One of our cooks, I'll call him Floyd, is sometimes a perfectly pleasant man, and other times he gets a raging fucking attitude. Tonight was one of those nights. Somehow we ended up with an extra order of boneless wings, which then sat in the window for close to an hour. In that time we got busy, and because Floyd was pissed he tried to send out the old wings to a customer.
The Auctioneer was on expo, and he surprised me by refusing to send them. After five minutes of arguing about it, Floyd still wouldn't drop new wings, and Auctioneer still wouldn't send them out. PSM finally rolled into the kitchen and tried to take the middle ground … but re-saucing them. They were still fucking nasty, and I knew we'd have pissed off customers if they went out. They were already on fifteen minutes, but when PSM pushed them across the window to Auctioneer, he and I looked at each other and actually had a moment of mutual understanding and disgust.
I finished washing my hands, then picked up the plate of wings in question. Checking to make sure that Floyd wasn't watching, I gave one an experimental poke. Hard as a rock. It wasn't even my table, and I was pissed. For fuck's sake, in the time Floyd had spent arguing and being a jackass, he could have made new wings! And for PSM to try to pretty up those nasty dried up pieces of crap? Ridiculous. I started for the edge of the kitchen, and right before I made it to the door ….. oh, whoops. Wings everywhere. Bleu cheese on my jeans and the wall. What a shame.
Floyd wasn't happy, but it was an accident, right? What's he going to say. The customer was fine – and his server got a fat tip – because I made sure to go out to the table smeared with hot sauce and dressing to profusely apologize for my butterfingers.
6 comments:
brilliant! I love this story.
Just found your blog, it's amazing! I'm waiting tables too and yor blog totally makes me laugh at all the asshats I have to deal with.
My pet hate: the management purposely understaffing a shift to save money on labour. Basically means we rush around like headless chickens giving shit service and makin no tips - huzzah!
Way to go above and beyond for the team!
What kind of a manager tries to appease a lazy-assed cook by sending out hour-old wings to a table? I swear, you find some of the hardest working people in restaurant staff, and you find some of the laziest. And sometimes, the laziest of all can be those in management who just don't want to confront assholes when all that really goes into it is 'do your job or you are fired.'
That's exactly what I had to do at Chili's all the time because the cooks were fucking lazy and argumentative. Good for you, doing the right thing. I agree with Rachel, there's no reason a manager should do anything but whip that cook into shape.
I really admire that what you did shows great strength of character. Its scary to think that there are people out there who dont flinch at sending out food full of phlegmers and other nasty shit
theblonde -- unfortunately the bleu cheese stained the shit out of my jeans so I don't love it quite so much anymore! :)
Hi maxi! Nice to 'meet' you. :)
Rachel, I don't think PSM realized quite hold old the wings were, and I think he was trying to avoid Floyd throwing one of his bitch fits when we were starting to get busy. I wasn't too happy about it either!
FMT, unfortunately PSM is sort of the low man on the totem pole and isn't really allowed to whip anyone in to shape. HotPants is a newer hire -- but he used to be a server there long, long ago so CL treats him like gold. If PSM tried to straighten Floyd out, Floyd would bitch to CL and CL would yell at PSM about it. *sigh*
DMT, I think it mostly shows great annoyance with my kitchen staff. :) But thanks!
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