Heinously Bad c2012 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     I missed out on a golden opportunity that'll probably never come again. I could've posted an episode of These American Servers  with the unusual date of February 29th on it, but I didn't. Events kind of conspired against me; I worked a double that day, I misplaced the charger for this computer and the material in the on-deck circle wasn't quite ready yet. But really, if I'd of had my shit together a little more, I could have made it happen. And the scintillating story I'm serving up now isn't what I was contemplating for that last day of February.That one'll probably show up here soon, this one's about a really bad Saturday night at work.
    

     Heinously bad weather was forecast for Friday night but it never happened. Sure, it rained a little and there was a lot of gusty wind and it appeared a lot like how I’ve been led to believe tornado weather probably looks, but thankfully, the threatened devastation never happened.. I realize a lot of bad weather did take place in the United States that day and my heart goes out to its victims. But all it did to us here was cause our business to be a lot slower than expected that evening. It really wasn’t that bad a night. I closed and waited on a good amount of folks, made pretty nice cheese. It was just slow enough to where I was a little less weeded than usual and could at least pretend to delude myself that I was taking good care of my clientele. Things were a little different on Saturday.

     I had this whole big room with ten fourtop tables in it all to myself. I think everybody showed up for work and the fault was probably with the schedule maker and maybe the Manager on Duty. I know a lot of servers that would love a ten-table station on a busy night but not me; I like quality tips better than quantity tips. Anyway, I conversed with the hosting professionals about it and was promised that they’d try not to kill me. They did kill me a couple of times but, I gotta be fair here, not nearly as bad as I expected when I saw that floor chart.

     I got pretty busy right away. My first couple of tables were low-maintenance and things went pretty well. The door whores kind of started loading me up pretty heavy, with some folks who were indecisive and/or persnickety, and it wasn’t long before I had the familiar feeling of weeds nipping at my heels and threatening my ankles, which is only appropriate, since it is after all the weediest restaurant in America. Most everybody  was pretty nice and I kept smiling and  managed to hang in there OK. Then ticket times started taking a little long. After that they started taking a lot long. I had several tables with 40-minute ticket times and some of my co-workers had chow take even longer than that.

     I think a lot of customers who stayed home on Friday due to weather concerns went out on Saturday instead. Our new GM, Desmond, was expediting. I don’t blame him for the kitchen’s meltdown. He actually held it together pretty well, all things considered, and I think he did a pretty good job under very difficult circumstances. The manager on the floor that night was Dale, assistant manager in charge of the waitstaff, and I got him to pay table visits to most of my tables that had food take a long time, which got to be pretty much all of them. I always make a concerted effort to never take the rap for shit that is my fault so I sure the fuck wasn’t going to take it for some slow chow that wasn’t. Dale comped a lot of product.

      The worst people I waited on that night weren’t all that bad. One of my booths was apparently located in a spot that was a little chilly and more than once people wanted to move from it.. A lot of my co-workers said that  they got some shitty tips but then enough good, possibly sympathy, tips to make up for it. A couple of the female employees were brought to tears because of some verbal abuse heaped upon them by some disgruntled customers who ought to be ashamed of themselves. I on the other hand walked with $100 on sales of only $400! I had a guy bring in some kids and leave me $30 on $39. Then another guy who works in a competing restaurant found me at a side station and give me $30 after the host of the table he’d been part of left me ten bucks on a $70 tab. I thanked dude very much and told him it was more than I deserved. I would have liked to have made a little less money in exchange for enduring a lot less stressfulness, but oh well.