I enjoyed your entire post, though while I’ve never waited tables before, I didn’t have to read more than the quoted bit to know the rest of the story. I knew exactly what was coming.
I was in a Ground Round years ago, a place that serves “bottomless” cups of coffee. It was a busy night, and they were trying to turn a lot of tables. But three young guys, I’m guessing college age, were spending hours at their table. They had bought one cup of coffee, and were taking turns sipping from it.
At any rate, if you’re really being correct salad comes after the entree. We’re just accustomed to having it the other way around because restaurants can get salads out in a hurry to give you something to shut you up with.
Geez, I’ve probably forgotten most of it, it’s been a long time.
There was the beginnings of a fistfight in the buffet line on Mother’s Day. Fortunately we had a couple of burly managers on staff that day (coincidence?) and they broke it up.
The managers who could never come up with the next week’s schedule until sometimes the night before, and would even change that next week’s already-posted schedule without notice. Once I had the last day of one work week off as well as the first day of the next work week. I worked until close the second-last day of that work week, double-checked the posted schedule, and punched out. My next work day, one of the managers asked me where the hell I was yesterday. Yeah, they’d changed the schedule the last day of the work week, on a day I was legitimately off, and didn’t call to tell me that I was now due in the next day. Fortunately he seemed to get this when I showed him I’d been scheduled off the day prior and it was a nice trick for them to assume I’d realize a change had been made.
They rarely answered the phone if it was busy (or would pick up the phone then hang it up immediately, to shut it up), so if you weren’t scheduled and you knew the next week’s schedule should be going up, you either waited until what should be a slack hour and called then, or you drove over there and went in back to check out the posting.
Working with a fresh, huge second-degree burn on my arm. Twice. I hated taking those giant pans of food out of our oven, and the racks were packed so close together that you didn’t have a lot of room for error. Trying to avoid burns from the inside of the oven, I mishandled the pan and it tilted toward me and seared the inside of my forearm. At least I didn’t dump the hot food in the pan all over me! :eek:
I was tidying around the buffet and had to get down on my hands and knees at one point to scrub up something that had been spilled and started to dry on the floor, kneeling there wearing a skirt. An old man nearby laughed approvingly and said I’d make a man a good wife someday. (I was not polite in my response.)
When I was a busboy, the asshole who owned the restaurant instituted a policy where you had to pay for any dishes, bowls, glasses, etc. that you broke. And he didn’t charge his replacement cost, which was certainly less than $1 per item - he charged some outrageous fees that started at $5 for a basic water glass. Basically, he turned the random breakage that will happen at any busy restaurant into a profit center for himself.
One night, I was bringing a tub full of dirty dishes to the dishwasher. One of the cooks had just spilled some oil on the floor, so I went flying, and smacked the back of my head on the tile floor. Hard. I blacked out for a few seconds, and the next thing I remember is sitting in a chair with a few people hovering around me. The shithead owner looked at me said, “Are you OK?” I said “I think so,” and he replied “You owe me $40 for the broken dishes.” Asshole took it out of my next paycheck too.
Is this really possible? In my experience (not that I’ve been paying that much attention) it seems to take about the same time to get my entree whether I’ve ordered a salad or not. I figured that in a quality restaurant, it takes some amount of time to cook the entree, and it can’t just be fired at the last moment. If they give me 20 minutes to eat my salad, and I’m not done yet, I still want my entree cooked right and fresh.
I finally looked down, where my assailant was now lying on the floor face down. He’d been annoying the person sat behind him all night, and it so happened this was a para on leave. My drunken assailant was now restrained by a boot held on the back of his neck.
What made the event so special was the kind treatment from the pub landlord. The only comment I got from him was “You aren’t going to call the police, are you?”
I finished the shift, called a friend of mine who worked in another pub, and was working there the next day.
Serving semi-rural Alabamians sweet tea that isn’t sweet. Our manager halved the sugar during the beginning of the recessions, and swear to god I struggled every day with customers to not argue that I did, in fact, bring the correct tea. No, you pigfucking redneck, tuck your fucking tongue back into its toothhole and shut your god damn mouth, I brought you shitty tea.
Sorry. I didn’t make it, it isn’t getting any sweeter, and if you’d realized this fact five minutes ago when I explained it, we could have avoided all this unpleasantness, and you’d still be drinking coke.
That’s part of it. Back when American restaurants DID serve the salad after the entree, one of Hollywood’s “weight loss secrets” was to eat the salad first, so that it would fill you up, and this was popularized in the gossip rags. Now this habit has become ingrained in our culture.
Personally, I prefer to have the entree brought out while I’m still eating my salad. I can cut into the meat and see if it’s done to my liking. And if it is, I start eating the entree. My salad won’t warm up appreciably while I’m eating the meat, and will be edible afterwards.
It’s not like they’re cooking things like we do at home - most restaurant kitchens are optimized so that only the last bit of cooking has to be done when something is ordered. So the veggies are cut up, the meat is portioned, the sauce is made, the burners/oven is hot, etc. etc. So when the waitress puts in your order for a burger, the cook just grabs the pre-portioned burger, drops it on the flat top, lowers the fries into the oil, and within 5-10 min or so the whole thing is done.
Heh. What really blows my mind is when you go to a high-end restaurant that really has their shit together, and it’s like a perfect 30 second wait between the removal of the dishes from one course and placing the next course on the table. I have no clue how they do that, but they do.
Well, you say that like it’s a lot of nonsense, and I don’t think it is. Of course you want to fill up on something non-fat before you start shoveling carbs. And even if you’re not eating a lot of carbs, it’s still a good idea to take the edge off your appetite before the main event.
Back in college I worked as a cook in a French cafe (~40 seats). I could see most of the tables from the kitchen, and if things were slow enough, I’d even head out to the floor to check on people with fondues. The timing on cheese fondues was particularly challenging.
If we were slammed, you got your food when I finished cooking it.
My worst was doing counter service. I was 18 and had just started at this bakery/sandwich shop at the mall, and a nice older guy stopped by to introduce himself to me, saying he ate lunch there every day. When I told him my name, he got surprised, told me he was in the big brother program, and his “little brother” had the same name as me. We talked cheerfully for a minute, and then he offered his hand to shake goodbye.
As he shook my hand, his middle finger was curved inward, and he used it to caress my palm.
GAAAAAH!
I hid from him for a few days, until finally he caught me out, asked me on a date, and when I nervously declined got all pissed at me for not being brave enough just to say I wasn’t interested in him.