Pieces of a Life Left Behind

It's the holiday season! I love this time of year! Lots of great food, shopping, visiting with friends and family, and things to do. Mostly work, but I try to sprinkle in a couple of fun things as well. 

I also won another storage locker! Yaaaay! I found a nice small 5x5 that wasn't stuffed full of things. I enjoyed my first locker, but at 10x5 it was just too big. We just aren't ready for that amount of stuff that we'd have to go through quickly so it doesn't overwhelm our little house. What made me bid on it was not just the size, but a specific box I saw in the unit. It was an Everybody Loves Johnny Ringo boot box. They make some very nice cowboy boots that, even used, can go for a couple hundred dollars. So, I took a chance and bid $30 and won. That was the 21st of November. I went and cleared it out on the 22nd. Yep. The day before Thanksgiving. That might have been a little tight. I had to go through everything and get it all cleaned up and dealt with in one day. Mostly because I didn't want to deal with it on T-day. 

This is the picture I based my decision off of

on the 22nd, I grabbed my coat, and my tripod for my phone (I'm learning how to film myself clearing out storage units in hopes of future YouTube videos for fun), and headed over to the storage facility to see what I'd bought. 

Normally, you have to pay the storage facility the amount you won the locker for as well as a cash deposit of about $100 that you get back after you clean everything and sweep it clean. This particular location didn't have a cleaning deposit, so that was one less thing to worry about. 

As we pulled up to the building housing the unit, I saw an old beat-up car outside the door with a dog in the back seat waiting patiently. When we entered the building, I saw a unit with the door a third of the way open and someone changing while talking on her cell phone. 

When I got into the unit, the first box I got into was the Johnny Ringo box. Now, I'd say 90% of the time, whatever the box says on the outside is not what's in the inside. This was no exception. When I opened it, I found it full of sports cards. Baseball, Football, Hockey, Hydro racing, and Desert Storm cards. There were several hundred. A cursory glance through them showed a lot of junk cards. Nothing of interest. Mostly 90s and nothing special. It took me maybe 20 minutes to empty the unit out. I chatted with another very nice lady named Cathy who was emptying a 10x30! She was retired and did this for fun and profit. She had some great pointers and was just a pleasure to chat with. 

When I got everything out I swept the floor and headed home. I got everything inside and got started. As you may guess, even though there wasn't a lot of stuff in the unit, it's amazing how much stuff you can fit in a bag, or a tote, etc.! I spent a couple of hours combing through all the things. The only thing I couldn't get into was a lockbox that ended up containing old birthday cards and miscellaneous items. I ended up asking a friend to get it open. He was the one to point out that it was a gun box. There were a handful of things that were worth reselling and the rest was either Goodwill or the dump. Almost all the clothing went to Goodwill except this fantastic suit!

That purple is very vibrant in regular light and the suit is darker. It looks like it was tailor made. Not sure it will ever sell, but I'm giving it a try. There ended up being a ridiculous amount of cards in this unit. So many. 

I sold almost all the cards for $40 local pickup. There were also quite a few non sports trading cards.

There are lots more, but you get the drift. 

So, let's talk about the person who owned the locker. He graduated in 2004 and sometime around 2006-2007 he read the book The Secret. It seems to have been a fairly important part of his life for a while. I believe this because there were notebooks full of sentences written over and over like: I have won the lottery, I have won the lottery, i have won the lottery, etc. If you are not familiar with The Secret, check out this link. I personally am not a fan. Lots of pseudoscientific nonsense that can make things worse for you and your mental health. He seems to have been somewhat primed for it though. There were lots of packs of tarot cards, some sage, lots of incense, and a very nice crystal ball. He loved big cats. Lions, tigers, and Panthers. He loved them enough to have bought a 12 plate set for decoration. 

I know he met someone in his early 20s and fell in love. They had a baby and lived together for an unknown number of years. He got into some kind of insurance that required him to make cold calls. There were a lot of unpaid medical bills (I don't look inside, I'm mostly looking for something like a passport, wallet, tax returns or something of value that needs to be returned). As happens in life, something changed and she took the little one and moved to Arizona. I believe it's about this time he sliced off part of his life. He stored some suits that no longer fit him, his lions, and tigers and panthers, all his sports cards, a Lego model of Fast and the Furious he was working on, all his tarot cards, a beautiful compass, a fake rolex (inser pic here) and most disconcerting, his meds. There was a lot more, but you get the drift. It just felt very specific.

 As is becoming usual with these units, I wondered what happened to the person who owned it. So I looked him up on Facebook. He did move and he seems fine. Happy even. Or, if not happy, at least willing to continue on and try to figure it all out. I know this is a lot of guessing and projection, I'm sure, but it's interesting to me to imagine other people's lives. I'm always rooting for them.

 

There but for the grace of god...

 Humility. I got a pretty good sized dose of it recently. My husband and I like to find ways to make money. My main profession is serving and he is a banquet server. On the side, we like to go to yard sales and estate sales and look for things to buy and flip for a profit. It's fun and we really enjoy it. One thing we'd always wanted to do was buy a storage unit at auction. Sure, yes, maybe we spent a little too much time watching storage wars. That was my trash TV at the time it first came out, however, I didn't really want to do the in-person auctions. I was worried we'd get carried away and just bid until we were broke. Enter online storage auctions! I watch this site religiously, always looking for what could be a good deal. I found one I liked the look of towards the end of August. I felt like a lot of the people that normally bid on these lockers were getting their last vacations of the summer done because no one else bid on this one. It had an a/c unit front and center! Even if nothing else was salvageable, the a/c was a great find for us to keep or sell. I got the unit for $10. There was a 15% fee to the auction site and taxes, but for less than $15, I had a storage unit! I was so excited and more than a little nervous. I hadn't told my husband I was bidding on this unit. I didn't see the point! I had bid on probably 10-15 units in the past, but never had I gotten close to getting it. So, I put in the bid in the morning of the last day and was the only bidder the entire day. After I got home from work I mentioned to him I had won a storage locker unit. He sighed and asked what time we were getting started. 😆

The next day I took off in my truck. I was just going to go through everything and bring home the stuff we were keeping. I was going to wait until the next day to actually get going with removing everything else. Turns out, I have absolutely no inkling of how much stuff someone can fit into a 5x10 storage unit! There was a LOT of stuff. Clothes, scrapbooking supplies, party lite candles and holders, toys, toys, toys, a few pieces of furniture, pictures, journals, kitchen supplies, dirty laundry, duvets, comforters, shoes, just...everything someone might have in their lives. The first couple of hours I spent trying to make a dent, and I did. Along the way I found a woman's life. I found her yearbooks first, class of '04 then a shoebox full to bursting with pictures from her early twenties. She was a Jameson's girl at one point. More pictures of her happy and with a young man. At some point she had two children. They were beautiful. Then I found some books. AA the 12 step program, Domestic violence and you, were a couple of the titles of the them. Then the journals. I didn't read them all as there were so many, but I read a few pages of one that just broke my heart. She wrote her children letters that she never sent telling them she loved them so much, that she missed them so much and she wished she could have them with her. She wrote about how they would live together if they could. They would communicate and try and work things out together. She said she was so sorry. She felt terrible. In that way the unit was utterly heartbreaking. Seeing her grow from a young, hopeful teen, to an abused and possibly abusive adult, was an awful feeling. There but for the grace of god go I. 

I spoke with the storage unit facility manager before I left. She was taking pictures of other units that hadn't been paid for for a long time. She told me she was new there and that she had about 30 storage units that had been abandoned. No one had bothered trying to auction off the contents since before the pandemic. So, the unit I bought was there since at least January of 2020. Probably longer. I think about this woman occasionally. I wonder if she is living a happier life now, or if she made it at all. Alcohol, drugs, abuse, it takes incredible strength to get away and stay away. 

I plan on doing more units in the future and if you're interested, I'll share those stories too. Take care of you and try to hold on and ask for help if you need it. M.

Ain't life a kick in the pants?

 As I was falling, I kept thinking, 'Not again, not again, not again, not again! No, no, no, no, nooooooo!' See, I had just fallen not two months earlier at work. That time it was the hose they use to clean the floor mats pulled out the back door with nor warning signs or cones up. I didn't see it at all and tripped, fell to my knees and bonked my head on the Brick wall. That time I was fine. Embarrassed, but fine. I filled out my incident report and moved on with my life. The time before that was about a year or so earlier. I was just walking across the front of the kitchen on what can only be described as lawsuit tiles. Super smooth and slick. A drop of water and the whole crew will go down. But no, just me, slipping in what felt like slow motion onto my hands. I roll forward and my forehead hits the ground briefly, gently. Happily.

 A couple of Saturdays ago, our water heater broke at work. Now, the health department has a list of reasons to immediately close a restaurant. I copied these from the King county website.

• High score on the routine inspection*
• Sewage backing up in kitchen and/or bathroom
• No hot water/running water
• Electricity goes out
• Other imminent health hazards: broken refrigeration, damage caused by accidents or natural disasters, or when establishment is linked to a food borne illness outbreak
• Other: No permit to be operating (The permit assures that they have met all of the structural & equipment requirements for the menu items they are going to serve); the owner/manager interferes with the inspector's ability to do her/his duties.
• *The inspection is based on a 400 point system. The violations are added up between red and blue violations. If the total red critical violations is 90 or more, or the total of red and blue is 120 or more, then the establishment will be closed.

Now, I've experienced a lot of these over time in the industry and I'm here to tell you, it's unusual for a restaurant to just... close. I've not experienced all of these, but I have experienced a restaurant with sewage backing up into the kitchen/bathroom, but it was on small cruise ships. and let me tell you, you've never seen the engineer and all the deckhands work harder on a problem than sewage backup. Obviously, you can't close the cruise ship. I've worked restaurants during a blackout. All they did was put candles down the hallways, in the bathrooms, and in the kitchen. That's it. This experience was simply due to not having a plan in place for when it happened to us. But enough about all that. Back to falling and 'NONONONONO!'

I noticed, when I washed my hands at about 7:30PM that the water wasn't getting warm. It was about 30 minutes later that I noticed the dishpit was seriously backed up. Not unusual for a Saturday night, but this seemed excessive. Then we started noticing that the silverware was cold and not particularly clean. It was tacky with a thin film of oiliness to it. The managers were on the phone looking for guidance and Chef J was just beginning to get the kitchen organized. During all this time, we are still serving the folks that have orders in. I'm pretty much done with one table eating, so I grab my caesar tray and head for the kitchen walk in. I put the leftover cheeses, minced garlic, and mustard away. The small tins I take to the back side of the dish pit which is where our lead dishwasher likes us to place them, then I walk around to the front of the dish pit with my tray and dirty spoons to put where they belong. Easy peasy. When I go back to my section, I notice my neighbor, Kessa, still has her ceasar tray in her cart. A brief look at her tables tells me she doesn't need it anymore as we are done seating by now and all her tables are on entrees. I take her caesar tray and do the exact same thing as before. This time, though, as I walk around from the back of the dish pit to the front, there is a large bucket full of pleasantly warm water and dirty dishes. I, of course, don't see it and fall over it, knocking it over in the process. I feel the water wash over my shirt, my face (retching sounds here) and my hair. I land awkwardly on my right arm. I am immediately surprised, grossed out and pissed. However, I get myself together as people run over and help me up, dry me off and ask if I'm okay. At first I feel okay, but my right arm hurts a little bit. Then it hurts more. It swells. I'm embarrassed. One of the captain's has to finish my last table. It takes a couple of hours to get my accident report filled out and my paperwork done. It's Saturday night and there are a lot of things going on. My arm doesn't really hurt that bad. I know it's not good, but it is tolerable, so those couple of hours are not a big deal. I take the time to let my arm do whatever it's going to do and make some decisions. Eventually, I call DH and ask him to come get me and take me to the emergency room. I have a fracture of my radius by the elbow. 

Why am I sharing this with you? It's a good practice piece. I haven't written in a while and I have a lot to say. This is really more of a warmup. To what? Not sure yet. I'll likely come back and add/subtract things and thoughts. It's a start.

So, yeah. That happened...

 Heck! I don't even know where to start! Welcome to 2021. My name is Monica Evans and I really want to keep on writing. For some reason, I need people to have the option to read what I've written. You may be asking yourself, 'Well, then why haven't you been writing here for the last few years?' The answer is, I've been unhappy? Busy? Tired? Yes, yes, and yes. But now I want to continue and I am overwhelmed by the last few years. There was a 'President' I never thought could happen that really took over all our lives. There was a pandemic that changed our lives forever. Things happened that I never would have dreamed of. It makes me well up just thinking about all the things and all the feels I've felt. 

This post is going to be a little out there. 

I've been thinking a lot about multiverses recently. Not so much about the universes themselves, though that is a very big part, but about the definition of infinite and human's inability to grasp the application of the concept. I think of it like this. Hypothetically, what the multiverse is is infinite versions of everyone, everything, ever, in all the different ways it could be. So, it could be the big stuff, like in my universe, in my world, we believe aliens exist, but have no real, concrete proof of existence. In another universe, we could be part of a federation of planets (Yep! Star Trek reference there). In another universe, we could have had to move to another planet altogether and we had the technology to do so. In yet another universe, we fly the space craft that make another world crazy wondering if aliens do, indeed, exist! All this and all the other ways we could be is difficult for the mind to grasp. Throw in the much, much, smaller stuff and forget about it. I'm talking about things like, in this world I am me exactly as I am, but in another, I have one hair follicle that isn't there. literally everything else in the universe is exactly the same, just that one thing is different in that universe. Repeat all those miniscule and vast differences, adding and subtracting and then all the variations that could exist in any given universe and you have infinity. 

But is it? 

For our brains, yes. It is infinite. We simply cannot possibly imagine the amount of universes out there. But it is finite. There are a finite number of me with one less, or one more hair follicle. A finite number of variations on a theme. But the number is one that doesn't exist to our brains. We simply cannot comprehend it. It is, indeed, infinite. 

I imagine there are an infinite number of books out there talking about this exact thing better than I ever could. But damn, it's interesting stuff. 

Here's a quick, fun read about infinity facts. Thanks for indulging me!

New Years Eve 2016

I wrote a piece on New Years eve 2016. There were some things going on in my personal life that made me feel not so good and I was in the middle of a pretty good sized head cold. Before I left for work, I wrote a very quick piece and posted it on Facebook with a picture. I edited it over the next couple of days, but this is basically the writing in it's original form. All I changed were some commas and periods along with a couple of words that didn't make sense at the time. I'm just surprised I was able to write something so coherent! 

I am going through a little rough patch right now compounded by having a cold that I'll have to work through while pulling a 12 hour shift at work. Don't get me wrong, I got this, but I was feeling a little sorry for myself, so I decided to go to Starbucks down by the water in Tacoma. I walked by this wee little storefront and thought that it was very cute, and very wee (yeah, I think like that). I almost made it into Starbucks before I stopped and went to the wee little restaurant instead. As I walked in, I was greeted by a young woman. She smiled and told me that the coffee was self serve and that I should choose any table I like. She gave me a menu and told me that her favorite soup of the day was curry with cauliflower and she'd be back shortly to take my order. I grabbed some coffee (coffee should be grabbed, tea should be made) and ordered a cup of the soup and some oatmeal. I'm not feeling well and it sounded good. The soup was a revelation! Not too much curry, a perfect amount of cauliflower, not overdone. It came with saltines which added the perfect amount of salt. I felt like I over ordered the food as I was sated after finishing, but the oatmeal was so wonderfully satisfying!  Dried cranberries, candied walnuts, brown sugar and cream. Absolutely amazing. I felt warm and wonderful after I was done. I was already having a moment when it started to snow. Huge fluffy flakes, just a few at a time, floating down from the skies looking as though they were having the time of their short lives. People walking by were looking up and smiling.  Kids were yelling with delight.
I had a moment today.
Happy New Year everyone!

Little Slices of Server Life

Adventures in serving:

I once worked with a man named Kier. We both worked brunches every weekend. He told me that when juices were free, he would bring a fresh juice every time the guests glass was half way done. The idea was to fill them up, get them to leave sooner and get another table.

I learned to serve tables at the Grand Canyon in my mid 20s. Working at the Grand Canyon was one of those fluke choices in life that ends up being the best decision you’ve ever made. I started at Havapai lodge which was cafeteria work, but quickly talked my way into being trained at the Bright Angel Lodge restaurant as a server. The restaurant was essentially a Denny’s except we charged a premium for everything. Side of salsa? $2. Extra cheese? $3. This was at a time when a side of salsa was usually free everywhere else and cheese was certainly not $3 a slice. I don’t really remember my training, nor did I write about it in my journal, so I can only say I was left with an overall impression that I enjoyed it. Mostly. I remember Johnny on the spot (cannot remember his name, but I’m guessing it was John something). He taught me about carrying a large oval tray. Not by teaching me, but by showing me. He would spin them, carry them catty-whompus, and showed by example what you could and could not get away with while carrying stuff on a tray. Honestly, I was amazed. To this day, carrying a tray bothers me not one whit. A couple of things I learned about carrying a tray not learned by watching Johnny:

1. It’s not a question of if (you drop a tray), it’s when.
2. When a tray begins to drop, trust your instincts. I’d say 9 times out of 10 your body/brain knows what to do. Don’t adjust in panic. It’s just food…

I once had a man at the Crowne Plaza Hotel order a full meal with a coke, and when done, order coffee. When I came back with the coffee, he was gone. Dine and dash. 4 years later, he did it to me again.

One thing that bugs servers endlessly is when parents let their children run free in a restaurant. They are a hazard to the servers and themselves. They get in the way and are easy to miss while carrying trays full of hot food. I worked with a server who almost ran right into a 4 year old. He avoided it by, essentially, leaping over the kid while carrying a large tray with a few dirty dishes on it. He fell to the floor and dishes went flying everywhere. It was loud and everyone went to check on the server and the kid. The kid was crying loudly, the parents were making sure he wasn’t hurt and apologizing profusely and the server kept saying, don’t worry, don’t worry, I’m fine. Is the kid okay?

I am 100% positive the server did that dramatic leap over the kid on purpose. Good for him.

I once had a man order our 'Captain's Platter'. A lot of people didn't realize it came battered and fried, so I mentioned it to him. He was barely paying attention and mumbled a distracted 'That's fine.' and waved me off. I brought his food and he said 'I didn't know this was a fried dish!' His friend looked at him and said, 'She specifically said 'just so you know, this is a battered and fried dish!' I love when someone else at the table voices exactly what I want to say.

A work friend of mine had a pretty, red, box left behind at one of his tables. He left a note in it that said 'What's in the Box?!" -Brad Pitt
I decided to take it to the next level.

He thought it was the funniest thing! He put it aside and went to get it later, but it had mysteriously disappeared.

I once leaned over a table to talk to another table only to have my hair catch on fire. Just a little, but it smelled pretty bad. Victor, the piano man, kept chanting 'We don't care, we don't care, we don't care you burnt your hair!'

A busy, busy brunch. A round tray full of bloody Mary's and mimosas being held aloft to avoid the crowd. A toddler crying, being carried by his dad, reaching out for the pretty colors on a tray. A scowling server covered in bloody Mary's and mimosas going back to the bar to ask for remakes of all the drinks being cleaned up off the floor by her busser. I. Do. Not. Miss. Brunch.

11.11.2017 Saturday night

I had a couple in for their anniversary. The wife went to the rest room. I set up some butter and scallions on their table to fluff their baked potato with. I came back to drop something else off and the gentleman told me he thought the bowl of butter was pineapple and he got a piece on his fork and popped it in his mouth. I just couldn't stop laughing! He told his wife when she got back and she laughed and said, 'I was only gone for 5 minutes!'

These are just some slices of my working life. I really enjoy what I do and am glad that if I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, at least I found something that worked well for me.

Valentine's Day

I love Valentine's Day. I do. All the red heart boxes full of delicious chocolates, the beautiful, many-colored roses, and the couples. This post, however, is not about the sweet side of Valentine's Day. 
I may or may not have mentioned this before, but I am a server at a popular restaurant. It's the kind of restaurant people go to for special occasions, or to impress a client. We have our regulars, but the price is a little bit prohibitive to make it a regular watering hole. This last Valentine's Day was really nice. As is usually the case on major holidays, we were running a 30-40 minute wait.  Valentine's day may not seem like a major holiday, but for restaurants, it most definitely is. I was lucky enough to be downstairs in our banquet rooms where there are 25 extra tables for 2 set up. It's quieter and much more pleasant there. Upstairs, they remove around 25 tables for 4 people or more and replace those 25 tables with 51 small, shot-glass sized, round tables for two. They also turn all but 6 tables, in our 36 table lounge area, into dining room tables by simply throwing tablecloths over them and setting them with silverware. We served 1000 meals that night. All things considered, everything went very smoothly. I had lovely guests who really enjoyed themselves. 
You may be wondering why I shared all this with you. Well, that's because I am now going to write about my experience working Valentine's Day 2012. That day is the first time I really understood what a well-oiled machine we are and how good we have it on major holidays. 

On February 14th, 2012 I was busy packing. I didn't care I'd have to work hard and very late at the restaurant, because I was going to Puerto Vallarta! I had a flight at 6:30AM the next morning and I would join my parents who were already there. Valentine's Day is crazy busy, so I didn't even try to get my shift covered, or request it off. By the time I got to work at 4:30, I had stopped by the store and picked up a couple of bags of Dove chocolates for the folks who sat in my section. It's something I like to do every year for Valentine's day. When I walked in, I saw we had a few people who checked in early and were enjoying drinks at the bar. I found my section, made sure it was ready, read the Chef's specials, and reviewed the pre fixe 1 night only menu. 
I'm ready.
It's 5PM, we're open.
My first two tables are sat and everything starts off very smoothly. Drinks come right out and since they are some of the first few reservations in, their experience is smooth and enjoyable for me and them.
5:30PM. As we later find out, someone has plugged two point of sale systems into one box with two Ethernet connections. Apparently, that is bad. 
5:31PM. The first server to notice that all the POS systems are down is looking for a manager.
5:32PM. The current GM starts looking for the problem. He is married to the person who knows the most about the system, so she comes in and helps. 
5:45PM. We now know, as servers and kitchen staff, that we are on our own. Frightening. Let me lay out for you how our night is now going to go.
Two tables are sat in my section. I bring water, chat them up, tell them the specials, both drink and food, and try to get a drink and appetizer order. My third table gave me a drink order and they are hungry, so they went ahead and ordered the caviar appetizer. I walk away, and grab two blank carbon copy tickets. Remember, we can't just ring them in anymore and it's been a generation or more since we've had to write up a ticket, so none of us has ever had to do so. To make matters worse, like most restaurants, we don't always have prices listed on our drinks. Especially well drinks. They are all in the POS (point of sale/piece of sh!t) system. I write my name at the top and the table number it's going to. Most of the table numbers are new, because if you remember, we have something like 65 extra tables with numbers we don't normally use. We have floor maps, maps that show us the location of tables throughout the restaurant, but the maps don't always show the actual placement of the tables. As a result, servers are hesitant to help run drinks and food. I write the drink order down and give it to the bartender, on a separate ticket I write down my name and table number and the appetizer and give it to the cold side expediter. Cold side is where salads, wood oven and fried foods come from. Hot side are mostly entrees. Expediters stand on the restaurant side of the kitchen and organize tickets, place food on trays making sure everything listed on the ticket is on the tray, and make sure it gets out in a timely fashion. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, everyone has so-so handwriting to start with and there are upwards of 30 servers all doing the same thing. Once we have the drinks it's back to the table to try and get a dinner order. They order and we write up another ticket and give it to the Hot side expediter. Now, normally, the kitchen is getting copies of all the orders from the POS in the correct locations. Grill, saute, wood, pantry, etc. But now, there is one copy for the expo and one copy for the entire kitchen. See, you may have ordered a steak, but say you want fries instead of the potatoes on the plate. That's two different stations, so now the chef is having to expo on the kitchen side of things. He has to call out for the fries, and the pantry, instead of knowing he needs it and having it ready, has to stop whatever they are doing and make fries. All of this starts to add up immediately. Ticket times for apps are 40-ish minutes and entrees are running almost an hour. Everything takes longer and that means the guests stay longer. That means the host stand gets backed up by, like, 1.5 to 2 hours. The hosts send the guests into the bar for a drink, but there is only the bar rail and 6 tables that make up the bar. That's about 28 seats. Normally, when a guest moves to their table from the bar, there is a transfer. Not that night. I'd guess that maybe 50-60% (I think that's low) of the transfers never made it to the correct server. When the guest is done with their dinners we offer dessert and coffee. Believe me when I say that we are hoping against hope they say no. So now, while running around trying to help out and do everything else, we have to write up one last ticket with everything they ordered and prices. Happily, managers were on hand to help with the finalizing of the bill. They add on the tax and run the 'cachunk-cachunk' machine. That's the noise those old manual credit card imprinters make. 
I started early with every one of my tables, explaining to them what was happening. People are funny. Most folks want to be in the know. I was kneeling conspiratorially at one of my tables and they were both leaning in to the point of claustrophobia so as to not miss a word of what I was saying. The woman clucked her commiseration, and smiled saying they were in absolutely no hurry, take my time. Another table, sat a couple of hours later, were a little less understanding. They were frustrated by the wait, and hungry. I brought their drinks out and took their order. Another table was seated next to them and they were ready to order everything immediately. Throughout the evening, we had some trouble bringing out the correct food to the correct tables. My table that was sat second got their food first. Well, technically it wasn't their food, but it was close enough that they took advantage of the fact that there were crab legs and steak sitting in front of them only 15 minutes after they ordered it. By the time I knew there was a problem, the first couple were already talking to a manager with coats in hand. We bought their drinks and they left. I don't believe they were very upset, but they saw the writing on the wall and decided to go someplace less busy. Like home.
Our last seating was supposed to be at 10PM. We sat until midnight. We sat until everyone who wanted to stay was fed.
Like everything in life, that too, passed. At 2AM the last of our guests straggled out the door. We all breathed a sigh of relief. Everyone did their side work, their napkin folds and cleaned their section. Now came the paperwork. When things are normal, I have a system that works well for me. It minimizes my end of night paperwork. Not tonight. For the first time in probably 10 years, I have an apron pocket full of cash, credit card slips, and partially written tickets. At around 2:30AM one of the managers got one POS working. Those of us still there (some folks are just fast with their side work) were asked to put in all their orders and pay with the credit card numbers on those manual slips. Lots of things went wrong with addition and prices, etc. but on the whole that part went smoothly. There were just a lot of servers waiting to do their books. The whole system kicks everyone off at 3:30 in the morning and resets for the next working day. I was the last server to do her books using the POS. Many other servers were coming back the next day to do their books then, but I was leaving early in the morning for Puerto Vallarta, so they asked me to do mine right away. I staggered home at 3:45AM. I got about a half hour of sleep, then I was up and off to Puerto Vallarta. That's a really nice reward for such a lousy Valentine's Day.
We were relatively unscathed considering how bad it could have been. We have an amazing crew both in the back of house and the front. Most guests were very understanding. A few will never come back. That's unfortunate. I feel like the restaurant I work at tries very hard to give a superior experience to our guests. Judging us on major holidays is not okay. I recommend coming in the week before, or the week after to celebrate.