"How come I no seet there?"

Convention hotel restaurants have to be some of the most bizarre places to work as far as dealing with the variety of people from all over the world.   

When groups of people stay at the hotel for a convention, our guests become this bizarre wave of the exact same type of people dining in our restaurant for multiple days in a row.   One week we can have a health convention when people order mostly salads, gluten free options, low carb meals and hardly any alcohol.  Two days later everything can switch.  Next group: fast-food chain franchise owners who love to consume almost anything and everything and aren’t picky whatsoever.  As you can imagine, it can be a widespread blessing or it can be absolute hell on Earth depending on the type of group in house. 

This week the foreigners were back with a vengeance.  For five straight days and nights they’ve been infiltrating our restaurant with frustrating language barriers, with virtually no clue as to how American restaurants operate and appalling non-tipping scenarios like the word tip doesn’t exist in their native tongue (which for some, in their defense, perhaps it doesn’t). 

Let’s say, for example, I worked at the neighborhood Italian joint.  Sure I’d get a table here and there of foreigners but in no way would I ever, ever get five days in a row of 90% foreigners.  Never.   Never, ever, ever. 

I’ve written about foreign diners in Serving Humanity in the past (reference ‘Euro Convention’ May 2012).  But foreign people can be so mind numbingly frustrating to serve sometimes I had to touch on this subject again. 

Two of the most infuriating aspects of waiting tables are high maintenance people (for countless reasons) and not getting tipped.  Combine these two annoyances together - for five days in a row - and you’ve got a recipe for a total nightmare … with the possibility of a complete mental breakdown. 

Guest after guest piled into the restaurant seating themselves at any table they wanted.  Or they’d demand tables in a closed section.  Most couldn’t understand the concept of proper seating in the restaurant at all.  “But I see open table!  How come I no seet there?”  (Note: I’m writing this in improper English for a reason).  When people are allowed to seat wherever they want and whenever they want, it affects the entire restaurant; from the servers and their assistants getting too busy to of course the kitchen getting slammed all at once.  That's never a good thing.  Proper seating controls the entire flow of the restaurant and when this fails, the entire operation of a restaurant can collapse into a horrific spiral downward. 

Another annoyance the foreigners bestowed upon us was the amount of cappuccinos, lattes and espressos we had to make.  Foreigners love their post-lunch coffees.  And I’m not talking smack about this tradition, it’s just that we’re not set up for this at our restaurant whatsoever and therefore slows us down tremendously.  Basically, when we have a foreign group in house, we really need our own barista.  It takes so much time to make cappuccinos and lattes.  Consider how long it takes your Frappuccino to be made at your favorite coffee shop.  And what’s even more frustrating is that we’re not going to see any difference in our tips from making all of these drinks whatsoever.  More work and no money to show for it. 

Now back to the whole high maintenance, language barrier and non-tipping thing.

A perfect example was at the end of my hellish day yesterday.  I got the word we were finally shutting the patio after my seventh hour (and fifth day) of waiting on foreigners.  My assistant had just begun to clear the table settings and had removed seat cushions from the empty tables.  Just then, two foreign men sat down at one of these tables.  Oh hell no.  I walked over to them and strictly said, “I’m sorry gentlemen we are closing this section down …” One of them cut me off.  Two beers,” he said in his thick Eastern European accent.  Ugh…Fine.  It wasn’t even worth my breath explaining, especially because he wouldn’t have understood me anyway.  I still had several other tables and was still fairly busy.  I thought, “I might as well take one more table while I finish up with my others.”    I brought the check with the two beers I delivered.  I did a couple other things and came back.  He placed a large bill down.  I went and got change.  I broke down the bill with lots of change, hoping this would allow him to give me some sort of tip.  When they left, I picked up the checkbook.  Not a single bill or even a coin in the check presenter.  Stiffed again.  No big surprise there as I’d been stiffed probably over fifteen times in five days. 

Another great example happened to another server the night before.  She waited on a foreign table who were extremely high maintenance that screwed up her entire section for a couple hours.  Apparently the language barrier had a lot to do with it because their food kept coming out “wrong” so they kept sending it back.  They were highly demanding in every way possible, constantly asking the server and her assistant for things practically every time they walked by, but nothing seemed to make them happy. This table tied up the kitchen, tied up the server assistant and tied up the server.  All for nothing.  Their check was over $300.  They paid cash and left one extra dollar.   Yet again, more work and more hassle for no money. 

Anyone can handle this type of crowd for a day.  But on the fifth consecutive day, the annoyances of this group had begun to crawl beneath my skin like a nasty infectious virus.  It reached beyond the point of frustration that I just wanted to explode…  I wish I had counted the times I said to myself “just kill me now” over the past five days…  Yeah.  It was that bad.

I don’t want to talk smack about foreigners.  I love meeting people when I travel abroad.  It’s one of the most intriguing aspects of traveling.  Getting to know people and other cultures is truly fascinating. 

Of course I realize I am a foreigner when I travel.  I’m sure I’ve pissed off some locals in my journeys.  And generally speaking, I know Americans can be a pain in the ass in foreign countries as well. 

I honestly love getting to know foreigners and their different cultures.  But I also honestly would be completely satisfied in my life if I never had to serve another one ever again.  Never. Ever. Ever.   

~ HK ~

Anything That Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong

Oh Murphy, you son of a gun.

It’s not that often I get sat a party of 15.  Like hardly ever.  So when the greeter told me I was getting a large party I was immediately excited.

                                                                                                                            

I had three tables outside and three tables inside.   I was cruising along just fine until I looked up and saw I was getting sat a party of five not long before my 15-top was to arrive.  In my head, I had my game plan ready:  to get their drinks delivered and food orders in the system as fast as possible before the big party comes and I’d be just fine. 

Note to self – never assume this plan will ever work.

It took me a few minutes to get to table 22 - the new 5-top - consisting of all men.  Just as I said hello, one of the men piped up, “Well, I guess you were worth the wait.”    Wow.  This is the type of guest us female servers dream of serving; rude, arrogant, impatient womanizers.  Amazing.  Always a pleasure!   I immediately responded.  “I’m sorry.  How long were you waiting here?”  He replied, “Like two minutes.”  Okay.  Not long.  Now I am absolutely positive he’s a jerk.  I tried to be as polite as possible and asked where they were from and so on to try and change his discourteous attitude, but lord knows that wasn’t going to happen.  They ordered a few cocktails, raw oysters and sushi to start.  I was trying my hardest to stick to my game plan; however, every time I was at their table, they seemed to keep me there with annoying narcissistic, flirtatious banter.  Annoying comments like asking me if I was single even though all of them had rings on their fingers.  They demanded all of my attention, even when I was simply walking by they seemed to need me for something. 

When I came back to the table with their drinks, I noticed my party of 15 was getting sat.  “Deep breath.  I’ll be fine.  Just get table 22’s food orders in and move forward,” I repeated to myself.  My request to the universe was adamantly denied. 

One of the tight-fitted, muscle-shirt wearing guys asked if we had oyster shooters.  Oh no.  Of course this guy is asking for something very complicated right when I’m getting sat this large party.  “Technically we don’t have oyster shooters,” I replied as I was watching 15 people get settled in front of me.  But these men wouldn’t take no for an answer.  They were relentless.  They kept shouting, “Come on… We know you have oysters and we know you have vodka… Make it happen.”  I told them I’d do it, but it would take a while. 

Plan A was starting to fail miserably. 

As if the request for oyster shooters wasn’t bad enough, one of them then asked if we had sake.   Oh God no… not sake.  Let me put it this way, when anyone orders sake at our restaurant, every single server cringes.  I promise you.  Sake is a nightmare.  Let me explain.  We don’t have any updated sake menus for guests, no one knows what we have and don’t have, we had one day of education on our sake (a year and a half ago) and the sake itself is unorganized and in a land far, far away.  Basically, our restaurant shouldn’t even carry sake in the first place.  As you can imagine, the very mention of sake creates an intense and immediate stress.   In retrospect, I should have just said we don’t have any, especially under these circumstances.

As I went to grab the ridiculous sake “menu,” I had to first stop at my large party to introduce myself as they had already been sitting for a solid few minutes.   As expected, people began shouting out drink orders and the head of the party wanted to look at a wine menu to choose a few bottles for the table as well.  I’m so screwed. 

At that moment, I had to order the drinks for the large party, talk with the kitchen and the bar to organize five oyster shooters, grab a wine menu for the large party, a sake “menu” for my 5-top and talk with both tables about their bottle selections.  Keep in mind I still had three other tables outside and three other tables inside, not including my 5-top or my 15-top.  And yes, my other tables were beginning to need things by now - like a lot of things. Checks, coffee, dessert menus, more drinks, etc…

I felt my body tense up and an instant headache forming into my temples.  My mind started to shift… Would it really be that bad if I just walked out right now?  Oh right.  That whole getting fired thing.  I do have quite a few bills to pay.  Hmmm, I guess that’s not an option at this moment.  Damn.

Game Plan A = epic fail. 

Onto Game Plan B = shift into fifth gear (with some sort of nitrous boost) and get as much help as possible.

Boom.  Let’s do this. 

I found my assistant to help get coffees, checks and run drinks for the large party.  I picked up checks and ran credit cards as fast as I could.  I brought the wine menu over to my large party to discuss options.  All the while my womanizing table 22 kept yelling my name and waving at me to get me to come over to them.  It was very obvious I was busy with plenty of other tables, but they didn’t seem to care.  After the head of the large party picked their wines, I went over to the 5-top and gave them our stupid sake menu.  He said, “Finally.”  I couldn’t help myself but to say, “You can see I have that large party as well as several other tables.   Please be patient.  I’m doing my best.”  After a few more rude comments from him, he finally chose a bottle.  I left the table and was now in full panic mode.  Not only do I have to find this bottle of godforsaken sake and present it and serve it to them, I also have to find and open three bottles of wine and present it and serve it to my large party.  And just at that moment, I saw the food runner coming out with five oysters – on the shell - not shooter style as I requested.  I stopped him.  “Wait!  These are supposed to be shooters.”  He told me I had to take them myself to the bar and set them up because he had never done it before and he didn’t have time. 

Oh my God.  Someone shoot me.  And where the hell is a manager.

I grabbed the oysters and high tailed it to the bar.  As the bartender and I were scooping the oysters into the vodka shot glasses, I saw a manager.  “I NEED you to get a bottle of Cakebread Sauv Blanc and two bottles of Stagsleap Cab to table 32… like right this second.  Like NOW.  I literally have no time to present it and pour it.”  He nodded.  I took the impromptu oyster shooters over to my favorite table of the evening.  As I placed them down, the guy who ordered the sake yelled at me, “Where’s our sake?  The food is good here, but damn the service is slow.”  Would it be considered illegal to punch this guy in the face right now?  I took a deep breath.  “I told you these shooters would take a while.  But I got them for you didn’t I?  You’ve got your shooters; now, I’m going to get your sake.” 

I bolted to the walk-in refrigerator in the back of the prep kitchen (behind the main kitchen) to grab the sake.  As one would imagine, the location of this walk-in is in no way convenient for the servers.  It’s basically like a trek to Vietnam under these circumstances.  I searched high and low for the sake to no avail.  Where the hell is this bottle?  Are we out?  After a minute or two of searching, I left the walk-in defeated.  I hustled my way through the kitchen and found a server to ask if he knew anything about this elusive bottle.  He thought we had it, but wasn’t sure, but said he would help me look.  Thank God.  In times like this, one extra person helping can feel like that hand you need to help rescue you from sinking into quicksand.  To kill some time while he looked for it, I visited my outside tables, as to avoid table 22.  Of course they all needed something. God knows it’d been a while since I was last out there.   

At this moment, I was deep in the trenches of my own personal war zone with no end in site.   I hardly had a machete - or even a Swiss army knife – that could have helped me out of this hellish battle. 

I got word back from my one fellow helping hand of a server – we were out of that bottle.  Apparently we had just sold the last one a few nights ago.  This is an absolute nightmare.  I decided I’d just tell table 22 to forget the sake and order another bourbon.  When I told him we were out, he said, “This is absurd.  It took you this long to figure this out and now you don’t even have it!  I should get a bottle of sake on the house.”  I told him, “I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”  He demanded, “Where’s you manager?”  Good question.  “I’ll get one of them for you.” Meanwhile, my large party was getting antsy for me to take their food order.  Yep, that’s right.  I still hadn’t taken their food order.  I told the large party I’d be right there to take their order.  I’m sure they didn’t believe me.  I walked around searching for a manager, asking around.  I ran to the office in the back – past Vietnam and around the corner - and found one.  “I NEED help again!  You have to visit table 22.”  I told the manager what happened; yet, unfortunately for me, he couldn’t help me at the moment.  He was in the process of searching for a bottle of wine for another server.  He said he’d get to table 22 after.  That’s not going to work.  Where’s a machete when you need one.   I walked back into the restaurant and thank God found the other manager.  I told her the situation and luckily she wasn’t as busy and was able to go to table 22 quickly.

Feeling like I finally was handed that Swiss army knife, I now had time to take orders for my large party. 

As I was rounding the big party’s table taking orders, I noticed my manager opening a bottle of Sake at table 22.  Ugh.  They got what they wanted (it is one thing to be offered a bottle of whatever on the house.  It’s another to actually demand it).  I finally finished taking my large party’s food order and put it into the computer.  I then made my rounds to all of my other tables before I went back to table 22.  They actually complained about how “bad” the free sake tasted.  I basically ignored that comment and I asked them if there was anything else they wanted, hoping of course they’d say no.  They apparently had enough and were ready for the check.  Thank you Lord baby Jesus.  Get these guys outta here.  When I dropped the check, they actually asked me what time I got off work and if I’d meet them at a bar.  You’ve got to be freaking kidding me.   I ignored that question as well and walked away. 

Finally.  I could focus all my attention on my 15-top; the one I was actually happy to have before the war zone of table 22 hit.    What a difference it made to have them gone.  I could actually spend time with my large party, get to know them and serve them properly. 

To have a 5-top from hell is one thing.  But to have a 5-top from hell while waiting on a newly sat 15-top with six other tables is a whole other type of combat I never want to experience ever again. 

So Murphy, could you please change your law to state that anything that can go right will go right?  But I’m guessing that’s not going to ever happen.  A law is a law for a reason.

Therefore, my only option for my next battle is to be better prepared with the tools I need – a machete, a sharp Swiss army knife and perhaps a great pair of combat boots.  Hell, I’ll take a butter knife if it’ll help me survive the trenches.  Because I do know one thing: without the tools we need, serving humanity - especially the pompous and demanding ones of the world – will always be a loosing battle. 

~ HK ~

Winning!

It was a coveted balmy October night in San Diego and a large convention was in full swing at our hotel.  The restaurant got hit hard, as expected, and we were cranking out drinks and decadent dishes as respectably as possible. 

I saw a single lady get sat at my last available table.  I was juggling a lot at this point; taking drink and food orders, inputting them into the computer, getting drinks from the bar, dropping checks, running credit cards, etc… It was not an easy evening to say the least.  I hurried as quickly as possible to get to the point in which I could greet her and give her my full attention.  She was facing away from me and just as I started to walk over, I saw her pick up her purse and begin to get up.  Uh oh.  “Hi ma’am!” I began with a huge smile.  “I’ll be taking care of you tonight.  Thanks for your patience.  We’re quite busy, as you can see.”

No smile on her end.  Just a frank, “I was just about ready to leave.  I’m really hungry.”    Of course I had to reply with, “I apologize.  Again, as you can see we’re very busy tonight.  But I am ready for you now.  I can take both your food and drink orders if you’d like.”  She agreed.  “I’d like a glass of the Malbec and I’d like a bowl of tomato soup.  And I’ll have the beet salad.”  I responded quickly, “Great.  The soup will come out quickly.  I’ll be right back with the wine.   Also, my assistant will be by with bread for you at any moment as well.”  She seemed reasonably content with my plan but was definitely still irritated.   I figured as long as she had water, wine and bread on her table as quickly as possible, she couldn’t be too upset.  Right?  

Wrong.

As I shuffled about my station, I kept my eye on her - as well as my seven other tables.  I asked how her soup was and I commented on how quickly it came out.  Thank god for food runners.  She didn’t say anything.  Perhaps she gave me a head nod, but she didn’t give me any response like she was actually satisfied with how quickly it came out.  At this point I had a feeling there was no winning with his lady. 

I had no time to dwell on her so I continued onward with my juggling act. 

After some more time went by, I noticed she had put the soup bowl aside.  I fired the beet salad (“firing” is an industry term used to let the kitchen know the table is ready for it’s next course).    I continued multi-tasking and juggling what felt like 20 things at once.  As I was taking an order at a table, I noticed my assistant was giving me the I need to tell you something look.   Oh no.  After taking that table’s order, I hurriedly walked inside.  “What’s up?” I asked him.  He said, “The lady on Table 11 said the salad is taking too long and she just wants her check.”  Oh God.  Of course. There’s absolutely no winning with this woman.  I didn’t even care to talk to her about her “situation” first.   I took the salad off her check, printed her ticket and began to walk over.   As I was literally heading over to her table with the check, the food runner arrived with her salad.  Yes!  At least it came out before I dropped the check (keep in mind, it honestly didn’t take long).  The food runner stood there frozen, looking as if he was taking a verbal beating from this woman.  Rut ro.  What am I walking into?

As I briskly walked up, the lady was telling the food runner,  “The salad took way too long to get here.  I don’t want it.  It should have been here immediately after I was finished with the soup.”   She actually said immediately.  I told the food runner, “I’ll handle this.”  I piped up.  “Well the salad is here now ma’am.  If you think it took too long you can still enjoy it and I won’t charge you for it.”  She didn’t like that idea either.  Who turns down a free beet salad?   Especially when it’s right there, ready to eat.   I continued.  “I’m sorry it took too long for you, but it seems like it came out in a timely manner.  I knew you were hungry so I had the soup come out first to be as quick as possible.”  She just shook her head, “Well maybe you should have asked me if I wanted the meal coursed.  I would have preferred to have both out together.  You should have asked me.  You’re just too busy anyway.”  The nerve of this lady.  I couldn’t win with this woman.  There was no need to argue, nor spend any more time with her.  She was over it so I was over it too.  I dropped the check, apologized one last time and walked away.  

What more could I have done? 

The answer: nothing.  Years in the restaurant industry will teach you many valuable lessons about people.  Being a server is truly an education in sociology and psychology.   You have to like people as a server; friendly, rude, impatient and everyone in between.  There will always be people in this world you’ll just never be able to please.  I realized this lady was one of those people from the moment I walked up to her table (remember she was ready to leave before I could even say hello).  Nothing I could have done would have changed her attitude or made her dining experience better.  Even if it had been a slow night and I had greeted her in five seconds, served her salad immediately after the soup bowl was taken away (virtually impossible), she still would have been unhappy about something.  

Perhaps it was just her mood that night, perhaps it had something to do with what happened to her that day, but the one thing I did know was that it wasn’t worth my time to argue to try and fix it. 

In serving humanity, sometimes you just have to let those ones go.  And when you look at it from that perspective, who’s really winning now? 

That would be me.

Be polite.  Do what you can.  Don’t dwell.  Move on. 

Who’s next?  ~ HK ~