Waiter Rant (28 page)

50 Ways to Tell You’re Working in a Bad Restaurant

• 1.
  Management hires you the moment you say, “I’m looking for a job.”
  
• 2.
  You start working Friday and Saturday nights the first week. (That’s because waiters quit with alarming regularity.)
  
• 3.
  Your boss doesn’t ask you to fill out a W-2 or ask for ID of any kind.
  
• 4.
  Training consists of a cursory tour of the restaurant and the headwaiter telling you “sink or swim.”
  
• 5.
  The restaurant doesn’t pay new hires a training wage. Trainees often get used as unpaid slave labor and are told after their “probationary period” that “things aren’t working out.”
  
• 6.
  There are porn screen savers on the owner’s computer.
  
• 7.
  There are porn screen savers on the POS computer.
  
• 8.
  The kitchen guys have names for the mice.
  
• 9.
  The employee bathroom is so gross it would be better just to have a hole in the ground.
  
• 10.
  The toilet paper in the employee bathroom could double for sandpaper.
  
• 11.
  The owner’s banging the hostesses. (How déclassé.)
  
• 12.
  There are always either too many waiters on the floor or not enough.
  
• 13.
  Employees threaten each other with physical violence.
  
• 14.
  The manager solicits bribes for good sections on Saturday-night shifts.
  
• 15.
  Owner, GM, or chef screams at employees
  all the time
  .
  
• 16.
  Owner, GM, or chef makes fun of a staff person’s significant others.
  
• 17.
  If a waiter makes a mistake, the kitchen staff would rather go on a power trip and watch the server squirm instead of fixing the problem. Of course, the customer suffers.
  
• 18.
  The chef refuses to make reasonable substitutions.
  
• 19.
  You start drinking more.
  
• 20.
  The restaurant doesn’t provide aprons or dupe pads.
  
• 21.
  You have to pay the owner a percentage of the merchant fee on your credit card tips.
  
• 22.
  The manager expects a share of your tips. (
  Illegal!
  )
  
• 23.
  They take money out of your check for staff meals but don’t feed you.
  
• 24.
  There aren’t enough teaspoons, so you hoard them in your apron in order to have enough to do dessert service.
  
• 25.
  The manager makes you empty your pockets, looking for aforementioned hoarded teaspoons.
  
• 26.
  There’s never any soap or hand sanitizer around.
  
• 27.
  Your work schedule can change without notice.
  
• 28.
  The manager is constantly calling you to work extra shifts and threatening you with dismissal if you don’t “help out.”
  
• 29.
  You show up for work to find the manager cut you from the floor. No one bothered to call to tell you.
  
• 30.
  Management tells you to work sick. (Good evening, I’m Typhoid Mary, and I’ll be your waitress tonight.)
  
• 31.
  If you lose a credit card slip, the owner takes the check amount out of your compensation until the credit card company transmits the funds into his account. You lose the tip.
  
• 32.
  The restaurant makes you pay for breakage.
  
• 33.
  Management makes you pay if a customer skips on the bill. (All too common.)
  
• 34.
  Busboys take uneaten bread out of a table’s breadbasket and use it for a new table.
  
• 35.
  You’re working a double, and the manager laughs when you ask to take a break.
  
• 36.
  You’re asked seven times a day if you’re gay or lesbian.
  
• 37.
  The owner tells you that you’re part of a restaurant “family” and that going “above and beyond” to “exceed customer expectations” is expected. After a couple of shifts you begin to realize the Manson Family had more on the ball than these guys.
  
• 38.
  The restaurant is dirty.
  
• 39.
  Heavy turnover of waiters, busboys, and dishwashers. The place is a meat grinder, and you are the meat.
  
• 40.
  The salad guy doesn’t use gloves.
  
• 41.
  You see the health inspector snoozing in the back.
  
• 42.
  Fire exits are always blocked by extra chairs, tables, or pieces of equipment.
  
• 43.
  The owner’s too cheap to give the staff a decent Christmas bonus or party.
  
• 44.
  There’s no first-aid kit.
  
• 45.
  The owner’s never around when you need him and always around when you don’t.
  
• 46.
  The restaurant has a video surveillance system that the owner uses to satisfy his voyeuristic control freakiness.
  
• 47.
  On your first day all the waiters tell you how much the owner, kitchen staff, busboys, and the other servers suck.
  
• 48.
  Waiters surreptitiously drink themselves sober while working Sunday brunch.
  
• 49.
  The hostesses tell the waiters what to do.
  
• 50.
  Waiters tender their resignations by screaming “Fuck this place!” in the middle of the dining room floor on Saturday night.
  

Items a Waiter Should Carry at All Times (or Have Close By)

CHEAP BALLPOINT PENS.
Every waiter should carry at least three; one for signing checks, one for writing down orders, and the other for fellow servers to borrow and never return. Don’t bother bringing nice pens to work. The customers will only steal them. Alternative uses are (though not limited to):

• Taking down a cute girl’s phone number.
  
• Emergency tracheotomy tube.
  
• Weapon. (Think
  The Bourne Identity.
  )
  

WINE OPENER.
It has a myriad of uses:

• Opens wine bottles.
  
• Pops open beer bottles.
  
• Punches holes in olive oil cans.
  
• Cuts open boxes.
  
• Cleans under fingernails.
  

TABLE CRUMBER.
Also a multipurpose tool:

• Cleans crumbs off table.
  
• Tongue depressor in a pinch.
  
• Scrapes dog shit or gum off your shoe.
  

PEPPER MILL.
(Would you like fresh ground pepper? How I hate saying that.)

GUM.
(Keeps your breath minty fresh and covers up the fact you’ve been drinking on the job.)

NARCOTIC SUBSTANCE OF YOUR CHOICE.
Waiters can be a walking pharmacy. I’ve seen servers with:

• Cigarettes.
  
• Hip flask of booze.
  
• Leftover Vicodan from the dentist.
  
• Prozac. (Should be in the water.)
  
• Crack.
  
• Advil, Tylenol, Alleve, Oxycontin.
  
• Marijuana.
  
• Chocolate.
  

LATEX GLOVES.
(Now most waiters don’t carry this but I do. It’s a habit left over from my days working in a psychiatric hospital. You never knew what bodily secretions you’d encounter—you know, vomit, blood, semen, urine, feces, spinal fluid. Well, the same holds true for a restaurant.)

CELL PHONE.
I hate them but most waiters have one. Good for:

• Calling home.
  
• Calling 911.
  
• Calling a cab.
  
• Calling your therapist.
  
• Calling your bookie.
  
• Calling your drug dealer.
  
• Using built-in camera to video coworkers doing the wild thing in the linen closet.
  

DUPE PAD.
Some uses are:

• To write down orders.
  
• For writing down that cute girl’s number.
  
• Doodling unflattering caricatures of customers.
  

MATCHES.
For:

• Lighting birthday candles.
  
• Lighting cigarettes/cigars.
  
• Covering up the foul stench in the employee bathroom.
  
• Burning the place down. (Use dupe pad soaked in Bacardi 151 as a starter.)
  

GEAR TO BE STORED IN LOCKER:

• Additional narcotizing substances.
  
• Extra shirt and tie. (In case you get splattered with food or aforementioned bodily substances.)
  
• Extra socks. (Helps ward off “swamp foot.”)
  
• Talcum powder. (When you’re walking all day you might get “the chafe.”)
  
• Preparation H. (Standing all day gives you hemorrhoids.)
  
• Band-Aids.
  
• Hand sanitizer. (In case you touch something gross.)
  
• Tissues.
  
• Condoms. (You might actually get lucky with that cute girl.)
  
• Spare pens, table crumbers, and wine openers.
  
• Copies of all applicable labor laws.
  
• Resignation letter preprinted and signed. Insert date when needed.
  
• Firearm where permitted by law.
  

M
y brother got me my first job in the restaurant business, so I guess I have to blame him for everything that came after that. Thanks, bro! I’m sorry I sucker punched you at Amici’s.

I’m indebted to Farley Chase, my agent at the Waxman Literary Agency, for convincing me that this book was possible. I’m deeply grateful to Emily Takoudes for her insightful and graceful editing and to Ecco’s publisher, Dan Halpern, for giving me the opportunity to bring this book to fruition. I would also like to thank Eleanor Birne at John Murray for her editorial comments and Emily’s editorial assistant, Greg Mortimer, for his contributions.

Ben Hammersley and Jason Kottke merit a special note of thanks. I am also indebted to the inestimable Laurie Pietsch for her warm words of encouragement and to my tech-savvy friend Charles Prothero for patiently explaining everything I didn’t know about computers. I’m also grateful to my friend Andrew Barone for his years of steadfast support.

A special thank-you goes to all the staff who ever worked with me at “The Bistro.” To my customers Barry and Clarice and Bob and Linda, thanks again for all your kindnesses. (And the tips!) Thanks are also due to Christy; Jen; Launa; Tara; Patrick; Liong;
the Poker Boys; Carmen Giglio, DDS; Peter Schessler; Dr. Michael Lynn and Richard; and Tina for their years of friendship and support. Thank you, Renee! My eternal gratitude to Richard Binkowski and Harry Dawson for showing me the power of words. Thank you, “Rizzo,” for showing me how to be a Waiter Jedi. Profound thanks to the late Rev. Msgr. Theodore Humanitski for all the life lessons he taught me. “One day we shall hold the star in our hand and ring in the triple hymn of the heavenly chorus!” See you there, Ted.

Finally! A gigantic thank-you to all the wonderful people who read and commented on my blog Waiter Rant over the past four years. Thanks for your support!

This book is for all of you.