Tag Archives: Waiting Tables

Gum check

I’m a waiter. I get people Diet Cokes and make sure that everybody’s happy. Great. The dinner rush comes and goes, closing time is at eleven, and barring any customers trying to spend the rest of the night camped out at my tables, it’s time for me to start making my way toward the exit. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as counting up my tips and calling it a day. “Hey Rob,” the head waiter calls out to me just as I’m packing up my stuff, “Make sure you check for gum.”

Fucking gum check. Do you know what that is? It’s me having to get on my hands and knees with a flashlight and checking to see if anybody stuck their chewing gum underneath the table. And you know what sucks? You know what’s really crazy? It’s that there’s always gum. Every single night, there’s at least one wad of chewed up gum stuck under one of my tables.

Unless you work as a waiter or waitress, maybe you think that I’m full of shit, that nobody goes into a restaurant and knowingly deposits their chewed up gum for someone else to clean up. I mean, that’s what I used to think before my bosses started making me do gum checks. The first time I thought it was a joke. I was like, that’s a funny thing to go and check for. Why would anybody spit out a piece of chewed up gum, inside a restaurant, at a table, and just leave it there?

But sure enough, I did that first gum check and there were like three pieces of gum. I couldn’t believe it. A hot towel wasn’t really doing the trick, because this stuff had since dried out and cemented itself in place. I found this flat chisel shaped tool, and that was kind of doing it, but finally I went to the maintenance guy who gave me this can of compressed gas stuff that froze the gum at the end of a long tube.

Still, it was a pain in the ass. Each piece of gum took like two minutes to clean up. Multiply each piece of gum by two, add that to the end of a busy night waiting tables, it’s not fun. It’s not a nice way to wrap things up. That first night I thought to myself, man, they must not have checked these tables in a while. Well that should take care of the gum problem for a few months at least.

And then on my second night, just as I was about to head out the door, the head waiter stopped me again, “Hey Rob, did you make sure to do a gum check?” and I barely even halted my stride. I just paused long enough to say, “No man, we did those last night.” But he persisted, “No, Rob, we have to do those every night. Gum checks every night.”

Every night? That seemed a little much. Sure, I could accept the fact that maybe once in a while someone would be careless enough to leave a piece of gum under the table. Maybe they were on a date, maybe they forgot to bring a wrapper or they were too embarrassed to ask for an extra napkin. I don’t know, things happen, people get funny in restaurants.

Like I said, once in a while. So I grabbed the flashlight just to kind of go through the motions, like yup, check, no gum, check. But on that first table, I couldn’t believe it. It was another three pieces of gum. I had just cleaned three pieces of gum from this table the night before. And now three more pieces? Was it three different guests, each leaving their own mark on our furniture, or was it a repeat offender, someone just constantly chewing gum in between bites of food?

At this point I wish I could say that I’ve made peace with the insanity of my situation. But every night, right as I should be on my way home, I find myself on the dirty floor scraping someone else’s chewed up gum off of the underside of our tables. It’s every night. It’s every table. What in the actual hell is going on? Who does stuff like that?

Since there’s so much gum at this restaurant, I’m statistically bound to assume that the majority of diners are guilty of this offense. But since I’ve never actually heard anybody talking about leaving gum, no friends or family members, I’m inclined to believe that everybody’s doing it in secret. Everybody chews, everybody sticks it to the table, and nobody says a word.

And all that’s left is me touching other people’s chewed up gum. It’s disgusting. It’s the absolute worst way to end any night. There’s nothing I’d rather do less than squeeze myself under a table and, with one hand hold a flashlight, using my free hand to clean up gross nasty it’s-been-in-someone-else’s-mouth-for-a-while chewing gum.

So here’s out with it. If you’re reading this, if you go out to eat, don’t put your fucking gum under the table. Ask me for a napkin. I’ll stick out my hand at the table and you can spit it out right there, I’ll catch it, I’ll actually do that, because even though that sounds horrible, trust me, I’d rather do that right there while it’s still fresh and pliable than at the end of the night when I’m tired, and I want to go home, but I can’t go home, because your stupid gum is all dried up and stuck, and maybe I’ve got half of it off, but the base layer won’t budge, and it’s coming off all stringy, and the gum string is really thin and wispy, and did one of those strings just float up and hit me in the face? In the mouth? Get me the fuck out of under this table, please, just go to the bathroom and spit out your gum, come on, let’s do it like they do in Singapore, where if you get caught chewing gum some police officer has to give you like ten lashes to the back with a cane, you know, that’s not a bad system, we look at them and think, how cruel! How barbaric! But we’re the barbarians here, we’re walking around chewing this gum like it’s cud, and we’re just sticking it anywhere, it’s sticky and so I don’t have to find a trashcan, I can just leave it wherever the hell I want. Why? I have no idea, but I’m just going to do it, and I don’t care, because some other jerk will clean it up eventually, and it won’t be me.

Don’t be an inconsiderate asshole. Spit out your gum in a napkin.

I’d like a cup of strong coffee

I was at work the other day and this old guy said to me, “I’d like a cup of strong coffee.” And I smiled and I said, “Yes sir,” and I went back into the kitchen and came out with a cup of coffee. I put it down in front of him with a little milk and I said, “Here you go sir, one cup of strong coffee.”

Guess what? It was just regular coffee. He made a point to order his coffee strong, whatever that means, and I also made it a point to deliver his coffee, repeating the word strong back to him as I set it down on the table. By my logic, his strong and my strong effectively cancelled each other out.

Listen old timer, I don’t know how restaurants did things back in the twenties, but what you think you’re exactly going to accomplish by telling your waiter that you want a cup of strong coffee? What do you think, we have different options back there? Strong, medium, weak? Who would order a cup of weak coffee?

Although, now that I’m thinking about it, it would probably make actually a little more sense to order some weak coffee. I’d just cut it with hot water. There you go, weak coffee. Although, I don’t know why anybody would drink weak coffee. Or decaf even. If you don’t like that caffeine kick that accompanies regular coffee, well then I just don’t understand where you’re coming from, what your idea of life is all about.

But the strong coffee guy, I put down that cup, I looked into his eye, I tried as best as I could to nonverbally communicate, hey mister, I heard you say strong coffee, yeah, and guess what? This is regular coffee. I’m almost daring him to call me out on it. “Waiter! I asked for strong coffee!”

And I’d just be like, “That is strong coffee.” Because strong is a subjective word. If I found myself in the unlikely scenario where I’d have to defend my position, I could genuinely say, sorry buddy, sorry boss, I thought our coffee was strong. I thought that was a pretty strong cup of coffee.

But all the while I’d be making that same eye contact, that same kind of half grin, like if you’d look at me you’d think, this guy’s either trying to be really friendly, or a huge dick. And of course it’d be the huge dick look. Because as soon as you start making my job that much more difficult, with your strong coffee request, I’m automatically not at your service anymore. I mean, I’ll still do my job.

But I’ll be looking at you dead in the eye, and all I’m trying to say to you is, what exactly is it that you expect from the service industry? You’re just coming in here and automatically assuming that the strength of our coffee isn’t up to your standards, that you’d like me to go back to our one industrial sized coffee machine, empty the whole thing out, make a fresh pot with extra coffee, just so you can take a sip and probably still flag me down and complain that it’s not strong enough?

And then what, I’ll have to go back into the kitchen and listen to my boss start shouting at everybody, “Hey! Who made this last batch of coffee? Why did you use so much coffee? Everyone’s complaining. And look, there were too many coffee grounds, they all got in the machine. Come on guys, this stuff is portioned out individually for a reason!”

It’s funny because, they actually have a whole industry set up for people who are particular about their coffee. Yeah, you can just go to Starbucks or some other coffee shop and they’d probably know exactly what you’re talking about when you ask for your strong coffee.

It’s like people that come in and ask for a stiff cocktail. You know what? All of that stuff is portioned out also. You want free booze? Too bad, buy another drink. And that just gave me another idea, hey Mr. Strong Coffee, get a shot of espresso. Or even better, order a red-eye. Stop trying to get free strong out of me.

Give me a half-regular, half-decaf. All right, all decaf for you. I’d like a thick steak. You’re just getting a regular steak. Give me a nice sized baked potato. You’re getting whatever baked potato the line cook is closest to. I’ll have a sweet soda. What do you think I’m mixing the syrup back there?

OK, nobody ever asked for a sweet soda. But come on, just order like a regular person. People ask me for crazy stuff and I just want to be like, come on, stop asking me for crazy stuff. Stop asking me things in general. Just point to what you want on the menu and that’s it.

No more free refills on soda

At the restaurant where I wait tables, management recently got rid of the soda fountain. Whereas before five dollars would get you unlimited Coke and Diet Coke, now five dollars gets you one twelve ounce bottle of soda. Whatever, I was all bent out of shape about it initially. I hated having to explain a stupid change in soda policy to every single table that I wound up serving.

“What is this?”

“We recently switched to bottled …”

“So no more free refills?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK. But I hate you. And I’m not tipping you. And I’m going to follow you home and egg your house. Asshole.”

OK, nobody actually said that last one to me, not explicitly. But I’d stand there and smile and bullshit about how, “We really just want to make sure you’re enjoying an optimal soda drinking experience,” and I could tell these people wanted me dead. They don’t care about quality. If you’re a Diet Coke drinker, you’re not in some sort of a quest for quality. It’s super popular, yeah, everybody drinks it, but come on, does anyone truly enjoy Diet Coke? What is that taste? It’s like a battery that’s been left out to rot out in some old socks for a decade before accidentally being dropped into a vat of Coke Classic.

I’m getting carried away. I realize that now. A couple of months have passed and our customers have since gotten used to no longer receiving unlimited, intravenous Coca-Cola, and so I don’t have to talk about it all that much anymore. But at the time, man was I pissed. I was so angry. I came right home after that first shift and wrote a whole blog post about how much I hate bottled soda, how much I hate my managers, how the restaurant industry is this giant scam.

I sat on it for a couple of weeks, I always sit on my writing for a couple of weeks, and it’s a good thing too. Because I reread my diatribe against the soda policy and I scratched my head, like, huh, I was getting all bent out of shape over this? Over Diet Coke? Come on. That’s lame.

Although I am pissed off that I don’t get to drink free soda anymore. That used to be a really minor perk of working where I work. Every five minutes or so I’d fill up a huge glass of seltzer and I’d pound it down, enjoying that crazy sensation of those bubbles trying to go every which way, up my nose, down my throat. I’d close the back of my throat and squint my eyes really hard, because you know, just try chugging any carbonated beverage, that’s no joke. But it would pass and I’d feel instantly refreshed and recharged.

Now I can’t do that anymore. Before I had a perk. Now, there’s no perk. And I’m not being dramatic. I tried chugging a glass of plain water, and I almost quit right there. One, it’s boring. There’s absolutely nothing going on with a glass of plain water. Two, there is no two. It’s just one, water is boring. No bubbles, no fun.

I also tried switching to unsweetened iced tea, and that worked for about two hours. I’d fill up a glass, squeeze a lemon, and I’d get that refreshment, I liked the added caffeine kick. But you ever try downing more than two large glasses of unsweetened iced tea in a short time? Man, it’s like I boarded an express train to upset-stomach central. I had to sit down. I thought I caught some sort of a virus.

Finally, I’d like to end with a little anecdote. So we have bottles of soda, which means tons of empty bottles that we’re throwing straight in the trash. I can’t believe restaurants can get away without recycling that much plastic. I think that if I tried that in my house, the city would give me a fine. Anyway, this one waiter started collecting all of the soda caps.

I was like, hey man, what are you doing? And he was like, “Oh, well, you see these codes under the caps? If you type them into the Coca-Cola web site, they’ll donate .0001 cents to the charity of your choice.”

I was like, wow, thanks, I guess. But what I was really thinking was, Coke, you’re willing to donate all of this money to charity, but only if some random person gets on his or her computer and types out a long string of nonsense onto the Internet? Don’t be an asshole, Coca-Cola. Either donate to charity or don’t donate to charity. Don’t condition you’re philanthropy on whether or not you can get complete strangers to sit at their computers and do a bunch of mindless, unproductive busy-work.

Boss, I’d like a raise

A few weeks ago I was getting so fed up at work, I was like, man, I can’t do this anymore, I’ve got to get out. But how do you just leave a job? How do you get out when you don’t have anywhere else to go? So I sat on it for a while, my frustration, my bitterness, everything growing steadily until I couldn’t, like I really couldn’t do it anymore.

So I figured, well, maybe I’ll act like I’m going somewhere else. Maybe if I started going through the motions, then everything would just fall in line, all universal, like the universe, like all of those new age self-help books that I see people reading, about unlocking the secrets of the universe, you’ve got to, like, you’ve got to act on it, and then you’ll get it, right?

So I was like, boss, I need a raise. And he was like, no way, waiters don’t get raises, company policy. And so I was like, fine, well, maybe I’ll find a different company. And he didn’t even look up from his papers, and the tone of his voice didn’t change at all, but I could tell he was annoyed, he was like, fine, go ahead man, good luck out there.

And then I left his office and I was like, shit, that’s not what I was going for, a raise? No, I want out. But then I got in there and, you know how it is when you have to talk to your boss. It doesn’t matter what you had planned out, you get in there, he’s not looking up from his papers, you have to knock on his door even though he’s just sitting there, you see him through the glass just sitting there, like I don’t get what a knock’s going to do differently than if I just open it up.

But still, it’s like, hey Rob, you mind knocking next time? And so I knocked. But was that too gently? Did he hear me? Maybe I should knock again. And I did, and he was like, all right, I’m coming, I can hear you, hold your horses there partner, and he was clearly annoyed.

And then I was like, hey boss, can I ask you something? And he didn’t say anything, so what do I do? I asked about a raise. That wasn’t what I wanted to say, but he was already nodding in disapproval, and I was just thinking, get out now, but I didn’t, I said the whole maybe I’ll find somewhere else to work bit.

So then after work that day I asked my buddy Pete to call up the boss, pretend you’re somebody else Pete, somebody from a different job. Call him to ask about me as a potential employee. And so my boss answered, I was sitting right there, right next to Pete, and he was like, hello? Yes, this is Pete, I mean … Peter. It was already off to a weird start. And he was like, yes, I’m calling about Rob … Robert. For a job. Yes. OK. Nope. Got it. Terrific.

And I said, Pete, what happened? And he was like, nothing. He didn’t say anything. He was just like, yeah, Rob had been mentioning he’d been looking for work. Do you like him? Do you have any questions? And that was it.

Fuck, Pete. Come on, you’re supposed to play some hardball. You’re supposed to be making it, like for my boss, so he’s like, shit, I didn’t think Rob was really going to go, maybe I should give him a raise, screw company policy. Maybe he is serious about leaving. Now I was like, shit, what am I going to do? Do I say anything to my boss?

But my boss didn’t say anything to me. Not for a week. Not for another week. So finally I knocked on his door again. I waited after I knocked, like a minute. Two minutes. I raise my hand to knock again and he was like, all right, come in. I said, hey boss, thanks for putting in the good word for me. And he just kind of nodded.

But you see boss, I think I’m going to stay. I’m a part of the team, right boss? So, yeah, I think I should stay right here. Nothing. So boss, maybe like a little raise? And he was like, I told you already Rob, that’s just not going to happen. And I was like, well, could I maybe have like something? Like a free lunch? A free Coke? And he just nodded, nope, and then held up his hands, like, sorry buddy. But I don’t think he was sorry.

And it’s crazy because I didn’t even want a raise. I didn’t want anything. I just want out. I don’t know why I thought I’d talk to my boss. I should be talking to other bosses, other potential bosses. Not my idiot friend Pete. But come on, not even a free Coke? One free glass bottle of Mexican Coke? That’s total bullshit, because I see the boss giving a free Coke to the grill guy like every other day, definitely every Friday, and he doesn’t even say anything to him, he just kind of tosses it to him, and while it’s still in the air, while it’s perfectly in between both of them, almost suspended at the top of the arc of the throw, they look at each other, they have a little nod and a wink, a really subtle keep up the good work man, we’re all really proud of what you’re doing. Enjoy this ice-cold Coke man, on us, on me, we’re fucking tight you and me, drink up.

I want to be a space waiter

I want to go on a space adventure. I should go on one. It just sucks that they only pick physicists, scientists and military people to be astronauts. That’s not fair at all. Why can’t they just pick regular guys to go up space? There’s got to be something I’m good for up there. Like, what, astronauts don’t need waiters? Hey NASA, don’t you think maybe your scientists might be able to do all of their space experiments a little better if they weren’t too busy rehydrating their own space food?

That could be me, Rob the space waiter. I’d be your go-to cosmic server. Actually, you’d probably need to send up a kitchen guy also. Because look, I’ll gladly serve you guys whatever you want. Do you need anything else? A Diet Coke? How is everything going over here? But cooking? Space cooking? Yeah, you’re definitely going to need to hire a space cook. Trust me, I’m a good enough waiter, but you don’t want to see me behind the line.

That’s restaurant jargon. Like how you guys have space jargon, like “roger that,” and “Houston we have a problem,” and “Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Blastoff.” In a restaurant, the line, that’s where the cooks make the food. One time I was like, “Boss, put me behind the line, I can do it,” and I just kept bugging him, over and over again, month after month until he was like, “All right, if you’re really that interested in pursuing a culinary career, I guess we could have you shadow the salad guy one day a week, you could learn the basics.” I won’t bore you with the rest of the story, the whole lemon that wound up in the deep fryer, the globs of boiling oil splattering everywhere, just, seriously, me and the space cook. We’d be a team.

As long as you guys aren’t paying me in space tips. Haha. That was a joke. No, I’ll go to space for free. Come on. But wait, while we’re at it, do you think it would be too much to bring up a space busboy? Just one guy, I usually have two busboys, but I’ll manage, I’ll help him out, help pick up his slack. I’m not above bussing my own tables, OK, but I think it would be fair to give me at least one extra pair of hands. And it’ll wind up being another pair of hands for you and the crew if you think about it.

Because if it were just me up there, just one service member taking care of the staff, I mean, if you think about it, we’d be up there for months, who knows how long, eventually you guys would get to liking me, I’m very personable, and so we’d be joking around, who knows, maybe you’d start letting me do some space experiments, nothing big, you know I’d start small, I’d work my way up, you’d be like, wow, are you sure you haven’t had any career astronaut training? I’d be a natural.

And then as you guys would all be taking turns complimenting me, talking about what a great job I did on my first spacewalk, you’d interrupt to be like, hey Rob, can I get another Diet Coke? Because for all of my supplementary achievements in the field, my primary task would still be that of a space waiter. And I’d say sure thing, one second, here you go sir, but it would gnaw at me, the resentment, the bitterness festering inside.

Just one space busboy, as a barrier between my mission and my ambition. You guys won’t feel as inclined to break down those professional barriers because you won’t have time to. I’ll be constantly on the space busboy’s ass, making sure that you all have fresh linen, that your water glass is always full. Well, what is it, not a glass, right, because of the zero G? Never mind, we’ll figure out the logistics.

I just, it’s not my fault I’m only a waiter. That’s what I did in high school, waited tables, and I did it while I was in college. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to go on a space mission? There shouldn’t be any reason why my career path hinders me from the types of scientific advancements I’d really like to pursue. Surely there has to be a way to apply my talents to outer space. Honestly, if you could rate your last experience in space, from a purely customer service oriented point of view, in what ways were you happy? In what areas do you feel like the service lacked? Where were there opportunities for improvement? I’ll constantly be asking you those questions. How is everything? Can I get you anything else? You need me, come on guys, space needs me. I need space. I seriously need to go to outer space. Please.