phlox

I'm a big fan of the customer who forgets what he orders. I was waiting on a party of older gentlemen last weekend, and one of them ordered hot tea. We have those fancy Forte tea bags that come in a cute little pyramid shape (good tea, too, and so adorable with the little leaf thingie), and so as I presented the tray to the one guy and had him pick which kind he wanted, another guy said he wanted some, too. I gave him his Earl Gray tea bag and then went to go get hot water, since I hadn't anticipated him wanting tea, too. When I came back with the hot water, he said, no, no, nothing for me, I don't want anything, what are you doing with all that? Er...did he want to take the tea bag home? Did he just not want tea? Sometimes I just give up.

As you mentioned, some people do prefer to pour their own wine, but I wish those people would just actually say, 'I'd prefer to pour my own wine' instead of refuse when you come to pour and then pour themselves two minutes later. This brings on said hounding from the manager, and sometimes on a busy night I don't have time to explain what happened. If there's one thing I've learned being a server, it's that everything is your fault. You are the group of employees in the restaurant who makes the most amount of money for the least number of hours, and you are the one directly in contact with guests. This means guests tend to blame you for things you have no control over and the kitchen and sometimes management staff also blame you for things you have no control over. Not that I don't screw up, but so does everyone else - the kitchen staff, managers, hosts, everyone.

Hmm, I wonder if I could cut one of those into a small square and use it at work... Or I could just start pushing cocktails and call it a day!

Now that I have finally mastered opening wine with a regular cork, screwcaps are becoming really popular, and I suck at them! A couple of days ago at work I tore a large chunk of skin off my middle finger and still couldn't get the blasted thing open. I don't know why I have so many issues opening wine in front of people. I know you're supposed to twist the bottom, not the cap, etc., but none of the advice I've gotten so far has helped. What can I do? Is there some kind of small rubber thingie I could carry with me so I could get more of a grip? Help!

With either fish I'm not as familiar with, or when I'm at a really good restaurant, I tend to leave it up to the chef. I'm over the whole 'I'm a hardcore foodie and want everything RaW!!11' thing. Not everything tastes its best served rare. I also like milk chocolate and, occasionally, sugar in my coffee. Shh, don't tell anyone!

There is a bar/restaurant in Pittsburgh that does Saturday as well as Sunday brunch (Harris Grill). I think more places should to this, too! The problem with Saturday brunch is that if you have a small kitchen staff, that is a long-ass day, what with Saturday being typically the longest/hardest night of the week. If you had to do brunch and dinner on both nights, or dinner Friday, brunch Saturday, dinner Saturday, and then brunch Sunday...ouch!

Brunch is my favorite meal. When else is it socially acceptable to drink before noon and have a chocolatey dessert after your eggs and bacon? It *should* be acceptable every day, but alas, we live in a cruel, Puritanical world. I had a great idea for a brunch dish the other day. For staff meal at the restaurant where I work, they made us grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches on challah bread with some kind of butter/brown sugar mixture slathered on the bread before it went into the press-grill thingy. Yeah, they spoil us sometimes. Anyway, I think a fancier version of that sandwich served with thick-cut bacon and maybe really cold, thinly sliced pineapple would be a fantastic brunch dish.

In my experience, the cooks who work the hardest also seem to party pretty hard. They don't *necessarily* get hammered and they aren't usually the ones who do more than dabble with recreational drugs, but they go out with the rest of the staff and have a good time. One of the most fun things about smaller restaurants is going out after a hard Saturday night with the entire (down to the dishwashers) staff. Sounds hokey, but it really does help everyone bond and feel like a team.

I have to put another nod in for Mostly Martha. I just rewatched it the other day and it was just as wonderful as it was the first time.

I don't think anyone really likes this system. Unfortunately, it's the one we've got! Someday when the tooth fairy leaves me bags full of money I want to own a restaurant where the waitstaff is paid a fair wage and are treated like professionals rather than petulant children.

This is really sappy, but I feel that I have become a more compassionate, mature person as a result of working in restaurants. When you spend your work day trying to anticipate the desires of others, it tends to bleed into the rest or your life. I tend to think a little more before I speak now and am more empathetic.

Bwah! One of my all-time favorite episodes.

I understand that servers are paid differently in Europe, I just resent the implication that it requires no skill! And yes, what I described is a typical night for any server anywhere, just don't tell me that anyone could walk in off the street and do a good job if they'd never done it before. But then I guess that's why I work in restaurants, anything else would just be too taxing for my little brain. All that said, I do think that a 20% automatic gratuity is too high for the type of restaurant described, and that if the menu stated it was 15%, then that's what it should have been. I would have been irritated by this, too!

Have you ever waited tables? What you've written might be true if you worked in a restaurant that had no wine list and you only got one table at a time. Try memorizing a large menu and wine list with ever-changing components, waiting on a party of 8, one of 4, maybe one of 3 on a patio or deck outside, and a few deuces who are all at different stages of their meal, communicating with a kitchen staff and chef who may or may not hate your guts, and then come talk to us.

I don't understand why people who have such an adversarial attitude towards restaurants and the people who work in them continue to go to restaurants. FOH folks put up with a lot. I have only been working in restaurants for two years, and already in that time, I have cleaned up vomit and urine multiple times, scrubbed shit off the walls, been touched inappropriately by customers, been screamed at by insane chefs, permanently injured my hand, I could go on. For all you know this server works for the type of manager who loses his shit if her end-of-shift paperwork isn't perfect down to the penny. It's a bit rude to expect her to eat that, and it's also a bit weird to be so put out by what amounts to 20 or so bucks. It's not like your bill was auto-grated and you were expected to pay 20% on several bottles of Petrus. Was your server totally absent for your entire meal? Was the entire dining room completely empty of staff the entire time you were there after your order was taken? If not, if someone at the table wanted another drink, they could have just flagged someone down and asked. I'm not saying that this constitutes ideal service - I feel *really* bad if someone has to do this to me for something I should have been paying better attention to all along - but I also don't understand why diners don't just ask for something they want, or say something if there is an issue instead of stew in silence at the restaurant and then freak out at home.

The reverse is also true, if we're going to skip right into stereotype land. One of my best friends is a kick-ass line cook but he can't even make chocolate chip cookies. He has no patience, doesn't like to follow detailed instructions, and is constantly trying to take things out of the oven before they're done!

Bwah! I interviewed with the owners of a restaurant that's opening soon in my city, and they told me they were considering not only using Micros, but using the Micros version of Open Table. It was hard to retain my composure.

I like Aloha, too. Right now I have to use an ancient version of Micros and it's such.a.pain. As a server the features that are most useful to me are being able to find things quickly and the ability to manipulate checks. For some reason, Micros (I've used newer versions, too, and they're a little better) makes it cumbersome to split checks.

I've had similar experiences, although I work in the front of the house. Big and corporate can suck, but sometimes small and privately owned can be its own special kind of pressure cooker.

I don't think that is "obvious". I have absolutely no problem with a server pouring me more wine. I consider it part of the service they provide me to keep me topped up. I have a feeling I am not alone in that either. I have been fortunate enough to dine at some pretty excellent restaurants in my life, and I would venture to bet that I rarely get asked if I would like some more wine or bottled water. We ordered it, why wouldn't we want to drink it? ← If it's something people are paying for, I tend to err on the side of asking. Sometimes it doesn't even need to be verbal, you can just sort of make eye contact with the person before you pour so they have a chance to say no, shake their head, hold their hand out, whatever. I do the same thing with bottled water. As a server, especially in more expensive places where people have higher expectations, you have to make peace with the fact that it's impossible to please everyone. This is true of all restaurants, but it's especially true of fine dining: most people have an idea about what kind of experience they want, but their ideas can differ wildly. You can get pretty good at reading people, but we don't have ESP! I'm sure many restaurants train and therefore require their servers to top up wine without asking. If I worked in a place like that and it was a choice between keeping my job and pleasing Mr. Hitchens, well...

I find myself wishing people would do this outside the kitchen, too!

I like to make special iced coffee for the kitchen staff: espresso, a small dollop of sweetened condensed milk, a splash of regular milk, and a little ginger syrup pilfered from the pastry chef. Everyone loves this. The other day the sous chef made homemade pop tarts out of blueberries and raspberries and some tart dough. He even made a glaze. They were damn tasty!

Get some Dansko clogs, if for no other reason than that they are the most comfortable shoes ever! I have two pairs now, too. One in plain black leather for work and one in shiny red patent leather for the rest of the time.

Aww, good for her! If she starts to complain about sore feet, get her some Dansko clogs. I love these things. I can be on my feet for hours and hours and still be comfortable. The best thing about them is that they have that little bit of space in the back. Your feet swell when you stand for a long time, and the space gives them a bit of room. Makes all the difference. If she has to be more dressy (like if they have her host or something), Sofft, which is a brand owned by Clarks, makes the most comfortable dress shoes on the planet. They are not sexy, but they are tasteful and appropriate, and I can wear the heels for 10+ hours and not be in agony. A Godsend.

Now if only we could get foh employees to be as diligent about handwashing. I swear, they are the worst. You should be washing your hands so much during service that they are CHAPPED, people!! Argh!