Restaurant work – your most embarrassing moment?

[mskerr]

We've all done some embarrassing sh*t working in restaurants. What's your most embarrassing moments?

For me, I was a couple months into my first line cook job (breakfast). Peak tourist season, customers lined out the door before we opened. I season the home fries liberally. Service begins. We send out the first ten or so breakfasts. Everyone in the restaurant starts choking. Turns out, I'd accidentally grabbed the cayenne pepper instead of the home fry seasoning. Had to kiss the waitstaff's bums for, oh, the next month.

(Dropping five gallons of pancake batter all over the floor of the line when we were in the weeds wasn't my finest moment either).

As a new waitress... Wine made me really nervous. (I'm a beer gal.) Wine connoisseurs are some of the fussiest people on earth, and I wasn't trained at all for proper wine service. And I had a crappy opener to boot. Once I was so nervous trying to open a bottle for a young couple, I actually broke the entire neck off the bottle, sending glass fragments and wine all over their table, and possibly onto them. (They were too polite to say anything.) I went back and got them another bottle and opened it properly, and started to take their order when I realized my hand was bleeding. I froze, not knowing what to do, but the woman saw it and told me not to worry about them and go take care of myself... Luckily they were a very laid- back couple. The rest of the night was brutal though.

Luckily, a few years later, I can laugh at these things, but at the time, they were so humiliating.

[Mjx]

I opened an artery in my wrist, sending blood everywhere in the back. This resulted from my placing a dishwsher trayful of glasses on a heap of plastic spoons with great care and tremendous stupidity, making it that much worse. It was so excruciatingly embarrassing that I literally felt no physical pain when I got four (unanaesthetized) stitches about a quarter of an hour later.

[KaffeeKlatsch]

Years ago, I was managing a small beach cafe. I had to be a jack of all trades as I never knew for sure who'd show up for work. One day I was filling in running food and drinks to the tables. I was carrying a tray of drinks when one of the top-heavy chocolate milkshakes tipped right over and down the back of the male customer at the table. Luckily he had a good sense of humor (& was just wearing swimming trunks and an old t-shirt) as he thanked me for the great back rub he got while I wiped the chocolate ice cream off his back and apologized profusely.

[Panaderia Canadiense]

One of the first bakeries I worked in kept unlabeled flour sacks - and bleached rye was right next door to the flour used for croissants. Yup, I reached for the wrong sack, and made 500 rye croissants which were then quickly put out for the public because that bakery served only hot bread. They were awful, and all the time I was working I couldn't for the life of me figure out why they weren't behaving the way I was used to. Not once did I think to try the dough and find out if I was working with wheat. Now, I not only label my flour bins, I also compulsively taste a pinch of flour before I measure.

Front of house, I used to do VIP catering for a large festival, outdoors in the middle of the sticks, and it was a miracle if we got sunshine. The kitchen was at the top of the (muddy) hill, and the green room at the bottom. Most memorable and embarrassing is probably carrying two large carboy insulated caraffes of coffee and a tray of muffins, and whooop, I go sliding down the hill on my tush, muffins flying everywhere. With about 3000 people watching because of course I hollered when I started to slip. I still had to take those carboys into the green room for the VIPs, in my now less than pristine whites. I looked like an outhouse had exploded on me.

[Charlotte1988]

I walked to a table carrying 3 scorching hot pan things. One of them slipped back onto my arm and burnt me. I had to practically throw the plates down on the table because it hurt so much. I now have a lovely scar to remind me of the incident

Another incident was when a wasp was near me (I would normally scream and run away, but I couldn't because I was at a table). It went up my sleeve and stung me and I had to keep a straight face whilse hoping the wasp would leave my T-Shirt!