The Dance

A busy shift at a restaurant is like a dance.  It is a beautiful thing when everyone is moving at their best pace, skillfully moving around each other, everything falling perfectly into place.

The dance is different depending on where you are working and your particular role.  Bill Forrestt and Spoodles are servers… they each have this middle ground, this pace at which they can control everything to do with their tables in both the front and the back of the house.  I’m a manager, which, in our little local non-corporate world, means I’m running either the front or the back of the house on any given busy night.

When I’m in the front, I’m watching the door, bussing tables, speaking to each guest at least once during their visit, helping the servers, the hostess, the bartenders, solving any problems that arise with food, computers, toilets.  There is a sort of Waltz going on.  The movement never stops, but it also never appears that I am moving fast enough to be flustered.  I don’t want to guests to think I’m so busy that I can’t take care of their needs.  I want them to see fluidity and genuineness.  I want them to think that we can handle everything thrown at us with professionalism and true concern.  A smile is a big part of the front of the house show.

When I’m in the back, I’m generally expediting.  Planning ahead for what sauces belong on what plates, traying up food as completed tickets arrive in the window, hopefully not running the food into the dining room (because that fucks up my timing, yo).  When I’m expo, it’s my window.  You touch it and I’ll bite your damn hand off.  I don’t know ballroom dancing well enough to name this dance, but it’s a fast paced one.  Every move is calculated, planned out.  The movements are sharp & quick, but still fluid, my mind always on the next step.  The need to be flexible and willing to change the order of the steps is necessary, but the beat needs to remain steady, or I’ll trip.  One hand is saucing a plate for table 12 and the other is traying table 44, my eyes on the lookout for table 32 because that damned quesadilla is taking forever and the rest of the food is dying.

With any luck, the praise from at least a few tables will be enough to let me know that we danced well.  I don’t work for tips like my servers do, so I have to rely on verbals from the guests.  I have to rely on the number of meals or drink or desserts I didn’t have to comp on any given night.  I have to rely on the plates that didn’t get sent back to the kitchen to be recooked.

And then, I have to try to dance better tomorrow… even if tonight was the show of my life.

Cheers -

- Boss Sauce

Kitchen Awesomedential

So, I just started reading Anthony Bordain’s Kitchen Confidential.  Holy Shit… how did I not read this before now?  Fucking. Hilarious.  And, so true.  My favorite thing, though, thus far, is that he actually ends a sentence with two exclamation points!!  Brilliant.  I’ve always liked his honesty.  He’s a no bullshit kind of guy.  Not a fancy dancy celebri-chef, but a real chef.  One who’s worked from the dish pit up, and one who never expected to be famous.  Mr. Bourdain: if I ever get to meet you, I will probably piss my pants and bow down to you, all “I am not worthy” and shit.

~Boss Sauce~

Cars Are Not Good Indicators

The number of cars in the parking lot is not directly proportional to the number of guests in the restaurant.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t greatly appreciate you pointing that out to me, though.  I mean, I LOVE hearing, “There aren’t any parking spots left, I thought you’d be busier.”  Well, lady, maybe every. single. customer. drove separately.  Kind of like you and your party of 7 other old ladies.  That’s 8 parking spots for one table.  We only have like 30 parking spots.  You do the math, douche canoe.

Also, I’m not psychic.  “Why aren’t you busier?” is not a question I can answer without sounding like I hate you.  Unless it is 3:12pm and you just came in for dinner.  Or linner.  Or dunch.  Whatever you want to call it when you are eating an odd hour when nobody else is eating.  Then, I can say, “Oh, we’re not busy because it’s 3pm and we’re rarely busy at this time of day.”  Otherwise, I have no answer for you… but thanks for being Captain Obvious and pointing out the fact that we could be making more money if we had more customers… and if our parking lot was bigger.

Toodles,

~Boss Sauce~

There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don’t know how…

I work in a restaurant, so let’s just assume that I’m retarded.   Take all of this with a grain of salt. =)

 When there are 8 menus at a table, and two people sitting at it, it is definitely necessary for you to tell me, when I ask if you would like something to drink while you are waiting for the rest of your party, that “well, we’re waiting for some others.”  Wow.  REALLY!?!?!?  OMG!!!  THAT MUST BE WHO THE REST OF ALL THESE MENUS ARE FOR!!!!  Good thing you told me, I may not have noticed otherwise.

When I ask you if you’d like bread,  definitely let me know that you’d like butter.   Because how else would I know to bring that?  Obviously I DON’T work in the food industry, so I wouldn’t know that people like BUTTER with BREAD.

“My mahi-mahi tastes a bit fishy.”  This is my favorite.  Oh, your FISH tastes like FISH?  Oh, let me fix that for you.  Also, is your water too wet?  Is your lemon too sour?  Does your chicken taste too much like… chicken?  Because that is the same goddamn thing.  And I’m the retard.  (It’s probably a good idea for you to order fish, if you don’t like the taste of fish.)

Merrr.  I could go on.  Being treated like the dregs of humanity, when in actuality, very few people could do what we do, wears on one sometimes.  There’s a reason restaurant people are generally creative, versatile, musical, diverse, functional, gifted, and/or resourceful.  If you think you, could deal with people like you, for the most part you’d be wrong.  Give us some props people!  We bend over and take your shit, no matter how ludicrous or illogical.  One outlandish complaint, and your meal is free.  Let me pucker up and kiss your ass while I’m at it.

Just know, that we know, we can endure more than you on any given workday.  We can multi-task better than you.  We can problem-solve like you couldn’t imagine.   We can take a chaotic situation, which seems hopeless, and power through it.  We perceive things that you would never even consider.  We must suffer belittlement, humiliation, verbal and emotional abuse, with a smile and a “have a GREAT evening.”  And nothing you do goes unnoticed.  Karma is a cruel mistress.

Sleep on that.  =)  Night.

-Spoodles

In a Hurry

So, it’s 7:15.  Pretty much the height of busy-ness.  The phone rings.  I grab it as I run by the hostess desk with a super heavy tray on my shoulder because everyone else is too busy to hear the phone ringing.  “Thank you for calling Blah-Blah, this is Blah-Blah, how may I blah-blah?”  I’m expecting a reservation or maybe a takeout order… something I can easily remember (hopefully).

Boston Lady: I’d like to order a cahd.

Me: Excuse me, did you say you’d like to order some cod to go?

Boston Lady: No, a gift cahd.  For fifty dollars.

Me: Oh, ok.  Let me put you on hold for a moment and I’ll take care of that for you.

Boston Lady: Fine.  But, I’m in a hurry.

-STOP-  What?!  You’re in a hurry?  You’re calling a restaurant in.the.middle.of.the.dinner.rush. and you’re the one in a hurry?  Okey dokey, lady.

I drop my tray at the dish pit and head back to the phone.  I get Boston Lady’s credit card info and ask where she’d like me to mail the gift cahd card and the receipt.  She tells me that the card is for The Pirate and his wife… bar regulars who we see like 5 times a week.  I ask if she’d just like me to give them the card next time they come in, which will likely be tomorrow.  You know, a personal delivery.  One that saves me 44 cents.  She wants me to mail it.  No biggie.

I ask her what she’d like me to write on the TO:/FROM: line and if there’s any other message she’d like written.  She wants me to write Merry Christmas.

Let’s stop one more time.  You’re in a hurry to buy a gift card to mail to people we see just about every day and you want me to write Merry fucking Christmas on it?  You are aware that there are still 4 weeks left until Christmas, right?  And the local mail takes like 2 days?  And personally handing them the card would take less than 24 hours?

10 minutes later, transaction complete.  Line of people at the door staring me down because they probably think I am just dicking around on the phone.  Thank you, Boston Lady.  I just hope that next time you don’t call at noon.  The lunch rush crowd is prone to stampeding the hostess desk.

Super excited to mail shit,

~Boss Sauce~

Stupid Question: Is it nice out?

This, the very first post on Cool Beans Awesome Sauce, is a Stupid Question.  I can only imagine that there will be gobs of Stupid Questions in the future.  We get a lot of them.

Anyways… today’s Stupid Question:

Is it nice out?

The Restaurant has outdoor seating.  This means there are tables outside where you can sit and have a meal.  Obviously.  More often than you would think, we get someone who comes inside to the hostess desk considering to dine outdoors.  They ask, “Is it nice out?”

Really?  You just came in from outside to ask me, the chick inside, if it is nice out.  I’ve been standing indoors for, like, 6 hours.  You tell me if it’s nice out.  Douche canoe.

Word to your mother -
~Boss Sauce~