Anger.

Often times we find ourselves in positions that induce anger or rage and in a situation like this, we stop and stare at ourselves only to see a bottle filled with hatred within ourselves.  Tonight at the restaurant happened to be one of the days that I dread ever since the restaurant had opened for the first time.  A chaotic Friday, much more crazy than the past Fridays before, enough to merit a long waiting list and both kitchens getting their ass handed to them by the sheer volume of people ordering.  For what it seemed, the restaurant was falling into shambles and it was not due to the servers or the hostesses but rather it was lack of competency from both kitchens, Sushi and the Back kitchen.

Food was taking so long come out and it was so bad that I had a table walk out because their meals we’re taking so long and it took roughly 45 Minutes till their first courses came out and so did they.  The manager was doing his best to help and it was much appreciated though everyone knew that he was going to bitch at everyone at the end of the service.  Sure enough towards the end of the service he decides to cut the servers and take every table for himself to apparently “teach” everyone a lesson.  This made me so mad because it was very unreasonable and in all honesty everyone in the restaurant was doing their best and to be called out on the lack of performance does actually hurt.

I’ve never wanted to quit the restaurant and that thought had never even crossed my mind until today.  At the end of the shift we we’re given a little talk, apparently we weren’t up to his standards and we got called out on every single thing we had.  I’m frustrated right now, exhausted and actually fairly inebriated so I’ll go ahead and lay down, I’ll probably write the rest of what was on my mind.

Sincerely,

Your waiter today.

Dreaded 10%

It’s never a good night when by the time you check out, you realize that most of the tips you earned for the night don’t even amount to 20% of your sales, generally 18% and above is a good thing but when you start seeing the tips on the bills only nearing 10%, it makes one wonder why this happens.  Quality of food doesn’t constitute a bad tip, generally if the food is mediocre, that is looked at as good enough and would merit another visit but when the service is terrible, no matter how good the food is, you’ll always find yourself in a tough predicament.

I don’t necessarily have much room to say because I feel that the way I was treating my tables was very sub-par and I’m not completely upset, I mean I made a decent amount of money and I was just expecting more.  No regulars of mine came today, I was stuck with people who worship Happy Hour as a deity and treated that little menu as a bible.  I’m hoping to make good money because I still have to take my girl out on Valentines day(for us Valentines day is not on the 14th), the tackiest holiday ever and I’ll be so busy during that day.  I’m looking forward to the rush that will pound the restaurant, I’m looking forward to the chaos that’s gonna run rampant and truly, I am looking forward to that money.  Hey, after all, I do need it.

Today wasn’t a bad day, nor was it good.  I just really dislike getting that dreaded 10%.

Sincerely,

Your waiter today.

Plastic

Now I’m not talking about the traditional plastics of Barbie dolls; tall, blonde, skinny, sun-baked and incredibly attractive and as dull as a butter knife in terms of intelligence.  I’m talking about a much more different breed of plastic, the men and women who act highly in front a crowd of friends but inside know that what they spew is all garbage.

Today was a rather slow day, to be expected on a rainy day.  Skip the details on side-jobs and all the sexual harassment done in the first 2 hours and it suddenly is 6 in the evening.  Enter a party of 12 women, celebrating a friends birthday.

Happy Hour is still active and the party decided to get nothing other than the cheap stuff, not surprising but still not what I’d expect from someone celebrating their birth.  Long story short their bill goes up to $270 and a tip no more than $40.

I love cheap stuff as much as the next guy but the fact is they weren’t talking about “cheap” stuff and instead decided to talk about where they plan to travel next, what the new dress they bought is, and all other things that made it seem they had the money when they specifically ask the waiter if doing something would cost extra and when I tell them that adding cream cheese on their roll will cost an extra dollar they decide to get something else.  Don’t pretend, act within your means and maybe I’ll start respecting you and treating you better.  I have customers who I know could barely afford to eat out and let alone tip and I even see them tip me because they know that this is a job for me, they respect me so in turn I respect them.

I’m just ranting because I had to clean up quite a good amount of shit for a tip that didn’t touch enough.

I’m exhausted and I haven’t eaten anything all day… Thank god I have a box of Girl Scout cookies, Thin Mints to be exact.

Time to kick back and gain weight… as I watch Ides of March.

Good night!

Sincerely,

Your waiter today.

Causing a scene

I just got back home and before unpacking anything got a message saying that I have to work the following day and today was that day.  After being out of the loop of the restaurant some things have changed such as a server suddenly being trained to be a sushi chef, a hostess being pregnant and a whole schmuck of other things.  To top that off I was jet lagged like no other and had a stuffed nose and can barely breathe.  I was a man destined for failure today yet I somehow found it comforting to be back in the interior walls of my restaurant, it felt warm, it felt nice, it felt like home.

Barely able to operate I march to my table, with the intent to serve, so vicious that it’ll drop them dead and sure enough I nailed that first table.  I got a 50% tip as a starting point, I mean sure $15 on a $30 isn’t much but the fact that it was my first table made it all the sweeter.  The day progresses and we found ourselves in the middle of dinner service.  Restaurant packed with people and everyone speaking in a tone of liquor and raw fish, it was almost intoxicating even to the servers.  Everyone was so happy and out of the seven tables I was juggling around, four of them we’re my regulars, this night is one of the nights all servers wish to get.  Money is going great, my sales hitting a peak and the only problem I have is one table that is still waiting on their food.  This is where the night takes a turn.

A British man with his wife we’re waiting on an entree.  The woman’s meal had already been taken to her and so did some side dishes for the mans meal.  As I was grabbing the woman’s meal, I saw what I assumed was my dish being almost done.  I rush the meal to the woman and for what it seemed, all was fine.  Fifteen minutes later the meal still wasn’t ready so I apologize to the man and immediately find my way in the kitchen to grab the mans food.  The manager following me with the other things that came with his meal, we act with haste only to be halted by the man saying, “I do not want this, take it back”, “This is the worst experience I’ve ever had” and among other things causing quite a commotion over something so menial, all while his wife finishes off her meal(I know, how classy).  Now don’t get me wrong, I know that 15 minutes is quite some time but I don’t think he took care of the situation gracefully.  Had he not been a jackass he would’ve got taken care of like a king but instead he decides to be a child and actually raise his voice in a dining room full of people.

There are better ways of taking care of a situation like this, and let me tell you, it isn’t to be a fuckin asshole.  I ended up giving them all they had for free, just so I could get them to leave quietly.  No tip, no nothing, just a table that needs to be cleaned and a attitude of bitterness and resentment.  If you ever get in a position like this, please have some decency to act like a human, chances are you’d get free food, alcohol and we both don’t end up hating each other.  Nothing is gained by causing a scene, only loss of respect.

Please take my word on this.  Give us the respect you’d give your wife, mother or loved one and we promise that your stay with us will be as good.

Sincerely,

Your waiter today.

(Though the man reminded me so much of Gordon Ramsay, because he was British and had nothing good to say about my restaurant…)

 

Mistakes

Gratuity is how servers make money, yes we do get paid $2.13/hr but that equates to $0 for me.  My past 5 pay checks have been $0 because I make plenty on tips, now not all servers are on the same boat as I, there are servers who still get a paycheck and in comparison, their tips don’t even come close.

Now we get gratuity for our services, how the fast the food goes and the taste of the food we serve.  If one of the three falters, it affects our tip in some way.  Last night was one of the days where the kitchen decided that they would make a mistake that’ll cost me my paycheck.

A couple that looked no older than 32 walked in along with their 2 children, the man wearing what seemed to be a high school leather jacket that had the year 97′ patched on, the wife looked as dull as my butter knife and the kids actually looked better off than their parents.  I get their drinks to which they only wanted water, I run back to them and get it with haste, I take their order and walk away.  As I was punching their Edamame and Gyoza(Dumplings) to run, their main entrees had to wait.  Timing is crucial and giving them enough time to eat their appetizers is a very important concern of mine.  The wife asks me to put in a order for a California roll, I nod and tell the sushi bar to get the ball rolling.  Appetizers come out and they are left to eat.  About 10 minutes or so pass and they are done, I take everything as I wait for my food to come out, I ask them and all they have is a entree that was not mine, turns out they misread the ticket and immediately got going with the correct order, my table had finished everything, even the California roll that the woman had, I was deep in the shit.  It took a total of 17 minutes or so to get my food out, ridiculous.

I wasn’t expecting any tip for this table and It’s understandable, I mean I’d be upset that my food took excruciatingly long and it was a simple dish.  So in hopes of getting their business once more, I run over and get them a free dessert on me.  They seemed to like it and as far as I’m concerned, they weren’t as mad as when they we’re waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

Mistakes are not uncommon and when it happens, there’s nothing a server can do if your food is backed up.  We take the blunt force of being stepped on while the kitchen gets off with a slap in the wrist.  Their paychecks don’t rely on the customers emotions, the servers paycheck is COMPLETELY reliant on the customer.  So the next time your food is taking a while, please understand that it isn’t the servers fault(unless he messed up the order, but let’s not worry about that.) so I ask you kindly to find it in your stomach the patience and attitude to forgive.

Sincerely,

Your waiter today.

Gaining weight

As I hold a tray of raw blue fin tuna, I imagine eating it slowly, savoring each and every piece although I was lusting for it until I had to snap back to reality and deliver the fish I wouldn’t be able to afford.  Now this has been a more recent occurrence and I just now realized how working at this restaurant had affected me.

Now I consider myself a rather healthy and fit person, I’m able to run two miles barely breaking a sweat, I do plenty of cardio(I used to…), I can do a near record breaking amount of crunches, all while being able to give amazing sex.  Now I’m not saying I can’t do all of those, I just have a more hard time doing so, except the sex of course.

I’ve gained quite a good amount of weight, almost nearing 8lbs, in a short span of 3 months.  I’ve only started realizing that a pudge is building on top of what used to be a washboard.  I’m very much infatuated with being very fit, not only does it give me a better appearance, it also gives me quite a bit to talk about inside and outside of the restaurant.  So I decided to finally stop this and work-out.

At the restaurant, dinner was being served; a fair amount of Sake Toro, Barakuta, Suzuki and a damn good amount of specialty rolls.  I thought to myself, “what the fuck” the day I told myself that I would start working out and get back into shape they pull this and decide to make a feast fit for a king, needless to say I succumbed to the near demonic strength of delicious raw fish, I prayed to whoever is playing me as a puppet to stop this torture.

It’s damn near impossible to not gain weight working for a restaurant, a good one at that.  Any persons in this profession is bound to gain a pound or two or eight…  It’s only up to us to do portion control and have self disciple.  It doesn’t help that we get alcohol on the whim either.  I’m just surprised that servers haven’t ate themselves to extinction, I mean at the rate that I’ve seen people eat, it’s almost as if they we’re imprisoned for weeks.

Now if you have any idea on how I’d be able to not gain weight while eating, that doesn’t involve sticking a finger down my throat then please let me know.  I’d leave you with as much sake as you can fathom and I’m sure other servers will be on your palm too.

Sincerely,

Your waiter today.

 

Why not sit at the bar?

A question that I really don’t ask often, why not sit at the bar?  I don’t want my customers to sit at the bar because that just means money I’m losing to the person I’m even giving my money to the end of the day.  But there comes an occasional jerk who decides to occupy my precious real-estate and get nothing to eat, no appetizers, no sushi, no sashimi, nothing else other than a simple happy hour draft beer that costs $4.  WHY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WOULD YOU NOT SIT AT THE BAR?  I got a table of two who ordered 2 glasses of Kirin Ichiban on draft, the small size to add on; they we’re given me as their server because they had wanted to sit at a table.  Sure, why not they’ll probably order when their drinks are done, or so I thought.  Roughly half an hour passes by and they are almost done with their beer, I thought to myself “perfect, now they’re gonna order” and when I approached their table “no thanks, we’re still OK.”  What the hell does that even mean?  Why did you not just sit at the bar, the place we’re people generally go to sit down and chat.  Tables/Booths are not meant for your casual drinking, go to a pub for that.  Servers rely on tables to make a living and when one of our tables gets blocked off it makes us mad.  And god forbid you ever come back, we will remember you and we will treat you the same way you treated us, like garbage.

Their total came to about $9 and they decided to be generous and tip me $1.  Take that dollar and shove it up your ass.  I do wonder, there are pubs built and hell my restaurant even has a full bar so what compelled you to sit at a table?  Maybe I just don’t think like a jerk and can’t come up with an answer but one thing I do know, I know better than to disregard and disrespect my server.  I hope you do treat your server with the utmost respect aswell dear reader.

Sincerely,

Your waiter today.

Doors closing

What separates the kitchen to the dining room of a restaurant are the double doors. There is an order in which someone comes in or comes out of the door and generally when servers leave the door behind, they don’t look back. The story of the short-lived hire comes into play, her name was Mindy and she worked for us a total of 4 weeks. She was exceptional at her job and though she made a few mistakes she was able to compensate for it. So when I was talking about the doors it wasn’t completely a filler, today was the last day we would see Mindy as a server. Another person who had left the doors and will never be seen again was one of my favorite hostess, Patty was fantastic, she cleaned up tables when we needed help, she was quite a funny person and to top that off, she was good eye candy. She too had left, she wasn’t fired, she didn’t quit, she just didn’t have her name on the schedule.

It might sound brutal and even somewhat rude to not tell someone they won’t be working for you by not including them in the schedule but that is how most restaurants work. When that decision is made, one does not usually come back to walk the double doors. For reasons Mindy left, I do not know though for Patty it is of tragedy and misunderstanding.

Patty was let go not because she was unskilled nor was she caught doing drugs outside my restaurant but she instead she was let go because of the owner over hearing her say that she “didn’t need the job”. Stupid? I think so. No one needs the job they have, they want it, I mean they don’t have to pay their bills, they want to. Sure you can say that no no, I need to pay it, but really. Think about it, if you didn’t you wouldn’t need to work and if you had no job you wouldn’t be able to afford the luxuries you have such as electricity, running water and a roof above your head. You don’t need the job, you want it. So when my boss overheard her say that, he immediately assumed that she didn’t want the job and made the decision almost immediately. He reworked the schedule to fit where she wouldn’t need to come in, he made the two other hostesses work extra and pick up the slack, due to a big misunderstanding.

I’m not saying all restaurants are like this, but some are. I don’t have the nerve to leave them guessing if they’ll still have work but rather I’d tell them.

If you push open the door hard enough, it swings; leaving enough room for someone to weasel their way back in and that is what I am hoping for.

I don’t feel like talking much about it though it has always bothered me.

Sincerely,

Your waiter today.

No shame of any sort

Now having gone back to the groove of things, I’m once again the same exact machine that serves raw fish with the precision of a laser cutter I am once again seeing faces of people that I do not want to see.  Now I’m not talking about people bringing their children nor am I talking about the people who only tip 10%, though I do hate you and would rather you not come in my restaurant but what ticked me off today was seeing someone who shafted me come back.  Not by tipping me 10% or leaving a gigantic mess for me to clean up but someone who didn’t leave a single dime and didn’t even have the courtesy to leave a dollar or two.(previous blog post)

Though this time she wasn’t my table and she happened to be someone else.  When I saw them I immediately rushed to the server who had the terrible fate of being shafted by them and told them how these women completely ignored the social norms and stepped the boundary of being blacklisted.  Now I don’t mean blacklisted as a denial of service but the quality of service will differ significantly.  Oh your water seems to be low and you happened to put a little more wasabi than intended?  I’ll get to you in 10 minutes, that kind of treatment.  In all honesty, we don’t really care if people like this don’t come to our restaurant.  They weren’t gonna spend much money to begin with and they sure as hell don’t care about the person who is taking care of them.  Bad for both the business and the server.

Now you might say, they didn’t have the money to tip because of the hard times and the economy, blah blah blah.  Here is one rule to live by; If you don’t have enough money to tip, then you sure as hell don’t have enough money to eat out.  Stay at your house and eat your TV dinner or call the Thai restaurant to get your pad thai, just don’t eat out and screw someone over.

I have my girlfriend waiting for me as I type this so I’m gonna choose to cut this post a little earlier than usual.  I do apologize(not really…)

Sincerely,

Your waiter today.

Egotrips

So the head waitress was out of town because of plans for thanksgiving so this gave us one less person to rely on, one less hand to help out with and one less person to lead.  Now there was no need to argue over power and superiority as everyone saw each other as equals, except my bartender who obviously thinks she is the overseer of the restaurant.  All bark and no bite, the bitch parades the restaurant as if it was her own dog park, growling at others and instantly running in fear once confronted.  Now I don’t want to continue talking about Lindsay because it’s just gonna destroy my mood and probably put a gigantic block on me.

I came in the restaurant and immediately had sidejobs to do, I do it with no hesitation and I do it with pin-point accuracy, nailing everything spot on and being as fast as I can.  A woman walks in with 4 children, they weren’t well behaved children and from the looks of it they we’re gonna be quite a hassle so I immediately thought of something to see to it that I do not get this table.  The woman saw Lindsay at the bar and immediately says hello, an opening is found and now I just need to strike.  I sat them at their table and told them that a server will be on their way to take care of them, I walk over to Lindsay and casually say with a surprised look in my face that the woman had requested her to take care of them.  She replies with utmost confidence, “I thought so, she really likes me”.  Fuckin’ bitch, are you really gonna tell me that?  They didn’t even mention your name to me and it just so happens that I didn’t wanna deal with little assholes so I passed it on to you, simple.  Now you might say that what I did was wrong but lets be real for a second, imagine that you hate someone, you won’t give them roses correct?  Instead you’d give them something that might set them back, hurt or worst case kill them(I am just joking on this one, don’t do the latter two), so I did just that.  Benefit myself and bring her down.  Evil maybe, wrong?  I’m not entirely sure but she deserves it.  She then goes off and tells me how and why the lady that did not request her loves her.  I couldn’t think of anything other than laugh at her because it was nearing the point that it was pathetic.

Egotrips are nice every once in awhile but to do so to an extent beyond your actual capability, now that is just foolish.  Wake up and smell the roses, you are not as good as you think you are.  So get off your high horse, sit down and shut up.  It isn’t bad to toot your own horn but don’t push it, no point in beating a dead horse.

Time to sleep, it’s 4:50AM and that song 5′o clock song with Lily Allen started playing…

Sincerely,

Your waiter today.