Friday, January 13, 2006

“The Shit-ith Hath Hit-eth The Fan-eth”

Whoa boy, what a shift at work today, and on Friday the 13th too! Talk about your drama! Names* of some sort are going to be necessary in this latest installment of the happens of my restaurant. Monkey Boy and String Bean are partially involved, and there are a few more that need to be established before hand:

Danny: a server has only been working here a few months
Frenchie: has been working much longer than Bob, also a server
Sandy: has been working longer than both Bob and Jill, first as a hostess then as a server.
Rizzo: “manager”/server, one of the original employees hired three or four years ago.

Okay, I'll try to put this in chronilogical order as best I can, but I'm not totally sure of the order of everything.

First, Rizzo put in her two weeks not too long ago. She's smart trying to get out, but she was willing to work two full two weeks (not like other employees we've had who just up and quit and not show up anymore). Well, String Bean foolishly left the manager schedule out where everyone could see (whether on purpose or simply because he's not all there, I'm not sure) and one of the servers noticed that he had taken Rizzo off the schedule completely after ths week (thus, not giving her the full two weeks of work). So this server gives Rizzo a call to let her know. Five minutes later, Rizzo calls up and asks for String Bean, who is sitting at a table in the bar.

I tell String Bean that Rizzo is on the phone for him, not realizing that the server had called her already and head back up front. Rather than taking the phone call in the office as my previous (and much better boss) would have done, String Bean takes it up front where me, another hostess, and a carry-out person are and where we can hear every word of his half of the conversation. Only hearing half is definitely not as good as the whole thing, but you can figure out most of what the other one is saying from the reactions you can hear. The extent of the phone call was this: Rizzo quit right then and there because of what String Bean did to the schedule, that among other things. The conversation lasted about ten or fifteen minutes and from what String Bean was, calmly saying, Rizzo seemed to be really mad. I imagine String Bean took Rizzo off the schedule for what happened last Saturday after hours on her shift.

Backing up to last Saturday...
Four people were caught on tape after hours. The the bar has two security cameras on it at all times (the actual bar itself, not the whole area we call "The Bar") and these people thought the cameras were off, I think otherwise they would not have done this. Danny, Frenchie, and another two servers were in the bar (that's the area now), helping themselves to beer and other alcohol. Danny is on tape going back to the bar 4 or 5 times for more beer (whether it was for himself or the others I'm not sure). Three of them definitely had beers and they poured the fourth server, who is most definitely not 21, a shot. I was told later (by the minor himself) that he didn't take the shot because he was about to get up and go drive home. At least he's a sensible minor ;)

Bringing it back up to date...
Sandy is royally ticked about Danny's getting picked for Rizzo's place. Not just because she got passed up, but because a whole bunch of other, more capible people, could have been picked instead of Danny. Several other servers would be much better choices for the "Team Captain" position. It's not really a manager position, you can't hire or fire people, it's like a manager assistant or something. They can open and close the store, and they've got access to the office and we're suppose to listen to them (yeah, right), but that's about it. It's kind of a joke position really, "We don't trust you enough to be a real manager, but we'll let you pretend"

Update: Thursday, January 19...
Danny had a manger shirt on today! I walked in and he was up front trying to tell one of my more experienced hostesses how to do her job. Yeah, that went over well. Needless to say she was happy to see me. I'm perfectly fine with Danny being a "manager", but if he tries to tell me or my other hostess (who actually do know what they are doing by the way) how to do their jobs, I'm gonna raise some hell. He's been at this restaurant for three months max. I've been hostessing at this restaurant for over a year, plus my hostess experience before that! I've got at least two years experience hostessing, plus my other experience bussing and serving. I know that in the week Danny's been a manager, he couldn't have possibly been trained enough as a host to meet my standards for my host. He probably wouldn't last on a Monday night hosting by himself! Yeah, they can throw all the "rules" at him, they can tell him how it's suppose to be done, but there's so much more to it than that. Yeah, he's got people skills, he made a good server, but that doesn't mean that he can host worth beans! Hostessing isn't something that you get good at by being taught, it's by doing. You have to learn to anticipate what the guest will want, and that is what makes them the happiest. You can't teach that, I don't care how hard you try. Servers are always saying to me that my job isn't all that hard or stressful, and I say BS! It can be both if you let it! It's not a hard job, but it can get complicated, and it's only stressful if everyone else in the restaurant isn't doing what they should (which, in our restaurant, is pretty darn often) or if guests are being particularly annoying.


*Names changed to match characters from "Greace" because I watched it recently and it was on my mind. Names of characters in the movie and in my restaurant have no corispondence and were assigned randomly.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Shopping List

Week of December 21st to the 28th, 2005.

Coke
Diet Coke
Whirl (melted butter-like substance that is squirted on veggies)
Pickles
French Fries
Linens (cloth napkins that we roll silverware with, thus the term “Ghetto Wraps” was coined one day, we had to use paper napkins...)
Wings (we ran out of wings on Wing Night!!)
To-go boxes
Honey mustard
Sprite
Nachos
Sausage
Straws
Cheese Mix
Chicken Breast
Tabasco Sauce
Crab Dip
Ketchup
Mustard (yellow, we still had the yucky “Bertman Ball Park” stuff that nobody seems to like)
Bistro
Au Jus
Lemons
Sam Adams
Hefaueizen (a draft beer we usually carry)
Miller Lite - draft
Miller Lite - bottle
Equal
Paper napkins
Bev. Naps (the little square napkins we put drinks on)
Mints
Crayons
Mac & Cheese
Heiniken - bottle
Filet
Raspberry screen (I have no idea what this is, I think I’m not reading my own handwriting properly...)
Celery

This entire list covers the things that we ran out of at one point or another over the course of seven days. That’s right. Most of these things we ran out of over a period of five or six days. The last few were added on the seventh. This list is unbelievable; these are things that we should never have run out of. I’m not sure where the foulup was, or who’s to blame, but thirty-six things? One or two is understandable, we’re humans, we make mistakes. It’s easy enough to overlook a few things, but wouldn’t thirty-six things have been noticed?