the mystery salad...SOLVED!!

in April i posted about a woman who sent her food back to the kitchen and received a free salad from the manager while she waited for the re-cook. I saw her push the salad away like it was poison and when the manager asked her if it was okay she responded "No, i didn't want any lettuce". And me and everyone i ran it by was like "what the f--". Well kids, the mystery has been solved!

Tonight's main event!

customer: "Can i get a salad, no lettuce."

me: "Umm, okay. So you don't want any iceberg or romaine lettuce, just the purple cabbage and shredded carrots?"

customer: "That's right, with bleu cheese. And let me get cheese added to the salad."

and there you have it!

good luck...

to anyone working the nightmare that is mother's day. I hope you too get to see a grandma throw a tantrum, cry, and refuse to eat because her family said she wasn't going to get to pay the bill. R.I.P. ya'll!

toast rage

"did a tractor pull or monster truck show just let out? Shit!" That was the question we were all asking ourselves Sunday night since that seemed to be our customer base for the evening. With it came lots of complaining, massive consumption of soda, and rampaging little kids. Every night the manager dims the lights a bit during dinner for ambiance, well Sunday night he dimmed them and a large woman in my section yelled out "we didn't come here for romance, we came here to EAT!" She yelled it loud enough to be heard by the manager on the opposite side of the dining room, he got the "deer caught in headlights" look and turned the lights back up. That was actually pretty awesome.

not so awesome was the pretentious wankers i had at table 21 in the front of the restaurant. We were on a wait but they demanded that table, ignoring the people ahead of them and seating themselves at the still dirty table. The manager cleaned it off and got their drink order. He dropped it off for me and said the standard "your server will be right with you" and started to walk away. The man at the table loudly said "you're not our server?!" I had just walked up and i told them that i was their server, and i was about to launch into my "specials" spiel when his wife interrupted me to ask "so what's the quote of the day?" There's a chalkboard hanging behind the bar that lists the drink of the day and also a lame ass quote of the day, from the sound of it i think it's copied off a fortune cookie or the back of a cereal box. Usually everyone ignores it--but not today! I had to trudge up to the bar to see it and then fight my way back through the packed dining room to tell her "the only normal people are the people you don't know yet". She savored this bit of wisdom, thoughtfully repeating it after me and asking her two daughters what they thought about it (cue pre-teen eye rolls). The philosophy discussion over she ordered a mimosa and a breakfast with wheat toast.

at this restaurant we turn in a hand written ticket to the kitchen and any modifications are highlighted with a yellow marker. I dutifully highlighted WHEAT TOAST in blazing yellow and went about my business. Of course the cooks put white toast on the plate anyway, and whoever ran the food didn't bother to look at the ticket, so when i went to check on the table i was confronted by an irate Mimosa Lady. She started yelling "why can't you people ever get my order right?! I always order wheat toast and every time--you people give me white toast!" She pushed the offending toast toward me from across the table with the end of her fork. "This is ridiculous!" I told her i'd have an order of wheat toast for her in just a moment and i quickly walked away to escape her tantrum. I told the manager about the angry Mimosa Lady and after muttering obscenities he said he'd bring the toast out to her. By the time he brought it out she had decided she no longer wanted any toast at all because her meal was ruined.

hores

back when i worked 3rd shift at the 24 hour chain restaurant i dealt with wasted drunk people on a nightly basis. Have you ever seen a wasted drunk person eat? It's like watching a pack of hyenas ravage a carcass on Animal Planet. Really.

one night a lone wasted mexican guy came stumbling in and sat himself at the head of a table big enough to seat 10. The other server was on break (therefore out in the parking lot "smoking a cigarette") and the manager made it clear she was having nothing to do with him so it was on me. I picked a menu up and headed over. I could smell him before i got there and he was sitting there looking confused. I placed the menu in front of him and asked what he'd like to drink. "Hores!" he replied. (I have no idea if he was saying WHORES or HORSE, he was drunk and english wasn't his first language, so i'm going with HORES). I went back to the server line and decided to give him a coke. I came back with it and he was rifling through his wallet so i saw that he did at least have money on him. "Do you know what you want to eat?" Blank look. "The menu--food." He pointed at a picture of buffalo wings on the front of the menu and asked "hores?" So buffalo wings it was!

as soon as i placed the hores in front of him Drunk Mexican Guy attacked them. Like totally decimated them starving animal style. I was busy with other tables but i kept an eye on him from a distance. Drunk Mexican Guy began to fade. His head started to droop and a buffalo wing fell from his hand onto the floor. I swung by and moved the coke out of spilling range. Soon he was face down in the buffalo wings, but since he was snoring loudly i knew he was getting oxygen so i didn't concern myself with it. Something you learn fast is to never try to wake a passed out drunk person--i've seen too many freak out and start flailing. The other customers were enjoying him so it was all good.

eventually he shifted out of the plate of wings and started leaning precariously to the side. We all knew what was coming next--everyone waited in anticipation--finally both man and chair fell sideways. This didn't wake him up though, he just snored even louder laying on the floor surrounded by half gnawed on chicken bones. After i'd been walking around the passed out man on the floor for a good hour the manager decided to take action and called the police. Soon a cop car pulled up out front and one of my regular cop customers (J) came in. I pointed over at Drunk Mexican Guy on the floor and J sighed loudly with a long drawn out "maaann!" He walked over and yelled "Hey! You gotta get up now!" No response. So J grabbed and cuffed him and Drunk Mexican Guy started flailing, yelling "Hores! Hores!" After a brief struggle and more buffalo wings being knocked everywhere J hustled him out the door. The next night some of the cops came in to eat and they told me that even in the drunk tank all Drunk Mexican Guy would say was "hores".

fight!

i have some sort of genetic defect that causes me to be at least 15 minutes early every shift, no matter how much i don't feel like being there. I've even tried hanging out in my car and listening to the radio but i get all antsy and have to go on in. So there i am, touching up my section and assigning everyone's sidework. Frequently i'll pick up a table or two before the rest of the servers show up and this was the case last Thursday. It was a breezy sunny day so the patio was popular, and one of my first tables was a 3 top at the second patio table. It was Ma and Pa and their chunky teenage son. They were your average unremarkable table who i knew would leave me an average unremarkable tip so i was giving them regular service (none of that above and beyond crap here!). The only things of note about them were A.) they were sucking ice tea down at an unholy rate and B.) Junior's acne covered ass was hanging out of his pants for all the world to see. I pointed it out to some of the other servers and we decided to try not to seat the one table with the direct view of it.

well Ma and Pa turned out to be campers. They hoovered their food down the same way they did their drinks but they wouldn't leave, telling my they might get dessert later. Eventually the table with the view got sat, it was a young couple best described as "trailer park-esque". Their server was trying to get a drink order out of them when my table finally decided to pay, and i collected a beat up looking credit card from Ma. I went inside to run the card and Pa followed me in, heading for the restroom. A moment later the male half of the young couple came in and also headed for the mens' room. A few minutes later i dropped the credit card slip off and was about to head back inside when Pa and Young Guy both came through the patio door, Pa yelling "you need to have some respect!" Like a dummy i went on into the dining room--i'm not currently working at the type of place that has fights break out so i don't watch for the warning signs like i used to. The next thing i knew screams broke out on the patio while Pa and Young Guy threw chairs and ice tea pitchers at each other. Inside the restaurant it was like when a fight breaks out on the field of a baseball game and the entire team pours out of the dugout--all the employees and customers went racing to the windows looking out on the patio to stare at the guys throwing shit and yelling. The bartender started to call the police and someone yelled "she's calling the cops!" Young Guy heard that and jumped the railing surrounding the patio and took off running, leaving his girlfriend behind. Somehow he also left his shoes behind in the process, so he went running barefoot and ice tea drenched across the parking lot and out of sight.

to me, the jaded restaurant employee, the best part of all this was that nobody got anything for free. Ma and Pa had already paid up and left me $3 on a $37 ticket (woot!), girlfriend was required to pay for her and Young Guy's drink before she could leave, and the woman with the little kid on the patio didn't get her meal comped no matter how much she complained about her little angel being traumatized ('cause you KNOW two men throwing chairs was the highlight of that kid's day).

5 + 3 = duh

i know math can be challenging. Really, i sucked at math back in my school days. My senior year of high school i had to write a two page paper about measuring the breadth of a river using nothing but a 6 foot piece of rope and the shadow of a tree and it was destined for failure from it's onset. But filling out a credit card slip shouldn't be the most challenging part of a person's day...

saturday i had one table determined to sit out on the patio despite it being a blustery 60 degree evening. It was an old couple, a teenager with Down's syndrome, and a little kid. Once they decided they couldn't take the cold anymore the old lady fished a credit card out of the depths of her purse to hand off to me. Later when i had time to bus the table i glanced at the tip written in (9.07) before sticking it in my server book. But i didn't notice the math...not til later when i went to enter the tip into the credit card machine. I couldn't decide who at the table had filled it out. The bill total was $54.93. The tip written in, clear as day: $9.07. They even wrote out the "carry the one" addition activity over top the numbers (i can just imagine the sweat beading on Whoever Did The Math's brow right now). The total shoulda been $64.00. Their total?

54.93

+ 9.07

------

57.00

oh well, at least they didn't write their phone number in the tip area like some male customers do.

real men drink frozen strawberry margaritas

last night Larry the Cable Guy's identical twin came in with two friends. They walked right past the hostess and sat themselves out on the patio and proceeded to act like jerks. First they were angry that their drinks didn't come out instantaneously, grabbing another server and telling her to go check on them. I went back to their table and pointed out that while the two friends had ordered beer Larry had ordered a frozen strawberry margarita, and there was only one blender in the entire store and there were several milkshake orders ahead of them. Then they were pissy 'cause their little half appetizer didn't appear the second they ordered it. Again i helpfully pointed out that you know, we had to cook it. They lorded over the patio for about two hours--while the friends chugged their beers Larry daintily sipped on his frozen margarita. Of course he wanted his one and only "re-fill" the second the bartender went out back for a smoke break.