My schedule's been screwed up lately (thank you LAPDOG), so I worked a Wednesday this week. I. Fucking. Hate. Wednesdays. The shift always starts out with some kind of fucked up chaos, no matter what. Today's wasn't anything specific, and by six I had tables only in my own section again. And honestly they were treating me fairly well, $10 and $12 tips for the most part.
But of course, one person always has to be different.
My last table of the night was a woman who looked like she had a stick up her ass, and her son. They ordered boneless wings as an appetizer. The kid ordered a rack of ribs with extra fries instead of cole slaw, and the mother ordered a chicken tender and rib basket with ranch instead of honey mustard.
Unfortunately, they were one of three tables I was sat at one time, which is how I ended up making a mistake. The people next to them also had an appetizer, and I got my brain wires crossed and thought I'd rung in the uptight bitch's appetizer.
I saw the Bug taking their food to the table, saw the woman give her an earful, and then Bug walked back to the kitchen. I met her halfway and asked what was wrong.
“She didn't get her appetizer before her meal, she said he did not get double fries, and she says this,” Bug shook the basket at me, “isn't enough.”
“Oh, fuck.” I rushed out to the table. “Ma'am, I'm so sorry I forgot to ring in your appetizer, that was entirely my fault. I'm going to get the manager involved to fix the rest, right away. Do you still want the boneless wings?”
“Well of course.” she snarled. I wanted to punch her. I fucking apologized, alright? It's not the end of the world. Especially since the kid did have his double fries, and she got the standard meal portion. “And don't you have some silverware!”
I stomped to the host stand for two silverware, wondering why the hell the hosts were seating people without the stuff, then went in search of Lapdog. I started by telling him I'd forgotten the appetizer and had already apologized, and apparently that made him go deaf with rage because he just couldn't understand what I was saying about the rest of it.
Once I finally explained to him that the woman was complaining about her son's portion of fries, and her overall portion of food, he asked if I was sure she'd ordered the smaller meal. I told him – twice – that I'd repeated the order to her, and he finally started talking to the cooks and expo, so I thought the situation would be resolved fairly quickly.
As I was delivering drinks to another table, Lapdog passed me with the woman's food – which he'd doubled the portion of despite it being normal to begin with – and immediately came back looking even more pissed. I rushed back to the kitchen to find him scooping fries out of the basket and hollering. I hadn't mentioned that she was supposed to have ranch instead of honey mustard, because stupid me, I was dealing with my other tables and maybe thought that might be info the expo would've given him while they were discussing the order. So now the bitch was flipping out because some vile, disgusting, terrible honey mustard touched her plate, and Lapdog was even more pissed at me. I told him the information was on the original ticket and he started snarling about how he didn't have it, nobody uses the special order tickets in situations like this, he's tired of putting out fires, yada yada yada.
Then Chicken Little chose to come out of the office for the first time all night, and she started flipping her lid! She was pacing up and down the kitchen, yelling “I just don't get it! Why are we having these kinds of problems with ten servers on! Maybe we need to have 15! I'll do it! I'll tell my boss my staff can't do their jobs! Maybe then we'll get things done!”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and waited until she had thundered out of the kitchen before saying loudly enough for Lapdog to hear, “It doesn't matter how many servers we have on, people are still going to forget things sometimes.”
Thank god they cut the floor, and I was first off, because I was so fucking frazzled and irritated I don't think I could've handled anything else.
5 comments:
Wow some people are proper mental...tbf I've made a few scenes in restaurants as the customer before...will definitely think twice next time my drama queens wants to come out!
You're a brave soul, there is no way I could ever waitress! And people do forget, I lost my phone for 20 minutes earlier before it rang...it was in my pocket...
These managers sound like real asswipes adding fuel to the fire. It happened, let's fix it and get the next party in and sat! So simple yet so difficult.
The restaurant biz is one of those industries where your tiniest mistakes are going to be blown waaay out of porportion. Yes, you and I realize that forgeting to put in an appetizer when triple sat inconvieniences the customer. It does not ruin a dinner. If the customer acts like it did, it's because she is a fucking cow who would have been upset over something else had the mistake not occured, anyway.
But what I truly cannot understand are managers who take those human errors and turn them into Armaggedon...then don't understand how a server (who had been having a perfect night before the slip up) is suddenly making a ton of mistakes. It's almost like being royally dressed down three times by two managers while you have tables waiting on refills made them frazzled, or something. We had a similiar incident at my place...a manager threatened to fire the host staff because they didn't notice that a group of people had come into through the ToGo door and sat themselves in the (free-seating) bar area. So two hosts walked out, leaving us with one during the dinner rush. To top it off, the idiot manager still doesn't understand why they walked out. It's not like good employees who are told they will be fired for an understandable screw-up shouldn't still be loyal to their asshole employers, or anything.
*hands a double vodka* drink up and chill it happens to everyone unfortunately its the nature of our job. In my time I've worked Menswear Womanswear Childrenswear Grocieries and Food and starting with menswear at the top the rationality of customers decreases exponentially as you work towards food. Its something about the food industry and peoples unrealistic expectations, people want restaurants and cafes to be more like fast food places they want highquality food right without the wait for fast food prices they also want servers to bend over backwards and kiss their asses for free.
Your Managers are a pair of fucking eejits Chickenlittle needs to come down to earth and get over herself and and that other gobshite lapdog needs to reach inside and yank out his manhood because he's acting like a dickless bitch!
wow, I feel your pain...
A few weeks ago @ my work, this woman and her 11 year old daughter sat on the patio. We didn't have a server on the patio, just the servers inside picking up tables. So I picked up this table. The lady ordered an app of guacamole and chips and I forgot to ring it in thanks to the host tripple sitting my inside section. I rang in her food order (salad and a sandwich for her daughter) while taking care of my other tables. When I brought her food out she said "YOU FORGOT MY APP!!" and I was like "I can get it right away for you, I'm very sorry" and like a little kid she was like "I don't want it anymore!!!" So i walked away and checked up on her ofter to refill her ice tea. About 2/3 into her salad she brought to my attention that her salad had no almonds in it and she specificly wanted almonds in her salad (kitchens fault), I offered her a side of almonds and she refused. I told my manager the situation and he didn't want to comp her salad over it having no almonds so he gave her a 20% discount. So I gave her the check, she tipped me 10%, left then told off the host.
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