Let me preface this by saying: I fucking hate serving ditzy assed females. I hate serving ditzy assed bitchy females. I hate serving ditzy assed bitchy young females.
EDIT: I’d also like to add: I know that not all sorority girls are like the ones I will describe here.  I’m sure I have many sorority readers, and I’m hoping you’re not one of the following or the previous.
I’m all about working parties. Really, I’m not lying about that, I do enjoy parties. This one, however, was one of the most annoying parties I’ve ever had the misfortune to be assigned. Today, myself and three other servers had the “pleasure” of serving 140 sorority girls….on bid day. I’m not going to say the name of the sorority because I don’t need a thousand bitchy old former sisters coming after me with the power of Ivy League father lawyers, but it was Kappa ____ _____. Bid day, with all the hundreds of fucking just out of high school females trying to be sisters, wearing stretch pants and throwing confetti and glitter around, feather boas losing feathers for me to sweep up as I closed tonight.

I didn’t know it would be a “Bid Day” party. Had I known that, I would have avoided working it. I got out of working it last year because I saw the results. Shitty gratuity, females scared to eat for fear of gaining a half ounce of weight, 2 boxes of diet coke syrup used up, countless bottles of grenadine making Shirley Temple’s, and annoying snotty attitudes.

When I saw them putting up their decorations, I knew what I was in for. Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck is it too late to get out of this? Yes, yes it is.

We get everything set up, while the sorority demons were putting up posters. They have a helium tank, and proceed to put balloons everywhere: taped to the counters, strung to the bar, ribboned to the glass partitions between the bowling lanes. Great to know I’ll have to get rid of those before I can take actual lanes tonight.

The party starts. We start getting drinks for these sorostitutes. “Oh my god, you have shirley temples?” “Can I have a shirley temple?” “Bring us 4 shirley temples!” Not only did they have really thick valley accents that snotty just out of high school girls have, but they were almost as perky as fucking cheerleaders. We ran out of 3 boxes of diet coke, 2 of sprite, about 8 bottles of grenadine. There was a ton of food left over because they were afraid to eat.

I also came out of this party with a major headache. Screaming and screaming and screaming. Yelling and yelling and yelling. Lots of girl on girl hugs doing absolutely nothing for me. Lots of girls dressed fugily, and more screaming. The last few malingering scumlettes started releasing balloons to the ceiling of my bowling alley. The bowling alley that I was trying to clean. Then a hostess who shall remain nameless decided to run through popping the balloons. Over and over again until me and Mr. S went off on her because we had to clean the balloon guts up.

All of this for a lousy 50 bucks each on our check. They didn’t think we were good enough for anything extra. Fuck you Kappa _____ _____, Fuck you right in your stuck up little ear!

Some interesting knowledge I’ve figured out on the tipping debate. I’m learning that people with smaller checks, around 15-40 bucks, don’t mind tipping 18 to 20%, or even 25%. 45 dollars and more, and we a lot of time get 10 to 15% of the check, no matter how hard we work. Anyone want to shed a little light as to why that is?

My idea is that people don’t want to wait for the change on little checks, but on big checks, they use bigger bills and want most of the change back. I get a lot of people with 25 dollar checks that give me 30 bucks and say keep the change. That’s 20% right there. 30 bucks, they give me 36 or 37 and say keep it. Sometimes more. The bigger the check though, depending largely on the class of the guest (ghetto, redneck, entitlement junkie), the lower the tip. 5 dollars from rednecks or ghetto trash seems to be the norm, regardless of the amount of the check. Entitlement Junkies? If there’s a check left at the end of the meal for them to pay, then their job is unfinished, and they’ll tip on the post-comped price if anything.

Tipping on post comp prices screws us because we have to tip out on the pre-comp total. The pre-comp sales are also held over our heads, because if we don’t claim enough money when we clock out to equal what the IRS thinks we should have made on those sales, we get an audit. So we have to claim tips we didn’t make. If we claim less than 10% that puts us in danger. Legally, we claim 100%, but there’s some nights that we have so much trash that we don’t even make that 10% to claim to stay safe.

New group of people I hate to serve after this weekend? Gospel Singers/Fans. Crowds of them came in Saturday night, an hour before close. They were still coming in 10 minutes after last call. They were bitching because we weren’t allowed to seat any more tables. They were bitching because of how long the food took to come out. Some Godly people those Gospelers. No tips though, lots of bitching about gratuity. Just go somewhere else.

Ribeye

It’s back, after the holiday hiatus. Round Table vol. 3 will be hosted this coming Monday, January 7th, by the great and wonderful….

If you want to get in a submission, go to his page and leave him a comment, or you can always send it to me and I’ll send it to him, just visit the Contact link at the top of my page. Otherwise, you’ll probably get one of your posts picked for you. I believe, unless something has changed and I’ll correct if it has, that the theme for this week will be Holiday Horror Stories.

Get your posts ready everyone, Round Table has returned!

On another note, I’ve gotten more RagingServer pens in, and RagingPartner and I are working on a new fun idea for them. Here’s what the new ones look like:

And because she was so cute a minute ago, another of the Raging Kitty, Skitzo:

I’m plain and simply put exhausted. We closed an hour later than we normally do on Monday nights, but none of the servers knew we were going to. We were short staffed all around. 4 total dining room servers, 2 cocktail servers in the bowling alley, and 3 of us in the game room. I ran a 6 table section all night long. I got my ass kicked, once again. The worst part? My dept leader was back from his time off today. He was there for an admin meeting in the morning, and spent the evening doing scheduling. Not helping out his department, seeing that we were getting our asses royally handed to us on a fucking platinum platter, oh no, that would mean actual work. This mother fucker sat on his ass in the office working on a fucking schedule. I was pissed. I’m still pissed. I want his job so fucking bad, and he wastes it. I’m so tired of picking up the slack for his fuck-up’s.

We also started out with 2 bartenders at the beginning of the night. Why the 2nd one had the nerve to leave at 8 pm, I’ll never know, but that meant that drinks were coming out very slowly. I ended up jumping behind the bar and helping out along with running my 6 tables. That was a blast, let me tell ya. I didn’t mind too much, I enjoy it when I go behind the bar, knowing that I deserved to get that job in the first place and didn’t. I’m sure I’ll get it next time.

Nothing major to say about the shift except that I got my ass kicked, and stomped straight into the ground with a stiletto heel. I’m in pain all over, and I have to go back tomorrow. I’ve also lost one of my 2 days off this week that I was looking forward to, that being Thursday…payday. I was really looking forward to having that off, stopping in for a half minute to pick up a paycheck and leave again. Oh no, I have to go in and open, and the gods only know when I’ll be getting out of there.

My dept. this week has been in a shambles, which is a big part of my frustration. I take that back, it’s not just been this week, it’s just been the worst this week. The “one in charge” actually left someone who no longer works for the company on the schedule, and said that everything was covered. How the fuck would he know that, he’s been off on his honeymoon with “Flip-Flop” the dept. boss of the dining room servers, his “roommate”. They took their vacations the exact same time. The day before Christmas Eve until today. They came back in town just in time for the admin meeting they have every Monday, but did they stay and help out their areas? Nope. The managers are royally pissed at the cocktail leader due to his short staffing and his excuses about it. Last New Year’s Eve that I worked, we only had 12 cocktail servers on the schedule, and we still had more on the clock on these holidays than we had this year, and this year we had 17 cocktails on the schedule. What’s wrong with this picture? I know that job can’t be all fun and games, but come on, learn how to write a fucking schedule, or people are going to start rebelling on you. I don’t know how true it is, but I’ve heard that a couple of people are putting in notices. More money for me, I say.

To the nice old woman that I cussed out, I really do apologize.  I was pissed off not at you, but at everyone.  You sitting down and nagging me about cleaning your table, despite the good tip you eventually left, pissed me off anymore.

Here’s how it went:

Ribeye: “Hey guys, I’ll be with you in a few minutes.  We’re extremely short staffed, and I’m running behind.”

Old Woman:  “Is there a server for this table?” No, bitch, I didn’t just tell you I was going to be with you in a few minutes.

Ribeye: “Yes ma’am, and I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”  I had my hands full of dishes, and was trying to get away.  I’d started to walk away when…

Old Woman: “Are you going to clean this table? We’ve been waiting a while.”

Ribeye now loses his temper: “I just told you I’d be with you as soon as I can, now fucking wait a minute and I’ll be with you as soon as I can!  How fucking hard is that to understand?!”

Old Woman: “How dare you talk to me that way!”

Ribeye: “Because you didn’t fucking listen to me the first time I answered you!  I told you once I’d be with you when I fucking could and you fucking had to keep it going instead of saying ok!  Just wait for a damn minute, Jesus Fucking Christ, how hard is that to do?”

They didn’t stay, which didn’t bother me at all.  I felt bad about it later, but when she sat down, I was running 7 tables, and couldn’t get to them.  I just hope they don’t call corporate on me.  Even if they do, they didn’t talk to anyone when it happened, so it won’t matter much…

I guess now that it’s happened, all the pissiness from work has built up and blown up at a poor defenseless old woman who could have probably beat the hell out of me with her gigantic shoplifter purse, it won’t happen again for a while.  I felt a lot better after getting it out though…

Oh yea…

HAPPY FUCKING NEW YEAR!

Ribeye

Another of my “Things to do and not to do” series tonight, mainly because I’m tired and as such my brain just isn’t working correctly right now.  Here are some of the things you can do to make your servers happy when you go out to eat.

If you say you’re ready to order, be ready to order!  We want to get your food in as quick as possible so we can get to our other tables.  Getting behind doesn’t make us happy, it puts us in the weeds.

Keep your kids under control.  When kids are polite and well mannered, we are glad to serve your family.

Be polite when you’re asking questions.  Nothing pisses us off more than a guest that comes at us asking things like “Why da fuck my food ain’ heah yet?” and “You do know what you is doin right?” If you want us to check on your food, then ask us nicely.  “I’m sorry, but would you mind checking to see how much longer our meal is going to be?”  I don’t mind helping out at all when I’m asked nicely.

Be polite when you’re ordering your drink.  “Can I get a top shelf margarita, please?” goes a lot further than, “Brang me dat Patron’ mahgarita main.”

If your food is running a long time, don’t get pissed off.  More often than not, it’s the kitchen running long, not your server.  Huffing and puffing and making demands of bread and free salads when the restaurant is clearly busy as Hell is just going to piss us off.  We’ll gladly bring you a salad on the house most of the time, as long as you’re nice about asking us.  Most of us will even offer it to you.

Don’t be snotty to us.  We’re there to make sure you have an enjoyable experience while dining out, and when you’re happy, we’re happy.  Telling us how much better you could do our jobs pisses us off.

We don’t make the prices.  If you don’t like them, please don’t take it out on us.  I don’t much enjoy high prices myself, but I don’t bitch about them, and you shouldn’t either.   Taking it out on us just pisses us off, and makes us less inclined to be nice to you or your crotch spawn.

If we’re out of something and tell you about it, but someone near you gets what you wanted, that just means we only had enough of that product to fill the orders that were already in the kitchen when you came in.  That doesn’t mean we just don’t want to serve you what you want.  We are told that we’ve run out of something by our managers, please yell at them and not us.

Compliments are nice, and we all like them.  Compliments, however, do not pay our bills.  Therefore, if you plan on giving us compliments, please do so along with a tip.  If we’ve deserved your praise then we obviously did something right and deserve a bit of cash as well.

When it comes time for the tip, please actually look at your bill and tip a percentage, or at least more than 10%.  For those of you older diners who think that tipping 2 bucks on every single check is still the standard, please remember that it’s no longer 1970.  The cost of living has gone up and as such, so has the standard of tipping.  I’m all about serving older people, I enjoy hearing stories, I enjoy flattering the older ladies and older diners are a lot of times more inclined to talk to us.  The problem remains that older people (older men mainly) tend to tip a flat rate of 2-5 bucks a check, regardless of if the check is 20 bucks or a hundred.

If you’re going to talk to our manager on the way out and are complaining, please at least give us a heads up so we can figure out what went wrong.  If it’s something you didn’t like about our service, at least we know.  If you just didn’t like the food or prices or something that we have no control over, please don’t go bitching about how horrible your service was and make demands for our corporate/owner’s phone number.  We want to see you flayed when you do that.

Ok, so this post wasn’t exactly the normal “Ribeye quality” you’ve all come to love/hate, but I’m tired tonight, and I have a long day tomorrow.  I just wanted to at least give you something.  More to come.

Ribeye

I’ve been thinking about some of these things for a while, and tonight just seemed like the night to post the list. Here are some things that you should just not say to your server when you’re out eating, either because it’s going to piss them off or because it’s just plain rude and makes you seem like a worthless piece of excrement.

“You missed a spot.”  If we’re cleaning, just let us clean.  There will be no need for noise from the peanut gallery.

“Fuck you!” You know what, Fuck you too!  If you don’t have respect for us, we’re damn sure not going to have it for you.

“How much longer on the food?”  We keep you as up to the minute as possible when your food is running long, so don’t keep asking if you don’t want to piss us off.

“How much does _______ cost?”  If you have to ask, then you need to cook it yourself.  Most prices are in the menu if it’s food, with alcohol there’s just too many prices to memorize.  If it’s not a bottle/draft beer or a well drink, then we probably don’t know right off the bat.  We’re not going to price check every fucking drink until you find the cheapest with the most liquor.  Just order and worry about it later.

“It’s slow in here tonight.”  No shit, Sherlock.  I was wondering why you were the only table getting on my nerves!

“My food tasted bad, can I get it free?”  No, you ate the entire thing, you’re now going to pay the entire thing.

“This drink doesn’t have any liquor in it.”  Yes, it does, you’ve just had so much you can’t taste it anymore.

“What’s free?”  Nothing.  Absofuckinglutely nothing.

“Can I get insert non-menu item here?”  If it’s not in the menu, then it’s probably not something the restaurant has.  Asking for it isn’t going to change that.

“Do you give anything free for birthdays?”  No, No, No, NO, NO, NO NO NO, NO NO NO!  Go to T.G.I. Fridays if you want a song!

“Do you work here?”  No, I’m just wearing an apron and asking you what you want to drink.

If standing in front of the bathroom, this one…”Where’s the bathroom?”

“Can we get some straws?”  No, I’m just going to give you these drinks without them.  They’re not sticking out of my apron, or sitting on the tray, so you can’t have them.

“Can we get some silverware?”  No, I want to watch you eat with your fingers and make my stomach turn backflips.

“So what’s your real job, or are you in school?”  This is my only job, and I make more doing it than most people do in stuffy, boring places.

I’ve got a lot more things you shouldn’t say to your servers, but I figure the list is long enough for now.  But before I go, the number one thing to say that pisses us off, because it’s not funny and we hear it so many times a night:  In regards to the check, “I thought you were taking care of that.”  What the Hell would give you the idea that we would even consider paying for your meal?

Come back for more, very soon.

Ribeye