Fell on my face again.

I was hoping day two would be better than day one. I had a section right outside the kitchen, which made things easier, but then I also had two tables out on the patio. Everything was moving along smoothly and then I got a woman and her two sons. They were nice enough when I greeted them and they ordered promptly, starting with the youngest son.

"I'll have chicken alfredo," he muttered shyly, not looking directly at me but instead at his closed menu.

"And?" his mother prompted in that "eat your vegetables" tone.

"And, um, a salad." he offered. His brother then ordered a burger and his mother ordered "shrimp linguine, and a salad with ranch" as she handed me her menu. I rang it in, I refilled their drinks, I brought their salads, all the usual stuff. They said their food was great; I fetched them a couple of boxes and gave Mom the bill.

The hostess then told me I'd gotten sat outside, so I scooted out and got their drink order. Came back in and Mom handed me her credit card. I ran it and took her slips back to her, and that was when she decided to ask .....

"Were those the lunch portions?"

Well no, no they weren't lunch portions because they didn't ask for lunch portions. I politely explained this and explained the best way to order next time if they wanted the lunch portions.

"Well, I thought you understood when he pointed at it in his menu," she said. See above re: him looking at the closed menu. But she wasn't snotty about it, so that was nice. I apologized for the confusion, and then, in an effort to avoid a problem like the day before, I went to Lapdog.

"Hey, you might want to stop by table 2. She doesn't seem upset, but she thought they ordered the lunch portions - they didn't - and she said something about it."

"Well, let's fix it." he whipped out his manager card.

"They already ate and paid," I said, expecting that to be the end of it. Oh, no. Lapdog decided he needed to pull back their ticket, change the price of their meals, and charge them the cheaper price. That took a few minutes, and I went to explained the lady what we were doing and said we'd need to run her card again. When I got back to Lapdog, he hadn't finished yet. I tore up the slips that were going to be voided, threw them away, and circled around again - at which point Lapdog asked for the slips I'd just torn up and thrown away.

See, it used to be that we could only void a transaction and re-run the card. Apparently Lapdog has figured out how to alter the charge that was originally entered - but he has to have the numbers off the original slip. So he told me go dig it out of the trash. That was fun, rooting around in the dish pit trash can trying to find bits and pieces of now-wet paper. I didn't find all of it; I didn't find the piece he needed. He lectured me about not throwing it away next time, then let me wash my hands and re-run the woman's card.

(It has just now occurred to me, as I was writing this, that Lapdog and I are both stupid. We could have re-printed the credit slip to get that effing number. But I was so flustered I didn't think of it. Balls.)

I took the new slip out to the lady, who was thankful - we'd saved her a whopping six dollars - and I started trying to re-group and deal with the tables around Mom and her boys. I had re-filled drinks and had just finished bussing Mom's table ($7 tip!) when Lapdog came storming back in the kitchen and hollered, "Who knows something about the table on the patio that didn't get service?"

FUCK.

Well, that could have gone better.

First real shift today, and while I didn't go down in flames, I didn't exactly hit the ground running either. I had the section farthest from the kitchen, plus a couple of tables on the patio, and that stressed me out right away - I assumed since I was "new" I'd have three tables right by the kitchen. The extra time to get to that station, plus the extra time it took me to ring in a few orders due to the slightly different computer system ... it put me behind and I felt that all day. Most of my customers were totally cool and tipped me well. And despite my stress, I was still glad to be there. But there was one table where I done screwed up. It could have been fixed, had they not been passive-aggressive ijits.

First of all, the woman wanted nachos, which aren't on the menu anymore, but there's still a button in the computer. So no problem, I thought. But when they went out, it turns out that we don't have the ground beef for it anymore and apparently we just send it out now without it which makes no sense to me because a) it's the same damn price as it used be and b) we have damn hamburgers so why not use one.

Mmmmmmmmm.

Anyway, the woman insisted, insisted, that it was fine, she didn't want beef or chicken, she just wanted some salsa. Okeydokey. The little girl didn't look thrilled with her macaroni and cheese, I assume because it's not Kraft kind, but instead our version on cavatappi noodles. But her mom helpfully told her it was
yummy and I thought all was well.

Mistress J was on expo, so I let her know all of this - she still has managerial powers, and I didn't feel like talking to Lapdog (oh, yes, Lapdog is still there. He comes with the building lease at this point.) about it. She said if we needed to we'd take something off the bill, just to let her know.

I made a point of checking back early and a little more often than usual - first checkback, everything was fine. Second, they had gotten very quiet but said it was good - I asked specifically about the nachos and the macaroni and was told they were fine. Third, they wouldn't even answer me other than to ask for the bill. In retrospect, I should have sent Lapdog to check on them. But I figured Mommy and Daddy had argued or something, because the kids were suddenly quiet and subdued too, and also because they had told me their food was fine.

Imagine my surprise when I picked up the ticket after they left and had a two dollar tip on $55 - okay, that didn't surprise me after the nacho problem, and I wasn't upset or anything. What did surprise me was that they'd left passive aggressive notes on the check: "8.99 for chips and salsa??!" with the nachos circled (yeah, sure, there was nothing else on them ...) and then "NO CHX!!!!!" with the little girl's macaroni circled. I don't know if that meant there was no chicken in the mac and cheese or the little girl didn't want chicken - neither of which was communicated to me. Neither was their displeasure with the cost of anything.

I felt bad after they left, because I didn't handle it well. But I also felt like they should have spoken the hell up at a point where something could be done.