I am so mad right now, I could just... write a letter!

Things have been pretty slow the past few weeks at the ole Restaurant-o, so nothing fantastic to blog about.  Today though, I had the privilege to read over an e-mail sent to the restaurant by a customer and it inspired me to write a little something.


Of course, the e-mail was not a positive one.  No one ever goes out of their way to say nice things about a restaurant, a server, or anything else for that matter.  But people will spend ridiculous amounts of time when they are pissed about something- writing e-mails, making phone calls, writing letters to the editor, some self-absorbed people even "blog" about all the day to day nuances of life that piss them off.  Anyway, I won't get into exactly what the email said, though if I could get my hands on a copy of it, it would definitely be worth me retyping the entire three pages of it to post on here.  Yes, I said three pages... in an email... typed in a small font... with no spacing.  See what I mean about people spending a lot of their free time to express their dissatisfaction with something as inconsequential as a cheeseburger?  


A Few Interesting Points of the E-mail: 


Paragraph 1-2: Describing, in detail, how she and her two co-workers came to walk into our restaurant for lunch. The unacceptable time table for her food and drinks to arrive, she also mentioned that server was polite/nice.
Paragraph 3-6: In depth analysis of the running of our restaurant, steps to remedy the "appalling service" she received and a number of possible training methods the restaurant should implement, targeted at both the front of the house and back of the house staff.
Paragraph 7:  Listed specific interactions with server that she deemed to be unacceptable.  
One example:
-Customer: Why are you so busy?  Why is my food taking 40 minutes?
-Server: Well, it is our opening day, ma'am and we are a brand new restaurant, so things are taking a little longer than normal.
Paragraph 8: Explaining that several other in her party were in "the restaurant industry" at one point in their life and no one thought a 40 minute ticket time was ever acceptable for lunch.  And that under no circumstances should a server ever indicate problems in the BOH (see paragraph 7).  I guess revealing that it was opening day was some big BOH secret that the server 'let slip.'  And what person that has been "in the industry" goes to a restaurant the first month it's open, let alone the first day?  They certainly were "in the know."
Paragraph 9-12: Explaining that despite her terrible experience on what was literally our first day open for business, she loved the food so much she decided to come back.  This was followed by a description of our "appalling rude" manager explaining to her that, "sorry, we do not take reservations for weekday lunch."  What a dick.  


I guess my whole point in ranting about this customer's email is that what do people that write nasty emails like that think they will accomplish?  Will we change our training program to teach our servers to be "more personable" and to "show the customers more respect" as the woman suggested we do? No. We like our servers to be rude and unprofessional.  Will we start taking lunch reservations simply because this customer wrote a whiny email? No. Why would we when we are on a wait on a Monday lunch.  Will we all sit around and feel sorry that we offended a customer?  No.  Will we cower and bemoan the threat of never receiving this customer's business ever, ever again?! Oh let me think... um, no.  Will we all the servers and managers sit around after lunch rush, eating our employee meals, passing the email around and ruthlessly tearing it apart, making fun of the customer and later use the contents of the email for fodder for blog about waitressing? Probably.

No Tip Please- the $2.83/hr That You Pay Me Is Already More Than Adequate

The other day I had the honor of waiting on the owner of the restaurant where I work.  I've had this experience at my last serving job and I thought it couldn't really get more degrading and of course, I was wrong.

Allow me to elaborate on my previous "waiting on the owners" experience.  Well, not really the owners, but the owners daughter, her husband (who held some sort of made-up position in the company that was created by father-in-law) and their four children, which the servers lovingly referred to as "Demon Spawn of Satan." OK, maybe they only had two kids, but when they were pitching violent temper tantrums in the middle of the dining room during a Friday lunch, it certainly seemed like four.  Needless to say, when we saw the happy family enter the restaurant every server had an immediate need to use the restroom, smoke a cigarette or go get ice from the scary basement cooler.  And the server stuck waiting on them dealt with belittling adults and bratty kids.  I worked at this restaurant for almost two years and neither the owner nor any of his family, which I constantly waited on, bothered to learn my name, despite my name tag proudly displayed on the lapel of my short sleeve oxford shirt.  They dubbed me "Pocahontas" as I usually wore my hair in two braids.  Thankfully I have no Native American ancestors, so I wasn't offended by the nickname... uh, I guess.  At the end of the fiasco of waiting on this family, one could at least be assured there would be a 20-25% tip waiting for you, to compensate for your pain and suffering and all was right with the waitressing world.

My latest experience with the restaurant owner was absolutely lovely... well, all except for the end part.  It started by her quizzing me on the soup of the day, the lunch special and drink specials, which I passed with flying colors, followed by drinks, a course of soup, lunch entree and even dessert.  The entire meal was perfectly pleasant.  I delivered their $45 check, and anxiously awaited what I thought would be a fat tip to start my day.  After handing me the check back, I was told to have our general manager comp the check.  "Great!" I thought- she's not even paying out of pocket, so I'm sure to get a nice tip.  After they left, I went back to bus and set my table to find a whopping $4 stuffed under an ice tea glass- less than 10% of the check.  What the what?  I quickly tracked down an assistant manager to ask how the owner generally tips, since I was convinced there must have been something wrong with my service.  "Terrible" was his response.  Oh.  I started to ask around with the other servers.  Their responses were all the same- that I was lucky to get the $4, as the norm is $1, no matter what the check.  Absolutely appalling.  I would have been less offended if no tip were left at all.  At least then I could have justified that she has the mindset that she doesn't have to tip any server, that waiting on the owner should be "an honor" or "expected" or some crap along those lines.  Instead, she had to count out those four measly dollar bills from her purse and consciously think about how many to leave.  A sure-fired way to disgruntle any server. Maybe she took into account the hefty $2.83/hour she was already paying me. That must be it.

Look at me! I know how to type!

The other day I heard a news story (I use that term loosely because I heard the story on the Today Show) that said that blogging, they called it "self publishing," was so popular these days because it was very empowering for the writer.  I couldn't agree more, if by empowering, they were really meaning narcissistic.  That might sound negative and I guess a part of it is. Between blogging, tweeting, facebooking, foursquaring and flickr'ing we certainly have more than ample technological outlets to say, "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!"  With that being stated, here I am, starting my own, shiny, new blog.  I figured it's easier to fully embrace the narcissism, basking in its warm, gooey, self-important glow, rather than try to over come it.


This particular "empowering self publication" will mostly be about my glamorous job waiting tables, waitressing, serving, or whatever the politically correct term is nowadays for bringing people food and beer.  This is my second stint as a waitress.  I completed my first tour of duty during my college years at Penn State, back in the good old days when the only responsibilities I had entailed scraping enough tips together for rent and beer, writing a few papers and feeding my cat.  I've long since traded in those carefree days for a life that's much more stable and comfortable.  I can honestly say I wouldn't want to relive those days again.  I love being a wife, a home owner and a human being with a regular sleep schedule.  


Waitressing during college to make ends meet and waitressing as a "grown up" are two very different experiences.  I no longer want the sweet Friday night shifts.  I've worked one Friday night since I've started and it kicked my ass.  I am much too old, at least in my head, to be dealing with annoying drunk people at 1:00 AM.  So I'm enjoying my nice Monday through Friday lunch shifts, the money isn't as good, but the normalcy more than makes up for it.  One thing that hasn't changed- ridiculous customers and enough drama to choke a real housewife of Orange County.