My radar is off.

Last night, I would have laid even money on the thought that my first three tables wouldn't tip me more than 10%, if anything. One seemed nice enough but just gave me a weird vibe; one was total white trash; and one was two younger couples with their mother and senile grandfather, and none of them seemed happy.

To my surprise, I netted 20% off of all of them! It was like that all night -- my internal gauge was wrong every time. There was even a table that my stomach dropped when I saw them -- one of them was missing teeth, another had on the crazy thick heavy makeup, another almost a mullet, snotty answers to my questions, just all the signs of "YOU'RE FUCKED" -- and they left me a twenty on $80.

I cleaned up last night -- after having fajitas for dinner and giving the bartender $14, I still walked with $130. On a not-terribly-busy Sunday night, I was waaaay more than pleased!

If I worked at home, I would be soooo happy.

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If I could Work from Home, I would be a very happy person. I like my house. Oh sure, I'd get bored sometimes. But mostly I think I'd be quite content!

Of course, I might turn into a pale vampirey blob -- moreso than I already am, that is -- but I think I'd be willing to take that risk.

The problem with trying to find a job from home, though, is that there's the potential to get scammed. What's needed is a Home Based Business Directory -- oh hey, there we go. I haven't done any in-depth research on HomeBusinessBug.com, but the site is designed for business owners to advertise their at-home work opportunities. They seem to have a good list of Work from Home Articles, such as understanding the different types of businesses advertising and such. The index also shows, right there on the page, how much money is needed to get started--which has got to be helpful in weeding out blatant scams.

Then again, if I stopped waitressing I'd have nothing interesting to blog about! And I know you all don't want that!

Lying liars who yell across the restaurant.

About a week ago, I had a verrrry pleasant customer.

Actually, they started out fine. A husband and wife, they seemed pleasant enough, even though they had insisted on taking up a five-person round table for themselves. The guy was thrilled to find out that we had a really cheap, white trashy beer on tap.

And then I forgot to ring their food in for about five minutes. But they had an appetizer coming, and fly onion rings only take three minutes, so I wasn't worried. It still wasn't an extraordinary wait, considering the place was full and we had a wait at the door.

But right before their rings came up, I stopped at their table for drink refills and was asked by the wife "what happened to our appetizer!" Which just pisses me off -- "can you please check on our appetizer?" is the correct way to ask that question.

I just smiled and said the kitchen was running a little slow, but I'd go check right away. Thirty seconds later I was back with said onion rings, and things seemed fine. Then I realized I'd ordered the wrong chicken on one of their salads -- but again, I caught it soon, it wasn't going to be a delay. So I was surprised a few minutes later when CL came up to me with her face all red and practically shaking.

Apparently this jackass saw her walking by tables on the other side of the bar from him and screaming "HEY! Are you the manager? WHERE'S MY DINNER?"

Keep in mind they'd been waiting maybe fifteen minutes on a busy night! And CL was embarrassed and shaky and upset. I don't know why, if anyone should've been embarrassed it was the douchebag yelling across the restaurant! He said they'd been waiting half an hour (wrong, but people always exaggerate that) and that they'd asked me where their food was and I'd "shown no concern" and not answered them!

That right there pisses me off -- when people fucking lie about me it makes me furious. They had ignored my drive-bys and smiles, and definitely not spoken to me. Is it possible they talked to somebody else who didn't bother to check? Maybe -- but I was the only short fat blonde chick there that night, nobody else was even close to looking like me.

So at this point I'm pissed, CL is pissed and not really believing me that I only forgot to ring things in for five minutes and that I had not actually spoken to them. She bought the fuckers' entire meals, including their drinks, and totally had a spaz attack in the kitchen.

When the assholes got their food, they'd been waiting a total of 25 minutes.

Sometimes, I wish I could work barefoot.

(Sponsored)

I know that realistically, waitressing barefoot would be a nightmare. With the disgusting state of kitchen floors mid-shift, and the people everywhere, and broken glass and all. But I get so tired of dealing with the ever-present dilemma of work shoes. It's not like I can just go to the store and buy any pair of nike shoes I feel like -- because they have to be a certain color and they can't have any decorations and for my own safety and sanity they have to slip-resistant.

And now that I'm thinking about it, I don't think I've had any nike shoes in my life. Well, maybe back in the 80s I might have had some bitch' puffy high-tops that were nike shoes, but anyway. The ones I've been wearing lately are okay, and they hold up pretty well; and they're cheap. But still, sometimes by the end of a shift my feet are just throbbing. And it will happen at the strangest times. by the end of my last shift of the week, I'm usually fine. But sometimes the second or third night of the week I'll suddenly feel like I'm walking on bruises.

I'm not sure if that a function of my shoes, or my feet swelling, or what, but it's super annoying. There have been a few times at work that I've waited until customers left, got all my kitchen stuff done, and then taken off my shoes and done my vacuuming or whatever barefoot. Which still leaves me feeling like I need to bleach my feet, but you know. At least I'm more comfortable for a while.

In the category of "No fucking way!": customers who didn't suck.

Just a little story, and a nice one at that! Last week I waited on a couple and their daughter. They were quiet, nice people who didn't run me around or do anything obnoxious. When they left and I picked up their money, they had left $52 ... for a $32 ticket.

I won't lie, the little devil on my shoulder suggested I just put it in my pocket and go about my business. But I knew they didn't mean to leave that much -- and if they did, well, they'd send me back inside with it. I could see them just getting to their car, so I scurried out the door. They gave me a strange look at I came up, god knows what they were thinking.

"I think you left more than you meant to," I said while holding out the cash.

"No, there should be about forty there." The wife wasn't looking at the money.

"Actually there's fifty two ..." I held it up.

She blinked at me. "Oh! I did leave too much." Then she looked confused, like she was embarrassed to take it back. I handed it all to her, not wanting to assume, and she handed back $42. "Thank you so much, that's so nice of you."

"You're welcome, I'd want someone to do the same for me. Have a good one!" I was about to turn to go back when the husband finally spoke up.

"Wait, here ..." he handed me another five. "Thank you, we appreciate it. Really."

So I got tipped great and I got to feel good about myself. It was possibly the only good moment in the last week!

It's nothing new ...

And yet the fact that 99% of my customers are flaming fucking douchehounds has had me in a near rage for the last eight hours. Fucking fuckers.

That's homoerotic!

(Oh god, this will probably generate some interesting search terms ...)

A few days ago Pennsyltucky walked in to work all proud of himself because he bought a 2006 Mustang. He's quite insufferable about it, actually--which made it all the more satisfying to give him a ration of shit! That particular day, he was on the patio. As he walked in to the kitchen, he asked if I knew where his section was.

"Yeah, you're out on the patio." I was putting in an order at the time, so I almost didn't catch him response.

"The patio? That's homoerotic!"

"Wait--what did you just say?"

"That's homoerotic!" He continued on his way mumbling while I dissolved in laughter because he so clearly had no idea what he'd just said. Being 19 and thinking he has the world by the balls, he likes to blurt out things like that with no idea what they mean.

"So, uh, P?" I finally managed to compose myself a few minutes later. "Do you know what homoerotic means?"

He looked at me suspiciously. "No."

"Well, you know what homo means, right?"

"Yeah! It means gay, and that patio is gay!"

I started giggling again. "Well, yeah, but erotic? Do you know what that means?"

He shook it head.

"Like erotica, like sensual and sexual."

Pennsyltucky stared at me, the light slowly dawning.

"So you said the patio is homosexually exciting."

"OH GOD." He stomped off before I could make any more jokes.

Naturally, every time he came around a corner for a few hours, somebody was giggling as I told them the story. Then I let it drop for a while before giving him grief about something else--and then I "apologized" for it.

"You know, P, as much crap as I give you, you're not a bad guy." I smiled innocently at his expression.

"I'm not?"

"Nah, you're okay. You're not even bad looking."

He started preening.

"Yeah, you're alright." I looked him up and down, giving him time to start feeling cocky again. "There's something, kind of, I don't know .... kind of homoerotic about you."

He ran away in the middle of punching in his order. I'm such a bitch.

It's not broken? Let's fix it!

Again, corporate groupthink overwhelms common sense in my restaurant. Apparently all the other divisions in the company have "in" and "out" doors in the kitchen. Which, on the face of it, makes sense--less risk of collision. We've always just yelled "in" and "out" as we came and went from the kitchen, and it really hasn't been a problem.

But, somebody a step above us on the corporate ladder decided that every restaurant needs to designate in and out doors, regardless of sense. Here's a (very clumsy) diagram of our kitchen:
Anyone with an ounce of common sense will immediately spot the problems. Like, oh, I don't know, having to traverse the entire length of the kitchen with dirty plates. Especially on a Friday night--dodging the panicking carside person, people digging in the cooler for things, waiting for computers, rolling silverware, pouring drinks, washing hands, stocking ice ... then there's the expo running up and down that area too, and the people with hot food leaving the kitchen, before you finally get to the dish area. It's fucking idiotic. At least they did insert a modicum of common sense: originally the doors were flipped, so we'd be dodging all that while carrying food! I was just waiting for somebody to get a fajita skillet to the face with that shit going on.

Eye gouging in 3 2 1 ...

I am hiding in the bathroom because I was about two seconds away from screaming obscenities at the table of 15 cackling hyenas taking up my section. I might be hiding a body before this night ends.

Speak, don't point.

I had one of those tables last week who just don't like to communicate. It's apparently too difficult to say words like "chicken" and "salad", because this guy freaking grunted at me and said, "We'll both have that." He jabbed his finger squarely in to the picture of a salad.

"Okay, two (Fried Chicken With Sugar Dressing More Calories Than A Cheeseburger) Salads," I said very clearly. "Would either of you like some soup before dinner?"

They ignored me. Okay, whatever. Patio dwellers are usually giant pains in my ass, so I just continued on about my business. Ten minutes later, another server comes up to me with two salads and asks where they go. Grunt Man and his silent wife had said the salads weren't theirs--"we ordered pasta!"

Nothing galls me more than to have to apologize and kiss ass to the person who was actually at fault, but I did my best. They weren't satisfied, and bitched out the manager, and demanded free food and free dessert. They refused to make eye contact with me the rest of the time they were there, and they stiffed me.

Because, you know, I should be able to read minds--both when they order the wrong thing and when I repeat it and don't get corrected!

Update on the previous post.

So it turns out there's a reason for me being at work until midnight on Tuesday, but only having three tables after first cut and only making $50. And that reason is, I work with douchebags.

One of those douchebags decided he didn't want to take any more tables. So he told the hostess that we were down to closers--which meant only one side of the place got sat, which fucked me and Wide-eyes over completely.

I thought Lapdog's head was going to pop right the fuck off his neck when he heard that, he went off on the people involved! And then apologized to me for it, much to the disgust of Wide-eyes, who he also bitched out about something. Ha!

Complete and utter bullshit.

I have had two tables in two hours. Lapdog will not make cuts, though, because three servers are "busy"--with tables camping out for trivia. I'm spending as little time doing anything as possible, because I'm not going to be my coworkers' bitch for server wage. Especially when they don't even actually need help.

Good service is a privilege, not a right.

(I really let loose on this one. At the time I really wasn't all this upset, but in writing about it I've spewed out weeks of frustration with customers. I hope it's amusing at least!)

Mother's Day was quite an interesting day for me. I'd gotten up at ten the morning before, after four hours of sleep, and had a brilliant day. When the clock struck midnight in New York City, I was crossing Times Square with three Brazilians, two of whom I'd just met. We wandered a bit, ate at McDonald's, ogled Morten Harket's ass on one of their cameras, and at about 2:30 headed down in to the subway. I had taken the E line in to Manhattan, but it was re-routed so I had to take the F back to the airport. Unsure of how much the stations would have changed, I asked a friendly transit worker what stop to get off at. She told me to get off at the very last stop. Easy! So I did, and .. uh ... was not the right one. Ghetto is probably a little too harsh of a term, but it wasn't a very welcoming place at night.

I located another Metro employee, who said I needed to get off one stop earlier. So I waited for the train to come back around, wondering what I was going to catch from the particles the guy with rotting feet was shaking off his socks. Then I walked up and down the length of the train, trying to figure out where the conductor's car was, before giving up and just sitting in the car with the most people. At this point, it was 4 a.m.! My plane left at six and I still had to take the lightrail from the subway station, so I was starting to panic.

I made it to the airport in time, and even had a few minutes to charge my phone at a handy mobile charging station, before climbing in to the puddlejumper that took me to Washington D.C.. I slept in few ten minutes increments on that plane, and then again on the plane home. Then I blearily hiked to the far lot where my car was--having kind of forgotten where I'd parked, and headed home. Except I took a detour up in to the mountains to get my dog from my dad's house, then came back down and showered and went to work at four. So by the time I got to work, I'd been awake for essentially 32 hours.

I did pretty damn good, though--I was still on such a high from my trip that the exhaustion hadn't hit me yet. I had a four table section, three large booths and one small one, and overall I got some great tips. The one exception was a bunch of glaring fucking assholes, though.

When they were there, I had a seven, a five, and a six, all in a row in back-to-back booths. The flaming assholes were the five in the middle, but they did a good impression of being nice people. They never told me anything was wrong; they never gave me any impression anything was amiss. And remember, I had tables on either side of them, I was constantly in the area, constantly making eye contact etc. So imagine my surprise when I picked up their ticket and found a nice long note. Spelling, punctuation etc. all as written:

"Reasons for no tip:

1) Sat for 10 mins without silverware + napkins ... with hotwings. What are we to wipe our hands with?
2) Had to finally ask other waitres for same
3) Had to wait 5 mins for water refill
4) once refill brought, no ice ... warm. Nice!
5) steaks ... no steak sauce offered. Had to ask other server
6) Tips are a privelege for good serve ... not a right."

Okay, you douchesack sucking asshat, let's look at this. You sat for 10 minutes without silverware with boneless wings? My fucking ass you did! Okay, I didn't notice you didn't have silverware--obviously the host didn't bring you any. But I didn't deliver your fucking wings, because I was taking an order two feet away from you. And you were eating said wings when I was done taking that order. That did not take ten minutes, and there's no "finally had to ask other 'waitres' for same" when I am clearly in your goddamn sight. Also, technically, those two reasons would be the same. You're just trying to make your pathetic fuckstick list look longer.

Now, it's entirely possible you waited five minutes for a water refill. What you're ignoring is again, I was in your sight that whole time, and more importantly your glass was never actually empty! And there was also ice in your glass when I refilled it with the water pitcher--pretty common practice at any restaurant, you ignorant numbnuts! Also, again, three and four would be the same "problem".

Let's review what happened with the steak sauce. I brought several plates out, with Brainless behind me. I set down the plates I was carrying and took two steps over to the bar to pick up the water pitcher since all you cheap bitches were sucking it down so fast. As I turned back around, Brainless (who had brought out the plate with the steak on it) asked you if you wanted steak sauce. Please tell me how that translates in to "no steak sauce offered. Had to ask other server".

And now, as for you grand conclusion? As it turns out, good service is a "privelege" not a right. And I will remember you, your poorly spoken wife, and your goofy looking socially inept pockmarked piebald idiot teenage children the next time you come in, so you might want to just turn back around and leave before some Orange Power degreaser finds its way in to your hot wing sauce.

(As much vitriol as I'm spewing now, I honestly didn't let it ruin my night. I'd just spent three nights in the presence of my favorite Norwegians, meeting awesome people and having the time of my life. I'm pretty sure I was happier that weekend than these fuckers will ever be in their lives!)

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Bastard lovechild.

One of the more annoying things about my restaurant is that we're a training store for new managers. We didn't have any of the bastards there for about a year, which was great--they're always all about the tiny little rules and regulations that nobody else gives a shit about. Plus their presence brings in other corporate people to see how their training is going.

This batch of them has mostly been okay--with one glaring exception. One of them is an arrogant douchebag who thinks he's hot shit. Every time I work with him, it's just a non-stop litany of nit-picky stuff. Only instead of stating things as a rule, he has to make some asshole joke. "Hey, how big are those earrings? Yeah? That's funny, because I thought the employee handbook said earrings have to be under a half inch long."

The last time I worked with him, I was almost ready to just walk out because I was so sick of it:
"This food isn't going to run itself!" (I couldn't bite my tongue--"And these peoples' orders aren't going to take themselves either!") He said this while standing there doing nothing, of course.
"That better an important text, better be Obama or something." (to one of the cooks)
"Smile guys!" (FUCK YOU!)
"Let's make sure we're getting people the right food, we want them to have a good experience!" (No fucking way! Really?)
"Aren't glasses supposed to be full to the top with ice?" (Not if they asked for light ice, why don't you fuck off already?)
"Am I wrong here, isn't there a charge for a side of guacamole?" (No, not in this case. Again, fuck off.)

And on and on and on. My favorite, though, was when he picked up an ice cube off the floor and yelled, "Every ice cube counts, guys!"

That's when I decided he must be the bastard lovechild of Chicken Little and Lapdog.

ETA: SkippyMom's comment reminded me that after he said that, I started throwing ice everywhere when his back was turned. Floors, counters, in the cooks' window, etc. Muahahaha!

Repost: some things just stick with you.

Since I'm suffering from ridiculous writer's block, I thought I'd repost an ancient story just to have a post!

The restaurant I currently work at is one I worked at six years ago, for three months. I don't have a whole lot of specific memories of customers from then, but there was one specific table I will never forget. It was three soccer moms and their kids, between 6 and 9 years old. Two of my tables had been pulled together for them. It was during the afternoon, not the rush, so that part was fine. What wasn't so fine was the fact that the moms were at one end of the table, the kids at the other, and beyond ordering the food, the moms completely ignored their children.

At first, the four kids were just demolishing their own table. After sucking on sugar packets, sticking gum to the table, mashing macaroni on the table, squirting ketchup all over the place, ripping up every napkin they could find, make sugarwater soup on the table, and destroying all our promotional flyers ... these children got up and started grabbing things from OTHER tables to destroy. And the women sat there, chatting and laughing, paying zero attention. Not one of them said one word.

When they finally left, the kids had dirtied four tables. It took fifteen minutes or more to clean up. I had to vacuum the floor, in the middle of the day. I got $5 for my troubles. It was so bad that my only other table, a middle-aged couple, asked me, "I can't believe they let their kids act that way. Do people do that often?"

It makes me feel old to say it, but I would never, ever have been allowed to behave that way when I was a kid. My daddy would've slapped me into next week for acting that way in public--not that it would've been an option to me in the first place. I knew better.

That was the first time I'd really experienced that sort of thing (though not the last). I'd worked at a local family-owned restaurant for years, and I don't remember people there ever letting their kids get that out of control. Sure, we had some asshats sometimes, but the fact that it was small, local, and just slightly more upscale apparently kept the worst offenders away. But at nation-wide, corporate places? People don't give a fuck.