I Need A Break !!

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WHEW! What a stinkin day this was. I worked a double shift yesterday and today but at least yesterday I got a nice break and even got to lay down for a 20 minute power nap before going back.

Today was a slow lunch but as soon as I got off I had to go pay Verizon, get gas and scream by the high school to hug my girl's neck before she loaded up on a school bus to go to Cobb County for a band competition. School buses are so rickety and I am a paranoid Mom. I never want my kid leaving on a bus that has a maximun speed of 55 MPH to travel ANYWHERE in Atlanta without holding her close and hugging her so tight it makes her feel like she is suffocating.

I zoomed back to work and the bomb dropped.

We were busier than a bee hive being hit with a bat.

Before I knew it I had seven tables and felt like I was in a cartoon. We had a new girl start tonight for a trial run. She was working in the kitchen. I call her a girl but that only means she is female. I am fifty and if I had to guess her age I would say we were probably at "Prom" the same year.

She is an African American woman  and has never worked in the restaurant industry.

Some of our cooks come in at 10:30 in the morning and don't get off til 10:00 at night. They get a short break to eat...decompress or hot box a cig..text their spouse ,  but pretty much it is a "Slam Wham Bam " job.

This woman came in at 5:00. By seven we were packed and I could see the panic in her face. She was working in the salad area..you gotta get those salads out before the meal so it is already a high pressure area. About 7:15 she told the owner (already known as Dr. Evil) that she needed a break. She marched out front to the bar and asked the bar tender where she could sit to take a break?  She acted like she wanted to be directed to a table where she could sit and gather her thoughts about how crazy it was to try and work in the kitchen of a busy restaurant. The bartender (politely) told her we didn't HAVE a table for her to sit at and she needed to head back to the kitchen.  Well she found a bucket to sit on and a little while later I saw her sitting on a plastic tub that we keep bread in. I guess she had a "WOO- WEE" moment and thought to herself "What the heck am I doing here?"

She took a good 15 minutes to decompress and gather her thoughts while we all got killed.

The restaurant industry is a brutal place to be if you have never worked in it before. Actually it can be pretty brutal if you HAVE worked in it before.

After all was said and done, she didn't slip out the back door and leave and Len didn't kick her out it. (Not yet)

I have been a server for over 32 years and there have been MANY nights  I felt like saying "I just need five minutes to catch up." The problem is when you are busy, twenty more people get seated in the five minutes you want for yourself and they are ALL wanting and expecting something at the same time.

I bet when I go into work tomorrow there will be one less bucket in the kitchen. DAMN...there goes my seat!

You never know...she may come back tomorrow and say "I didn't know it would be THIS hard, but I am willing to try it again."

I am hoping  she does. Trial by fire is a good thing...keeps you on your toes and cuts down on the bucket inventory.

Til next time...COTTON

A Surprising Sunday!

Just walked in the door from work, $211.00 richer (or poorer may be more accurate.)

Still, that's a pretty sweet sum on the night before Labor Day. That is after tip out and tip out is usually anywhere from $25 to $30.

It started out slow and the managers started cutting servers.I only had one or two crappy tips and that always has to be expected.

We went down to two servers by 9:00 and luckily I was one of the two.

I work with mostly young kids and thank goodness they care nothing about making money, only about getting out of the restaurant as quickly as they can. GOD BLESS THEM, they help me more than they know.

My last table was a party of eight and they left me a $50.00 tip that put me over the top!

Waiting tables is a crap shoot. You can really bank or you can really bomb. There is only so much you can do to change what kind of tip a customer will leave, but "Baby can I work a table!"

Of course after doing it for over 32 years...I'd better be good at it or what kind of slow learner would I be?

I've learned a few helpful tips on my own along the way:

NEVER ask a woman when her baby is due, unless her water breaks at the table.

If gender is in question, NEVER use "Ma'am or Sir."

NEVER ask if they need change back when picking the bill up, it's THEIR money and of course they want change...it is up to them to choose to leave you some of it and asking usually decreases what they might leave.

NEVER piss off a cook (there's no other way to put THAT one)

Learn as much Spanish as you can...it comes in real handy in a restaurant kitchen. I have learned more Spanish in my serving career than I ever learned from Senora Pallares in high school.

ALWAYS treat the kitchen help with respect...they may be here without a green card, but they are putting out the product that makes or breaks your tip.

I was kidding around with a few of the Mexicans the other day and one of the fry cooks told me that "Diego" wasn't Mexican but was from Salvador. I told them they didn't have tunnels THAT long yet. Sometimes when there are three or four of them back there at one time, I feel like I am working with the penguins from the movie "Happy Feet." I think that is the movie, about the environment and global warming, but the four penguins with their accent stole the show.

I treat these guys with respect, learn their crazy names (Ranulfo, Faustino, Edeberto) and treat them as equals.

Of course we always give them nicknames (Gringo ones) and they have even given me one. I am "Pelos Sporados" which loosely translated is "Spiky Hair." I guess that is better than the nicknames THEY have for SOME of the servers!

It is a melting pot that I work in...Managers with degrees in finance, cooks with degrees in Biology, cooks that aren't even supposed to be here and people working their way through college hoping to move on to better and bigger things.

Me...I am just a mom , wife and server. Granted I make pretty decent money for the hours I work, but it ain't easy if you do it the right way and I try to do that every time I walk through the door.

Bueno Noches.... ALGODON

Stormin "NORMAN" to the Rescue

On Tuesdays I open the restaurant with two other waitresses. It usually isn't too busy right off the bat so we are okay until around 11:45 when the other servers come in. On this particular day, at 10:55, five minutes before we open...a group of 115 came streaming in the front door. It was an immediate "INVASION". Frantic calls to servers for them to come early were made, the kitchen...headed up by our "Stormin Norman" was alerted to the fact that the "ENEMY HAS LANDED!! BATTLE STATIONS"!!! It was a company bringing the entire office out for Secretary's Day. Obviously everyone in their office knew about it, and our Troops were TOTALLY taken by surprise. The cooks had no one to call in ..they were all we had. "Bring the Latinos up front"!! Give the manager an apron..load up the bread oven...start filling glasses with ice...GO GO GO...NOW"!!! One of us three servers started taking drink orders, the other started taking food orders, and the third began ringing them into the kitchen. I cannot even begin to imagine how it must feel to the cooks to receive 115 orders one immediately after another, but it must feel like having a M-16 spraying around your head with nowhere to run or hide. When we asked Norman if he wanted us to stagger out the orders or send them all at once..the reply from their battle station was "BRING IT"!!! Thus began our normally quiet Tuesday lunch! By this point another server that is an "Ole Timer" like us had walked into the chaos. She immediately started going to the tables that we had not been able to get yet, and started firing orders back to our troops in the kitchen as well. It was 24 tables in total that we rang into the kitchen in a matter of about ten or fifteen minutes. Steaks, chicken, ribs, special orders, special instructions...and it didn't faze our "Stormin Norman" one bit! I can honestly say that we had a harder time of just getting drinks refilled and salads out before he was sending out the lunches...how can two cooks beat four servers to the punch, considering they had a lot tougher job to do than us? I can honestly say that I do not remember one person sending their food back or complaining about their lunch. Out of 24 tables, one table had to wait for their food...but HEY!! someone has to get served last! Let me add that while all this was taking place, the kitchen was still filling orders from the rest of the restaurant that was filling up very quickly with our regular customers. Believe it or not, it went AMAZINGLY smooth. Our manager that day was on the ball, shouting out his commands, and we were listening to him. The host staff did a great job, the other servers that walked into a mine field when they arrived for their shift did an amazing job. It was truly a team effort...but one that I give the kitchen staff of "Stormin Norman" all the credit for. We are a family at our store..granted a sometimes dysfunctional family, but one that pulls together when the bombs are dropping and there is no place to hide. The public is a tough crowd to please. I have learned this over my 30 years in the business. But on this particular day, in this particular restaurant, this particular crowd had a particularly amazing man shooting out their lunches like mortar fire coming out of a tank. My hat goes out to this amazing feat the "Stormin Norman" pulled off with the grace and ease of a trapeze artist..Although he is one person that I don't think would ever be caught dead in a pair of tights...But tight spots are his FORTE, and he did an outstanding job in one of the tightest spots we have ever been thrown into, and saved our butts from what could have been a tragedy...but ended up to be a success...Thanks to "STORMIN NORMAN". Take a bow my friend...you deserve it. What impressed me even more was the fact that he acted like he had done nothing exceptional, just had done his job. I swear I work with the greatest people in the world... At least a lot of great people, that make working with some of the others that aren't as great, an OK thing. Maybe they will look at us and say "I could do that too if I tried". YOU NEVER KNOW!!! But a HUGE, FAT "THANK YOU" and my total admiration for a "Job well done, Soldier". Till next time...COTTON

Cooks who can "kick" it up a notch

As long as I am talking restaurant... let's don't forget all the cooks that I work with. They are a varied group of guys..biology degrees, former military, musicians, Latinos, students just trying to get through school, and some just trying to make a buck. It is an incredibly hard job that they have, and an awesome job that they do of it. One of our former cooks, who had a degree in Biology, was trying to get on as a pilot ( He has now been flying for ASA for several years). A great guy, engaged to one of our servers...they are now married and expecting! I remember one night the fryer that we fry all of our food in was on the fritz. Shawn was down on his hands and knees, trying to fix the fryer, we were in the middle of a dinner rush. I walked through the kitchen to get a rack of glasses, and as I walked by him, down on the floor, peering in to the innards of the massive "fry" machine... I remarked.. " oh, that's right... you have a degree in fry-ology" Thank goodness he was a dear fiend of mine, and I laugh about it all the time.. especially now that he is flying jets around the U.S. and making his dream come true. They have a true bond in the kitchen. They work in a constant 90 degree temperature, have 17 servers screaming at them at all times for 17 different things, and still put out the perfect product, in the perfect amount of time, in an absolute surrounding of pure chaos. That is what we call our kitchen in times of a rush... controlled chaos... and it is. But whatever you need from these guys, whatever it takes to make the customer happy.. they CAN and ALWAYS do it. We have a lingo that would seem like nonsense to the average person.. When we are out of something.. we are 86 that item. When we are in the weeds, we are so far behind that we need other team members to come to our aid and help us get caught up. "HEARD" is another big word for us. Since there are 17 of us in the window of the kitchen, asking for things.. I could say "I need a side of horsey" , and the response would be "horsey heard". That means that they heard my request, and they will get me a cup of horse radish sauce as soon as they can. When you are dragging something, that means it was left off of an order... " I'm dragging a sweet potato" .. and BAM .. there it is in the window of the kitchen. It is a strange, marvelous, hectic, insane job that I have. But for the men and women that cook and put out the wonderful product that I am proud to sell.. my hat is off to them... Thank you.... "HEARD" !!!