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. 

Just got to post something for gosh sakes!

Wow! It's been way too long! There's been October, November, December, then, well, you know. I thought I'd go ahead and just talk about some things I like and go from there. Y'know, Squirrel style. 
So, I am a big fan of OK GO. I enjoy their music very much, but It's their videos that make the experience so much better. I thought I'd share some of my favorites. The first one is what turned me onto them in the first place, Here It Goes Again. It's also one of their better pieces of music. 

The next one is not my favorite song, but it does show how they put a crazy amount of thought and effort into their videos. It's really all about a Rube Goldberg machine and it is amazing!The end of the video gives you links to show how the whole thing was made. The song is This Too Shall Pass (one of my favorite sayings).

This next one is just pure fun. It's the Muppet Show theme song. Let's just watch it. (Yay!)

It just brings so much happy to my life! (OK Go did a video with dogs in it, not very good comparatively, hence the 'we can't do that dog video' line towards the end) 
Now for the last OK Go video. My absolute favorite and also one of their very intricate ones, Wanting/Needing.

I love the last line. "Did we get it?!" Gosh, I hope so. There are some behind the scenes videos, but I'm not able to post them for some reason. 
That's it for tonight! Hope you enjoyed! Here's a video of a boat covered in a tarp that looks like it's saying 'bluh'.

Happy Birthdannayversary!

Man, I love August! It's, like, the best time of the year! The sun is usually out, there are so many things to do, and, most importantly, it's both my birthday AND my (our) anniversary month! My birthday was pretty fantastic. A lovely friend of mine had this waiting for me when I arrived at work.

That is one beautiful orchid! She also brought a tiara. Yes, I wore it while serving tables. Why wouldn't I?

That's Kristy who gave me the orchid and tiara on the left,
 Erin is on my right and behind me is professional photo bomber, Sarah.

Hard to see the whole tiara, but the pink fuzzy stuff kinda gives it away. Our lunch sous chef, Jose (I call him shoomie cause that's his xbox gamertag) made sure I got two tacos that they make for the crew in the kitchen. The bartender bought me an after work drink. Everyone was very sweet and kind about the happy birthdays. The very best part was how everyone made me feel so special. Everyone should have a birthday like mine if they have to work. 

Moving onto my (Oops, sorry!) our anniversary. We both took Friday, Saturday and Sunday off to enjoy the weekend together. We started out on Friday at Tulalip Casino and resort. Fun, but we really blew through our money and left relatively early. Saturday, we didn't really have any plans, so we went to Salty's (yes, where we work) and enjoyed brunch. Y'know, for a place I have worked at for so long, I still really enjoy eating there. Don't get me wrong, I have very specific things I choose to eat off the brunch buffet. I've never been one for oysters, and I have a, erm, sensitivity (read: projectile vomiting problem) to crab, so I stick to prawns, bacon, omelets, and the wall of dessert. Specifically, getting a snicker doodle and dipping it in creme brulee. Oh yes, I know all the good tricks. Grab a small belgium waffle and top it with a little syrup and the fresh whipped cream. I swear, I'm drooling right now. Here's a couple of nice pictures of our table and the view from our table.

Yep, fresh donuts from the donut robot...

Taittinger, no Slurpee Laurel! This is the good stuff.

A piece of anniversary white chocolate cheesecake dipped in chocolate.

Look how clear the water is!

We spent the rest of the day recovering from our brunch. We really had a great anniversary weekend. We had so much fun, as a matter of fact, that I think we will do it again next year! 

Xenomorph

Hi all! I'd like to introduce you to Ripley.

I love how the photo looks all dreamy

Ripley is a Kitchenaid stand mixer 620 Professional. Basically, that means it holds up to 6 quarts and is grey. I've wanted a stand mixer for a very long time. Baking has been bringing me so much joy, and anytime I can make something from scratch, I do. I love her. The very first thing I made in her was butter! 

I was surprised the butter came out yellow. Since milk is white, I thought the butter would also be white. After looking it up, I now know that when churned, the butter cream separates from the watery liquid (which is sold as skim milk, so I guess I'm also making my own skim milk!). The butter cream contains all the fat which has a high concentration of vitamin A. Vitamin A has a natural, yellowish tint. Who knew? Now you do! 
Tomorrow I plan to make some shortbread cookies using this butter in Ripley followed by pizza dough. The twins are coming over for the weekend and we are making pizza from scratch. Dad and I took a really great pizza making class last year and I've been wanting to make the really silky pizza dough we made in class. It took, like, 25 minutes in the stand mixer they provided to get it done, but it was really worth it. 

Hmmm. Really wish I'd taken a picture of the pizzas...

I'm sure I'll be posting a lot of food stuff in the near future, but I am also going to try some other types of posts. For now, though, Bill Cosby and Groucho Marx!

Superb Owl!

Hm. Something looks wrong with my title... Ah, I'll worry about it later. Let's talk about the Super Bowl! More importantly, let's talk about what my hubby bunny made for eats. He likes to cook and is occasionally absolutely inspired! This was one of those times. He started with the marinara. Oh, it's heaven. Tomatoes, oregano, red wine, a touch of vinegar a few other loose odds and ends and, voila! a pot of the best tasting marinara evah!

He then made meatballs. I am not a big fan of meatballs, they remind me of meatloaf. Guess what? I don't like meatloaf. The meatballs were good, but I think maybe next time we'll add some spicy, flavorful sausage to the mix. I think that'd zing it up nicely. 

When he finished baking the meatballs, he tossed them into the sauce and let them simmer for awhile. 

I had made whole wheat hoagie rolls the day before. He heated them up and, I gotta tell ya, wow were those sammies good!

The sauce was perfect with the meatballs and the bread. Ravens and 49ers? I will watch every year as long as the good food keeps on coming.

Oh! Now I remember what's wrong with my title!



Corny, but, well, not even cute. This one kinda creeps me out...

Weekly Wha?

I work at a very popular restaurant with an amazing view of downtown Seattle. Every weekend we do an almost more amazing brunch. Brunch is busy, but a couple of young ladies always find a few minutes to create a piece of 'art'. The art is made with whatever is available to them at the time. It's funny to me because I never see them actually make it. It's not there, it's not there, it's not, oops! There it is! I thought it would be fun to post a picture every week of their creations. This one is from last weekend. I think we should name it. What do you think?