Monday, June 23, 2014

Hello My Name is Kelly and I'm a Blogaholic

Caught the midnight train out of the airport tonight back to the parking lot. I have enough grease on my face from sweat to fry a basket of fries. Went in at one thirty and walked out after eleven thirty.

Walked through the door of my house a little after one and have to be up by six to work a morning shift.

So what do I do?

That'd be Blog.

I'm used to working nights, been doing it for well over thirty years and can never simply come home and go straight to bed. I'm just not wired that way.

So we only had four servers on tonight, which technically starts at three. On top of that, the manager came up and told me I had been shopped.

Corporations hire secret shoppers to go into a restaurant posing as customers but rate their experience and server.

For Pete's sake, I've only been on the floor a week and got SHOPPED already?!

He told me we'd go over it later on and left it at that.

It was like somebody suddenly put a tiny sharp rock in my shoe and limped around on it all night.

We didn't get busy until around six but once flights got delayed passengers streamed in the door and didn't stop until we closed at ten. We were down three servers so took the four of us until after eleven thirty to finish. Two of the servers had been there since eight thirty AM so at least felt lucky I wasn't them.

We have two managers. I call them Good Cop and Bad Cop. Bad Cop worked tonight. I truly like him but is a stickler (which is a good thing) about steps of service.

I realize they are all watching me being the Old / Newbie on the floor but Bad Cop just makes me nervous. I think he enjoys it. He's never been anything but nice and professional,  has taught me a lot since starting there but makes me a nervous wreck which in turn tends to make me make more mistakes.

I didn't mention the shopper report until I clocked out to leave. I asked if he would just tell me the score?  I think he said Seventy Eight. (out of a hundred) Once I heard the number Seventy come out of his mouth my mind went numb.

DANG, isn't that a "C" and if recall correctly from my high school report cards is considered "Average"?

He did make the remark I hadn't done as bad as it sounded and would go over it later with me.

Okay, I'm home now and had a beer (or two) looking back over  my blogs and thinking back on how nervous and stressed I've been.

I stepped WAY out of the box with this job and knew from the jump was actually more like a LEAP but certainly didn't expect to get shopped the very first week on the floor.

They haven't had a shopper in quite a few months so my ole Cotton luck kicked right in as soon as I started the job and got the next one!

It's not like he told me I was in trouble or not to come in tomorrow or wrote me up but sure felt like a kick in the teeth.

I slumped my way to the Plane Train still feeling that little rock in my shoe and realizing  was also going to miss the eleven forty MARTA train and have to sit for another twenty minutes waiting on the "Midnight Train."

You know what? This just makes me more determined!

Step out of the box I did, but don't EVEN think you're going to stuff my tiny self back into it.

You want "Steps of Service" followed?

You got it!

You want to see how many new tricks this ole dog can learn? Hang around and be amazed.

Okay I feel better now, it's out of my system.

Tumbling into bed for a now four hour nap and doing it all again, even BETTER next time

Til next time...COTTON


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