken to tagging them with one hand as they cruise by his table. When he sees me coming with his food, he shoos them away. Their parents call them over, but they're having too much fun to just listen. So he resorts to the next most logical response.
"WHOOP! WHOOP!" he yells at them, "I'll make you sorry you talk to strangers if you get in the way of my food. And I'll tell Santa to leave you be this year." He notices the limited effect his words are having. "Whoop! Whoop!" he repeats, loudly, like a dog keeping the postman from breaching his territory. I can almost see the marquee across his eyes. <Whoop-Whoop is SUPER EFFECTIVE! Wild Children stop attacking!>
Meanwhile, the nice couple at my first table are looking at the lot of them as though they're insane, and cannot fathom how to continue enjoying their meal together in peace. They hurry up and leave, all the while casting nervous/disdainful glances at the parents of the ragamuffins and at the huge, self-absorbed whack-jobs.
It takes another half-hour before the obnoxious table is even close to finishing their food. Then, they ask if we (the staff) are in a hurry to get out. He is really just reveling in the fact that we have to answer 'no', because the guests are always given our full and fair attention, even after closing time. The glint in his grin says, "Haha, eff you, serverman! I get to stay here and make closing up even harder for you, and there's nothin' you can do about it!"
It figures that my last table would have the Frankenstein's Monster of the DNA of classic Adam Sandler, Al Bundy, Cartman, and Chris Rock, with the IQ of a crab leg. Get thee gone, please, thou unintelligible, classless, tasteless, self-amusing moron.
I just walk back to the alley and roll my eyes, comforted by the fact that soon I will go home and write all about these idiots.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
A Word about Stacking Dishes
A guest asked me today, "Does this bother you?" She was pointing at her husband.
I opened my mouth to say, A little, with that annoying habit of asking for sauces and things one at a time, but I'm willing to let it go if he leaves me a good tip, but I realized in time that she probably didn't mean her husband. "Does what bother you?" I asked.
"My husband read somewhere that waiters don't like it if we do this for them." She moved her pointer finger from her husband to the edge of the table, where a small stack of used dishes lay.
Ahhhh. That.
"Not at all," I replied, "at least not here." I can't speak for other restaurants. What I didn't say, and feel the need to elaborate here, is that there are qualifications to this reassurance.
Generally, I don't mind when a guest stacks plates for me. It does three awesome things.
1. It lets me know that the guest has finished using those dishes so I can pre-bus them. It helps me avoid that awkward feeling when I ask a guest, "Are you all set with this dish?" and the guest looks at me like I'm speaking Martian.
2. It clears the table up a little bit for when I bring more food, more drinks, etc., to the table. This way, I have room to place things without having to juggle plates between my tray and the table.
3. Most importantly, it expedites the pre-busing process. I am able to remove the stacked dishes from the table faster, and then clear them faster before sending them to dish.
However, there are occasions when nothing bothers me MORE than a guest stacking dishes for me.
1. Do not stack dishes for me INTO MY HANDS. I am not a party clown. My job is to bring you tasty food so that you don't have to cook it, NOT to entertain you by wildly balancing a high, precarious stack of plates, bowls, forks, knives, and glasses so that you can laugh like animals when the mess comes crashing down on my head.
2. Do not stack dishes for me ONTO MY TRAY. It's all right if you're trying to help and set them up on the table - consolidating there is not a problem, because I can rearrange them onto my tray however I see fit. However, since I am going to have to carry the tray of dishes back to dish, I need to ensure the tray is properly balanced. If you're stacking them all haphazardly onto my tray, I end up with a slightly less troublesome version of problem #1 (see above).
3. Do not stack dishes in a clearly illogical fashion. It's not funny. Seriously. I've had guests arrange their dishes like this, and then laugh when they told me "we helped you!":
Four glasses, set rim to rim. Above the glasses, a large round plate. Above the plate, three more glasses. On top of the glasses, another three large plates, several forks and knives, a few napkins, and who knows what kind of seafood. On top of that mixture, a bowl, and in the bowl, leftover dessert. It was the Leaning Tower of Accident-Waiting-to-Happen.
Often, guests will unwittingly stack dishes in hazardous ways, and genuinely believe they were helping. How can you be so blind, so inexperienced, so utterly short-circuited as to think that putting large plates on top of smaller bowls is HELPFUL and LOGICAL?
So, yes, usually your stacking of the dishes is helpful to me. So long as you follow the simple, common sense-based rules laid out above.
P.S.
Sometimes, for fun, I imagine my guests trying to carry the dishes back for me, the way they've stacked them. It's like watching Looney Toons in my head. Minus the anvil flattening them.
Maybe in the next daydream...
I opened my mouth to say, A little, with that annoying habit of asking for sauces and things one at a time, but I'm willing to let it go if he leaves me a good tip, but I realized in time that she probably didn't mean her husband. "Does what bother you?" I asked.
"My husband read somewhere that waiters don't like it if we do this for them." She moved her pointer finger from her husband to the edge of the table, where a small stack of used dishes lay.
Ahhhh. That.
"Not at all," I replied, "at least not here." I can't speak for other restaurants. What I didn't say, and feel the need to elaborate here, is that there are qualifications to this reassurance.
Generally, I don't mind when a guest stacks plates for me. It does three awesome things.
1. It lets me know that the guest has finished using those dishes so I can pre-bus them. It helps me avoid that awkward feeling when I ask a guest, "Are you all set with this dish?" and the guest looks at me like I'm speaking Martian.
2. It clears the table up a little bit for when I bring more food, more drinks, etc., to the table. This way, I have room to place things without having to juggle plates between my tray and the table.
3. Most importantly, it expedites the pre-busing process. I am able to remove the stacked dishes from the table faster, and then clear them faster before sending them to dish.
However, there are occasions when nothing bothers me MORE than a guest stacking dishes for me.
1. Do not stack dishes for me INTO MY HANDS. I am not a party clown. My job is to bring you tasty food so that you don't have to cook it, NOT to entertain you by wildly balancing a high, precarious stack of plates, bowls, forks, knives, and glasses so that you can laugh like animals when the mess comes crashing down on my head.
2. Do not stack dishes for me ONTO MY TRAY. It's all right if you're trying to help and set them up on the table - consolidating there is not a problem, because I can rearrange them onto my tray however I see fit. However, since I am going to have to carry the tray of dishes back to dish, I need to ensure the tray is properly balanced. If you're stacking them all haphazardly onto my tray, I end up with a slightly less troublesome version of problem #1 (see above).
3. Do not stack dishes in a clearly illogical fashion. It's not funny. Seriously. I've had guests arrange their dishes like this, and then laugh when they told me "we helped you!":
Four glasses, set rim to rim. Above the glasses, a large round plate. Above the plate, three more glasses. On top of the glasses, another three large plates, several forks and knives, a few napkins, and who knows what kind of seafood. On top of that mixture, a bowl, and in the bowl, leftover dessert. It was the Leaning Tower of Accident-Waiting-to-Happen.
Often, guests will unwittingly stack dishes in hazardous ways, and genuinely believe they were helping. How can you be so blind, so inexperienced, so utterly short-circuited as to think that putting large plates on top of smaller bowls is HELPFUL and LOGICAL?
So, yes, usually your stacking of the dishes is helpful to me. So long as you follow the simple, common sense-based rules laid out above.
P.S.
Sometimes, for fun, I imagine my guests trying to carry the dishes back for me, the way they've stacked them. It's like watching Looney Toons in my head. Minus the anvil flattening them.
Maybe in the next daydream...
Friday, January 28, 2011
There's a Level Six?!
It began with a triple-seating. Not a bad one, mind you. It was a normal, semi-busy Friday lunch shift for me. I clocked in, greeted my guests, and got them their drinks promptly. One table wanted to order immediately; they were dining on their business lunch, which was also no problem. See, I arrive to work ready to go every time, expecting to be triple-seated. This way, when it doesn't happen (as is the case 60-70% of the time), I can be pleasantly surprised and relaxed. Today it did happen, so I simply went with the flow. You don't fight the flow.
Two two-tops of elderly people and a five-top family later, I was given a table outside my section. Again, if you've gleaned anything from my personality yet, you could guess I was not shaken by this turn of events. What made me pause for a split second as I strolled over to this new three-top was not that it was messing with my Seafood Feng Shui; the disturbance came, rather, from the details I noted, the finer points I perceived with my peripheral vision on the approach.
Oddity #1: The table, meant to accommodate four people, is usually set up with two chairs on opposing sides. The chairs had not been rearranged, but it was capped with an additional chair.
Oddity #2: Of the five chairs, only three were occupied. From the front without any chairs, a woman was seated at each of the two closest chairs on either side, and a third woman sat in the far chair at the back of the table. They kept a chair between them to maintain personal space, like toe spacers for a pedicure.
Oddity #3: The women were all the same size, shape, style, and disposition. I wasn't surprised by the fact that they were decked out in baggy, blingy, bright, contrasting clothes. The first three commonalities aren't all that strange; families or close friends often have some similarities in their physical features. But they all had the same perceived attitude and mood. It seemed, from a distance, as though an invisible mist of haughty displeasure thickened the air around them.
These oddities, especially the third one, piqued my attention and put me on edge. When I approach a table, as I've said before, I'm always cheerful. But what kind of person goes out to eat and begins the dining experience unhappy? That's like kicking off your own dance party and then breaking your own legs with a sledgehammer.
Alas, I needed to serve them anyway. Such is the nature of my job. It was worth trying to brighten the mood, I thought, so I mustered up a genuine smile and waved jovially as I said, "Hi! Welcome to the Scarlet Crustacean! My name is Calvin, I'll be serving you this afternoon. How are you today?"
The three of them glared at me in unison. The mood darkened, impossible as that seemed. I could almost see the gloomy shadow descending upon me, encasing me in their fog of fail. Tough crowd.
The first guest, I'll call her A, responded first. "Water."
I took a mental breath. Shrimpmonger Alert. Humongous Shrimpmongers. They were Shrimpmongous.
The second guest, B, said "I want a water, too. And nah," she looked at A, "you said yo' stomach was botherin' you. Get you a ginger ale or sumfin!" She turned back to me. "She want a ginger ale." A nodded along with her.
"Okay, I can get that," I said. "And for you?" I asked C.
"Get me one of them raspberry iced teas, Calvin," she grunted at me, eyes still fixed on the menu. She must have been looking through the menu, or she would have read that we don't have raspberry iced tea. Perhaps it was just for effect. Don't worry, lady, you look the part, all right. You could play Captain Shrimpmonger in The Shrimpmonger Stomps on the Scarlet Crustacean. It's a B movie. Or it could be.
"We have strawberry - is that all right?" I asked, hoping that it was.
"Yeah, whatever. Fine." She never even looked at me.
"All right. I'll be right back with your drinks, ladies, and then I'll take your lunch orders down." I took two steps towards the kitchen before I heard B start talking at me again.
"Nah, wait, I'm ready to order now. Y'alls ready to order?"
"Nuh-uh," C answered, shaking her head.
"Well I'm gonna order anyway," insisted B. "Gimme a make-your-meal deal, with some shrimp scampi and some o' them fried ones."
"Fried shrimp?"
"Yeah, whatchu think I was talkin' about?"
I thought, Oh, I don't know, fried clam strips, fried popcorn shrimp, fried chicken strips... I'm sorry, my psychic-waiter-powers are blocked by your aura of malcontent. But I said, "Okay, sure. And for your side item?"
"Lemme get a baked potato with some butter and lots of sour cream on the side. And bacon."
"I'm sorry, we don't have bacon for the potatoes. Can I offer you some cheese?" For just three extra dollars you can have an I.V. in your arm just pumping the fat and cholesterol straight into your body.
"Yeah. That."
"Excellent. What kind of salad would you like?"
"Gimme a regular salad but with Caesar dressing, on the side, extra dressing, extra croutons, extra cheese, no onions." By the time she finished describing her salad instructions, I assumed the other guests must be ready to order. I was wrong. I thanked her for her order and proceeded to the alley to get their drinks.
I made it to the alley and let out a sigh. Drake was there and said hello.
"Hey, dude. How are you? Did you just get here?"
"Good," he answered, "and yeah. I just clocked in. How you doin'?" He gave me a high-five.
"I'm all right, man. Except for this three-top of total Shrimpmongers I got. They're driving me nuts and I haven't even taken their orders yet." I put the drinks together on a tray, set up a dessert for my other table, whose dessert order I had taken what felt like hours ago, and moved to the computer to print out the third table's check. "Seriously, Drake, they're Level Three Shrimpmongers."
He looked up from the food window. "Level Three, eh? So they're messy, self-centered, and rude?"
"At the least."
"Wow. That can't be good." Drake trayed up a couple of plates. "So you probably don't have a second to walk this food right now."
"Survey says... no. Sorry, dude."
"That's all right," he said, "Mindy's coming in now and it's hers anyway."
I dropped the dessert and the check and returned to take the order from my three-top of Shrimpmongers. "Here are your drinks, ladies. Are you two ready to order?" I asked A and C.
"Yeah, they ready now," B answered.
"I wanna get a make-your-meal deal, too, with some crab legs and some of that seafood alfredo. And a baked potato with just butter, but extra butter on the side."
"All right, no problem. What kind of sal--"
"And get me one of these Big Shrimp meals, Calvin," interrupted C. She's a Shrimpmonger of the Name-User subtype. The kind of Shrimpmonger who pays attention to frequent-diner tips, such as the one that says using your waiter's name will make him more likely to attend to your requests. But alas, being a Shrimpmonger, these diners missed the fine print that indicates that treating your waiter with disrespect negates the courtesy of using his name. Silly Shrimpmongers.
"Surely," I answered, "A Big Shrimp deal for you." I followed up automatically with, "And what would you like on the side?"
"Baked potato. Sour cream only, extra sour cream." Wait for it. "No butter."
"And for your salads?" I asked A and C.
I won't bore you with the details of the last two salad orders, for as you might expect, there were many. Why these people have such specific preferences for their salads, I don't know. Why they care so deeply about the perfection of the precursors to their meals, I cannot understand. Surely, they didn't go out to a seafood restaurant for the amazing salads... did they?
They each changed their orders twice before settling into something they really wanted for lunch at that moment. This was getting to be too crazy to be real. I thought maybe I was getting Punk'd. Maybe I was on Candid Camera. Perhaps one of my managers was playing a practical joke on me. I have seen nasty, sloppy, ornery people before at this restaurant, but I did not know that there were people at this level of bad diner. It was like serving Jabba the Hutt's neanderthal ancestors while they were in withdrawals from heroin. After noting the mental image that presented and nearly vomiting, I jotted their orders down and slipped away as quickly as possible.
In the alley, I prepared precisely their preposterous salads and dropped them with fresh bread at the table.
"We ain't even got our meals yet and he already treatin' us like dirt?" exclaimed C.
Holdthephone. I'm treating you like dirt? I have officially entered Bizarro World. What the hell. I just brought you some FOOD. Start eating it! Please, occupy your talk-hole with chewing and let me go my merry way! "I'm sorry, is something wrong with your salads?" I asked.
"Yo, you gotta be kidding me. This is all the bread we get? This ain't nothin'."
"I can bring some more right out to you, and continue to bring more as you need; this is just the standard amount we generally bring to tables. I promise I'll have some more out to you right away, if you want."
"You're damn right I want. And bring me some more dressing, while you at it."
I came back with more bread and an extra side of dressing. "Here you go," I said.
"I need another dressing, too." said A. B opened her mouth to say what I thought would be the same thing.
I dropped the other two sides of dressing I brought out based on intuition. Bam. Psychic-waiter-powers trump stupid depressing aura. What now.
They wolfed through their salads like animals. Dressing sprayed from their salad plates and their teeth like there was a Caesar paintball war going on. I wanted to dive into a booth or duck under a table for cover, but I could only keep a safe distance while I looked over my other tables until their meal came out.
I brought their food out to them with extra napkins and another round of bread, having just refilled their drinks in advance. "This needs more of the sauce stuff," A snapped. "You gotta get me more of this, 'cause I'll be done with what you gave me in like a minute."
"I'll be sure to bring that out in a moment," I said.
"And another napkin."
"I brought extra napkins for you right here." I casually gestured to the napkins I had just placed on the table in front of her.
"I see like five or six. We gon' need like eight."
"And I wanna place a take-out order, Calvin."
I took the take out order. It was relatively uncomplicated - which, in this case, is like standing in a valley and saying a mountain isn't big compared to a planet.
"Drake, this table is driving me nuts. Forget level three. These people are Level Six Shrimpmongers. It's ridiculous."
"There's a level SIX?! Holy crap, man. Anything I can do to help?" He didn't have anything in the window because we were fairly slow, so he walked over to where I was retrieving more bread to chat.
"There is now. If there wasn't before, these women created it. They're horrific. Cruel. I swear they're trying to make my job difficult and frustrating."
"Well. At least you can write about it later."
"Hell yes."
I returned to the table. Heaven help me, I returned to the table. Because it's my job. I brought the take-out order and boxes for the rest of their food with me, as well as split checks, which they'd requested earlier.
"Cal, that won't work," said B. "I need a smaller box." A large box would contain their food. It wasn't like I brought them a container in which their food would not fit, but these Level Six Shrimpmongers were out for the perfect experience, and that meant they needed custom-sized take-out boxes.
"And get me another drink to go," demanded C.
I brought out new boxes, a drink to go, and cashed out B and C. A had a problem with her check.
"My ginger ale tasted weird. I don't want to pay for it." The ginger ale still sat in front of her, depleted by a third but therefore still mostly full. I promised to check with a manager for her and return shortly.
So let's tally up, just for fun, what I dealt with from this table so far.
Unenthusiastic greeting
Insistent interruptions
Indecisive menu selections
Ridiculously complex salad orders
Extra everything with their salads, meals, and take-outs
Eight napkins, because six wouldn't do, when they were making:
One hell of a mess on the table
Downsized boxes
General and continuous discontent and rudeness
And a check change that would cut two dollars and change off a forty dollar bill.
I have never wanted to hurt a guest so much. I was nearly shaking with violent indignation. I kept envisioning whipping a spinning backhand fist into A's skull, driving my elbow through B's temple and punching through C's face in a series of swift, graceful, brutal movements. I wanted to use a crab cracker to burst their eyeballs and drain the fluids into their scampi butter. I imagined shoving whole ramekins filled with Caesar dressing down their throats, lodging the ceramic in their esophagi. I wanted to drop their sagging, choking, eyeless bodies into the lobster tank and unbind the lobsters' claws. Of course, I'm not Dexter and they aren't murderers, so none of that would do. Instead, I went into the alley to ask the manager to remove the ginger ale from their check.
My manager complimented me on my composure and professionalism while handling this table -- which she had seen was "somewhat troublesome," -- and commended my perseverance. I'm glad she couldn't see into my brain and know the terrible retribution I craved. Anyway, she made the check alteration for me.
When I returned to bring A her new check, all three of them were gone. There was no way they all happened to go to the restroom at the same time. I left the check on the table, just in case I was wrong, but I wasn't wrong. They were gone.
It was like the miracle you didn't want to happen.
Yes, they were gone, but they had intentionally ditched the check, having used the "nasty" ginger ale as a cover story to get me out of the way. According to one of the hosts, they had left one by one, looking over their shoulders and seeming somewhat shady about the whole thing - it was their clearly self-conscious demeanor that caused her to remember them leaving. So not only had I dealt with the intense, demeaning admonitions of Level Six Shrimpmongers; not only had I not received a tip despite the fact that I'd worked harder on this one table than I had done on any of the previous five tables put together; but they had skipped out on a check, shorting the restaurant money. No, I didn't get in trouble for it because I went through the proper avenues and informed management immediately - there was nothing I could do about it.
I took a deep breath, silently rejoiced that they were gone, and got ready for my next table.
My two other tables had just gotten up to leave, also. It ended with a triple-seating.
Two two-tops of elderly people and a five-top family later, I was given a table outside my section. Again, if you've gleaned anything from my personality yet, you could guess I was not shaken by this turn of events. What made me pause for a split second as I strolled over to this new three-top was not that it was messing with my Seafood Feng Shui; the disturbance came, rather, from the details I noted, the finer points I perceived with my peripheral vision on the approach.
Oddity #1: The table, meant to accommodate four people, is usually set up with two chairs on opposing sides. The chairs had not been rearranged, but it was capped with an additional chair.
Oddity #2: Of the five chairs, only three were occupied. From the front without any chairs, a woman was seated at each of the two closest chairs on either side, and a third woman sat in the far chair at the back of the table. They kept a chair between them to maintain personal space, like toe spacers for a pedicure.
Oddity #3: The women were all the same size, shape, style, and disposition. I wasn't surprised by the fact that they were decked out in baggy, blingy, bright, contrasting clothes. The first three commonalities aren't all that strange; families or close friends often have some similarities in their physical features. But they all had the same perceived attitude and mood. It seemed, from a distance, as though an invisible mist of haughty displeasure thickened the air around them.
These oddities, especially the third one, piqued my attention and put me on edge. When I approach a table, as I've said before, I'm always cheerful. But what kind of person goes out to eat and begins the dining experience unhappy? That's like kicking off your own dance party and then breaking your own legs with a sledgehammer.
Alas, I needed to serve them anyway. Such is the nature of my job. It was worth trying to brighten the mood, I thought, so I mustered up a genuine smile and waved jovially as I said, "Hi! Welcome to the Scarlet Crustacean! My name is Calvin, I'll be serving you this afternoon. How are you today?"
The three of them glared at me in unison. The mood darkened, impossible as that seemed. I could almost see the gloomy shadow descending upon me, encasing me in their fog of fail. Tough crowd.
The first guest, I'll call her A, responded first. "Water."
I took a mental breath. Shrimpmonger Alert. Humongous Shrimpmongers. They were Shrimpmongous.
The second guest, B, said "I want a water, too. And nah," she looked at A, "you said yo' stomach was botherin' you. Get you a ginger ale or sumfin!" She turned back to me. "She want a ginger ale." A nodded along with her.
"Okay, I can get that," I said. "And for you?" I asked C.
"Get me one of them raspberry iced teas, Calvin," she grunted at me, eyes still fixed on the menu. She must have been looking through the menu, or she would have read that we don't have raspberry iced tea. Perhaps it was just for effect. Don't worry, lady, you look the part, all right. You could play Captain Shrimpmonger in The Shrimpmonger Stomps on the Scarlet Crustacean. It's a B movie. Or it could be.
"We have strawberry - is that all right?" I asked, hoping that it was.
"Yeah, whatever. Fine." She never even looked at me.
"All right. I'll be right back with your drinks, ladies, and then I'll take your lunch orders down." I took two steps towards the kitchen before I heard B start talking at me again.
"Nah, wait, I'm ready to order now. Y'alls ready to order?"
"Nuh-uh," C answered, shaking her head.
"Well I'm gonna order anyway," insisted B. "Gimme a make-your-meal deal, with some shrimp scampi and some o' them fried ones."
"Fried shrimp?"
"Yeah, whatchu think I was talkin' about?"
I thought, Oh, I don't know, fried clam strips, fried popcorn shrimp, fried chicken strips... I'm sorry, my psychic-waiter-powers are blocked by your aura of malcontent. But I said, "Okay, sure. And for your side item?"
"Lemme get a baked potato with some butter and lots of sour cream on the side. And bacon."
"I'm sorry, we don't have bacon for the potatoes. Can I offer you some cheese?" For just three extra dollars you can have an I.V. in your arm just pumping the fat and cholesterol straight into your body.
"Yeah. That."
"Excellent. What kind of salad would you like?"
"Gimme a regular salad but with Caesar dressing, on the side, extra dressing, extra croutons, extra cheese, no onions." By the time she finished describing her salad instructions, I assumed the other guests must be ready to order. I was wrong. I thanked her for her order and proceeded to the alley to get their drinks.
I made it to the alley and let out a sigh. Drake was there and said hello.
"Hey, dude. How are you? Did you just get here?"
"Good," he answered, "and yeah. I just clocked in. How you doin'?" He gave me a high-five.
"I'm all right, man. Except for this three-top of total Shrimpmongers I got. They're driving me nuts and I haven't even taken their orders yet." I put the drinks together on a tray, set up a dessert for my other table, whose dessert order I had taken what felt like hours ago, and moved to the computer to print out the third table's check. "Seriously, Drake, they're Level Three Shrimpmongers."
He looked up from the food window. "Level Three, eh? So they're messy, self-centered, and rude?"
"At the least."
"Wow. That can't be good." Drake trayed up a couple of plates. "So you probably don't have a second to walk this food right now."
"Survey says... no. Sorry, dude."
"That's all right," he said, "Mindy's coming in now and it's hers anyway."
I dropped the dessert and the check and returned to take the order from my three-top of Shrimpmongers. "Here are your drinks, ladies. Are you two ready to order?" I asked A and C.
"Yeah, they ready now," B answered.
"I wanna get a make-your-meal deal, too, with some crab legs and some of that seafood alfredo. And a baked potato with just butter, but extra butter on the side."
"All right, no problem. What kind of sal--"
"And get me one of these Big Shrimp meals, Calvin," interrupted C. She's a Shrimpmonger of the Name-User subtype. The kind of Shrimpmonger who pays attention to frequent-diner tips, such as the one that says using your waiter's name will make him more likely to attend to your requests. But alas, being a Shrimpmonger, these diners missed the fine print that indicates that treating your waiter with disrespect negates the courtesy of using his name. Silly Shrimpmongers.
"Surely," I answered, "A Big Shrimp deal for you." I followed up automatically with, "And what would you like on the side?"
"Baked potato. Sour cream only, extra sour cream." Wait for it. "No butter."
"And for your salads?" I asked A and C.
I won't bore you with the details of the last two salad orders, for as you might expect, there were many. Why these people have such specific preferences for their salads, I don't know. Why they care so deeply about the perfection of the precursors to their meals, I cannot understand. Surely, they didn't go out to a seafood restaurant for the amazing salads... did they?
They each changed their orders twice before settling into something they really wanted for lunch at that moment. This was getting to be too crazy to be real. I thought maybe I was getting Punk'd. Maybe I was on Candid Camera. Perhaps one of my managers was playing a practical joke on me. I have seen nasty, sloppy, ornery people before at this restaurant, but I did not know that there were people at this level of bad diner. It was like serving Jabba the Hutt's neanderthal ancestors while they were in withdrawals from heroin. After noting the mental image that presented and nearly vomiting, I jotted their orders down and slipped away as quickly as possible.
In the alley, I prepared precisely their preposterous salads and dropped them with fresh bread at the table.
"We ain't even got our meals yet and he already treatin' us like dirt?" exclaimed C.
Holdthephone. I'm treating you like dirt? I have officially entered Bizarro World. What the hell. I just brought you some FOOD. Start eating it! Please, occupy your talk-hole with chewing and let me go my merry way! "I'm sorry, is something wrong with your salads?" I asked.
"Yo, you gotta be kidding me. This is all the bread we get? This ain't nothin'."
"I can bring some more right out to you, and continue to bring more as you need; this is just the standard amount we generally bring to tables. I promise I'll have some more out to you right away, if you want."
"You're damn right I want. And bring me some more dressing, while you at it."
I came back with more bread and an extra side of dressing. "Here you go," I said.
"I need another dressing, too." said A. B opened her mouth to say what I thought would be the same thing.
I dropped the other two sides of dressing I brought out based on intuition. Bam. Psychic-waiter-powers trump stupid depressing aura. What now.
They wolfed through their salads like animals. Dressing sprayed from their salad plates and their teeth like there was a Caesar paintball war going on. I wanted to dive into a booth or duck under a table for cover, but I could only keep a safe distance while I looked over my other tables until their meal came out.
I brought their food out to them with extra napkins and another round of bread, having just refilled their drinks in advance. "This needs more of the sauce stuff," A snapped. "You gotta get me more of this, 'cause I'll be done with what you gave me in like a minute."
"I'll be sure to bring that out in a moment," I said.
"And another napkin."
"I brought extra napkins for you right here." I casually gestured to the napkins I had just placed on the table in front of her.
"I see like five or six. We gon' need like eight."
"And I wanna place a take-out order, Calvin."
I took the take out order. It was relatively uncomplicated - which, in this case, is like standing in a valley and saying a mountain isn't big compared to a planet.
"Drake, this table is driving me nuts. Forget level three. These people are Level Six Shrimpmongers. It's ridiculous."
"There's a level SIX?! Holy crap, man. Anything I can do to help?" He didn't have anything in the window because we were fairly slow, so he walked over to where I was retrieving more bread to chat.
"There is now. If there wasn't before, these women created it. They're horrific. Cruel. I swear they're trying to make my job difficult and frustrating."
"Well. At least you can write about it later."
"Hell yes."
I returned to the table. Heaven help me, I returned to the table. Because it's my job. I brought the take-out order and boxes for the rest of their food with me, as well as split checks, which they'd requested earlier.
"Cal, that won't work," said B. "I need a smaller box." A large box would contain their food. It wasn't like I brought them a container in which their food would not fit, but these Level Six Shrimpmongers were out for the perfect experience, and that meant they needed custom-sized take-out boxes.
"And get me another drink to go," demanded C.
I brought out new boxes, a drink to go, and cashed out B and C. A had a problem with her check.
"My ginger ale tasted weird. I don't want to pay for it." The ginger ale still sat in front of her, depleted by a third but therefore still mostly full. I promised to check with a manager for her and return shortly.
So let's tally up, just for fun, what I dealt with from this table so far.
Unenthusiastic greeting
Insistent interruptions
Indecisive menu selections
Ridiculously complex salad orders
Extra everything with their salads, meals, and take-outs
Eight napkins, because six wouldn't do, when they were making:
One hell of a mess on the table
Downsized boxes
General and continuous discontent and rudeness
And a check change that would cut two dollars and change off a forty dollar bill.
I have never wanted to hurt a guest so much. I was nearly shaking with violent indignation. I kept envisioning whipping a spinning backhand fist into A's skull, driving my elbow through B's temple and punching through C's face in a series of swift, graceful, brutal movements. I wanted to use a crab cracker to burst their eyeballs and drain the fluids into their scampi butter. I imagined shoving whole ramekins filled with Caesar dressing down their throats, lodging the ceramic in their esophagi. I wanted to drop their sagging, choking, eyeless bodies into the lobster tank and unbind the lobsters' claws. Of course, I'm not Dexter and they aren't murderers, so none of that would do. Instead, I went into the alley to ask the manager to remove the ginger ale from their check.
My manager complimented me on my composure and professionalism while handling this table -- which she had seen was "somewhat troublesome," -- and commended my perseverance. I'm glad she couldn't see into my brain and know the terrible retribution I craved. Anyway, she made the check alteration for me.
When I returned to bring A her new check, all three of them were gone. There was no way they all happened to go to the restroom at the same time. I left the check on the table, just in case I was wrong, but I wasn't wrong. They were gone.
It was like the miracle you didn't want to happen.
Yes, they were gone, but they had intentionally ditched the check, having used the "nasty" ginger ale as a cover story to get me out of the way. According to one of the hosts, they had left one by one, looking over their shoulders and seeming somewhat shady about the whole thing - it was their clearly self-conscious demeanor that caused her to remember them leaving. So not only had I dealt with the intense, demeaning admonitions of Level Six Shrimpmongers; not only had I not received a tip despite the fact that I'd worked harder on this one table than I had done on any of the previous five tables put together; but they had skipped out on a check, shorting the restaurant money. No, I didn't get in trouble for it because I went through the proper avenues and informed management immediately - there was nothing I could do about it.
I took a deep breath, silently rejoiced that they were gone, and got ready for my next table.
My two other tables had just gotten up to leave, also. It ended with a triple-seating.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
The Skeevy Scalloper
This past Sunday I had quite the day. I had a lunch shift at 11:30AM, but I wasn't able to leave until 7PM. We were busy and everyone was rather stressed. I had high-maintenance tables who didn't tip well and sat there talking for WAY too long, all day, such that I barely made any money. To top it all off, I needed to roll 105 sets of silverware before leaving, so by the time I got out of there I desperately needed a nap. The icing on the cake: my last table contained a Skeevy Scalloper.
I dealt with crazy, indecisive old people (which was all right; they called garden salads "garlic salads" and all pasta is macaroni to them, but they were polite, endearing, and soft-hearted, and actually called my manager over to give me some solid waiter-praise, so I didn't mind them all that much). I dealt with a table full of middle-aged women who, in the middle of the afternoon, wanted to eat less to keep their figure but drink more (mixed fruity drinks and mudslides) to forget that they were taking in calories. Remember, it's my job to oblige them and take their money, not to inform them of their counter-intuitive reasoning. I even dealt with this one ridiculous Shrimpmonger whose meal went thusly:
"Hello! My name is Calvin, I'll be your server this afternoon. How are you today?" I'm always pleasant on the approach. I want a pleasant meal for my guests, because it makes MY time more pleasant.
The overweight gentleman in the snazzy faux-leather jacket and the flat-brimmed blue sports cap regarded me with a, "Y'all got that flavored fruity lemonade drink... whatizzit... uh, strawberry lemonade. Gimme one a'those. She want one, too."
I'm doing great, too, thanks! "I'll be right back with your drinks, sir, and then I'll explain a few of our newer menu items." People, I implore you. We do enough of this fast-paced, selfish, time-crunching in our most common communication forms (text, IM, social network sites); when face-to-face with someone, take the time to at least pretend you care how they are doing when they've asked after your well-being. It's more than courtesy. I call it being human.
I swung over to the galley to get their drinks and then began to explain our promotions, the whole time just waiting for him to interrupt me. I wasn't disappointed. He cut me off about half a sentence before I was done.
"Yo, I want the dish wit all the fried stuff, but listen - last time I changed this one thing for scallops because they was out of shrimp, but then they tried ta charge me for that. Man, they was out of it. It ain't my freakin' fault, knowhatibesayin?"
"Yes, I understand entirely. I agree with you, if we were out of an item you wanted, we should have made sure you got an adequate replacement at no additional cost."
"Yeah, well, this time I don't want no fish, I just want more fried shrimp. You got that?"
"Yes, we have that. But sir, please understand that this time there may be an additional charge for the substitution. Is that okay?"
"Yeah, whatever. And with my meal I want a coke..." He paused. "With..." Another pause. He stared at me with indignation, as if to say, "Come on, waiterman, throw me a bone here! I'm trying to figure out what the hell I want!" Finally, he had it, and I could see the yellow light bulb forming above his head. "Uh, lemon."
"No problem, sir," I said with a pageant-winning smile. "And what kind of dressing would you like on your salad?"
"Get me these Thousand Island and ranch, but bring it to me."
This time I paused. Why would I not bring his salad to him? Who else would I be bringing his salad? "I'll have it out with some bread in a minute, sir."
"Yeah, bring it to me." He looked at me like I was a complete idiot. Clearly, that explained the communication issues we were having. Thankfully, his wife (whom he'd silenced by interrupting her up until now) intervened to help translate.
"No, you can't just say, 'Bring it to me,'" she informed him, "you gots to tell him." She turned to me and said in a tone you'd hear in an aside on stage, "He wants the dressing on the side."
So, folks, it appears that the phrase, "Bring it to me," is Shrimpmonger for, "On the side, please."
I won't bore you with the details of how he sent his dish back because the "shrimps wasn't right," how he wouldn't explain what that meant, or why he said the new ones (made exactly the same way) were "like, so much better," but you get the idea. Shrimpmonger: 'nough said.
The Shrimpmonger is quite the beast, and I see them ALL the TIME. The Shrimpmonger doesn't mean to be mean to the waiter, he or she just wants what he or she wants and the waiter inevitably ends up collateral damage. But the Skeevy Scalloper is a sly, sneaky creature who creeps up into your booth and waits, a predator of the friendly waiter. Some servers are put off their game by the Skeevy Scalloper - they don't know how to respond. Some of us, though, are born ready to go toe-to-toe with these jerks. You'll see what I mean shortly.
As I said, my last table contained a sixty-something Skeevy Scalloper, his wife, and her mother. I greeted the three-top in my usual cheerful way and then asked if they would like drinks and/or appetizers. The two ladies asked for Riesling, and the gentleman, who was seated closest to me, said, "Uh, get me a rum and coke. But none of that fruit bulls***, if you know what I mean." I did know what he meant, and placed his bar order to exclude the lime garnish it would normally have had. I thought, at the time, that the cutesy little politically incorrect joke was going to be the end of that. I really need to work on a Skeevy Scalloper Radar.
When I brought their drinks to them, I began explaining the specials but the Scalloper stopped me in my tracks. "We know what we want." The woman beside him looked at me, confusedly, and exclaimed, "Wait, I'm not! Could you explain this meal-for-two deal?"
I took pleasure in saying, "Absolutely!" and proceeding with the rest of my spiel. I described, in delicate detail, our expertly crafted appetizers, elegant entrees, and delectable desserts. I pointed out the menu selections featured in the deal she mentioned, and made a few personal recommendations. She and her mother gave oohs and ahhs at some of the options, and the Scalloper rolled his eyes. "All right," he said, "give us a few more minutes with this freakin' novel of a menu. Is it on the Times Bestseller List? Ha, ha, ha..."
By now I figured out exactly what type of guest he was. I cracked my mental knuckles and got ready to laugh very slightly at all of his stupid jokes along with him. "It is," I said. "I'm still collecting royalties. I wrote it, you see. In fact, if you'd like to take one home with you, it'll be 7.95 in paperback and 28.95 in hardcover."
His two lady companions laughed out loud, and his eyes sparkled mischievously. "Oh, look, we got us a smart waiter!" You have no idea, Mr. Skeevy Scalloper.
I came back a couple of minutes later and they were ready to order. Almost. "You can come to me last," his wife said. "I'll be ready when you do." They always say that. In my experience, that's true a whopping 50% of the time. Still, no skin off my back. I started with the Scalloper.
"I'll have a quarter-pounder with cheese, no pickles, ha, ha, ha." He smirked and shifted in his seat, clearly thinking he was the funniest thing since Jim Carrey put a green mask on and flailed his arms, screaming.
I made a quick note on my pad, and he jumped on the opportunity. "HA! You were going to write that down!"
"Yes, sir, I was making a note to change the ticket to a table for two." I turned my attention to his wife. "It appears the gentleman won't be dining with us tonight, ladies. He appears to prefer McDonald's over our company."
"Oh, ho, ho," he laughed, "you're a quick one." I flashed him a genuine smile and took his companions' orders. They did end up ordering the meal for two, so I jotted down my notes and told them I'd be back in a jiffy with their salads and bread.
"Here you are," I said, placing their salads on the table.
"That was fast," the Scalloper remarked.
"Yeah, I'm kinda speedy," I agreed.
"So, Speedy," his wife piped up, "could you also get me a glass of water?"
"Heh, heh, Speedy," Mr. Scalloper mused under his breath. If he meant to call me Speedy all night, I meant to make his dining experience eventful.
"Actually, dear, my name's not really Speedy," I laughed.
"Yeah," said the Scalloper. "It's Calvin. 'Cause I'm Alvin. Ha, ha, how funny is that?"
My psychic powers told me that he didn't want me to answer that question, so I let it be. Drake would be proud.
The Scalloper picked up his own thread. "But seriously, you are pretty fast. For a white guy. And a waiter, ha, ha, ha."
"Thanks. I think." I gave him a quizzical look, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of an indignant response or, really, any response, and walked into the alley. Margaret was right behind me on my way in.
"Did that guy at table 25 just call you a white guy?" She brushed a few strands of blonde hair from her face and began rolling silverware.
I nodded and confirmed that yes, he did just call me a white guy.
"Did he realize that you're white?"
I admitted he probably did - he's old but his eyesight appears intact.
"Did he not remember that he's white, too? And the other two guests at the table?"
"I don't pretend to understand my guests. I just bring them their food. It's simpler that way."
A short while later, I brought their food to the table.
"... and the Supreme Seafood Dish for the supreme gentleman," I said, placing the Skeevy Scalloper's dish in front of him.
"He doesn't know me very well, does he?" the man said to his wife. "But he does know how to make a tip, ha, ha, ha!"
"You can call it encouragement rather than acknowledgment." I gave them a wry smile.
As I walked away, I caught him with his eyes stuck on the backside of one of my coworkers while he ate, a ravenous grin breaking his face between chews of seafood. I proceeded to the fountain beverages in the alley to rinse with cola the taste of vomit from my mouth.
Later, I came back with their check when their dessert was nearly finished. "I can refill your coffee or get you water when you need, please feel free to take your time - I'm leaving this here for your convenience."
"This is not convenient." The Skeevy Scalloper was looking at me from under heavily disgruntled eyebrows. "Didn't you say this was on the house?"
"No," I said, "but it can be. Let's say it's on your house."
"Ha, ha, get that f***ing thing outta here, know what I'm sayin'? Ha, ha, ha."
I had personalized their check with a smiley face and a large image of the golden arches enclosed in a circle with a line through it. As I looked back at the table, I could see he was amused enough to pass it around. I checked on another of my tables and overheard him behind me saying, "See, he put a smiley face there because he wants a tip, ha, ha, ha." Yes, you bright, intelligent man, of course I do. I don't work here as a hobby.
Finally, I returned to take care of their payment and explained our survey to him.
"You don't want us to fill that out."
"Sir, I would love for you to fill that out, because the company wants you to fill that out, and while I'm dressed in these clothes with this nametag in this building, my soul is leased to the company."
He nearly died laughing. He managed to get a hold of himself long enough to finish signing his credit card slip and leave me a 25% cash tip.
I believe the score is:
Calvin: 1
Skeevy Scallopers: 0
Boo ya.
I dealt with crazy, indecisive old people (which was all right; they called garden salads "garlic salads" and all pasta is macaroni to them, but they were polite, endearing, and soft-hearted, and actually called my manager over to give me some solid waiter-praise, so I didn't mind them all that much). I dealt with a table full of middle-aged women who, in the middle of the afternoon, wanted to eat less to keep their figure but drink more (mixed fruity drinks and mudslides) to forget that they were taking in calories. Remember, it's my job to oblige them and take their money, not to inform them of their counter-intuitive reasoning. I even dealt with this one ridiculous Shrimpmonger whose meal went thusly:
"Hello! My name is Calvin, I'll be your server this afternoon. How are you today?" I'm always pleasant on the approach. I want a pleasant meal for my guests, because it makes MY time more pleasant.
The overweight gentleman in the snazzy faux-leather jacket and the flat-brimmed blue sports cap regarded me with a, "Y'all got that flavored fruity lemonade drink... whatizzit... uh, strawberry lemonade. Gimme one a'those. She want one, too."
I'm doing great, too, thanks! "I'll be right back with your drinks, sir, and then I'll explain a few of our newer menu items." People, I implore you. We do enough of this fast-paced, selfish, time-crunching in our most common communication forms (text, IM, social network sites); when face-to-face with someone, take the time to at least pretend you care how they are doing when they've asked after your well-being. It's more than courtesy. I call it being human.
I swung over to the galley to get their drinks and then began to explain our promotions, the whole time just waiting for him to interrupt me. I wasn't disappointed. He cut me off about half a sentence before I was done.
"Yo, I want the dish wit all the fried stuff, but listen - last time I changed this one thing for scallops because they was out of shrimp, but then they tried ta charge me for that. Man, they was out of it. It ain't my freakin' fault, knowhatibesayin?"
"Yes, I understand entirely. I agree with you, if we were out of an item you wanted, we should have made sure you got an adequate replacement at no additional cost."
"Yeah, well, this time I don't want no fish, I just want more fried shrimp. You got that?"
"Yes, we have that. But sir, please understand that this time there may be an additional charge for the substitution. Is that okay?"
"Yeah, whatever. And with my meal I want a coke..." He paused. "With..." Another pause. He stared at me with indignation, as if to say, "Come on, waiterman, throw me a bone here! I'm trying to figure out what the hell I want!" Finally, he had it, and I could see the yellow light bulb forming above his head. "Uh, lemon."
"No problem, sir," I said with a pageant-winning smile. "And what kind of dressing would you like on your salad?"
"Get me these Thousand Island and ranch, but bring it to me."
This time I paused. Why would I not bring his salad to him? Who else would I be bringing his salad? "I'll have it out with some bread in a minute, sir."
"Yeah, bring it to me." He looked at me like I was a complete idiot. Clearly, that explained the communication issues we were having. Thankfully, his wife (whom he'd silenced by interrupting her up until now) intervened to help translate.
"No, you can't just say, 'Bring it to me,'" she informed him, "you gots to tell him." She turned to me and said in a tone you'd hear in an aside on stage, "He wants the dressing on the side."
So, folks, it appears that the phrase, "Bring it to me," is Shrimpmonger for, "On the side, please."
I won't bore you with the details of how he sent his dish back because the "shrimps wasn't right," how he wouldn't explain what that meant, or why he said the new ones (made exactly the same way) were "like, so much better," but you get the idea. Shrimpmonger: 'nough said.
The Shrimpmonger is quite the beast, and I see them ALL the TIME. The Shrimpmonger doesn't mean to be mean to the waiter, he or she just wants what he or she wants and the waiter inevitably ends up collateral damage. But the Skeevy Scalloper is a sly, sneaky creature who creeps up into your booth and waits, a predator of the friendly waiter. Some servers are put off their game by the Skeevy Scalloper - they don't know how to respond. Some of us, though, are born ready to go toe-to-toe with these jerks. You'll see what I mean shortly.
As I said, my last table contained a sixty-something Skeevy Scalloper, his wife, and her mother. I greeted the three-top in my usual cheerful way and then asked if they would like drinks and/or appetizers. The two ladies asked for Riesling, and the gentleman, who was seated closest to me, said, "Uh, get me a rum and coke. But none of that fruit bulls***, if you know what I mean." I did know what he meant, and placed his bar order to exclude the lime garnish it would normally have had. I thought, at the time, that the cutesy little politically incorrect joke was going to be the end of that. I really need to work on a Skeevy Scalloper Radar.
When I brought their drinks to them, I began explaining the specials but the Scalloper stopped me in my tracks. "We know what we want." The woman beside him looked at me, confusedly, and exclaimed, "Wait, I'm not! Could you explain this meal-for-two deal?"
I took pleasure in saying, "Absolutely!" and proceeding with the rest of my spiel. I described, in delicate detail, our expertly crafted appetizers, elegant entrees, and delectable desserts. I pointed out the menu selections featured in the deal she mentioned, and made a few personal recommendations. She and her mother gave oohs and ahhs at some of the options, and the Scalloper rolled his eyes. "All right," he said, "give us a few more minutes with this freakin' novel of a menu. Is it on the Times Bestseller List? Ha, ha, ha..."
By now I figured out exactly what type of guest he was. I cracked my mental knuckles and got ready to laugh very slightly at all of his stupid jokes along with him. "It is," I said. "I'm still collecting royalties. I wrote it, you see. In fact, if you'd like to take one home with you, it'll be 7.95 in paperback and 28.95 in hardcover."
His two lady companions laughed out loud, and his eyes sparkled mischievously. "Oh, look, we got us a smart waiter!" You have no idea, Mr. Skeevy Scalloper.
I came back a couple of minutes later and they were ready to order. Almost. "You can come to me last," his wife said. "I'll be ready when you do." They always say that. In my experience, that's true a whopping 50% of the time. Still, no skin off my back. I started with the Scalloper.
"I'll have a quarter-pounder with cheese, no pickles, ha, ha, ha." He smirked and shifted in his seat, clearly thinking he was the funniest thing since Jim Carrey put a green mask on and flailed his arms, screaming.
I made a quick note on my pad, and he jumped on the opportunity. "HA! You were going to write that down!"
"Yes, sir, I was making a note to change the ticket to a table for two." I turned my attention to his wife. "It appears the gentleman won't be dining with us tonight, ladies. He appears to prefer McDonald's over our company."
"Oh, ho, ho," he laughed, "you're a quick one." I flashed him a genuine smile and took his companions' orders. They did end up ordering the meal for two, so I jotted down my notes and told them I'd be back in a jiffy with their salads and bread.
"Here you are," I said, placing their salads on the table.
"That was fast," the Scalloper remarked.
"Yeah, I'm kinda speedy," I agreed.
"So, Speedy," his wife piped up, "could you also get me a glass of water?"
"Heh, heh, Speedy," Mr. Scalloper mused under his breath. If he meant to call me Speedy all night, I meant to make his dining experience eventful.
"Actually, dear, my name's not really Speedy," I laughed.
"Yeah," said the Scalloper. "It's Calvin. 'Cause I'm Alvin. Ha, ha, how funny is that?"
My psychic powers told me that he didn't want me to answer that question, so I let it be. Drake would be proud.
The Scalloper picked up his own thread. "But seriously, you are pretty fast. For a white guy. And a waiter, ha, ha, ha."
"Thanks. I think." I gave him a quizzical look, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of an indignant response or, really, any response, and walked into the alley. Margaret was right behind me on my way in.
"Did that guy at table 25 just call you a white guy?" She brushed a few strands of blonde hair from her face and began rolling silverware.
I nodded and confirmed that yes, he did just call me a white guy.
"Did he realize that you're white?"
I admitted he probably did - he's old but his eyesight appears intact.
"Did he not remember that he's white, too? And the other two guests at the table?"
"I don't pretend to understand my guests. I just bring them their food. It's simpler that way."
A short while later, I brought their food to the table.
"... and the Supreme Seafood Dish for the supreme gentleman," I said, placing the Skeevy Scalloper's dish in front of him.
"He doesn't know me very well, does he?" the man said to his wife. "But he does know how to make a tip, ha, ha, ha!"
"You can call it encouragement rather than acknowledgment." I gave them a wry smile.
As I walked away, I caught him with his eyes stuck on the backside of one of my coworkers while he ate, a ravenous grin breaking his face between chews of seafood. I proceeded to the fountain beverages in the alley to rinse with cola the taste of vomit from my mouth.
Later, I came back with their check when their dessert was nearly finished. "I can refill your coffee or get you water when you need, please feel free to take your time - I'm leaving this here for your convenience."
"This is not convenient." The Skeevy Scalloper was looking at me from under heavily disgruntled eyebrows. "Didn't you say this was on the house?"
"No," I said, "but it can be. Let's say it's on your house."
"Ha, ha, get that f***ing thing outta here, know what I'm sayin'? Ha, ha, ha."
I had personalized their check with a smiley face and a large image of the golden arches enclosed in a circle with a line through it. As I looked back at the table, I could see he was amused enough to pass it around. I checked on another of my tables and overheard him behind me saying, "See, he put a smiley face there because he wants a tip, ha, ha, ha." Yes, you bright, intelligent man, of course I do. I don't work here as a hobby.
Finally, I returned to take care of their payment and explained our survey to him.
"You don't want us to fill that out."
"Sir, I would love for you to fill that out, because the company wants you to fill that out, and while I'm dressed in these clothes with this nametag in this building, my soul is leased to the company."
He nearly died laughing. He managed to get a hold of himself long enough to finish signing his credit card slip and leave me a 25% cash tip.
I believe the score is:
Calvin: 1
Skeevy Scallopers: 0
Boo ya.
Interlude: My Buddy Drake
I have a coworker who recently got me hooked on the show Psych. If you haven't seen it, go watch it now. It's hilarious. Anyway, this coworker is an awesome guy - the kind of person you like working with, because he's competent, responsible, and friendly. We'll call him Drake.
Drake works as an Alley Coordinator in the kitchen. Frequently, when I'm in the alley preparing salads or otherwise getting ready to walk food, if the restaurant is not too busy, we'll chat. Or banter. Banter's probably a better word, because he's like the Gus to my Shawn. But I'm not calling him Gus; he's Drake. Except for this one time.
We were talking while I prepped some drinks to go out, and the topic of conversation happened to be alter egos. Suddenly, an anecdote overtook him and he was swept into the winds of narration:
Drake: So, this one time, a camper at this old camp I used to work at had the best name. Darby McFadden. How awesome is that?
Calvin: Uh. It's awesome?
Drake: What? I think it's GREAT!
Calvin: Seriously? I wouldn't name my child Darby, especially with the last name McFadden; I might get arrested for child abuse on the first day of grade school.
Drake: No, not for an actual name. I mean, the kid was pretty cool, but I was talking about a character name. That should totally be my alter ego.
Calvin: Sure! Only to spare the ego part of your alter ego, I'll just call you Darb. It's only one syllable and is closer to your real name. On the other hand... if you rearrange the letters you get 'drab', and you're not a drab guy.
Drake: Aw, thanks dude. But yes, I am.
Calvin: No, you're not. But this argument is. Whaaaat?!
*Cue fistbump*
The people I work with frequently make the workday more fun. Thanks for being awesome, Darb. Er...Drake. =)
Drake works as an Alley Coordinator in the kitchen. Frequently, when I'm in the alley preparing salads or otherwise getting ready to walk food, if the restaurant is not too busy, we'll chat. Or banter. Banter's probably a better word, because he's like the Gus to my Shawn. But I'm not calling him Gus; he's Drake. Except for this one time.
We were talking while I prepped some drinks to go out, and the topic of conversation happened to be alter egos. Suddenly, an anecdote overtook him and he was swept into the winds of narration:
Drake: So, this one time, a camper at this old camp I used to work at had the best name. Darby McFadden. How awesome is that?
Calvin: Uh. It's awesome?
Drake: What? I think it's GREAT!
Calvin: Seriously? I wouldn't name my child Darby, especially with the last name McFadden; I might get arrested for child abuse on the first day of grade school.
Drake: No, not for an actual name. I mean, the kid was pretty cool, but I was talking about a character name. That should totally be my alter ego.
Calvin: Sure! Only to spare the ego part of your alter ego, I'll just call you Darb. It's only one syllable and is closer to your real name. On the other hand... if you rearrange the letters you get 'drab', and you're not a drab guy.
Drake: Aw, thanks dude. But yes, I am.
Calvin: No, you're not. But this argument is. Whaaaat?!
*Cue fistbump*
The people I work with frequently make the workday more fun. Thanks for being awesome, Darb. Er...Drake. =)
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Glossary (RestaurantDictionary.awesome)
The following are terms you may encounter in this blog.
#-top (1-top, 2-top, etc.) - The number of people seated at a given table. Ex: "They just sat a one-top at table 46; there goes any money I was planning to make." Ex: "Calvin, you and Martha can take that twenty-top large party together once they've all arrived." ALSO: the standard capacity of a given table. Ex: "Astrid, you just got a five-top at table 68." "Isn't that a four-top?" "Usually, but they capped it."
86 - Completely out of. None in the store, period. Cannot produce from ingredients unless you can wave your magic wand and make said ingredients appear out of THIN AIR. If a shrimpmonger asks for (demands) something that is eighty-sixed, it is the one moment of pure pleasure a server can eke out by saying, with full legitimate rights, "We don't have that." Which really means, "I don't have to bring you that today, you selfish, heartless jerk."
Alley - The kitchen area where servers prepare food to be walked to their guests. It's also where we make salads, prepare desserts, and get drinks and biscuits.
Alley Coordinator - A member of the staff whose job it is to prepare the food for transit to tables. That is, this guy (or gal) dresses the food with any necessary garnish, like parsley and Parmesan cheese, and then puts the plates on a tray for the servers to carry out. There's probably more to it than that, but it's all it ever looks like they do. All of the A/Cs at my restaurant are fantastic people, which is great because we servers see them more than any other staff member throughout the day. Also, they control the presentation of our food, so we really should appreciate them.
BD - Business-decline. A point in the evening where restaurant traffic has slowed and fewer guests are entering the lobby hoping to be seated.
Busser - A member of the staff whose job it is to clear and clean the tables when guests leave.
Capped - A capped table has an extra chair on the end (for instance, allowing a seven-top at what would normally be a six-top).
Cash out - Restaurant slang for paying your bill. No, you don't have to use cash. If you pay with a credit card, gift card, dish-washing, or licking my filthy seafood-crusted shoes, we still call it 'cashing out'.
Check - Also known as a bill. It's an itemized notification of how much money you owe the restaurant. If it's brought before you ask for it, you may take that as a hint unless I tell you not to.
Dish - The place in the restaurant where dishes are cleaned. Yes, it really is that simple a definition.
Double-seated - An unfortunate event consisting of having two tables in your section seated simultaneously. This means getting drink orders for one table and then going to the next table before you can fill them. It means cutting guests' questions short so you can maintain contact with your other table so they don't go wondering where you've been. It means you're not getting a breath of air for at least twenty minutes.
Drop - To place down on a guest's table. (Usually used with "food" or "check".)
Galley - An inconvenient area between the main dining area and the bar dining area, adjoining the bar, where servers may get fountain beverages or bar drinks for guests.
Pre-bus - The act of clearing unused dishes from a table. This frees up space for new, food-filled dishes during the course of the meal.
Seater - Also called a host. Staff member whose job it is to seat guests at tables when they enter the restaurant.
Sidecar - A shot that rides on the rim of the glass. Some people shoot it before sipping their mixed drinks, others just pour it right in and make the drink stronger. Some people are really weird and pour it into their eyes.
Silent Service - The practice of surreptitiously checking up on tables without disturbing them. I usually just walk around the area where my tables are. If they want me, they'll let me know - otherwise I let them do their thing.
Tip - The monetary gratuity left for wait-staff by dining guests. No, it is not optional; I work extremely hard so you don't have to cook or clean tonight to get a tasty meal, with excellent service, and I don't make any money off my over-taxed hourly wages that are less than half of the federal minimum. So please be considerate of your servers. Thanks! And no, your advice is not a tip, nor is it welcome. You can eat it, along with the extra lemons you want in your tap water.
Tray up - Verb. To place items on a tray for the purpose of serving said items to guests. I don't know why we don't "tray" them "down", considering that we don't usually have to reach up to set them on the tray - rather, we lift the trays up once we've put the items down - but I suppose such a question is akin to asking why we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway. (The answer is because the English language, both proper and colloquial, is majorly effed up. Or is it effed down?)
Triple-seated - A highly unfortunate event consisting of having three tables in your section seated simultaneously. This means you have to bust your butt even harder to get orders written down and punched in or your tables will wonder what the hell you've been up to for all this time. It means you're in deep and not getting a breath for at least a half hour. Possibly more. Good freaking luck.
VIP service partner - Another server whose section is adjacent to yours. Partners are expected to help each other out by introducing themselves to one another's tables and assisting each other with anything their guests need.
Wait - How much time a new guest will need to wait to be seated. Ex: "What's the wait?" "Roughly forty minutes." "Wow, we're pretty busy right now."
Zip - A string of booth tables in the bar area. To this day I do not know why we call it that. If you figure it out, please let me know. I'm also open to amusing etymology suggestions.
#-top (1-top, 2-top, etc.) - The number of people seated at a given table. Ex: "They just sat a one-top at table 46; there goes any money I was planning to make." Ex: "Calvin, you and Martha can take that twenty-top large party together once they've all arrived." ALSO: the standard capacity of a given table. Ex: "Astrid, you just got a five-top at table 68." "Isn't that a four-top?" "Usually, but they capped it."
86 - Completely out of. None in the store, period. Cannot produce from ingredients unless you can wave your magic wand and make said ingredients appear out of THIN AIR. If a shrimpmonger asks for (demands) something that is eighty-sixed, it is the one moment of pure pleasure a server can eke out by saying, with full legitimate rights, "We don't have that." Which really means, "I don't have to bring you that today, you selfish, heartless jerk."
Alley - The kitchen area where servers prepare food to be walked to their guests. It's also where we make salads, prepare desserts, and get drinks and biscuits.
Alley Coordinator - A member of the staff whose job it is to prepare the food for transit to tables. That is, this guy (or gal) dresses the food with any necessary garnish, like parsley and Parmesan cheese, and then puts the plates on a tray for the servers to carry out. There's probably more to it than that, but it's all it ever looks like they do. All of the A/Cs at my restaurant are fantastic people, which is great because we servers see them more than any other staff member throughout the day. Also, they control the presentation of our food, so we really should appreciate them.
BD - Business-decline. A point in the evening where restaurant traffic has slowed and fewer guests are entering the lobby hoping to be seated.
Busser - A member of the staff whose job it is to clear and clean the tables when guests leave.
Capped - A capped table has an extra chair on the end (for instance, allowing a seven-top at what would normally be a six-top).
Cash out - Restaurant slang for paying your bill. No, you don't have to use cash. If you pay with a credit card, gift card, dish-washing, or licking my filthy seafood-crusted shoes, we still call it 'cashing out'.
Check - Also known as a bill. It's an itemized notification of how much money you owe the restaurant. If it's brought before you ask for it, you may take that as a hint unless I tell you not to.
Dish - The place in the restaurant where dishes are cleaned. Yes, it really is that simple a definition.
Double-seated - An unfortunate event consisting of having two tables in your section seated simultaneously. This means getting drink orders for one table and then going to the next table before you can fill them. It means cutting guests' questions short so you can maintain contact with your other table so they don't go wondering where you've been. It means you're not getting a breath of air for at least twenty minutes.
Drop - To place down on a guest's table. (Usually used with "food" or "check".)
Galley - An inconvenient area between the main dining area and the bar dining area, adjoining the bar, where servers may get fountain beverages or bar drinks for guests.
Pre-bus - The act of clearing unused dishes from a table. This frees up space for new, food-filled dishes during the course of the meal.
Seater - Also called a host. Staff member whose job it is to seat guests at tables when they enter the restaurant.
Sidecar - A shot that rides on the rim of the glass. Some people shoot it before sipping their mixed drinks, others just pour it right in and make the drink stronger. Some people are really weird and pour it into their eyes.
Silent Service - The practice of surreptitiously checking up on tables without disturbing them. I usually just walk around the area where my tables are. If they want me, they'll let me know - otherwise I let them do their thing.
Tip - The monetary gratuity left for wait-staff by dining guests. No, it is not optional; I work extremely hard so you don't have to cook or clean tonight to get a tasty meal, with excellent service, and I don't make any money off my over-taxed hourly wages that are less than half of the federal minimum. So please be considerate of your servers. Thanks! And no, your advice is not a tip, nor is it welcome. You can eat it, along with the extra lemons you want in your tap water.
Tray up - Verb. To place items on a tray for the purpose of serving said items to guests. I don't know why we don't "tray" them "down", considering that we don't usually have to reach up to set them on the tray - rather, we lift the trays up once we've put the items down - but I suppose such a question is akin to asking why we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway. (The answer is because the English language, both proper and colloquial, is majorly effed up. Or is it effed down?)
Triple-seated - A highly unfortunate event consisting of having three tables in your section seated simultaneously. This means you have to bust your butt even harder to get orders written down and punched in or your tables will wonder what the hell you've been up to for all this time. It means you're in deep and not getting a breath for at least a half hour. Possibly more. Good freaking luck.
VIP service partner - Another server whose section is adjacent to yours. Partners are expected to help each other out by introducing themselves to one another's tables and assisting each other with anything their guests need.
Wait - How much time a new guest will need to wait to be seated. Ex: "What's the wait?" "Roughly forty minutes." "Wow, we're pretty busy right now."
Zip - A string of booth tables in the bar area. To this day I do not know why we call it that. If you figure it out, please let me know. I'm also open to amusing etymology suggestions.
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