You have never worked in the restaurant industry, have you? You are ignorant about the amount of work that goes into each plate, the attitude and expectations of the customers, the financial constraints of the business, the caliber and work ethics of the employees, the minimum wage laws, and the difficulty of establishing and sustaining a successful restaurant.
And no, I’m not really complaining about there being too many customers. I’m complaining about there being too many customers and not enough labor to handle them. My Boss would say “Too many customers? That is a good problem to have” as he stares at the bottom line of his P&L statement.
Regarding your second point, you are absolutely right. I picked this career, and I know the negative aspects of it. However, following your advice to move on would put in me in the same boat as all the unemployed office/tech/financial/etc workers you mention in your first point.
So which is it? Is this economy so bad that people can’t find work, or one where every person who complains about a job can just get up and find a better one?
Or did you just ignorantly let your emotions override your brain, the same thing you are accusing Ambly of doing?
What the hell country/world are you living in that you actually believe any of that B.S. rhetoric? A meal at your fantasy restaurant would cost $100/entree. Nobody will pay that. At least, not enough people will pay that for it to stay in business. The market spoke long ago, and it said “People do not value service. Period. Their mouths say they do, but their wallets say something else.”
If you truly are overworked and one person calling in sick is such a huge fucking deal then that’s management’s fault for under-staffing the restaurant.
People and/or their children get sick and sometimes they can’t come in. That’s life. If you and other coworkers can’t handle it, it’s not the sick employee’s fault or the fault of an employee with a sick kid.
And on the one hand, while I won’t just flippantly say, “Get another job.” because I know how hard it is to find anything; If you can find a less stressful job and it pays the bills then you should take it. It’s obvious that you are burnt out.
Edit: I worked for a pizza parlor for five years and one person calling in sick was never that big of an issue.
I get it and you’ve got my sympathy. My brother has a chemical engineering degree but he’s a chef because he loves cooking and creating. I hear much the same from him, being shorthanded due to line people calling in sick, in jail or because they’re being deported. Or the boss is going through a divorce and went out and spent all the money on drugs. Restaurants run on a fairly thin margin and something like sixty percent of them fail within the first five years.
I can also relate because hospital labs have to be open 24/7 regardless of how many people fail to come in to work. One stat test or one hundred, seven techs or three, all the results have to be turned out in the same time frame. Some nights can be a right nightmare, not that anyone else cares. Management just says tough, work short.
Actually, I won’t eat out on Friday or Saturday evening, or Sunday brunch. Sunday evenings seem to be OK, as the restaurants seem to be a lot quieter (if they’re even open on Sunday evening). But I have given up on going out Friday and Saturday evenings. I eat out because I want to relax, and the atmosphere just isn’t relaxing on those evenings. As for Sunday brunch, that seems to be when every single family rounds up the kids, the grandparents, and the great grandparents and goes out, with the accompanying Family Dysfunction occurring regularly. Not every family will have one, but if even one family in ten has a meltdown at the restaurant, that’s enough.
And just picking off tomatoes on a dish isn’t good enough for someone who’s actually allergic to them. Fortunately, I can eat tomatoes, but there’s a lot of stuff that I can’t eat, and that can’t be picked off.
There are usually three people that do my job - me and two colleagues. One colleague has gone on maternity leave and we weren’t allowed to hire a temp to cover.
Yesterday my other colleague got signed off work sick for at least a month. For the past four months she has been working half-time and wasn’t expected to be back to full time until halfway through next year.
So I am now doing the work of three people until someone higher up than me decides that maybe getting a temp in would be a good idea.
You are not the only one in this position. Be grateful you’re only in it for a couple of days whilst your colleague is sick. I’m potentially facing this for the next six months.
I thought it was a back-handed way to remind us that we should treat service people with a little compassion, especially during crazy busy times.
Note to the OPer: I, personally, order food without say, tomatoes, because I don’t want to just pick it off. That’s wasting perfectly good food. I mean, have you seen the price of tomatoes lately? It’s actually courteous of us to save the restaurant the cost of that tomato slice. Ideally, the waitstaff and kitchen staff would be on board with this concept, so that we can all work together to improve your profit margin.
Yeah, but do you find yourself mad at the patients for getting sick and coming to your hospital? Mad at management for not having more people on the shift, for not having a backup plan, sure. Even mad at the hospital itself for deciding to continue elective surgeries into the evenings now without bothering to check with the blood bank to see if they can handle the increased demand. But pitting the restaurant customers is like us bitching at the patients and telling them to go elsewhere. And except for the hospital-hopping sickle patients with half a dozen antibodies, to whom I say* “OMG why didn’t you just stick with the Hopkins Sickle Clinic, where they know you and are much better equipped to get you some blood?”, I usually keep my frustration for the people creating the bad situation.
*Only said in my head, of course. I never see any patients.
I get it, OP, the job sucks. In my area, it’s impossible to go to any restaurant on a Friday or Saturday night, because there’s an hour or longer wait everywhere. I can imagine that the staff at these places can have a hard time keeping up when they’re understaffed, and it’s not a glamorous or well-paying job. But I guess I don’t see how it’s fair to pit the people who are bringing money to the restaurant. The jackasses who send everything back and complain about the noise and the price and the wait, sure, pit the hell out of them. But if you’re pitting me because I came out to dinner with friends on Friday night and I would prefer you left the capers off my plate, that’s a little unreasonable.
Ambly, as one food service worker to another, THANK YOU FOR THIS RANT!!!
It doesn’t matter if you work in a restaurant, supermarket, or any kind of retail food establishment: Profit margins are so low that it’s business-as-usual to cut as much superfluous help as possible, especially at the end of the year (the same goes for “regular” retail, btw). If the manager is savvy enough, s/he will be able to reorganize those left into a lean mean machine. If one person from that lean mean machine calls in sick, it’s akin to a raging fire.
And no, people who have never worked retail nor food service have any fucking clue what I’m talking about. You have to experience it to understand it. The OP and I will be on the sidelines laughing our asses off because NONE of you would have any fucking CLUE as to what to do.
Go to Hooters, they’re always overstaffed. Of course, the girls complain that they had to come in for a 10 hour shift and only got 2 tables, so the tips they got didn’t even cover parking.
Everything you said except QuikTrip always sets the low price in my area.
ETA:
Also, to the OP. The message that it’d be nice if customers would be a little more thoughtful and kinder to service staff is received by me at least, if not some of the judgemental a-holes posting above. But that’s the risk you take in the PIT.
Well, except for the problem that I didn’t say this about all service people. I said it about those who bitch and moan that their service job is “hard” and “unfair” and because someone else has a personal life that somehow inconveniences them they say “fuck this” and they deserve better and it’s unfair that they have to work hard at something to earn a living.
Do you really think it is different in other jobs? Pretty much all of the people working in the world today are stretched to the limit and have unforeseen circumstances come up that makes meeting the already unrealistic deadline seem impossible.
Oh, and you did notice that this is the Pit and it is ok to be rude.
But people still get SICK, Jesus tapdancing Christ. Something’s wrong when you’re being resented by your colleagues for not showing up to work while running a fever and losing it from both ends. But meh, what do you expect when profit margins are more important than anything else. Not that that will change any time soon. Fuck.
Wow. Get the chips off your shoulders. Yes, your industry is hard. So are others. You’re not precious and unique in your experience, sorry to say, and SOME of us do have a FUCKING clue.
OP, if you hate your job that much on a daily basis, and you’re not getting adequate compensation, then start trying to find something else. At a different restaurant. Or something. But saying stuff like this:
. . . will get you no sympathy from everyone. Shut the fuck up. I’m paying for my food. If you’re ‘working yourself to death,’ that’s your fucking problem. As someone upthread said, it’s a management issue. Because, frankly, I could make it at a quarter of the price (or less), depending, of course, on the details of your restaurant.
And, you’re providing not just food, but service. That’s why people go out to eat. And pay through the nose for it.
I went out just last night, and paid $28 for a bottle of wine that I could buy at the store for $11, and $17 for a plate of (very tasty) pasta that I could make for, say $5 (of course, I’d have to buy some of the ingredients in large enough quantities that I’d have to make 4-5 helpings of it to hit that price point), $2.50 for a coffee that would cost me 50c, a glass of Frangelico for $7.50 that would cost me less than $2 . . . etc etc. And, I left $25 for a tip on a $114 dollar tab (no, I’m not usually this spendy, but it was a very special occasion).
So, you’d better fucking serve me with a smile and like it, because that’s what I’m paying for; for someone else to serve me. Otherwise, I won’t be back, and maybe you’ll have to turn off some of the lights.
When I go out to eat, and the restaurant where I and my SO are dining is understaffed, and I have to wait forever for a table, the service is lousy, the food is cold, and the waitstaff is stretched so thin I can’t get their attention, does management automatically lower the price for my inconvenience?
Hell, no.
If I pitch a fit, I might get a comp on my meal. The actual dollar value of the food on the plate is only a fraction of the price of the meal. The rest is made up by the preparation, service, atmosphere and other aspects of the dining experience. If I am getting none of the intangibles, like service, how does the restaurant justify charging full price for the meal?
I feel your pain, buddy. I’ve been where you are. You didn’t even mention Christmas, yikes what a rush! It’s a demanding industry in a tough, tight economy. Many a night, after a brutally business day, I would look at the late hangers on and think, ‘Don’t you have homes to go to?’. It doesn’t mean you don’t like service, but at times it is unending.
But I do have to think, when ever I worked where it was busy all the time, we were begging for a lull, we were all making good cash. Something’s not right, if you’ve doing this kind of volume and can barely afford staffing and lighting. Put the prices up, less volume doesn’t sound like it will hurt you so much, might even help the stress levels.
All that said, better they should call in, than just not show up. Been there. Or, come in, and infect your entire staff, a week before Christmas. Ho Ho Ho, indeed!
You hang in there, you’ll get through it. You have before, it’s not fun, but you will again. I’ll be thinking of you. Good Luck!
Huh, the Quick Trips I’ve been to are always the cheapest on gas, and only have 2 people working at most. The rest of your points stand though. I’ll get the folks I’m riding with to go out of their way to use QT instead of the others nearby.