Campers

Friday night I was actually pretty excited about my section. Four tables in the first diningroom. Two four tops and two deuces. It wasn’t the best section to have, but since our new management team has been overscheduling the floor the last couple months, leaving only three tables (sometimes two) for each server, it was definitely a step up. Plus it was Friday night and we were sure to be on a wait for the next few hours, so there was going to be plenty of business.

Turn and burn, baby!

Two of my tables were still sat when I got there, but as soon as those guests were finished eating, I rushed to clear the tables and get them ready and let the money-making begin.

And then the hostess spoiled my fun.

I turned around and noticed she was bringing one of our regulars to my table. It was one of the Coleman Sisters, so nicknamed by the staff because they like to camp. No, not the pitch-a-tent-light-up-the-portable-gas-grill kind of camp. The we’re-going-to-sit-at-this-table-for-the-next-four-hours-maybe-five-at-least-until-after-you-close-and-you-and-the-rest-of-the-staff-are-just-waiting-for-us-to-leave-so-you-can-go-home kind of camp.

I knew I had just gone from a four to a three table section. On the very first round of seating.

Fuuuuuck!

Two of the Sisters had yet to arrive, but I greeted the first and took her drink order. I smiled and told her I’d be right back with her lemonade, then went into the server aisle where I slammed down my tray and let out a string of expletives not fit to print even on the porn-riddled interwebs.

“Coleman Sisters?” Another server asked me.

“Yes,” I said. “Fuck!”

They come in every Friday, usually at the very beginning of the dinner rush, and they stay well after they have finished eating, apparently oblivious to the line of people waiting at the hostess stand or to the fact that all the tables around them have been seated and fed and cleaned and seated and fed and cleaned and . . . you get the idea. And once the rush is over and cuts have been made, they still sit. And once the restaurant is otherwise empty, they still sit. And once the restaurant has closed and every member of the staff save their server, the cashier and the manager has left, they still sit.

Every single Friday for the past year.

I was the very first server unlucky enough to have them sat in my section and I’ve waited on them several times since. They’re pleasant enough. Bus drivers for a local school district, I believe. And they usually tip well. Just not well enough to make up for the fact that I’ve lost out on three or four turns of the table they’ve decided to stake out for their very own.

Last Friday, though, they took the annoying factor to a new level. As I said, only one of them was sat at first while she waited for the rest of the party to arrive. I brought her drink and then went about getting orders for two more of my tables that had been sat. After entering those orders and bringing drinks, I found that the other Sisters had arrived, so I got their drink orders and asked if they were ready to order food. They were not. Not yet. Maybe a few minutes.

I dropped off their drinks and picked up the last of my two-tops that had been seated. Then I checked on them again. A few more minutes, maybe. By now, food was up for my first two tables, so I ran that, brought out extra napkins and any last minute requests then checked back on the Sisters.

Still not ready.

Twenty-five minutes since the first Sister had arrived.

I told them to just let me know when they were ready and they continued talking. I brought out the food for my last table, cleared some empty plates from the other tables, and brought a round a refills. A thank you from the Sisters, but still no order. I offered dessert to my other tables and dropped the checks. Still not ready to order. My other guests took their last sips of soda and put on their coats. Still nothing. I picked up my tips and re-set the table tops after the bussers cleared everything away. Forty-five minutes in, and there was still no order from the Coleman Sisters.

The last of my first round asked for a to-go box and started gathering their things. I was about to have three empty tables and we were still on an hour wait, which meant I was about to be triple-sat, which meant that, because the fates are unkind to me this way, the Coleman Sisters were finally ready to order.

And order they did. The special, please, with a house salad, oh and could I substitute this and could you add extra that and could you bring some bread ahead of the meal but after the salad and could we have some honey and some jelly and some apple butter and some molasses oh and extra butter and a refill and maybe some water too.

By the time they finished giving me their list of demands, my other tables were full of guests. Hungry, agitated guests who had just been standing in the lobby for an hour and were none too happy about having to wait another five minutes to get a server over here.

So on the second round of seating, I was already in the weeds. I greeted all three of the other tables, got a drink order from the first, and rushed to the back to gather up the bounty for the Sisters. I had to ask a manager to pick up the drink orders for my other tables so they wouldn’t feel neglected. Then I dropped off the salads only to find out that even though they had ordered house salads, they really wanted tossed. They just got confused. Because, you know, they’ve only been to our restaurant like fifty or sixty times.

May I say once again,

Fuuuuck!

For the next thirty minutes or more, I just rushed from table to table, feeling a couple of steps behind the entire time, and definitely feeling it in the subpar tips I earned that round.

Fortunately, I’d been able to stagger their ordering enough that everybody didn’t finish eating at once and the worst that happened the rest of the night was that I was double-sat. I kept the refills coming to the Sisters through three more seatings of each of my other tables. I cleared away their empty plates, brought them more bread, offered them dessert, and switched them to coffee throughout the night. Eventually the wait ended and guests just trickled in here or there until finally no one else was coming in and only my table of campers was left.

A few minutes before close I dropped off their checks. The first few months we were open, they would wait to pay until they were ready to leave, which meant that the cashier had to hang around and wait to count down her drawer until they left. Another server kindly let them know how they were holding up the cashier and they’ve since started paying right around closing time. But then they come right back and take their rightful place at the table, where they stay. And stay. And stay some more.

At a quarter to twelve they finally dispersed. At midnight, I finally got to walk out the front door and start my trek home, my pockets full with the fifteen dollars they tipped me for five solid hours of service.

Keep on ringing

I have decided that I will no longer answer the take-out phone at the restaurant. I hate the to-go phone. Every server does. This is why it rings and rings and rings and no one ever seems to pick up. We all have tables on the floor, tables we hope will be paying us to provide them with good service. We are busy trying to provide said service, and stopping what we’re doing to answer the phone and then explain the menu and take the order from some voice on the other end just takes time none of us has.

Of course, management is very adamant that the phone should ring no more than three times before one us picks it up. It is, after all, a sale waiting to be made. So they rant and rave and remind us constantly that the phone needs to be answered, and since it’s part of our job and I have that stupid work-ethic thing going on, I answer it more often than not, even when I don’t have the time.

But no more. Last Sunday, as I walked into the vestibule to put an order into the micro, the phone rang and since no one else was standing still long enough for me to hand it off to them, I took the call. What’s your special today, the guy wanted to know. Well, what sides do you have? Well, what can I get that’s like the meatloaf? What kind of soup? And on and on with the questions. Figure out what the hell you want before you make the fucking call. We have a menu on line. And if you're calling us to place an order, I assume you're at the very least familiar with out menu. I spent at least ten minutes on the phone with this guy, ten minutes I could have been using to wow my guests by refilling their drinks before they even asked. And as soon as I hung up, the phone started ringing again.

Because I’m stupid, I answered it again. Another pain in the ass order – all kinds of substitutions and sauces on the side.

By the time I was done on the phone, my orders were up in the window and I had to start running them out to my guests who by this time had empty glasses and had mentally deducted five percent from my tip. By the time I finished running the first round of trays and refilling everyone’s drinks, I realized I’d forgotten to ring in an order.

Fuuuuuck!

That’s why I was coming into the vestibule to begin with.

Moments later, I realized I’d forgotten to bring out a salad too. And the woman was pissed and let the manager know when he ran out the tray for me since I was in the back cajoling the grill line (bribing them with promises of pot) into rushing out my forgotten ticket.

Fortunately, the rushed order came out moments after the order for the table beside them (who ordered at the same time), so they never knew the difference. But I knew. And I couldn’t seem to recover myself for the rest of the night. I was just off all day, one step behind where I needed to be. And by the end of the shift, it was all I could do to finish my sidework and get the hell out. I even shorted them on a few silverware roll-ups in the end because I just didn’t care.

So from now on, the to-go phone can just keep on ringing. I’m pretty sure I can’t hear at that frequency. You know, hearing loss brought on by all those years I spent working on jets.

More than your fair share

When my son was small, I used to get a lot of phone calls from his school teachers. He talked too much in class. He talked when they were supposed to be silent reading. He talked when standing in line. He talked while other students were talking. He talked while the teacher was talking. And even though the things he talked about were generally on-topic and sometimes very funny, he was disrupting the learning process for the other students. “I have only so much time for each lesson and for each student,” some young teacher would say to me. “And he’s a wonderful boy. He’s just using up more than his fair share.”

Obviously, the boy needed more attention and another outlet (and probably a little more challenging work to do). We addressed those problems. He’s slightly less disruptive now.

I was thinking about this the other night. At the restaurant. When I had four tables of guests to tend to, and one of those tables was using up more than their fair share of my time and causing the other tables to get less attention than they deserved. I wanted to tell them what I told my son:

“The teacher (server) is in the classroom (restaurant) to teach you new things (take your order) and help you when you don’t understand (bring you refills and Tabasco sauce that you forgot to ask for). The problem is that you are not the only student (guest) in the classroom (my section). There are, in fact, other students (customers) who want the same thing you do. Sadly, your teacher (server) is a mere mortal and is unable to bend the time/space continuum in such a manner as to allow her to spend as much time with each student (dumbass) as some would like. Out of fairness to other students (more patient guests than yourself), it’s important that you allow the others a turn to speak and ask for help. The only other option is for you to get a private tutor (servant) who could tend to your every need, but we both know that is much too expensive. What I’m trying to say here is, you aren’t the most important person in the world, you’re not entitled to more than the next guy, so hold on, shut up and wait your turn.”

Of course I didn’t say that last part to the kid, but I definitely wanted to tell it to my table the other night. Of course I was far too busy running after yet more jelly (oh and could we get some to go boxes even though we’re still stuffing our faces full of food that is falling out because we’re too impatient to even wait to finish chewing before we speak, oh and I’d like to switch to coffee now even though you just brought me a fourth Coke, and when you come back by to ask that other table if they might need anything . . . actually, don’t bother asking that table, I’m sure they’re fine, but when you come back I’m sure we’ll have thought up something else, so hurry!), so I didn’t have time to tell them that I didn’t have time for their nonsense (bullshit).

And in the end, they tipped me $6 on a $79 check. So yeah, they definitely couldn't afford their own private servant.

This is why your server hates you

Friday night my last table just before cuts went up was a four top – an old white dude, his wife, their daughter, and the daughter’s teenage son who wanted nothing but water and biscuits (hooray, please let me refill this glass for you seven times while I run back and forth fetching you free bread and jellies. No, really. Nothing would make me happier). After being informed that junior would not be paying for a meal, I proceeded to take orders for the rest of the table, starting with junior’s mama.

She ordered breakfast, and when I asked her how she would like her eggs cooked, she thought about it for a minute and finally settled on scrambled. I smiled and turned my attention to her mother in the next seat, but before giving me her order, the older woman told her daughter, in a very snotty tone, “Do you want cheese on them? Because if you don’t want cheese on them, you have to tell them, or they’ll just put cheese on your eggs!”

Her daughter looked up at me, non verbally checking the accuracy of her mother’s outburst. I simply shook my head and said, “No.”

Right then and there my tip went down by ten percent.

“Well, they always put cheese on your father’s eggs and he doesn’t want it,” the older woman said to her daughter, as if exposing a global conspiracy between restaurants and the dairy industry.

“We will definitely not put cheese in the eggs,” I said, then, “What can I get for you today?”

She ordered, without looking up from her menu, obviously steaming about oeufs avec cheese, and when she was finished, she pushed her menu toward me, letting it hover in the air in front of her husband’s face. I very slowly finished writing down her order before taking it from her.

When the husband finally ordered his breakfast, I figured out why the old dude is always getting cheese in his scrambled eggs. “I’d like the pancake breakfast with bacon,” he mumbled, “and I’d like the eggs scrambled without cheese.”

So there it is, I thought, the reason dude is always getting what he thinks he didn’t ask for. If my old dude’s wife hadn’t raised such a stink about it, I probably would have served him and charged him for the dreaded cheese in his eggs, just as psychic bitch predicted.

Why? Because guests don’t know how to fucking order and because they don’t speak up. At full capacity, our restaurant seats over 200 people. Add to that the crowd of non-seated, waiting for a table people. And add to that ten to fifteen servers, two hostesses, maybe a couple of busboys, five grill cooks, two managers, two backup cooks, one prep cook, and whoever manages to show up in dish – all engaged in conversation. Add to that the clank of dishes being set on tables, thrown into bus tubs, and dropped on the floor. Add to that the phone ringing and cash registers slamming shut. And add to that three children running and giggling through the restaurant and one screaming baby. Always one screaming baby.

And I, the server, am standing at the end of your table, focusing intently on your every word as you stare into your menu and whisper your order to me as if we’re in hiding and raising your voice too much would let the serial killer outside the door know we’re in here. Even when I ask guests to speak up, using the pretense that I’m just deaf, most only raise their volume a fraction of a decibel.

So when you say to me, in your tiny voice, “Bring me a Coke with no lemon,” all I catch is “Coke” and “lemon.” And because a Coke is not served with lemon, has not ever been served with lemon, and is not listed on the printed menu you are holding in front of your mouth as you try to communicate with me as including a lemon, it can be assumed that the only reason you would mention a lemon is because you want a fucking lemon. Difficult concept to grasp, I know.