Tuesday, June 06, 2006

What's a Monday Night without some drama?

We didn't have quite the same quality of drama tonight as with the cheerleaders' mothers, but your usual Monday night stuff! :)

The night started off normal enough, a little on the slow side, but perfect for all the trainees who are still learning the ropes. Someone in the bar had four kids with them who were running around screaming and yelling like it was Chuck-E-Cheese's or something, they were annoying, but they left eventually. It wasn't until around 9 or so that things got interesting. There were two hostesses left, me and my best friend who I was training, and these two guys came in.

One was slightly taller and the other one was shorter and stockier. The shorter of the two had a little too much bounce in his step, and I don't mean the filled-with-energy kind of bounce, it was more like a wobble. He couldn't open his eyes all the way and he slurred his speech, so his friend did all the talking. "Just two of us, we're not here to drink" -- um, okay? We definitely didn't ask if they had come to drink, the one seemed plastered already, except he was way too out of it to be drunk...

After my friend got back from seating them, we all (the third hostess hadn't left yet) agreed that he was beyond stoned and we wondered what his friend was thinking bringing him out to a restaurant like that. A little while after they were seated, the stoner gets up and goes to the bathroom (which as far as I know, he found by himself), when he comes back, he asks us if we knew where his "boy" was. I look back at their table, and there he is, just where the stoner left him. I point to his table, "He's over there, at your table." And the stoner shuffles off to his table.

Several minutes later, the stoner gets up again, this time, he ventures outside. Why is he going outside? Why is his friend letting him wander around outside? Who knows. We couldn't figure it out. The stoner was gone for ten minutes before his friend went to go find him. After he went outside, we saw the stoner to the left of our building (if you're looking at it from the street) and we saw his friend start walking in the opposite direction. We watched the stoner as he was doing his "drunk walk" over to our next door neighbor's, a Chevy Chase Bank, his arms are streching and going from his sides to the top of his head, and back down again. He can't hold still, he has to move. We finally see him start to come inside, so I say "I think we have stuff to do in the back, don't you?" my friend agrees and we try to get to the kitchen before he sees us, but we're too slow...
"Miss, miss!" He calls (at least he was a polite stoner) and we turn, 'cause we're good hostesses like that, "Do you know where my boy went?"
Luckily, his friend was right behind him coming through the door.
"He went out looking for you." my friend said.
"He's right there." I point.
The two reunite and go back to their table.

Within a minute of being at the table, the stoner has passed out. He's slumped over in the booth and his friend is on his cell phone. A few minutes after that, the cops show up. I think someone else called the cops (we had been discussing whether or not to in the back since the stoners showed up), and it must have been a slow night for the Anne Arundel County Police Department because four officers showed up!
"We got a call about a drunk wandering around in back of your lot." The first officer says to us.
I point to their table, "They're over there, and we don't think they're 'drunk'. We think they're stoned."
Another officer asks if they had a bill or anything like that. I told them no, they only had drinks. I got a funny look from a couple of the officers and I realized they thought I meant alcohol, "Sodas,"I quickly added. "They got sodas."

Then our little Manager In Training comes out to talk to the table. I point him out to the officers and they go over to talk to him and the table. Somehow, one of the servers got involved and was talking to them too, meanwhile, the whole bar had pretty much stopped what they were doing to watch. Me and my friend and one or two of the servers, were just leaning against the hostess desk just watching and trying not to smile too much.
"Only on a Monday Night." and "Gotta love that Monday Night Drama." could be heard from employees throughout the restaurant.

Eventually, the guys are asked to leave and they do. The cops linger for a few minutes and they leave too. I go into the back and everyone is still buzzing about it while doing their sidework.
Come to find out, the same server who took care of the stoners, (also the same one who was called a stupid wench by the gay cheerleader) also had the people who had the four annoying kids. The kids ran around the bar the entire time they were there, they would play with each other, they would think they were playing the games, they could yell back to mom that they were playing the games, they would fall down and go crying back to mom, then they would run away again, only to come crying back to mom once more. The entire bar (and possibly the whole restuarant) knew that the kids where there, it's kind of hard to forget four screaming, undisciplined kids, but turns out it is possible because the parents left them in the bar!

The server had to run outside with all four of the kids bawling behind her trying to catch the parents before they left. Then, the woman yelled at the server! :-O "We were coming back!" She snapped. The server was just doing what she was suppose to, "exceed expectations" (that's our silly little motto), what else was she suppose to do if a customer left their kids? If people leave food or jackets or credit cards, we chase after them into the parking lot to try and catche them before they leave. If the server hadn't chased her with the kids, she would have been angry that no one reminded her that she had four kids with her (although how anyone could forget those brats I'm not sure).
"Only at my tables" that server was mumbling at the end of the night when people were saying "only on monday night". Unfortunately, it's true! She had the gay cheerleader who looked like he was sixteen and tried to get her to serve him alcohol then started drama, she had the stoners (because the server who's section that was didn't want to take them), and she had the people who left their kids and then yelled at her for bringing them out to the car.

That is why I don't serve tables. Because some servers get all the good tables (by sheer luck) and make $95 on a Monday night, and some just get all the lousy ones. And with my luck, I'd get all the lousy ones. It's happened before when I served at Chi-Chi's, I'd get all the really nice people, I'd play with their kids and their orders were perfect, and I'd get less than ten percent as a tip (although, the two gay guys I had once were really nice, funny, and they tipped well). Or I would get the people who didn't tell me if their food came out wrong and write a negative comment card about how I didn't care about them. Don't get me wrong, there are awesome people who do come into the restaurants in this area, it's just that they are extremely out numbered by people who have no idea how to behave themselves or tip.

No comments: