#waitressing rants

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This happened on the second day that I worked in the restaurant I’ve been working at for over two years now. Right now, I know that I want to keep doing this kind of work for the rest of my life. I love my job, I love the atmosphere, I love the work. But I honestly think if it weren’t for this woman, I would’ve been completely discouraged to continue my work there.

The very first day I worked there, I had had a very rough way. I didn’t feel like this work was for me. Honestly, I felt like quitting right there and then. So my second day, I come into work and at this point I’ve only ever been a runner and I see that I have a bar shift. Now, I know that I am quite good at picking up things, but bad at mastering them so I was terrified.

What made this whole thing worse is that my manager helped me and at one point he told me: “Oh, and don’t worry about dropping glass or something. It happens all the time.” Those words signed my faith. That sounds dramatic, but imagine this anxious, slightly depressed seventeen year old shaking with nerves because she has to carry glass on a tray a little bigger than a dinner plate and she has to keep it balanced. That shit terrified me more than the bar shift itself did.

But as I said, I’m quite good at picking up things so after about an hour or so I had gained some confidence.

And then the ticket of doom came in.

Two glasses of white wine and three glasses of red wine.

The restaurant I work at doesn’t pour the glasses at the table, just to make that clear, so I had to carry them on a tray. Everyone who has ran drinks knows that wine glasses, martini glasses, anything that lifts the balance point of the glass a considerable amount above the tray is not the easiest thing to do. It feels like you’re carrying nothing and a lot at the same time.

So I went over to the table of these really nice people in they mid forties and put down the glasses of white wine, but as I was putting down the second glass of white wine I tipped the trey against one man’s shoulder, making it tip over.

Three glasses of red wine poured over the back of the woman sitting next to him and I could not have been more ashamed or apologetic. I was terrified of how angry they might be. Mind you that this woman wasn’t wearing black or something, she was wearing a baby blue cardigan. I ran to get a towel right away, but when I came back with the towel the woman stopped me and gently laid her hand on my arm.

She told me it was okay, said that I was doing a great job and that I should try again with the next glasses of wine I would bring them. It really calmed me down that she wasn’t angry at me.

When they left, I went back to the table one last time to apologize and the woman just... hugged me. I remember exactly what she said. She told me that I shouldn’t worry too much about it and that she owns a restaurant. She sees this all the time and she hoped so badly that I wouldn’t quit.

She really gave me some more confidence and God knows I needed it because the next day I worked was on the first day of Christmas.

Now, two years later, I am in school to become a hotel/restaurant manager or owner, I’ve been working for two years in that same restaurants as well as having worked at a few other restaurants, and I am taking an exam in a few days to start my way to becoming a sommelier.

I wish I could meet her again and thank her for the confidence she granted me in my way of finding what I was made to do. Thanks to her I have spend many happy memories at the restaurant I work at.

Yesterday, I just happened to think of her again, as I regularly do, because I was having a blast at work. Guests left early so me and my colleague put on music really loudly while we cleaned. We had so much fun and laughed so much. I wouldn’t have befriended her if I had quit that very day.

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For this past week I’ve been working at the restaurant that belongs to my school. Every day from three to around ten thirty.

You see, I study to become a manager in the restaurant/hotel business and this past week I got to put that study to use (even though I’ve learned barely anything yet cause I just started).

But here is my problem, in the Netherlands, if you do MAVO, you choose your trade at sixteen. In my opinion, that’s too young. After I finished MAVO, I choose to step it up a nodge and did that... and failed. The point is, I am 19 and I only choose what I wanted to study a few months ago. I am now studying what I want to continue doing for the remainder of my life, but most of these kids aren’t.

The first two days I had a group that was split up. So one part of the group would go wine tasting and the other part of the group would run the restaurant under my supervision and the supervision of several teachers(cause I am by no means a capable manager yet, or so I thought). The first thing I noticed is that these kids have no experience whatsoever in this trade. They barely know how to carry three plates, don’t know what I want them to do when I tell them to take a look at their tables, and when there’s nothing to do they stand in the kitchen waiting for me to tell them to do something while I asked them multiple times to just come stand in the restaurant with me. But that’s ok, these are all things they have to learn and that’s ok.

The second group I had was mostly girls and there was a student manager who I assisted. Two of them were a little bit older than the others. One was 18 and one was 20, meaning she was older than me. The girl that is 18 was a great help. The first day we had a boy in our group who was... less capable. He came into the group later and had some issues regarding his talking, thinking, and moving. She helped me manage and took him aside when I assigned her tasks so that he could help her and maybe learn something from it. It was a great help. The other girl... Well... She wasn’t that great of a help. I could rant about her for a good hour even though I’ve only worked with her for one night. This girl was lazy, unmotivated, and would sigh so annoyed when I gave her the littlest of tasks. Needless to say, this annoyed me. She had two tables of two people for fucks sake. That’s not that hard or difficult. Then there was one other girl who just had a big mouth and would blurt out anything and everything she had on her mind, but in a really snappy way. She tried to take control over the restaurant multiple times, but it was not her task to take charge. She was constantly in discussion with the manager, refused to do a lot of stuff, and was just overal rude.

The manager is a case on itself and I’ll give him a separate column for that. Sure, he was nice to me... because I am one year younger, do the same studies as him, and was his assistant manager, but even though I tried to be nice to and made jokes to him... he just... he didn’t get it. He didn’t get that I tried to be nice to him because he didn’t get my jokes even after explaining and he ordered me around in a way that isn’t manager worthy. At least in my opinion it wasn’t. I prefer a managing style where you leave everyone in their values, ask them to do stuff instead of telling them to do things, and thanking people for doing things. But the very worst thing of that evening was that he didn’t communicate with me. So I had no clue what was going on behind the scenes, I didn’t know anything when there were changes, but I was the face the guests had to deal with the whole evening. For one group, he told me there would be eleven people instead of twelve, so we took away one set of forks and knives. When the group came, they told us it was always twelve. Another group came two hours early, that’s ok, if you tell everyone. I was still having dinner upstairs, cause I had a break along with all the people who had to run my side of the restaurant, when they came in. From that moment on, everything was messed up.

But in the end, guests left happy and satisfied. And it wasn’t all bad. I had two girls who worked really hard and were great to work with. They kind of saved the day. Aside from that we had really fun guests and no one complained a bit. One person had a little issue with the wine I poured, but he just explained to me what I should do differently because I don’t know much about wine yet. He was super nice about it too.

And at the end of the day, for all of these days, I got compliments about how I took charge and that I create a relaxed working environment. So I’m really proud of myself.

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Dear asswhipe,

Let me get one thing straight right away. I liked working in your restaurant for as long as it lasted, but not thanks to you. If it were only you, I would've quit weeks ago. Actually, all was well up until a few weeks ago which surprises me considering you hired someone I can work really well with when things went bad.

When her and I were working hard, you were whining that we didn't work well together. When we were playing around a little and guests were smiling at our interactions, you told us to stop fooling around and work even though there was nothing to do. When her and I were joking with the kitchen staff and cheering each other up after one of your fallouts, you came into the kitchen and started making harsh jokes about us.

My conclusion to that is that you actually don't want your restaurant to run well.

Do you know why I'm in the kitchen so much? Because you are no fun to be around and the kitchen staff actually cares for me. When it's busy, the chef asks me if I'm okay and I do the same for him.  You know, behind your selfish back, your staff cares for each other because there is a constant threat. That threat is you.

And I wouldn't mind these things if you were actually helping at work, but no, you're always drunk. You're always sitting down or saying you won't do anything for the remainder of the night. When the night came that it was just the two of us working a busy night and I was doing all of the work on my own, that's when I made my decision.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I want you to find this and hope this'll make you realize what an egocentric prick you are, but I know you'll never know this is about you.

Lowkey, I hope you fail before you can retire so you can finally learn something that you missed when you grew up, but I'm afraid it's too late. You're already too selfish and stupid to learn respect. Oh! And I am not your succes project. Just because I am going to do a hotel management study doesn't mean I become your protegé. The only person that ever learned me anything in this restaurant is the chef who gets paid like a normal cook even though he is clearly the chef.

Goodbye,

Read all Restau-Rants here 

Hello everyone, here I am, back at it again with another rant. This one will be pretty short and I can already tell you the gist of the story.

As a waitress, I am not here to raise your child. You have to do that yourself.

So last Thursday it was incredibly busy. We had 130 guests on a day that was normally pretty chill. I worked upstairs on my own with the occasional help of one of my co-workers. At first I only had a group of 18, which was fine, but then people started streaming in and I was running around like crazy.

Now there was this one table of seven. They came with seven even though they said they'd be with four. So that was fun. But anyway, this table was pretty chill at the start. The children were fooling around, the mother was dealing with the children, the dad creepily winked at me every time I walked past, grandma and grandma were doing fine. I took their order and they requested that their son would have his main dish with their starters. Fine, I can fix that for you. No problem.

The problem however, was that I couldn't fix it because I forgot to arrange it because I was so damn busy. Fine, not their problem, I know that, it's my own fault.

When they were already eating, the dad came up to me and got angry. He told me that I had forgotten the meal of his son and that I should arrange it that very second otherwise the child wouldn't eat. So I went downstairs, told the manager the problem, manager talked to the kitchen and went up to the dad to explain and apologize. She then came to me and told me he wasn't angry at all.  Of course he wasn't angry towards her, because she has more status at the restaurant.

Fast forward to when they're done with their main dishes.

I take everything away and ask the mom if I should leave the son's plate a little longer because he hadn't eaten much. Turns out, he hadn't eaten at all. And she told me, and I quote: 'I just want you to know that, because of your mistake, my son didn't eat. And I just find that very unprofessional.' And then she continued to say those exact things again a few times with different words. I simply apologized and went on with my work.

Now normally, I don't let this get to me, but these kids were absolute brads and the parents were even worse. 

They were playing in a room where a few carpets laid. A lot of glass has broken on those carpets over the years, so I told the kids it wasn't the best idea to sit down and play on the carpets with their bare hand and feet. I mean, glass shards, those small ones, hurt like motherfuckers and you can't get rid of them easily. So the kids left and I think they told their parents I told them to screw off because the parents didn't tip and looked at me angrily the whole time after that.

But also, back to the son, I DON'T HAVE TO RAISE YOUR FUCKING KID. IF HE DOESN'T EAT, IT'S NOT BECAUSE HE GOT HIS FOOD TOO LATE, IT'S BECAUSE YOU DON'T TELL HIM TO EAT. 

Me: Maybe we should dim the lights. People might think we're open.

My colleagues: *laughing out loud*

Me: What?

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Christmas is always chaos when you work in a restaurant, but at the same time it’s the most organized time ever. But things always go wrong on Christmas.

At one of the restaurants I work at, the bigger one, we have a very organized Christmas. We all come in at 14:00 and get everything ready for the day with everyone that has to work that day. We eat dinner together at 15:30 and open at 17:00. When we open, all the waiters line up at the door and the manager has all the guests walked over to their table by one of the waiters in line. When they’re all seated, they already have bread on the table and the special Christmas menu. The special Christmas menu is a limited version of our normal menu and you can’t choose your desert, because there’s only one desert available and it’s always ice-cream. You can’t eat dairy? Well, sucks to be you. (No, but really we do try to find a solution for you because we wouldn’t want you leaving unsatisfied.) When the first group of guests leave, we clean up quickly, set up again, and get ready for the second round.

I was assigned to a room upstairs that is secluded from the other guests. We had a group of around twenty people there. That’s easily doable on my own, considering that was my only table, so I went to help the others plenty of times. First round went great. Everything went well, the group was nice, nothing to worry about.  And then the second round came along.

It started with the fact that the group of the first round left a bit late. That gave me very little time to clean the tables. A colleague went to help me, but I was assigned to the bar the second round so I had to get over there. She said, don’t worry about it, you just do this quickly, I’ll take care of the bar.

She didn’t.

Well, she did, but she never has bar shifts so she just wasn’t quick enough. So when I was done with the tables and the first group was seated, I walk over to the bar and see a few tickets(?) laying there that had yet to be done. The one that was ordered first had a cup of tea on it and we don’t have a coffee machine upstairs, so I had to go downstairs. I get downstairs, make the tea, go upstairs, finish the ticket, walk it out.  The colleague that was supposed to help me is at a loss and another one comes to help me. Sarah.  Now, if Sarah helps you with a bar shift, you’ll be done faster than lightning. She’s just that quick. So I fly through my tickets and then I have to go downstairs again to get another drink that we don’t have upstairs. When I get upstairs I see Sarah talking to the assistant manager and I got so furious when I heard what they were saying.

It went like this:

Sarah: “Liz’s a little slow, I already got a few complaints that the drinks took so long.” Ass. Manager: “Okay.” Sarah: “I can take the bar shift if you’d like me to.” Ass. Manager: “Yeah, you do that. Liz, can you go back to the back room?” Liz: “Of course, why?” Ass. Manager: “Sarah is taking over the bar.”

I was fuming with anger.

I work three days in the week there, I worked so hard to get the bar back on track and now you’re telling me to do something else? Just when I got everything back in control? Get lost.

It took me half an hour to calm myself down and put on a smile again. I have a lot of bar shifts and I do my job well. I barely get any complaints, but when I suddenly get one or two complaints I can get the fuck out.

Thanks man.