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.
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.
posted by PhilosophicalWaiter | 1:25 PM
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