Memorial Day

 I don't know where to start with this one. I spent the majority of this holiday weekend working at the crabhouse and, like I always do, I wonder why the hell I torture myself by going there at all.
  Saturday wasn't that bad, it wasn't as busy as we were hoping, but it was still a somewhat decent day. The weather was nice, the bands were ok, and there weren't too many drunk fools. Of course there were some pretty hammered people out on the beach later, but that's normal for a Saturday. And of course someone got punched, and I think some people were "asked" to leave, and the cops showed up, but that's somewhat normal as well.
  Sunday was a completely different story. It was hotter, and it got busy earlier. As the day went on we started getting the people who were there to see the band. And these people leave a lot to be desired. They are drunk , loud and in the frickin' way. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. We were busy, so people were having to wait for tables, and getting pissed about it, and then having to wait forever and a day to get their food. And getting pissed about that. The kitchen was completely backed up, please don't get me started on how the kitchen runs in this place. If you're a server there you just learn to work around it. Customer service is NOT our number one priority. So don't expect it.
  One of the girls had a table of drunkos that were waving their arms and yelling "hey bitch", whenever they needed another pitcher of whatever they were drinking. I had a guy that started yelling for his "mother fucking shrimp". How about you get a bunch of mother fucking nothing and get the hell out of here. Ass. I have no idea about the rudeness that happened inside, but I know it happened. And I couldn't even begin to tell you about the rudeness on the beach. The point is that people were coming in on Sunday and acting like rude asses. My nice friend was getting pissed at everyone, and she's nice. I blame it on the band, this particular band brings a bit of a bad, trashy, crowd.
 So now I'm pooped, I don't feel like dealing with anyone right now, ( and I have to go to the mall, I feel like that might be a bad move ), and I can't get Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy out of my head. Because I'm pretty sure all the bands this weekend  played it. Yippee.
 

On busy-ness

Ziggy is weeeeded; Mimi is not

 I was a little confused as to where I was last night. Let's see, I was outside, I ran my ass off, and I didn't make any money. Crabhouse? No! Psych to me!
 Busy is busy, which is good, but there are some things that can be done to ease the pain, so to speak. There are also some major peeves that make it worse. This will be fun.
 
 Timing.
 Getting double or triple sat is going to happen, it's a law. To you none-servers, this basically means getting two or three tables at a time. Might not sound like a big deal to you, but add the other tables that are already sitting, and things can blow up pretty fast. Very fast. As in," I'm cool, I'm cool, I'm in the groove, everything is going along perfectly, oh SHIT-I-JUST-GOT-DOUBLE-SAT-I-HATE-EVERYONE!!!!!!". It can happen in the blink of an eye.
 This is where timing is crucial. Now is not the time to be giving your tables your 20 minute menu dissertation. Just get them drinks, let them know what they need to know, and run. Excuse me, walk away gracefully. You always have to be at least a few steps ahead of the guests because you can always count on someone doing something to trip you up, like asking a lot of questions, or ordering things one at a time when you ask if they need anything else, or wanting to "just take a look at the desserts, just to see what you have". The heavy-ass dessert tray that is all the way inside.
 This is where a server's experience shows. If you see right off the bat that a table is going to load you down with questions, then go get the order on the table that is ready and waiting. Don't make them suffer because you have poor time management. As long as a table has drinks, then they are ok for a hot minute. You can politely let them know that you'll be right back with them. Don't let them suck you in!! Servers that are less than experienced let themselves get sucked in; baaaad move. You get behind when you're busy, busy, and you can piss off your whole section, not just one table, ( you've sometimes gotta throw one to the wolves, sorry, fact of life ). You piss off your whole section, and managers get pissed off at you, and your whole day sucks.

 Running Sidework.
 Ooooooh, this my personal favorite. Nothing jacks me off more than going to get a glass, a spoon, ice, coffee, whatever, and it's not there. Do you know why it's not there? It's because some lazy jackass didn't refill ice, make tea or coffee when they took the last of it, or bother to go in the back to get more silver or glasses. These asses will run allll the way to the other end of the restaurant to snag a fork or glass or whatever. You know what, that's fine, it happens, but you obviously are aware that there are no glasses or silver in your half of the restaurant. So do the sensible thing and keep grabbing whatever your heart desires from the other half of the restaurant, instead of taking your candy-ass in the back and, I don't know, getting some glasses or silver to take to your section. It's a strange concept, I know, but I really think it will work.
 Because we have too few people that will lower themselves to doing running sidework, we often run out of things. It's just like timing on your tables people, keep ahead of it. It probably takes less time to grab a rack of glasses from the back than it does to keep traversing the restaurant snagging glasses. If they need to run half a rack, then have them run half a rack. It's not hard. Don't even tell me "it's the bussers' job". It's your table that needs whatever, go get it. The bussers are busy too. Don't get me started on busser abuse.
  Because not everyone does their fair share, you have people that basically just wait on their tables and make their money. Because certain people can't or won't help out with running sidework during the shift, other people have to pick up the slack, which makes them slightly busier than they really need to be. And THAT is what pisses me off. It's always the same people. If you can't or won't help out, then you need to find some other job that might be a little easier for you. I'm just saying.

 Service Bar Standers
  Servers: if you have the time to stand at the service bar and stare at the busy bartender while she's making our dramarific drinks then you have time to do something else. Like go get glasses.

 Grace.
  If you're busy, please try not to look it. You can be busy gracefully. Don't go stampeding through the restaurant like a rabid hippopotamus. Everyone is busy, we get it. Running through the restaurant doesn't impress anyone with how hard you're working. You just look like some idiot running through the restaurant.

 I wonder how busy it'll be tonight?

Mother's Day at the Crabhouse

 So, yesterday was Mother's Day, and of course I had to work. There are a couple of pain in the ass holidays, and Mother's Day is one of them. It's one of those days where you work way too hard for the amount of money you make. You run, run ,run, you're busy, busy, busy, and at the end of it all you say to yourself, "That's all I made??!!! That's it, I'm never working Mother's Day again." But you do, because it's one of those days that you have to work. Oh well.
  Mother's Day is one of those days where people who don't normally go out, go out. To put it bluntly, people who don't normally go out aren't so savvy on the tipping end. Which, if they are pleasant, is ok, ( I'd rather get a crappy tip from nice people than a great tip from complete asses ), but an entire day of 10% tips is rather disheartening, especially since you worked pretty hard all day. At least they were nice.
  Yesterday I was lucky enough to work Mother's Day at the crabhouse. I had been told that it was usually a crazy busy day, which surprised me, since Mother's Day is one of those dress-everyone-up-and-go-to-a-nice-restaurant kind of days. I wouldn't think that a place where you throw paper on the tables and sling crabs and pitchers of beer would be a big draw for Mother's Day. Apparently it is. Who knew?
  It wasn't business as usual. Most restaurants will have a special menu, or switch it up and do a buffet. We had a buffet AND an abbreviated menu AND crabs. Haha! We didn't take reservations, with a buffet and all you can eat crabs, you aren't getting your average hour and a half table time that you normally count on at normal restaurants. The all you eat crabs will keep people at a table all day; you add a buffet and forget about it. Especially around here. Since we didn't take reservations, people were showing up and having to wait, which happens, but these poor people were having to wait an exceptionally long time. Add the fact that we don't really have the space for people to wait, and most of these people are not small, and it gets a little claustrophobic. These poor people are trying to find a place to wait comfortably that is NOT in the way, and failing miserably.
   When they finally got a table, we had run out of crabs. Horror of horrors! It happens. We always tell people when they call and ask if we have crabs that it is always while quantities last. Always. Some people don't understand this, and ask what that means, or ask if we will have crabs on Wednesday of the following week. Crabs are the sort of thing where if you run out, you are OUT. As in completely gone. We can't create more crabs and have them ready in an hour. Don't get upset with me that we have run out of crabs at 6 p.m. on one of our busier days. Get upset with the large family that has been eating them all day. I didn't eat all of your precious crabs. If you want them that bad, go catch them yourself; we are pretty much surrounded by water.
 Except for running out of crabs, it was a pretty uneventful day. Some people were crazy busy, ( more on how we seat in another post; if you're a server, you'll know what I mean ), some people complained, and one guy completely wiped out when he tried to sit in a barstool. So, it was a pretty average Sunday. Except that we handed out roses to the mothers. Don't expect treatment like that for at least another year.  

Training Part II

this has nothing to do with training

 It's that time of the year where we need to plump up the staff and hire more people. You know what that means: it's time to train!!! Yuck.
 If you've ever worked in a restaurant, you will know that training is a minor pain in the ass. But, it's a neccessary evil, and the only people that can do it are the people that already work there. *sigh*. Don't get the wrong idea, servers aren't bad people, they just don't like to train.
 If you're training someone, you have someone following you. I am not a fan of having someone follow me. Sometimes they stand too close, sometimes they stand too far and try to look aloof because they're too cool to be trained, sometimes they get cheeky and touch my tables. NO! Don't ever touch my tables unless I ask you to. Ever! Sometimes they get cocky and try to outsmart you with their menu knowledge by asking an extremely obscure question. Nice try jack-a-lope; I've been here since day one. But, of course, this person has worked at Some Other Fine Establishment and is an expert on all things restaurant. Sometimes they are experts on alot of things that aren't even restaurant related. Good for you, but I'm not here to be impressed by your smarts. One guy was confused that our chef from Italy was speaking Spanish. I told him that Chef speaks a few languages. This guy told me that Italian and Spanish are similar. Really??!! I didn't know that!! Je parle le francais et vous etes un idiot. Je sais vous etes un buffoon. Pgghhfft! We had a bunch of these people when we first opened; we know how to smoke your type out.
 Sometimes trainees will complain about the way certain things are done. Go to Hell. This is not your old place of business, you are here now with us and you will do things our way. Besides, if your old job was so wonderful, why aren't you there now? Hmmmm? Open your own restaurant.
 Our menu is pretty easy to navigate, and it's really not too terribly terrifying to a new server. We're lucky, everything is pretty much written out right on the menu, there isn't anything really sneaky about anything. Having said this, we have had a few trainees who made no effort at all to try to learn anything about the menu. Where did these people come from? How have you worked in all these other places and don't feel the need to learn the menu? You are basically selling food, a server not knowing the menu is like a car-salesman not knowing that the round things on a car are tires. I mean, come on.
 Sidenote: we have a brand new guy who does nothing but ask questions. NOTHING. Good for him for being inquisitive and caring, but it is a little annoying. Two seconds of being around this guy and it's, "um, ok, question, ok?" Ok. I didn't know that there could be so many questions.
 It doesn't matter how many written tests you give someone, how many mock presentations they do, you never really know how well a server is going to do until they are waiting on real people. When we first opened, quite a few of our "seasoned" servers bit the dust. Hard. You need to see a server in action. It's one thing to wait on one table at a time; completely another to have a full section and you're weeded out of your gourd. A real seasoned server will know how to handle it; getting completely weeded is part of the job. Being a little slow on your first day out of training is somewhat ok, falling on your face and completely screwing up everything is not. I've seen it happen and it isn't pretty. You hate to see it, but it happens. After 5-6 days of training you should have at least half an idea of what you're doing.
 The crabhouse has a completely different approach to training. You might follow someone for a day, and then you're on the floor on your next shift. Which is usually a Saturday. Which is busy as hell and you want to die. Which you will either go back for more punishment or you will run away screaming, never to return. Sink or swim. Whatever, it works. It's brutal, but after 5-6 days of that place you can handle just about anything. By the way, anyone looking for a job? We need servers....muahahahaha!
  : D

 

The Brawlhaus

 So yesterday wasn't that busy, but at least we had a fight. The first one of the season! This makes me want to regale you with tales of some of the lovelies that frequent our crabby establishment.
 When you mix drinkin' and rednecks you get fights. We can count on a couple small ones on any given weekend, and at least one big one once a month. It's fun. They usually start out in the sand and always end up in the parking lot. We get the best view when they move to the parking lot, we'll line the rail on the deck, smoking and watching. If you sit on the back of the booths, you can get a really good view. Who knows what they fight about, somebody said something stupid, somebody was all over someone else's girl, long-standing feud from high school, there are a myriad of reasons.
  My favorite was the family brawl that went on for a couple of hours. Some guy got drunk and said something stupid. Maybe he threw a punch, either way he started it. So security kicks him out, which pissed off his sister, uncle, some sort of family members. Apparently there was at least one sane relative who was trying to get this guy out, and when he did get him out, the guy started fighting him. The guy was stumbling drunk, yelling at security, his sane relative, throwing punches and landing on his face, falling over cars, you get the picture. This was not a small guy. Security was worried about their bikes, ( motorcycles ), we were worried about our cars. This family was stumbling around the parking lot, trying to fight each other, ( dad had gotten involved at this point ), somebody threw rocks at a truck, it was a mess. At this point the waitresses were done, but we couldn't leave because of these wack-jobs rolling around our not so big parking lot. One of the security guys suggested calling the cops, our manager said no, she didn't want people to drive by and think we were some trash-hole problem spot because of a couple of cop cars. People would never get that impression if they drove by and saw a large, drunken group brawling in the parking lot. NEVER. Finally, after a couple of hours, somebody broke down and called the cops. About six Charles County and at least one Statey showed up. Mom showed up and took Junior home, and everyone else got home safely. Can you imagine Thanksgiving at that house?
  Last summer some guy got kicked out and punched out a window in the Keller bus that was parked down the road. One of our Charles County guys was in our parking lot, ( which I should tell you, is tiny ), he turned out, and took off down the road. Of course we were lining the rail, yelling "GET HIM DUCK!!!". They got him. Duck is our hero.
 One of our co-worker's sister in-law was passed out face first in the sand. When security tried to get her out she started swinging. They gave up, and her brother-in-law and one of my friends each grabbed an end and tried to carry her out, she's squirming and yelling and fighting the entire way. She got an arm loose and punched my friend in the back; they finally got to the car and threw her in the back. There was alot of swearing involved. Apparently, her sister was soooo done with her drunk ass she punched her in the face on the way home.
  Some big scary woman went after another waitress when her man grabbed the waitress' ass. The waitress was saved by a bartender who literally flew over the bar.
  We had a cat fight at the "nice" restaurant. There was normal conversation and all of a sudden "BITCH!" and two chicks come rolling out of their little area. When I say rolling, I mean it, these two were trying to mop the floor with each other. There was wine everywhere, and the one manager had a leetle bit of a time trying to pull them apart. I was confused for a moment; I thought I was at the other place.
  These are the biggies that I remember right off the bat. The little spits and spats are too, too numerous to mention. But don't be down, the summer is just starting. I'm sure I will have PLENTY more to talk about : )