Tuesday, February 23, 2010

And then, sometimes, people don't suck.

(Why the daffodils? Because I like them.)

I didn't have high hopes for my shift last night. The last four Mondays have been just abysmal, and then I started out with the same damn section I'd already had twice this weekend--oh wait, no, I had four tables. Brainless had six. How is that fair? Anyway.

I was already feeling like I had a "KICK ME" sign on my back because of that. Then all three groups of people in my three six-seater tables decided to camp out. Motherfucker. I got sat all of once in the four-seater booth. Then another server got sick/hysterically upset (never did get that straight) and her section was divided between me and Dallas. So I got two more tables .... one of which already had two dudes with a beer, a glass of wine, and a tent pitched.

So I spent the first several hours of my shift aggravated and doing a lot of food running for other people. Then my tables finally left, and my tips started to roll in. And then were great. Fifteen, thirteen, eleven, and twelve bucks from my campers. I was happy. I got a couple of 15% tips over the course of the night, but mostly people were quite generous.

My best tip came from a table I wasn't expecting anything from. They looked like trailer trash, but they were very nice, and their kids were cute and polite. I just figured I wouldn't expect much, so that if it turned out they couldn't afford to tip/didn't know how to, I wouldn't be irritated. I didn't treat them any differently than any other table--I've been trailer trash in my life, after all. No stone-throwing from me.

Anyway, after they paid, I temporarily didn't have any active tables. So I sat down and dug in to my barbeque pork sandwich (yum). A few minutes later, the mother from my table kind of hesitantly comes up, carrying the checkbook.

"I didn't want to just leave this on the table," she said, opening the book to show me the twenty dollar bill tucked in with the credit card receipt. "We've been here a lot lately and service hasn't been so good, but you were really great. Thank you very much."

Totally made my night. Overall, on $440 in sales, I walked with an even $100 after tipping my bartender and having dinner. Not too shabby for a small-town Monday night.

6 comments:

SkippyMom said...

Dayum. That is great for a Monday! Anywhere :D Nice job. Nice Mom too.

AZWaitress said...

Good job!

Steven Nicolle said...

Good going purplegirl!

nativenapkin said...

"So, You Want to Be A Waiter" has a great post(s) today that you should check out. I sense a theme...

purplegirl said...

It was a nice change! :)

Mary Sheehan Winn said...

It's about time someone said that to you AND tipped generously! :D