Hazy College Days

We were almost closed down at the restaurant, tables are clean, food is put away, and the entire staff is nervously watching the clock waiting to leave.

We hear the door creak open and poof! By some sort of ghetto magic, two of the roughest looking dudes walk through the front door of our restaurant at the worst possible time. Cooks are throwing pots and pans, servers are drawing straws to see who stays late, and the manager has just disappeared into the office to surf the internet. And of course, I draw that shortest of short straws.

So after many recounts I finally decide to just man up and take on the table. "Y'all got some shweet tea?"

"Yes sir, we do and it is very fine tonight." I sarcastically reply.

"We gonna have some that, and two cheeseburgers." My new pain in the ass customer replies.

So I take the order, enter it in the kitchen, argue with the cook about cooking the food, then grab their drinks. I hate it when tables come into the restaurant right before close. I especially hate it, because it is never someone who wants to tip you fifty bucks and order an excellent meal with a bottle of wine. It is always some ghetto thugs and their friends who come in and order the cheapest crap on the menu. But, I am a professional, and I give the same service to everyone regardless of race, gender, creed, or time you walked into the restaurant. So I serve these guys with the same respect that I serve anyone.

After two recooks and lots of sweet tea refills, my late stay table is finally ready to pay and leave. Much to all of our pleasure they promptly thank me for my service and settle their bill. After the gentlemen have left the building I look down at my tip, I never check the payment until the guys are gone, If they short me I can chase them down still, but if the tip is bad they are not around to hear my profanity about them. Fifty dollars on a twenty dollar tab.

Wow

People never fail to surprise me in this industry. I can't possibly understand why people are racist. After my experience with serving people from many different countries and cultures, people of different religions and colors, I find no difference between anyone except for how they tip. I have had the dirtiest rednecks and the blackest thugs in my restaurant, and those are usually the better tips. Sure, I get stiffed from time to time, but that happens with everyone, not just a particular race of people. I do believe that racism from the restaurant stems from tip prejudice, black people are seen as bad tippers, when in fact just as many white people as blacks tend to be poor tippers, but the majority of my clientèle is white. So when a black table walks in, the odds are against you getting a good tip from them. Not because they are poor, just because you won't see as many of them, so when you do get those tables, your average tip is poor.

I hand it to most of my black tables though. Servers have this general rule about eating out, if you can't afford your food let alone the tip to pay for your service, then don't eat out. The reason why we see less blacks in our restaurant is probably because they wait until they can afford all of it, or my personal theory is that the black community still has strong family values and just tend to cook more rather than eat out. Same thing with my redneck tables, and Asian tables, and so on. I truly try to give better service to these tables, since my tip should be good, and they are truly looking for a dining experience, not just a quick meal that they didn't have to cook.

People still surprise me on a day to day basis though, you never really know what your next table will be or what will happen with them.

Labels: blacks, food, restaurant, tables, tips

Working in a restaurant, is kind of like working in another society. Restaurants have their own unwritten rules. For instance, if you get off work, then go back to work later and get a discount on your meal and you had someone serve you, then you leave the amount of the discount for the tip. Just one of those rules in most restaurants, like how sweet tea here in the south, is always the tea urn on the left. Just the way things are.

Restaurants also have roughly six different types of personalities that work in them. You always have the wanna be management type, the coolest guy in the world type, the overly stressed about nothing type, and so on. The six same types of people work in restaurants because these six people get along together, and they also don't get along well. Drama, as well as very fun parties, tend to happen when these six types of people mix and get along. This is what makes working in a restaurant fun.

Well yesterday a friend of mine quit/got fired. The managers say he was fired, and of course my friend says he told them where to shove it. Doesn't really matter how it happened, it was definitely mutual. So now our restaurant is down one of our six personalities, the laid back personality. My friend filled this spot in our restaurant very well, so well that we didn't even really need anymore of the laid back type. Oh well, a new batch of trainees will be in soon, with their little books, and shirts that just came out of the bag. Haha trainees. Maybe out of this batch of innocent youth, we will find one that can help us fill this newly created gap in the social atmosphere of our restaurant.

With the economy in a tough spot, and no chance of getting away from being broke, many servers are loosing hope. Hardly anyone can really remember the good ol days of plentiful money and endless parties. Now everyone is pushing forty hours a week just to make some money to put food on the table and keep the lights on. Stay in there, keep working hard and something good will come your way. You never know, maybe you can impress the next table you get so much that they would want to hire you. Easy come, easy go

Labels: economy, friend, money, restaurant, serving

Since when did Good Friday become so commercialized.

I guess when wall mart came about and Christmas started in October.

You would think they have commercialized every holiday they could. Christmas is now three months early, Thanksgiving has its days of crazed out shoppers all hoped up on star bucks and energy drinks, but Good Friday? Really?

Today, if you were into the hip social seen, then you know what I was talking about. Any good devote Christian gave up their meaningless sacrifices like french fries or fast food in general, to represent the sacrifice that Jesus went through millenniums ago. So today, everyone comes out in their designer fashions and overpriced luxury gas hogging vehicles, and runs off my good tipping regular Friday lunch crowd. Which directly affected me, because now I am working all day, running my rear end off, trying to appease the nine tables I have of angry wannabe high class snobs. Get over yourself people.

Lets get back to the real meaning of Good Friday. In short, Good Friday is a day that followers of Christian religions observe in remembrance of the suffering and pain that Jesus was put through for the sake of humanity. Jesus did not go down to the classiest restaurant that he could afford, spend two hours discussing politics and entertainment television, and then tip ten percent to his server. So why would any true believer of such a religion follow this form of worship?

Don't get me all wrong. I have no faith that I will claim I belong to. And I have absolutely nothing against the Christian church, some of their views I like, even live by. But if you truly followed your faith, would this not be a day that you went to your service, and spent the rest of the holiday worshiping and try to get a better understand of his sacrifice? Would you give up french fries for lent, or maybe something more old school like a vow of silence?

Don't let your faith be cheapened by clever advertising and gaining rank in your social class. Celebrate the way you should and let the rest of the world go F itself.

Labels: college, friday, good, restaurant

Today was a nice day, and a few customers decide to sit on our patio this evening.

One of my tables that wanted to sit out there was an older couple, not elderly, just older. Anyway, as I bring the table his yuengling, and the lady her wine, I starting reciting the specials as I have done a hundred other times today. Then, out of no where the man picks up the pepper shake and starts putting pepper into his beer. Thats right, THE MAN PUT PEPPER IN HIS FREAKING BEER! I was speechless.

I walk away from the table and decide to regain my composure. As I watch the man through the window, he is drinking, and enjoying his strange beverage. Curiosity got he best of me, and I had to ask this man what the hell he was doing. So I walk back out to the patio and strike up a casual conversation with the table, then I drop the bomb.

"Sir, excuse my curiosity, but is there a reason you wanted to put pepper in your beer?"

The man smiles and says, "It taste good."

I chuckle politely and decide to poke him a little more, after serving tables for several years, you can pick up when your table is not being completely honest with you.

The man then goes on to explain that when he lived in the North, he frequented a certain pizza parlor that only served dark beers. Not being a fan of dark beer, the man got a recommendation for a good one and decided to try it. After the first sip, the man spit out the beer in disgust. Then he tells me, the man who was sitting next to him at the time simply told him to put pepper in it. Having already paid for a beer he didn't like, he figured what the hell. The man finished to pepper brew, and has been using this technique ever since.

"Only in darker full bodied beers though," the man warns me.

"Yes sir," I reply, "I don't like to drink anything else anyway."

I wish St. Patty's day was more often, Irish people are nuts!

Labels: beer, Irish, pepper, restaurant, serving, St. Patty