Tag Archives: restaurant

At your service

I work in a pretty busy restaurant, and there are tons of managers, everybody’s in charge of me. “Rob, come over here and do this,” or, “Rob, go over there and do that,” and whatever, that’s my job description I guess, server, servant, and I can already hear the, “If you don’t like it, get another job,” rebuttals, which is fair enough, I mean, I could always just leave. But I’ve left restaurant jobs before, it’s always such a pain in the ass showing up at a new place, trying to make a good first impression, starting over somewhere else from the bottom.

And yeah, I don’t necessarily like complaining, but every once in a while it’ll just build up, all of those little interactions at work, constantly getting micromanaged by people that you see every day, only at work, this cast of characters in my life that serve no other purpose than to direct me from point A to point B.

I have a lot of energy. At work, I don’t even necessarily try, but I move around the restaurant pretty quickly. Some kitchen manager will ask me to grab a stack of plates and move it from here to there, and I’ll do it, I get it done without breaking a sweat. And that’s doesn’t even really bother me. It’s when these little orders and commands start to pile up, when I feel that, regardless of how fast I get something done, there’s no end to little chores and constant directions.

“Rob, go get me a stack of plates. Rob, go fold this pile of linens. Rob, get me another roll of printer paper.” After a while I start to feel like, the faster and more efficient that I complete every one of these little tasks, all I’m doing is making more work for myself. Restaurant bosses hate to see their employees standing idle for even a second. And so, as soon as I open up my mouth to start small-talk with a coworker, a manager is guaranteed to show up, to interrupt me midsentence, “Rob, can you make sure that the silverware is polished?”

Yeah, I get the argument that there’s virtue in work. Sure, I have this picture in my head of me marching around the world putting my best foot forward, giving everything that I do one hundred percent, just for the sake of giving it my all, a testament to my admirable work ethic.

But on a day-to-day basis, especially on days where I’m not really feeling it, where I wish that I didn’t have to still be waiting tables at a restaurant, running around, the expediter is telling me to back up ice, and on the way to the ice machine, a customer stops me in my tracks, he lifts up his soda glass and, in between bites of food, he says simply, “More Diet Coke,” and on my way to get his refill, I’ve got another two people in the kitchen looking directly at me, “Is anybody backing up ice?” obviously you just asked me to back up ice, obviously I don’t have the ice, why are you forming it as this general question? Why don’t you just give me a second and I’ll back up ice?

Yeah, on days like that, it’ll get to me, the ceaseless busy work, the realization that, the faster I move, the more work I’ll ultimately have to do. And for what? A few dollars an hour? That’s what really bugs me about restaurant work. The house isn’t even paying me a living wage, and yet they’re acting under the expectation that I’m to work under their absolute obedience, the customers’ absolute obedience, everybody in the restaurant is my boss, but the only ones contributing to my making a living are the people who, after they’ve settled up with the house, maybe they’ll throw me a tip. Probably. Almost definitely. But still, maybe. There’s always the potential for a maybe not.

And so what can I do? “Boss, I gave table thirteen excellent service, but they didn’t leave a tip.”

“Oh well, better luck next time. Can you throw these boxes away?”

So some days, and I hate doing it, but I’ll drag my feet. It’s super passive aggressive, and I doubt anybody’s really paying attention enough to even realize that I’m upset. But that’s the only real control that I have over my day, to just take it a little easier. Because it’s not like if I work really hard they’re going to let me then chill out for a second. No, it’s right back to work, there are always a million things that need to be done, no way that I’ll be able to do everything, and so I might as well just catch my breath, walk a little slower, try to keep those negative thoughts out of my head, just doing my best to be in a better mood.

Can you see the moon during the day?

In high school, I worked at a local restaurant on Long Island. I remember one day I was taking this table, two older couples, one of the men called me over and said something like, “Son,” because all old people do stuff like that, call any young person son, he was like, “Son, are you a good student? Do you take any science classes?”

And I’m so full of it, and I know that I’m full of it, it’s something that I’m constantly trying to work on, not acting like I know everything. But this was something like fifteen years ago, I wasn’t working on anything back then, so I shot back an immediate, “Of course I take science classes, and yes, I’m a great student.”

So this guy said, “Great, maybe you could help settle an argument we’re having. How come you can’t see the moon during the day?” And I don’t know, I couldn’t think of anything, nothing close to an answer anyway, but I wanted my response to be instantaneous, like not only am I a good student, but I’m hyper-intelligent, like I don’t even need to fully listen to your question before I start rattling off some ridiculous scientific-sounding explanation.

And that’s exactly what I did, I made up some nonsense about particles in the air being refracted by sunlight, like that’s why we can’t see the stars either, because everything’s blue, and I just kept going on and on, talking and talking for what had to have been two solid minutes. I stopped, I looked around at these four adults making eye contact with me, I took a breath and thought, OK, that sounded like a knowledgeable answer, maybe they bought it.

“Great, thanks,” the man said and went back to his chef salad or whatever it was he was eating. And I walked away, sort of confused by my own rambling answer, but weirdly self-satisfied, like, OK, even if I didn’t exactly know what I was talking about there, at least I played the role of the smart kid, at least I looked like I knew what I was talking about.

But then like a week later this sudden realization flooded my brain: of course you can see the moon during the day. It’s there all the time, you’ll be staring at the blue sky and you’ll notice the moon, right there. Jesus, what the hell was all of that baloney about particles and refraction? Why couldn’t this thought have been available when I needed it, at the table? I could have casually answered, “What are you talking about? You can see the moon during the day. More iced tea?”

And this weird interaction, it’s haunted me ever since. Not a month goes by where I don’t picture myself as this wannabe know-it-all, a guy who, when presented with a problem, with a question that I’m not prepared to answer, instead of being humble, instead of looking upon this as an opportunity to be teachable, to learn something new, I’d rather just throw a string of words together to keep alive the illusion that I’m smarter than everybody else.

A few years ago I was reading this book about space, about astrophysics dumbed down for the average non-scientist. And this point came up, the author actually stated that the moon is visible during the day just as much as it is visible at night. Instantly I was transported back to that day at the restaurant, me, a pimply-faced fifteen-year-old giving a fake science lecture to a group of four adults.

What was that guy’s angle? I always think about this too. Why get me involved? Was he having a similar moment of confusion, suddenly unable to visualize the white moon in the blue sky? I don’t think so, because even if he was blanking out, surely someone else at the table could’ve corrected him, no, you actually can see the moon during the day.

What I’ve put together in the years since is this group of four, sitting around a table lamenting the poor state of modern education. Maybe he was a scientist, or a science teacher, and in between bites of ham and hardboiled egg, he’s railing at the youth of America, “They don’t know anything, not about math, not about science,” and maybe one of the women tried to mount a defense on our behalf, “Oh Roger,” I’m imagining his name is Roger now, “Kids aren’t as bad as you’re making them out to be.”

And he was like, “Oh yeah?” before sticking his hand in the air to call me over. “Hey son, let me ask you a question about science,” and then I stood there and went, “Blah, blah, blah,” over and over again, a steady stream of absolute garbage pouring out of my mouth, and then he sends me on my way, “Great, thanks a lot.”

And as soon as I’m out of earshot, he says to the rest of the group, “You see? That kid was an idiot, a total moron!” and everyone else would have had no choice but to shrug in agreement, because yeah, that was a pretty dumb answer on my part.

So whenever I get presented with a question in life, something that I’m not sure of, I try really hard to keep that experience on hand, ready to play back in my head before I turn the old chatterbox on. Because man, I still cringe, what a dumb answer. Of course you see the moon during the day. Just stop for a second and think.

I need a Drake break

I wait tables at a big, corporate, restaurant chain. It’s one of these places with a huge sound system installed throughout the entire space, speakers hidden, blended seamlessly into the ceilings. There’s a touchscreen on the side of the wall that gives you the illusion of there being some sort of a control to the whole system, but in reality, all of the songs are selected by some company VP far, far away. The playlist never changes entirely, it’s more like, once in a while they’ll take out one song, and maybe a couple of days later they’ll add in another.

I’m very conscious of this music because, well, I’m there every day, I’m in the restaurant seven to twelve hours at a time. Where the average restaurant guest won’t ever hear the same song twice, I’m stuck listening to each track three, four times a day. These weird new age jazz mixes combined with the occasional pop hit, I’m not even really aware how engrained these sounds are in my consciousness, not until one obscure song stops and in my head, I’m already starting up the beginning of the next weird synth hit, those first few seconds cycle through my head before it actually plays out loud.

The first few times this happened I was like, no way, did I just predict that? And now it happens and I’m like, come on, please don’t actually happen, please don’t really play the next song that I know is about to come up. I just feel like I’m being programmed, like my brain is being hardwired to memorize these songs that, had I never worked in this restaurant, I’d have never been exposed to in my life.

And while, yes, it’s mostly this kind of weird instrumental music, they do throw in the occasional pop hit every now and then. About a month or two ago, this popular new song by Drake was added to the playlist, it’s the one that’s like, “You act so different around me / Just hold on we’re going home.” I hear it everywhere, in addition to the four or five times it’s piped through the walls at work, it’s on in the taxi, it’s playing on some seemingly unattended boombox propped up outside of the entrance to the subway.

When it first started cycling through, everyone went nuts. You’d go into the kitchen and everyone would be singing along, the dishwasher harmonizing with the prep cook, the smooth sounds of contemporary R&B permeating every corner of the restaurant.

But I don’t care how good you think a song is. You start listening to that song every day, five or six times a day, certain things are going to happen. You’ll start hearing it in your head, and then your brain’s going to take it to another level, it’s going to deconstruct that song, every note, every background effect will be revealed. And once you commit that song entirely to memory, it’s inescapable, it’s the type of tune-stuck-in-your-head that almost sets itself on repeat in your mind, all day long, even when it’s not playing.

Then you might even ignore it the next time it comes on. You’ll hear that song and you’ll think, what the hell? What happened? Why didn’t I get anything out of it this time? And that’s when you fall down the other side of the mountain. Pretty soon you start to hate this song, that dumb drum machine intro, it’s just one drum, the most basic of beats, it’s virtually indistinguishable from any other drum intro, but you hear it, and you know it, just one beat on that drum machine and every fiber of your being absolutely knows that it’s going to be Drake.

“I’ve got my eye on you,” over and over and over again. But like I said, this song is a hit, it’s everywhere. And maybe everyone else in the world might eventually get tired of hearing it too often, but definitely not yet, your average music listener isn’t nearly as caught up as you are on this accelerated moment of Drake.

It’ll be close to midnight on a Friday night. I won’t have any energy left. All I’ll want is for my lingering customers to pay up and go home, but everyone’s taking their time. And then I hear that drum beat, and while a small part of me dies inside, I look out across the floor, the smiles are everywhere, guests are actually starting to dance, these weird I’m-sitting-in-a-booth-but-I’m-going-to-do-my-best-to-dance dances, singing along, having a great time.

The other night it came on as I was taking an order and this guy froze midsentence. He got that huge Drake smile and he said to me, “Man, I just love this song! Just hold on we’re going home! I love it! What a great song!” and what was I going to say? That I had become numb to all music? That this was already the ninth time I’d heard this song today? No, I wanted a good tip, so I flashed my own Drake smile, I was like, “Right? Drake! I love this song too! It’s awesome! I know exactly who you could be!” and we merged into the chorus in unison, a weird restaurant duet, “Just hold on we’re going home, it’s hard to do these thing alo-one.”

It worked. Twenty bucks cash on an eighty dollar check. But man, I can’t take it anymore, I can’t listen to that Drake song again, I need a Drake break, just a small one, please.

Ketchup? Ketchup?

The dinner rush started earlier than usual last night, and I found myself running around the restaurant at a more hectic pace. At one of my tables, I had a middle-aged couple enjoying some cocktails, and while I was busy on the other side of the floor, I saw another server drop off their food.

While I had like three or four other things that I needed to take care of at the same exact time, I made a mental note to swing by, to see if this guy might not need any ketchup for his burger. Normally I’d just drop off ketchup automatically, but he didn’t order fries, the burgers come fully dressed, and for whatever reason, my restaurant encourages us to ask, “Would you like ketchup?” instead of just setting out some ketchup.

Excuses, excuses, I know, I know, I should have just had that ketchup out there anyway, just in case, but I was running some food, and when I tried to sneak over to my two-top, another table flagged me down and started handing me dirty plates. So I had to clear everything off, I had to run into the kitchen and set everything down for the dishwasher.

And then on my way back out to the floor, I have to pass by the window, like I said, it got pretty busy, Sundays are always busy, but not usually this early, not all at once like this. I had to run the food. I just hoped that my guests over at table thirteen were enjoying their meals, that if the man did need ketchup, that he’d be able to wait the extra two minutes or so that it would take me to run these plates out.

But just as I set them down, the floor manager got my attention, he was standing across the restaurant, pointing his finger to the side, mouthing out something about I don’t know what, exactly, I can’t read lips, but he was clearly trying to communicate. “Rob,” he leaned in when I walked over, “Table thirteen is pissed. They said they service is lacking, generally, that the guy needed ketchup and mustard.”

Again, I’m willing to take some fault, some. It never hurts to bring out ketchup. At most places, it’s not even questioned. But like I said, our burgers come dressed with three different types of sauce, and he had coleslaw instead of fries. And for real, I was only late by what at the most could have been maybe two, three minutes tops, however long it takes me to do two laps through the kitchen and back out on the floor.

Nope, this guy only needed two minutes to somehow grab a manager’s attention, to complain not only about the lack of ketchup, but about my service in general. And yeah, maybe I wasn’t a hundred percent on top of the game, but I thought things were going fine enough. Just minutes before, the lady had asked me for some extra tonic water for her cocktail. I brought over an unopened bottle and popped it for her right there, she even said out loud, “Wow, what a nice touch, thanks.”

But if there’s one thing I’m taking away from over a decade of waiting tables, it’s that you don’t fuck around with people’s ketchup. The lack of ketchup on a table has a way of turning normally pleasant and sane people into ruthless lunatics. Nineteen times out of twenty, if I’m running a burger or a sandwich to a table, chances are that before I even have a chance to fully place the dish in front of a customer, they’re already bombarding me with that one-word question:

“Ketchup?” That’s it. Just, “Ketchup?” like a tick, like it’s rattled off instinctively, no, “Please,” no, “May I have some,” or “Can you do me a favor and bring me some.” It’s just, “Ketchup?” And chances are, there’s probably already ketchup on the table. I’ll put down the plate, they’ll say, “Ketchup?” I’ll motion toward the ketchup, but it’s like they can tell, they don’t even have to look at the ketchup, they’ll just say, “More ketchup?”

And so, yeah, I’m in the awkward position right now of trying to defend myself when I clearly understand how important ketchup is to the majority of American diners. I don’t even know why restaurants put any effort at all into their food. At my place it’s something like twenty bucks for an in-house ground chuck steak burger, on a freshly baked bun, blah, blah, blah, stop talking and go get me even more of that sugary tomato syrup to pile on my meal.

Yes, I’m sorry I messed up by not getting this guy his ketchup right away. I am. But I was only like two minutes late, I already said that. This man found it necessary to complain to a manager. Like let me see if I can’t get this waiter in trouble because I don’t have my five ounces of ketchup. Worse, when I went to walk by the table a few minutes later, this time the guy was talking to one of the hostesses. I stood there for a minute, until the hostess interrupts, “I’m sorry you had to wait for your ketchup, but I’m not a manager, I’m a hostess.”

And so I stepped in, “Listen sir, I’d like to apologize, I’m really sorry that …”

But he cut me off, his mouth full of hamburger and ketchup, “You know something? The service here is really lacking. I had to wait a while for this ketchup,” at which point his wife interjected, “He’s been waiting for this ketchup!” and the man continued, “I can understand if it’s Saturday night or something, but it’s not, it’s Sunday, it’s not hard, your job’s not that hard.”

That’s when I kind of just froze, I deflated, I was totally defeated, this man looked me in the eye and told me that I’m not very good at my job, a job that’s not that hard anyway. And I’m not a bitter guy, I strive to find happiness in my daily routine, but here I am, I’m almost thirty years old, I’m waiting tables at a restaurant, and I have this man making an effort to find two people he thinks are in charge of me to complain about my performance.

What are you trying to do, what’s your end game? I was nothing but polite, smiling for you while I took your order and brought you your drinks, are you trying to get me fired? Is that your goal? You want to set an example to all of the waiters and waitresses out there, look, if you don’t get me my fucking ketchup, I’ll complain, I’ll get you in trouble?

I had a very strong urge to do something stupid, to slam my fists down on the table and tell him what’s what. But I didn’t. I just kind of blankly looked at him and told him, “Well, I certainly apologize,” and then I walked away, delegating any other tasks to my coworkers, doing whatever it was that I could to not have to interact with them for the rest of the night.

And the manager swung by table thirteen again toward the end of their meal, to continue the apologies for my incompetence, to offer them a free dessert (which they eagerly accepted.) I don’t know. I made a slight mistake. These two went in for the kill. I’m trying to get past it, but man, there’s still that urge, that desire to take the burger out of his hand, chomp off a bite and tell him to fuck off. Seriously, if I’m ever at a restaurant, and there’s no ketchup, I’ll just eat the burger. I’m a big boy. I’m not going to cause a huge scene. Man, I could complain about this forever.

I used to be rich

Growing up is tough. Like when you’re a little kid and you have to beg your parents for everything. “Mom! I want some new action figures! Mom! Take me to the comic book store!” and, I shouldn’t assume everyone had the same childhood as I did, but my parents weren’t the type to drop whatever they were doing to satisfy the demands of their snot-nosed little son. Before I was old enough to get a job, this meant waiting desperately for some sort of a special occasion, Christmas, my birthday, one of those automatic days where I was entitled to presents.

Now I’m an adult, and yeah, I guess if I really wanted to, I could buy whatever I want. You know, within reason. If I don’t have the cash, just put it on the credit card. Theoretically speaking, there’s really not too much that’s off limits. But at what cost? Am I really willing to put myself into unnecessary debt because I want something that badly?

And so I don’t know what’s worse, being a little kid and having no sense of money, or being an adult and knowing all too well the true cost of material desires. I think back though, and there was an exception to this, it was a period in my life right after I got a job but before I had any bills to pay. It only lasted for about two years or so, but man, I was a god amongst men.

I started working at a restaurant when I was fourteen, scooping ice cream and making cappuccinos at a place a few towns over. After an eight-hour shift, the boss would give me sixty bucks, cash. It doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but to a freshman in high school with absolutely no responsibilities besides doing homework and working at this restaurant two nights a week, this job meant that I was rich.

Like, really rich. I remember the first time I got paid, I went from having absolutely nothing in my pockets, ever, to having sixty bucks. I might as well have been carrying a grand. The day after my first shift, I rode my bike to the park to play basketball with my friends. Normally, we’d all be lucky if we could pool a dollar and a half together to buy a soda.

But like I said, now I was rich. I took everybody to the pizza place and bought a pie. It was incredible, all of that cash, just burning a hole in my pocket. And that’s how it went for the next two years or so, before I bought a car, before I wound up throwing all of my money into a 1991 red Dodge Stealth.

The car gave me an even greater sense of freedom, but it was just a taste of what lay ahead, bills, insurance, gas, repairs, tickets. I still had money, but now when I went to the comic book store, I couldn’t just buy every new release without consequence. I’d been living the past two years never in want of anything. If I even remotely saw something that I liked, I bought it. But little by little, the adult world sucked away my surplus of money.

After school it was rent, and then cell phone service, and healthcare premiums. Whatever, everybody has to pay bills, so I’m not going to go through all of the things that I currently have to save my money for. But nobody prepares you for how it’s really going to be. I think back to when I was fifteen, when I had stacks of twenties in my underwear drawer, how I couldn’t imagine a time where I’d be even remotely close to having to stick to a budget.

I had no idea how good I had it. Maybe it’s a pattern, always looking back and waxing nostalgic. Maybe ten years from now I’ll look back upon right now as the best time of my life. I don’t know, I just remember going to the mall and buying like twenty new CDs. I think this summer I bought two albums on iTunes. What happened to my priorities?