SERVER HELL
Saturday night, post July 4th. In New York, everyone is still in the Hampton’s and I am sitting in an empty restaurant writing blog entries on receipt paper. I pick up the receiver and call down to the office to where my GM sits with the door shut and does God knows what.
"Hey, there's no one in here. What are you thinking?" He pauses. I'm praying. Please say we can close early. Instead, he responds with, " tell Sam he can leave early." Sam is the new kid. Of course, I must stay in case we get a rush, and for the one and only reservation in the book, a 5 top at 9pm. I've tried calling them to confirm, but no one answers.
8:3o. Still nothing.
8:31, and I realize I've got to stop checking the clock. Instead, I track down the manager card, and use it to open up solitaire on the micros screen. I'm getting paid 5 dollars an hour to beat my old score. My manager finally appears upstairs, with some good news. "If they're not here by 9, we're closed." Those sweet sweet words rang through my ears, and I immediately went into "let's get the hell out of here mode." I changed the trash, changed the menus, filled the ketchups.
9:10 rolls around, and still no sign of them. GM confirms, "OK, that’s it, we're closed." I go into the back area where our music is and put on my IPOD. I'll be out in 15 minutes, easy. I round the corner with a new found energy and respect for my GM and that’s when I see them.
The 5 top is seated at the table. They are the only people in the restaurant and my manager is wearing a look that says I've got to let them eat, they had a reservation.
The anger starts bubbling in side me. Why didn't he lock the fucking doors?
He tells me he explained the situation to them, that we were closing early due to the holiday weekend. They didn't care. They made a reservation, (ok, in all fairness, they did) but they were late. It didn’t seem to bother them that the entire staff now had to stay and extra 2 hours to serve their every need. To top it off, they were tourist and there was the one designated speaker of the group who spoke broken English, and we only add gratuity for 6 or more.
I had just found myself in server hell. It was my worst nightmare. Worse then the unavoidable server dreams I have from time to time where I dream am at work, and have 100 tables to take care of and everyone is yelling at me. This was really happening. For every moment I stayed, trying to fake smile all though I wanted to murder them, I was begging for someone to wake me up.
"Hey, there's no one in here. What are you thinking?" He pauses. I'm praying. Please say we can close early. Instead, he responds with, " tell Sam he can leave early." Sam is the new kid. Of course, I must stay in case we get a rush, and for the one and only reservation in the book, a 5 top at 9pm. I've tried calling them to confirm, but no one answers.
8:3o. Still nothing.
8:31, and I realize I've got to stop checking the clock. Instead, I track down the manager card, and use it to open up solitaire on the micros screen. I'm getting paid 5 dollars an hour to beat my old score. My manager finally appears upstairs, with some good news. "If they're not here by 9, we're closed." Those sweet sweet words rang through my ears, and I immediately went into "let's get the hell out of here mode." I changed the trash, changed the menus, filled the ketchups.
9:10 rolls around, and still no sign of them. GM confirms, "OK, that’s it, we're closed." I go into the back area where our music is and put on my IPOD. I'll be out in 15 minutes, easy. I round the corner with a new found energy and respect for my GM and that’s when I see them.
The 5 top is seated at the table. They are the only people in the restaurant and my manager is wearing a look that says I've got to let them eat, they had a reservation.
The anger starts bubbling in side me. Why didn't he lock the fucking doors?
He tells me he explained the situation to them, that we were closing early due to the holiday weekend. They didn't care. They made a reservation, (ok, in all fairness, they did) but they were late. It didn’t seem to bother them that the entire staff now had to stay and extra 2 hours to serve their every need. To top it off, they were tourist and there was the one designated speaker of the group who spoke broken English, and we only add gratuity for 6 or more.
I had just found myself in server hell. It was my worst nightmare. Worse then the unavoidable server dreams I have from time to time where I dream am at work, and have 100 tables to take care of and everyone is yelling at me. This was really happening. For every moment I stayed, trying to fake smile all though I wanted to murder them, I was begging for someone to wake me up.
posted by nola at
7:23 PM
1 Comments:
Damn you are a bitch! They were a few minutes late for their reservation. Suck it up. Being a server ( as I am) you know you will make minimum at least for the week (and lots you gotta take bad with the good).
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