Tips and The Twelve Trials of the Server

The job of a waiter is, in the abstract, very straightforward. Customers arrive, you take their orders, you bring them food. They pay you, leave you a tip, and you clean their tables and do it all over again. You smile, say nice and clever things to the customers (or try to) and everyone goes home happy. The End.

Uh, no.

First, you have about 10 simultaneous jobs, that is if you're lucky. Job 1 is greeting customers that have just come in the door and seating them in the appropriate rotation among the server stations. Job 2 is getting to your customer tables and getting their drink order. Job 3 is making and bringing their drinks to them, which may be a simple as a Coke and a glass of water, or as complex as making a half-dozen specialty beverages, mixing a milkshake from (hand-scooped) ice-cream and milk, or even adding additional cherry syrup to a Cherry Coke for a guy who wants a "very Cherry Coke".

Job 4 is getting the customers' food orders (quickly and correctly) with a menu that rivals quantum string theory in its possible number of variations. Job 5 is entering the customers' food order (quickly and correctly) into the labyrinthine touch-screen Point Of Sale (POS) system wherein even the most trivial item (say, a side order of green beans) can puzzle even a manager for more than a few minutes. We note here in passing that the names on the menu bear at most a passing resemblance to the ones on the POS system.

Job 6, oops, forgot already, is upselling. That is, getting customers to buy additional food and drinks they don't really need. Such as cheese sticks, buffalo wings, extra-sugary drinks, hot-chocolate, milk-shakes, and cream-drenched soups. This should start from the very beginning and continue even after they have gorged themselves on enough food to feed China for two weeks. You must remember to ask them every time, before they attempt to roll their distended forms out of their chairs, would you like some dessert?

Job 7 is preparing and delivering, well before the main course, soups, salads, and dinner rolls. Soups must be carefully ladled into the appropriate bowls, and accompanied with crackers and soup spoons. Salads are assembled from lettuce-mix, tomato, onions, croutons, cheese, and dressing of choice (sometimes on the side) with a chilled fork.

Job 8 is delivering the hot entree as soon as it comes through the cooks window with the appropriate sauces and condiments. Job 9 is refilling drinks and making sure the customer has everything they need to enjoy their meal. Job 10 is delivering the check, while remembering to push desert.

I said 10 jobs? Well I lied. Job 11 is clearing away plates that the customer no longer needs. Job 12 is taking payments at the register, remembering to correctly apply coupons and manually marking them with your initials and the letters "VOID". Job 13 is clearing away the remaining plates and glasses and wiping down the table with disinfectant. Job 14 is resetting the table for the next customers with silverware, desert menu and appetizers properly featured.

Those are your 14 jobs on a good day, that's when everything is going according to plan. That doesn't take into account running back to the dishwasher area to grab bowls, cups, or glasses that you need to prepare an order, soothing the histrionics of another server so that they won't attempt to remove your kidney with a buttter knife, or going back to the table to apologize to a customer, or that we are out of green-beans and so would they like the corn instead?

When you are done, sometimes there is money on the table, and sometimes there isn't. But you won't know if you've been stiffed until the end of the shift when you get your charge tips and probably not even then. Because by the end of the shift you only care about the totals and don't even remember which table was which.

Occasionally though, one table sticks out because you did everything right, the check was significant ($70 buys a great deal of food at PG13) and you find only $3 on the table. Or you didn't get their food out and they left but left you $2 anyway. And then there are the tips especially worth keeping.

The other night one of the servers didn't come in so we were short handed. And we kept getting large parties (8 or 10 or 12) and so I was running around semi-breathless trying to keep up. A pleasant young couple who laughed at my mistakes left me a couple dollars, one that had written upon it with blue magic marker:

"Tim--you need a Break --Thanks, C + J"

They were right.

Reflections on the big day. Hint: it's not a memorial to something that happened 5 years ago.

"Think about what day tomorrow is."

Last night at PG13, Ms. Exasperation happily chided Chino about his plans for Monday evening. "You know what tomorrow is!"

For half a moment I thought I was going to hear (and have to carefully distance myself from) political discussion of 9/11. But the tone was one of fun and celebration, not of sober memory.

"You should watch it with us," she continued.
"You should come with us to Hooters--we can watch it there, " he replied.
"Yeah, but I want to drink, " she said, "and Hooters is too expensive."

I never heard the resolution of their plans--but when I got up this morning I searched the sports pages and found that tonight is the Chargers-Raiders game which is a big deal amoung some. I don't know which side Chino and Ms. Exasperation favored, but it is clear that politics, the war on terror, Osama bin Laden, et. al. are not any part of their plans for today.

Other events were even further from any consideration of memorial services. Harley, one of the managers at PG13, said "Your food's up--you need to run this to table 38." And then, "I'm out of here, Jamie's water just broke."

"Name it after me!" I quickly replied. He chuckled. "Congratulations!" came quickly from others. Harley didn't leave immediately. Ten minutes later he was still rushing around with the same level of focus and activity as he would have on any other evening. That gave me a chance to repair my earlier silliness when he took a minute to wash his hands, "Congratulations--I didn't get the chance before, but my congratulations." "Thanks, " he said smiling, as if to say "you were all right--don't worry about it."

So that left me for the rest of the evening working with Maestro being the manager. This was nothing but positive as the Grey witch was not seen even once the entire evening. Maestro, the GM, was the first guy who interviewed me and an individual for whom I developed an immediate respect. He has the build and focus of an offensive tackle with the decency and kindliness of your favorite High School teacher.

Maestro usually works only during the day and because I work evenings I have seen him only intermittently since I begain waiting tables at PG13. But with Harley (who has been working a couple night shifts a week) having to leave to be there to experience his kid's first squawk, Maesto had to work overtime.

I don't know if it's the male-bonding thing or what but I get along far better with Maestro and Harley than I do with Lady Greymane. While you might expect this, for me it is far from typical. I was raised by women after my father exited the scene due to a heart attack while I was still in diapers. I grew up around women and for many years got along better with women than with men.

And now, for once, I prefer the company of men. Cool.

The evening was largely uneventful--at the restaurant that is. I clocked in early to take a party of seven and was treated to another $3 tip on a $70 check. Other tables were mostly typical. It was a poor night for tips, but not a terrible one, and it was definately better than last Wednesday.

But I wonder if Harley's kid will end up being born on 9-11. No doubt, even before that day was branded into our national psyche, kids born on 9-11 probably had some measure of the "emergency" nature of their birthdays foisted upon them. Then again, maybe not.

But surely now a child born on 9-11, as they grow up and give their birthdate for this and that will find a weird intrusion of this unimaginable event into their lives through no fault or cause of their own. For a child born today, or five years ago, for that matter, it will be almost two decades before they can truly even begin to meaningfully think about what 9-11 meant and to them it will always be something historical, something abstract.

I rather doubt that Harley will name his kid after me. But whatever his or her name becomes, they will have to one day struggle, as I did, to try to understand events that happened around the time of their birth that were painful memories to their parents but mean nothing to the little one who breathes on their own for the first time today.

Congratulations, kid. Welcome to the real world.

PG13 is HOT and I don't mean trendy. Plus, more tales of the Grey Witch!

Every evening at PG13 I fight an ongoing, losing battle not to sweat. I regularly dab my lower lip with paper napkins, wipe my face down during breaks, even sneak 30 seconds (when I can) in the walk-in freezer. So it should be no suprise that when I come home after a long shift I usually take a shower.

But not last night. More on that later.

The day started well enough, I had a party of five (two adults, three children) and a complex set of meals for them that included 5-count'em-5 bowls of hot soup which I delivered flawlessly from a single tray, two entres for the man and so on and so on. Say a $50 check.

And a $3 tip.

They did thank me nicely when I rang them out at the register. And raising three kids can't be cheap. And of course that makes all the difference in the world.

I'm not bitter. Really I'm not.

When I said that PG13 was hot, I of course was referring to thermodynamic not fashion temperature: PG13 is definately not the place where fashion reigns. Yet right after the family of 5 left I waited on a very attractive and shapely woman with her young son who was wearing a gi with a coloful logo on the back. I politely and charmingly (if I do say so myself) engaged her in conversation and brought her and her son's food promptly making one mistake (giving her french fries instead of onion rings) which I quickly fixed. Say a $14 check.

And a $5 tip.

When I shared this with Spunky, mentioning the attractive woman and the child she said "you mean the woman in the Luis Vuitton top?"

"I meant the woman with the--uh--I dunno, " I replied, not being able to quickly think of a polite word to describe the young woman's delectable decoletage. "That's Ok," Spunky replied, "you're a guy. You wouldn't know."

Staring down at the space behind a plunging neckline is another constant struggle for this member of the male wait-staff at PG13. I find my eyes drawn to any significant bosom, largely indifferent to the larger picture presented. And so I am presented with another battle of yet a different kind of heat.

And considering heat, the Grey Witch was largely quiescent last night, appearing almost entirely in her helpful Lady Greymane guise. The Witch appeared only briefly when it hissed at me to "Clean your tables!"

This emotional personality flip is something not limited to Lady Greymane AKA the Grey Witch. Spunky is mercurial, with an incredible smile and a warm, embracing nature but also wielding a shockingly acerbic tongue. And there is another waitress who previously ran around almost postal and then returned two days later only to be kind and helpful.

Last night, Lady Greymane even recounted one of the registers for me after I explained to her that I thought that I had accidentally given it $5 of my own money while making change. I was right, I had, and she returned to extra $5 before I left for the evening.

I had my best night of tips, about three times as much as the night before. Shows what good service and a little luck can bring.

And so I arrive home, just before midnight, throw off my sweaty clothes, loll around a bit, trying to decide if I'm too tired to shower or not. Finally, I decide that I must, and I head into the bathroom, pull back the shower curtain and ...

"What the F#$%^&! is this?"

My bathtub was full to the top with some dark brown liquid. Fortunately (?!) it wasn't what I first worried it could have been--it didn't smell. Either way, no shower tonight.

This morning I notified the landlady and she sighed and said, "they were working on the bathtub in one of the units upstairs. I'll call the plumber."

And so now, barely an hour before my next shift, after heading out for breakfast, then returning after the plumber had done his dirty but necessary deed, after sanitizing the shower curtain and scrubbing the tub with Pine-Sol, and after lovingly tap-taping out this entry, I am FINALLY ready to take a shower.

Lucky me.

Broken Dishes, Spilled Drinks, and the Terror of the Grey Witch

I passed several important milestones during last night's shift: I broke my first plate, I spilled my first drink on a customer, and I realized that I was terrified of the Grey Witch.

The Grey Witch (not her real name) has long braided hair, black mostly gone to grey, and so I referred to her in previous posts as Lady Greymane. She is one of the managers at PG13 and the only one I did not interview with before I took this job as a server. Had I done so, I would have been less sanguine about my prospects of success.

She is another one of those few people that I have run across in life who (I am embarrassed to say) thoroughly intimidate me. In her presence I become mute and stupid--on several occasions I have proclaimed loudly "we are out of [fill-in-the-blank]: We need [fill-in-the-blank]" and the Grey Witch materializes behind me and says "They're right in front of you."

"Where?" I ask. "Right in front of you," she repeats. And she's right--the spoons or the garnishes or the straws are right in front of me. As she turns away I mutter to myself "Why am I always such an idiot in front of you?" "Perhaps," I continue, half in jest, "I'm just always an idiot." Another server overhears this and chuckles--of course I was unaware that he was in earshot either.

But enough of terror, back to comedy:

When I came in, the bus-tubs were all crammed full of dishes from the day shift, and there wasn't a dishwasher on duty yet. Clearing a table, I unthinkingly tried to cram another stack of plates into one of tubs recessed below the counter. Moments later I was greeted with a hearty CRASH and the sight of large bowl and a plate in several pieces. This was the probably the high point of my evening.

Not too much later I was bringing a tray of drinks to a couple with their three children--a cherry coke, a chocolate milk, and several other children's beverages which I do not remember. Following protocol, I give the kids their drinks first and then, while shifting my tray I unbalance the top-heavy cherry-coke all over the child to whom I just presented her milk.

I apologize immediately and profusely and the family moves to another table. They are fine and consider the whole thing more entertaining than anything else. If I had followed-up by getting their orders right that would have been it and would have been fine. They eat and leave not exactly happy but not disgruntled either.

And, sad to say, that wasn't the worst of it. Somehow, just before the cherry-coke deluge, I had taken the order for another pair with a child, gotten them their drinks and appetizer but delayed getting their order entered.

This is a good time to describe the Einsteinian time-dilation that I have experienced several times since beginning my work at PG13. This comes invariably when I get busy, am running orders here and there, refilling this drink, seating this customer, clearing of that table, and so on. Within my personal, subjective time frame perhaps 90 seconds transpires but, inexplicably, PG13 objective clock-time will record a full forty-five MINUTES.

I know this because the Grey Witch timed me. Actually, the system did that, and she just looked up the details when the customers complained. Quaking in my work-shoes, the Grey Witch informs me that "she just can't have that." For the rest of my shift I make damn sure I put the customers' orders in completely as soon as I get them.

You might think that was common-sense. And if all I had to do was deliver cooked food it would be. But with multiple customers being seated at unpredictable intervals, with previous orders coming up and the high priority given to delivering customers food hot, the need to ring-out customers at the cash-register, greet and seat those coming in, and remembering to deliver dinner bread and salads before the main meal--given all of that, the time required in navigating the labyrinthine POS system to enter the order is not inconsequential. And more than once I have fallen into a time-dilation while glued to the order-entry screen trying to find some obscure entre whose screen name bears no earthly resemblance to the customer's menu.

The rest of the evening passed without events of comparable significance. There was the usual $4 or $5 tip on a couple $50-plus orders, a businessman talking on his phone all through his meal, the odd-couple with guy in Mohawk and a bible and child in evidence, and three regulars who had VERY specific requirements and were simply not able to get an English muffin toasted to their liking.

Still, for me, it was an average night for tips. With several large parties, though, there were certainly a number of lost opportunities.

My 30-days are not yet up and I retain doubts as to whether or not I will be fired after my trial period completes. But I tell myself that's just paranoid. Still, after working every evening with the Grey Witch, getting fired might not be the worst thing coming.

Lesson #57 : The Cooks Butter Toast

There are several dozen small details that one must remember being a server. How to order dry toast correctly is one that I had not come up against until last night.

A well groomed Ukrainian gentleman sat down and ordered a T-Bone steak (medium well) and eggs (sunny side up) and dry white toast. Or at least that's what I thought I heard.

Later, upon receiving his meal he said he ordered dry wheat toast, but perhaps due to my inattention or the vagaries of accents I heard "whyt" not "wheet". One little phoneme misplaced and he is convinced that I can't get an order right.

Meanwhile I am trying to keep a table of four happy after a grown man spills his drink all over his mother while trying to read the menu and all the while I am running back to try to find out from the manager how much sodium per tablespoon our light Italian dressing contains for another pair seated at a nearby booth.

Back at the cook's window I ask for an order of wheat toast but I don't say dry wheat toast. I assume that's how toast comes: dry. But, lacking additional instructions, the cooks automatically butter it which I now unsuspectingly deliver to a completely disgusted customer. Why after telling me twice couldn't I deliver something as simple as dry toast?

But I don't feel bad about getting the toast wrong but instead at a deeply moral level: for heaven's sake, have we become so lazy that the cook has to butter our toast for us? Before last night it never occurred to me that someone else would butter my toast even before I thought about picking it up off of the plate. Just another detail this computer programmer never gave a thought to before putting on his apron.

At the register (which at PG13 we have to grab in-between taking orders, seating customers, and running food to tables) a table at which I have labored on and off for an hour with a woman, her adorable baby, and a doting grandmother comes to settle up their bill. They are all praises about the amazing service that I gave them and pleasantly the manager was standing right there to hear it. Apparently though, excellent service does not an excellent tip make--I only get $3 on a $25 order.

I don't know if I got a tip from the Ukrainian gentleman, but I do know that I get stiffed by demanding young pair who wanted to know about the sodium content of our salad dressing. And somehow that's fine. Blithe, young, and stupid yields no tip I figure is par for the course. But well-mannered, grateful and three lousy bucks? Waiting table is often a succession of petty insults. Truth be told I find the weirdness of it all humorous, perhaps because the experience is still novel. Will I retain that level of jocular indifference indefinitely?

PG13 cycles between doldrums and chaos--we had at least an hour early in my shift when there was only one table in use in the entire restaurant. Then parties start arriving and one of the three servers for the evening is on break and we are swamped. The high-point of the evening for me is one of the more difficult ones--at the counter, Lady Greymane (one of the managers at PG13) tells me to take a to-go order for two milk-shakes, then berates me (in earshot of the customers) for putting them in cups that are too big. The man and his daughter wait politely as I rush the two shakes out to them and then he calls me over, presses a folded dollar-bill into my hand and whispers "your hostess is an asshole." The other servers on this shift, Spunky and BigBrownEyes, both are delighted to hear this admirably pithy assessment of Ms. Greymane. When I get a chance to pass this juicy tidbit along they laugh and share some of their own gripes.

Somewhere during this shift, I think, I truly became a waiter.