You’ve been voted off the island!

It’s surprising that every restaurant that I have worked at really only has one thing in common and I’m sure there are millions of restaurants around the country that deals with the same issue: the staff dislikes how management runs things. It always seems to be that the majority of the staff believe that management has lost touch with their “line” or “floor” roots and has traded their ability to make seemingly easy decisions that even a 12 year-old could make for a bigger paycheck. Whether it’s the time to cut staff members from the floor, seating rotations, or even whether or not to be open on certain days, the minions who serve under the overlords apparently know everything.

I came up with this interesting idea after talking with one of my co-workers who had, like me, been in the industry for a long time. If the waiters and cooks are constantly complaining about how management runs the restaurant, why not have a restaurant that was completely run by the staff? No managers. No private owners. It didn’t take long to throw together how exactly this type of setup would work, but we came up with a small set of guidelines.  Basically, we tossed around the conceptualization of the phrase “if you think you can do a better job, you do it”. Of course, the restaurant could only have one name: Republic.

1. At “Republic”, the staff must be comprised of people who have been in the industry for at least 5 years, preferably performing the same job. New hires must also have a large amount of experience as you really don’t grasp the mechanics of a restaurant until you’ve been in the industry for a long period of time. The staff must sign documentation saying that they take on full responsibility for their actions and will not take advantage of his or her fellow staffmembers.

2. Rules will be drafted by the staff and voted on by majority rule, but other decisions are made with the trust that the staffmember knows what they’re doing and adheres to those set rules (i.e. You may leave if the restaurant is dead and in a state that two servers could handle the entire restaurant, or a decision to close the restaurant on regularly slow shifts)

3. Each staffmember will have a job. There will be no executive chef (as it denotes power over others), so a staffmember of the kitchen will be responsible for ordering foodstuffs, another responsible for ordering untensils, etc. Same goes for servers, everyone has an important job that would take the place of a manager’s workload.

4. Should a staffmember of “Republic” break a rule and would be in need of being fired, either that staffmember will step down on their own, or the majority will vote to have them removed from the restaurant staff, essentially voted off the island.

If you have any other ideas of how a restaurant run by only staff would work, lets hear it. It is just a concept, however, but should anyone decide to actually do this, I expect royalties!

I think I’ll have the caesar salad.

I’ll admit that I can, indeed, be condescending. But in my defense, I only condescend ignorant people – those lacking common sense – and I never show it. I’ll verbally question someone’s driving skills (and whether or not their car consists of excrement) when they travel down the interstate going 55 when the speed limit is 60 and I’ll even wonder to myself if everything IS so easy a caveman could do it, why can’t this person in front of me at the grocery store figure out the self-checkout counter.

A lot of things are fairly common sense, so you would imagine that it would be common sense that when you give your patronage to a fine dining restaurant that specializes in a certain cuisine – whether it’s seafood, Chinese, or Italian – you would want to sample something from that specialized menu. Unfortunately, not all Americans have this elusive, fundamentally simple concept of “common sense”. These people are easy to spot in the dining room: they’re the ones spending $18 for a salad consisting of romaine lettuce, caesar dressing, chicken and grated pecorino-romano cheese.  That’s right, $18 on a chicken caesar salad that you could easily make two at home for under six bucks.

As many of you know, I recently commented for an article in Reader’s Digest where I was quoted saying that if you order fettucine alfredo, it tells me two things: you aren’t an adventurous eater and you don’t dine out much.it’s cheap to make and it’s a recognized flavor.  This is why restaurants put it on the menu. It’s easy and cheap to make, it’s a recognized flavor and we can charge you a 100% mark-up on it, because we know you’re still going to order it over the hoison-glazed duck breast with haricots verts and pilaf.

Last night, my last table consisted of three women who, from the onset, I instantly picked out as being “hotel people” (people who stay at one of the nearby hotels and this is one of the closer restaurants). These fine ladies, who found themselves wandering in the best fine dining seafood restaurant in town, proceeded to order a steak frites – well done, of course, and with A-1 steak sauce – and two chicken caesar salads. I’m telling you, people, I can spot them a mile away. It was no surprise to me when their check printed out to be $65, when they could have walked another block to Ruby Tuesday and gotten the same three dishes for twenty dollars cheaper.

I understand that sometimes you might select a restaurant because of a flashy sign, or it’s location to your hotel, but implore all customers to first read the sign on the door, scan the menu and realize what style of dining the restaurant is and order something accordingly. If you’re allergic to seafood or aren’t in the mood for Italian, either order something that sounds good (and won’t kill you) or walk down the street to a generic chain restaurant that you’re familiar with.

Mind you, I have no problem selling someone a $18 chicken caesar salad, but this blog is about educating the masses. Select the restaurant for the specialty menu, or your bill might just end up schooling you.

It’s just so gosh-darn trendy!

Quite often, I have people who will accuse me of being a some form of prejudice. Usually the accusation comes from someone who hasn’t worked in a restaurant when I comment on a certain group of people who tend to act a certain way in restaurants. The interesting thing is that when you deal with the massive amounts of people that we in the restaurant industry do, you notice trends.

Trends in the way people act, how they’ll order, how they’ll tip, if they’ll sit for a while, etc. I could go on and on about the different ways I have dissected the public. If you’ve read the “About Me” page on this blog, you’ll know that I’ve worked in the restaurant industry for about eight years now. That’s a long time to be in any certain kind of industry, especially food service. The interesting thing is that for anyone who works at a job long enough, you start to notice trends. Ask someone who has worked at a gym for a couple years what the biggest trend they notice and they’ll tell you that gym memberships spike in January (if you need help figuring out why, comment below).

In a restaurant, since we have to deal with a massive amount of the public, one can’t help but notice trends that follow certain demographics of socioeconomic statuses. The thing about it is that everyone goes out to eat, whether they’re rich, poor, white, black, foreign or domestic. Everyone. It’s time to face the truth: when you go out to eat, you automatically are pre-judged whether you know it or not. It’s not that your waiter is racist, ageist, sexist, or any other -ist you can think of, it’s just the trend.

I’ll toss out an example and if you are offended by it then you need to pay extra attention, because you are probably the perpetrator of the trend. The demographic I’ll throw under the bus is groups of women (figuratively, not literally). Women, when they are with other men, are perfectly fine diners, but when grouped with other women can be a nice little group of trend-followers. Groups of women will, quite often, do three things: 1, they eat light; they don’t want to look like a pig in front of their friends because as a gender, they are fairly self-conscious.  2, they eat cheap; they don’t want to look like a big-spender if their friends aren’t looking for an expensive meal together. 3, they camp; I understand that a working woman doesn’t have a lot of time to spend chatting with friends, so when they get the opportunity to chat, they will chat for a long time. Often they will sit and chat for hours after the meal is over, or what we call “camping”. I’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings by saying this, I’m just letting the public know about the types of trends we notice.

On one occasion, I got two tables of women sit down at the same time, at 6:00. Neither group of women got up until four hours later, right before the restaurant closed. Between the two tables, the bills were a combined $65. I ended up making $12 in four hours between those two groups of women, because they ate cheap, ate light, and camped.

Now, I’m not saying that all groups are like this, just as I’m not saying that all demographics follow trends. But, if I notice these things happening 60-70% of the time, I’m definitely placing my bet with the trend. I have no idea how these trends are started, all I know is that they exist. You certainly shouldn’t think that I’m making this stuff up, either. I’ll wait on something like 20-40 people per shift, 8-9 shifts per week, 52 weeks per year. That’s over 106,000 people I’ve served in the course of eight years. So, whatever I tell you it truth, you can take it to the casino and bet on it all night long.

In the deepest, darkest recesses of the restaurant lies…

Through the french doors behind the hostess stand, around the marble fountain, past the bathrooms and kitchen doors, down the 13-step dimly lit staircase, and a walk across The Black Chasm of Khazad-dum -while your hostess fends off the balrog- lies the deepest secret of every restaurant: “The Shitty Section”.

It’s true. Every restaurant has “The Shitty Section”. The aforementioned description of how to get to it is (as it is custom on this blog) a little exaggerated, but the waiters who have worked at their restaurant for a while have already started to chuckle at the reality of it. The Shitty Section is usually a set of a few tables a little out of the way of the main part of the restaurant that hardly ever gets seated. If the waiter is fortunate enough to get customers in that section, it’s only because the rest of the restaurant is full. In fact, a hostess will seat customers in one waiter’s section twice (double-seating) before even bringing a group of guests to that Shitty Section.While everyone else in the restaurant might break $100 that night, the sad-sack waiter who’s stuck in the Shitty Section is pulling in his regular $2.13 sitting around on his ass waiting for 8:30 to roll around so he can go home.

The Shitty Section can either be a stepping stone or a punishment depending on how the restaurant is run and if the managers like you. A restaurant will usually put the newly-trained waiter in this section for a couple weeks (or months) so they learn the ropes without running the risk of getting too swamped. After they’ve put their time in, the newly-trained waiters will be put into the regular rotation. In restaurants that operate by seniority, the new waiters might find themselves stuck in the section until someone above them on the totem pole quits and a new waiter is hired. However, management quite often knows that these sections are less desirable and use them to punish waiters they dislike.

In my current restaurant, there was a manager that enjoyed picking out one waiter to screw over. He would give this waiter he didn’t like the Shitty Section no matter where they sit on the totem pole, almost ensuring that they’d eventually quit because they weren’t making any money. For three months I was the unlucky soul this manager decided to pick on. I started to keep a tally of where he’d put me each shift and no matter who was working, there I was, in the Shitty Section. Eventually, he gave up when he realize I wasn’t going anywhere. I had won the war, defeated the balrog, and claimed my rightful place among the rest of the waiter clan!

Restaurant Nightmares, Part III

The next installment of Restaurant Nightmares! Today’s theme: Spillages! If you want your funny, disgusting, or disturbing story featured on Server Not Slave, email it to me at Servernotslave@gmail.com with the heading “Restaurant Nightmares”, and leave your initials and state for me to recognize you.

Little Miss Grabby-pants

Sometime ago I was waiting on a large party of 9, I had taken their drink order and returned to the table with a tray full of all their beverages perfectly balanced. I began to place the drinks in front of each guest when one wise ass guest thought it was a great idea to just grab her drink off of my tray and before I could say not to to do that the entire tray toppled over on to her. as she stood there screaming at me I just simply said “that is why you never ever grab anything off of a servers tray” and your dry cleaning is now your problem.

- NR, from N/A

Face-full of “yee-haw!”

I was working in a well known italian restaurant, they make you wear ties and aprons to your ankels.  Toward the end of the dinner rush a family came in.  They were an all around crappy table, but that didn’t make me feel any better about what happened!  The kids were out of control too.  At some point in the meal, someone asked for a bottle of texas pete! We didn’t keep but maybe 3 bottles in the back and they all looked gross so I put some into a plastic ramikin. Dinner drug on.  I started collecting the empty plates and they were already haphazardly stacked for me.  I pick up the tallest stack and half way over the table the plates shifted slightly. I didn’t know the ramikin of texas pete had been placed on the edge of one of the plates that shifted so IT FELL OFF!  It happened in slow motion!! It splatted to the table and hot stuff went everywhere! Including all over the mean grandma’s shirt and the poor little uncontroled pre teen’s face!  The boy started screaming at the top of his lungs (who could blame him) and all I could do was mutter “I’m sooo sorry! I’ll be right back with a clean wet rag” and left in tears my self! The manager wouldn’t let me back out until they left they were so mad at me!  I wasn’t even the one who put it there! I never would have been so careless.  I felt terrible the rest of the night, but it made me so angry that they blamed me when I didn’t even know the ramikin was there! But what can you do?

-AF, from N/A

No more freebies

So I was cocktailing at a night club I used to work at one night. It wasn’t too busy so even though these ladies didn’t tip me for their first round I still went back and took their order a second time. One of them was drink a bottle of beer and the other was drinking a tap. Well I had just their two drinks on my tray and when I took the bottle off the tray I some how managed to lose the balance of the tray and dumped the entire tap beer on her. I immediately apologize and get a bunch of towels and a new beer. She then asks if she can have the beers for free, which means I would have to buy them. Well it’s a shitty night, I’m not making any money, and they stiffed me once so I’m just crabby. I just give her this look and she’s like “you just dumped an entire beer on me.” So I told her yeah fine whatever, but “I just bought you your fucking beers and you haven’t even tipped me once!” and I walked away. I don’t know why but this woman really pissed me off, maybe because she was just an absolute bitch the whole time before this situation occurred I’m sure. So then she goes and complains to a bartender and wants more free beer, well this bartender told the owner so he calls me in the office. Thank God she didn’t tell him what I said. So I told him the not so bitchy version and at the end he asks “So she already got a free beer?” and says that she doesn’t need anything else. Haha bitch!!!

- RH, from MN

Restaurant Confessionals

Rang in an expensive glass of wine on an open bar tab party? Lied to a customer about the availability of a dessert because you didn’t want to make it? Let us know about it!

In a new segment I’m calling Restaurant Confessionals, I’m collecting brief stories about things waiters have done in a restaurant that noone knew about, but they’d like to get off their chests. These confessions are anonymous, so, if you have a confession to make email it to me at Servernotslave@gmail.com, titled “Restaurant Confessionals” with your initials (real or fake) and look for your stories every week!

Your tipping questions

It seems that the subject of tipping has taken over the comments section of my blog, so I figured I should address it. I’ve had a lot of people ask me about certain situations on whether or not they should leave a tip. The same couple questions keep coming up, so I figured I’d go ahead and give people a clear answer on these common inquiries.

Should I tip on to-go orders?

Yes, but not as much as you would if you were dining in. Many restaurants handle their to-go orders either through the hostess or a bartender. These employees don’t usually strictly work off of tips like waiters do, so they’re paid more hourly because the restaurant understands that the tips on to-go items aren’t generous. In fact, most people don’t leave a tip on a to-go order at all, so whether it’s the bartender or a hostess taking the order, they’re usually pretty happy even with a few dollars. To-go sales aren’t usually counted against the employee’s overall sales, especially if they are an hourly employee like a hostess. Therefore, the person who took the to-go order does not need to tip-out support staff like a regular waiter does. So, a tip of a couple dollars (depending on the size of the order, anywhere from $2-10) will suffice. Should the restaurant you order from deliver, you should tip more.

My food was only $50, but I ordered a $100 bottle of wine, bringing the bill to $150. What should I tip?

You should leave a sizable tip, but 20% is not really necessary. It really is a shame that all waiters assume that they deserve 20% on a larger bill. The waiter in the given case should realize that should you leave a tip of $20 on the $150 bill, without the bottle of wine, you might have given him a $10 tip on the previously $50 bill. Yes, your waiter has to tip-out on the $150, but it’s usually only a few dollars, maybe three or four. Waiters don’t usually see the flip side; that because you ordered the bottle of wine and tipped an extra $10, they made an extra $6 or $7.  The only egregious situation is if you didn’t tip on the bottle of wine at all. Then you’d just be taking money away from your waiter.

My waiter was absolutely horrible – the worst service ever! Should I really leave a tip?!

In rare, extreme cases where it’s obvious that the waiter has a serious problem with the line of work they’re in, it’s okay to not leave a tip. Why? Because if the service was as bad as you say, your conversation with the manager should end up with that person being reprimanded or terminated. Let me repeat that middle part in case you missed it: your conversation with the manager. You should never leave a restaurant having received terrible service without speaking to the manager – as Abraham Lincoln once said, “a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gal”. If you’re nice to the manager and tell them that you are unhappy, but want to come back, you probably won’t see that waiter again.

Everyone seems to want a tip these days, not just waiters. What’s the deal?

The restaurant industry is a completely different monster than anything else and no profession can be labeled as similar to a waiter. The waiter is the only job in this country that a company can legally pay someone less than the state-set minimum wage. It’s the only job that the government expects that a professional is going to receive enough generosity from the American people to make at least minimum wage. Can you think of another profession that relies on generosity like that? I call it “generosity”, although it has become a custom in our country to tip at least 15%, but I’m not going to delve into that subject right now.

Every other profession, the employee makes at least minimum wage, so it’s your own perogative if you should tip them or not. You don’t have to, but if that person provides you with a service that you feel they should make more than what they get paid, then it’s okay to slip them a couple dollars. For example, a bellhop in a hotel might only make $8, but he carries your luggage up and down the hotel for you. I would probably give the guy a $5 bill to thank him for saving me the trouble.

Don’t bother with those little tip jars you see everywhere (newsstands, chinese take-outs, gas stations). It seems like everyone is trying to jump on the “tip bandwagon”. Just don’t forget who you really should be tipping.

I hope that helps answer a few questions. If you have any more, feel free to comment or email me at Servernotslave@gmail.com

I’m sure you know better than me. I just work here.

There are a lot of things I know and there are a lot of things I do not. I’m sure everyone can attest that there’s a particular subject that they know about more than someone else, whether it be baseball stats or Tyler Perry movie quotes. Personally, I’m not a big fan of baseball nor have I seen a single movie by Tyler Perry so I don’t know very much about those particular subjects. However, should you find yourself sitting across from Meredith Vierra working your way up to a million dollars (that’s a TV show reference, people), I’m your man to call. I know quite a bit about useless trivia.

Sure, I can save your $16,000 question on how bees dance to communicate, but the thing I know best, of course, is my restaurant. Work in any job long enough and you have a tendency to learn everything about that place. How fast the kitchen slings out dishes across the pass, what time I should get to work so I can be the first to go home, and what wine pairs well with our menu items. Sure, these are mostly non-fact related but trendy, but it surprises me to this day that some people will still argue with me about everything from restaurant policy to menu items.

When I was working at the Italian restaurant, I had a customer come in and order a pasta alfredo. After consuming her halved-basketball sized bowl of carbohydrates, she nonchalantly asks me for a refill of her pasta. I told her that I was sorry and that we didn’t offer refills on pasta, but I’d be more than happy to order her another one. She continued to argue with me that she had seen a tv commercial that we had a “never-ending pasta bowl”. I corrected her, stating that it was the other corporate Italian restaurant and she demanded to speak to the manager who also ended up correcting her. Needless to say, she walked out of the restaurant in a bit of a huff.

What I don’t understand is, why do people insist on not believing me when I tell them facts regarding my restaurant? Sure, I’ve only walked through that door and slung on my floor-length apron for a year-and-a-half, but apparently you know better than I do because you dine there once or twice a month. You confusing my restaurant with a similar one across town is going to change my mind on facts somehow?

Yes, you may speak to the manager, but he’s going to tell you the exact same thing. Trying to go over my head or name dropping is not going to get what you want, either. It’s really not that hard to accept that you, as a customer, are going to be occasionally wrong.  Just take our word for truth as most of us are not out to screw you over.

If the adage was 100% true that “the customer is always right”, then meals would cost next to nothing and there would be fewer waiters in this world than repo men. At least they don’t usually have to speak to their clients and their paycheck is already loaded up on the back of their truck.

Hi, we have a reservation for “Smart” at 7:30…

Restaurants are like airliners: either they are similar to 99% of every airline company, or they are Southwest. They either take reservations or they don’t. Personally, I find restaurants that would prefer the cattle-call system that Southwest uses to be rather primitive, and usually employed by corporate restaurants. They would just rather open the doors and let the stampede of hungry bovine swarm the prime real estate that most in the industry would call “the good section”. If they’re going to do this, why not just set up a trough and let them eat at their leisure? Oh yeah, they have that – it’s called a buffet.

Reservations are crucial in a restaurant for many reasons. I wouldn’t even dare to bring my family out to a restaurant that didn’t have reservations. Walking in and trying to find two or three tables to push together to make a table large enough for eight can be a major chore. A group that size will end up waiting 30-40 minutes at 7:30 just on principle alone. Of course, some restaurants have tables that size that are saved for parties that large, but should a party that size not come in that shift, the server ends up getting the short end of the stick.

Also, reservations generally will let the rest of the restaurant know just how busy the restaurant floor is going to be that night. In a restaurant that has 40 tables and averages 120 covers a night, 15 reservations means that there are that fewer tables in the restaurant, leaving only 25 for walk-ins – the majority of the business a restaurant takes in. To the restaurant, 15 reservations means that the night is going to be rather busy. However, should there only be one or two reservations, the manager can make a decision of whether or not to keep a full staff and perhaps let some of his employees leave early to enjoy SIN night and get hammered by 8 pm.

Reservations are always a good idea and they can affect the customer, even if the customer is a walk-in. There was a recent TV show that paid a restaurant to let them pull a prank on the customers, telling them that every table in the restaurant was reserved, so they had to wait 45 minutes to an hour to be seated. The kicker was that every table in the restaurant was empty. Hilarity ensued as those customers threw a fit. One could take away something important from this situation, other than just a giggle: just because a table is empty doesn’t mean that it’s available.  Many times have customers argued with a hostess or manager because they see an open table that’s meant to be reserved for someone arriving 30 minutes later. The hostess isn’t going to change that reservation to please an angry customer. We’d much rather have one angry customer who had to wait 15 minutes, than having two angry customers, including the person who was smart enough to call ahead a reservation.

Think of it this way: a reservation is a way that a customer can say “I’ve decided when and where I’m eating tonight, so I don’t want to have to wait for a table when I get there even if it’s busy”. How great is that? It’s like being pushed through the velvet rope at a trendy Hollywood Club without sacrificing $100 to the bouncer, or performing some other dispicable act. Even the guy who looks like Bill Gates’ college-day mugshot can get a reservation.

A new name

With a possible book being published on the horizon and a confusion about the name of the blog, I’ve decided to rename the blog itself to make it easier for people to find and to relate. Since “You’re My Shadow Today” is nowhere in the website (current and future www.servernotslave.com), I’ve decided to rename the blog.

Friends and family have all suggested that I rename the blog (and pending book) to be “Server Not Slave”, since it’s so catching – and I tend to agree with them. It is rather catchy don’t you think?

Anyone with a link to the site on their blogroll, please go ahead and change the description to “Server Not Slave”.

Thanks to all for the support.