I work at a waitor at international home of understaffed. It’s 24 hours on weekends and boy do I have a story.
So I live in this tiny little town that has a special celebration every years. I don’t want to name it as it’s specific to this town but in the morning families go to the college campus and have fun, almost like a little fair or something with food, shops and activities. That’s awesome and doesn’t effect me at work at all cause I don’t work till night shift.
What SUCKS is that after this all the college kids then decide to drink themselves to death starting around 7 after all the families go home. IHOUS is the only place that’s opened that late minus maybe a few fast food joints. Well this year my manager decided I could work my usual 9-6 shift by myself.
The bars let out at 2am but people start filing in around 12am and are generally drunk. On a normal day this isn’t to bad, I can handle by myself with my one chef but on this holiday? Oh boy.
So I get to work and the first thing that happens is that the person who washed dishes decides she’s going to skip out early and not tell anyone. It’s dead at this point and I’m getting ready for everything, around 12 it starts getting BUSY. People are lining out the door, everyone’s drunk, I’m running drinks, food, condiments, Togo orders, and cashing people out.
At this point I start noticing that my tables are all dirty! So I start cleaning while also being yelled at by college kids waiting to be sat. I have a list of a bunch of people and more signing in. Groups of 7,8,9,10 all wanting to be sat and waited on.
While this is happening I clean off a big table and sit this group of 7 or 8. This is when it really starts going downhill. It’s about 1 am. At this point after seating a group of all dudes my chef calls me into the back. He’s frantic as the dishes are piling and tells me the dish washer left an hour ago, I had assumed she was in the bathroom, so he’s trying to call my manager but neither of us get through.
I keep bringing back dirty dishes and start putting them on the floor. A table gets up to leave and I race over to cash them out, a group of drunk girls is sitting by the register and they keep asking me for water. I tell them I’m to busy they gotta wait till I seat them,
The girls then say
“Oh but I see a water machine right there we’re just gonna get it ourselves”
She’s talking about my soda machine, the one BEHIND the counter where I get soda and drinks for customers.
I tell them no, they have to wait. They tell me I’m an asshole and a dick and I can’t refuse them water. I inform them I’m to busy and they have to wait. This dude sticks up for THEM and tells me I need to “Calm down”
I almost murdered this man, I told him to get out of my restaurant as I was to busy and stressed and since he just walked in I told him I didn’t have room anyways. He leaves after screaming about poor customer service and the ladies follow him. Fucking good.
I finished cashing everyone out (they apologise to me on those other folks behalf) and I run back to the table of 7 or 8 I just sat. Of course they all want milkshakes and “splashers” which are expensive and a pain to make. All 7 of them order the most difficult drinks. So I go in the back and make everything while running food out to my other tables.
I get them their drinks and take their orders, before their orders come out I have to refill their drinks multiple times as well as get them waters they didn’t even DRINK. I bring out their food and they all tell me
“I can’t eat pancakes unless they syrup is warmed up!”
I tell them I’m very busy and can’t take the five minutes to warm up syrup (we have to put syrup in small little dishes and warm them like that and one dish fits in my tiny little microwave so I’d have to hear how 7 dishes for 30 seconds each or more)
They INSISTED I heat them, one guy says “But I can’t EAT pancakes with cold syrup!” So in all the chaos I had to pause everything to heat up their syrup, on top of getting them more refills. At this point everyone’s yelling at me, either people want their food, to be sat or want cashed out. My chef is pumping out food like crazy and I’m running out of all my dishes.
I run into the back and pull out our plastic plates, cups and silverware to use as the chef has no more plates. I seat a few more tables before the big annoying table starts getting ready to leave. I give them their checks (I had to split them all because fuck them) and they ask me to get them a drink to go. I say okay as I just want them out, I run into the back and make them a drink and I come back out and they’re gone.
All of them are gone but ONE, one single guy out of their entire group paid for his food. He was the only one. My jaw legit dropped, they ran out of the place as fast as they could. When I asked the guy where they went he gave me a bullshit excuse and handed me exact change. Not tip. No sorry or anything. They racked up /80/ dollars in food and just left. I got written up for it too because “I should have watched them closer”
After they left I was defeated, I cried in the back for a few minutes and came back out to more chaos. I’m not one to cry or get overwhelmed easily so this was a big deal for me!
I continued to serve everyone and finally the last customers were sat. I thought I was in the home stretch as me and my chef cleaned when the last table I had, very last, called me over for more water. I made my way to them with their water and their friend, who had been passed out, turned to me and got sick all over the floor just hardly missing my shoes.
Guess who had to clean it!! Not only that but he did the same in the mens bathroom, getting sick in the SINK of all places.
I went home with almost 200 dollars but that wasn’t nearly enough. By myself I sold 2,000 dollars in food and that’s not counting the amount I sold before the rush. That’s ALOT for one person. I ended up having to pay the back a good chunk of my tips and so many people stiffed me. I went to McDonald’s after work for breakfast and sat in the back and cried again for like ten minutes because I hadn’t eaten a thing all night and I was so stressed out. The only redeeming part of that entire night is that I made the rest of the money I needed for my top surgery but aside from that it was shit.
So fuck customers! And fuck that dishwasher who didn’t get in trouble AT ALL and fuck that stupid holiday. That was probably one of the worse days of work I’ve ever ever had.
Tltr;
I’m a waitor and I was left alone on one of the busiest nights of the year, my dishwasher left early causing me to run out of dishes, got yelled at a lot, a group of 7 or 8 ran out on their bill, and someone almost vomited on me. To top it off I got written up for no reason. Fuck customers.
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