Manager vs. Manager

I hate Fridays… I love the money but I hate only having three server for 126 seats, no host and the closing server is required to do the take out and delivery service. That equals one hell of a headache for me being the closer. Plus the fact that I am the closer and am working with not only people who have never served before in their life, but with managers who really just don’t give a fuck.

The management team where I work is as follows.

GM – Have a great interim gm right now, from our sister store. She is great at what she does and very by the book.

“Hottie” AGM – Really cares for her staff and guests, probably the best person I have ever worked for. She actually puts on the uniform and serves if the need arises. No one else will do that.

Manager J – Wants to be the lounge only manager and is pissed that he has to do the dinning room as well, therefore doesn’t give a rats ass about us dinning room servers.

Manager W – Head in the clouds and eyes on Facebook. Enough said.

Those as well as myself and another supervisor are our management team at the moment. Now to the story of last night.

It was Manager J running the restaurant and someone had fucked up the schedule so only 3 of us were on past 8 o’clock with no host, when we should be keeping 4 servers till 10 pm and the host on till 11. However we were short as I said above and when the hit came again at around 9 o’clock  there was just the three servers on the floor. Myself, Pickle (only been serving 3 weeks) and Lazy Bitch (serving for a month and a half) Guess where Manager J was, yep up there sitting in the office because he doesn’t care.

I have managed I know what it’s like to be frustrated with you position, I left because I wasn’t being valued. That is what you have to do, don’t sit their and be a burden to your staff. You can’t do that, you have to either be out there helping your teamn out or just not their at all, it does no one any good for you to be up in the office when the dinning room just filled in ten minutes.

Man I hate people sometimes.

Update on myself

Just an update on myself, nothing really to note about my guests because I have been off and at the stampede. However I have taken a promotion with my restaurant so that I am now a supervisor and service leader.

Yay!

Sidework

I know that most of my posts so far have been about staff, but that is because I have just transfered restaurants coming from Managing one, and now back to serving in one. So the things I see are the things that a manager sees and my management does not. But here it goes another great day at the joint.

I have no idea how any person can be so bloody lazy in no less than the three weeks I have worked their I have been doing sidework for everyone, not quite true but pretty close. The fact that I can count on one hand the amount of servers who are doing sidework, on a crew of 18. Is pretty pathetic and the host team is no better. Really, how hard is it to bus and set your two dirty tables before going out for a smoke or grabbing a bite to eat. How hard is it to make sure the section is set for us evening servers? I don’t want to come on the floor at five and have to spend till 5:30 making sure my section is ready for guests! I have just lost a half hour of tips, over the course of a week that is two and a half hours, pretty well two turns in the section.

Not to mention filling shit up, sometimes I wish this was the old west and the cowboy code still applied. If you empty it, you fill it. If you dirty it you clean it. Simple shit right, apparently not to these clowns, the bottom of the socialite pool shall we say. These are the same people who get drunk off shift and than come walking on the service line, a story for another day.

I need some help people, I need some tricks to get these people to start doing sidework, I have a couple people doing it but those are the people I have trained and the closing servers do it, but we need to get the others on board too. I have tried being nice, I have tried being mean, and now I am trying being a complete DICK, but somethings gotta give so give me some ideas, the more creative the more it might work.

Server Errors

This one didn’t happen to me but from one of the other service leaders at the restaurant, however it has inspired me just to talk about the happenings and what servers are.

So one of the server’s is bringing drinks for her eight top and as tends to happen either she was bumped just slightly or the tray became unbalanced when she took one off but needless to say one of the guests got a nice shower of water all down her back. Now this lady went off the handle at the server, cussing her out and just generally losing her shit. Now we all know that this is an accident and she did not mean to drop water down this ladies back, however this woman took it personal. She called over the manager and cussed him out for the poor service and for the restaurant allowing this to happen.

Now at this point “Bar Manager” was at the table calming the situation down, and I can assure you that the server felt horrible because she was useless to us for the next 15 minutes, and on a busy Friday night, when we were already down two servers, from having to fire one and the other going home at the beginning of the shift because she was sick and started to cry, it was crazy so now we have 2 servers for a full dining room of 100+ guests, not good. However the server did come around and she got back in stride with things but she passed the table off to “Hammer”.

Now just to add a true story about myself, when I was working for the Ramada, I used to work in the catering department. We were doing a wedding party and I spilled red win all over one of the brides maids. She was pissed, and I was sent home for the night. Funny to me now, but I didn’t think so at the time, I was just glad all the brides maids were from out of town.

Table Manners

So this is something that has annoyed me for a number of years now but after seeing a couple of kids at my table and than serving a whole mess of adults last night I was amazed by the number of people, especially men, who have no idea how to eat. These people that I talk about are not the average person, lets take me for example I am not the pillar of table manners as to which everyone should wish to be. I put my elbows on the table, sometimes I will drop my cutlery on the plate and yes I even drink my soup from the bowl rather than painstakingly using the spoon. The people that I am talking about are the people that order 3 different plates and than pick over all three, like they have just gotten out of jail, and haven’t eaten in 5 years, so they slurp and snarl to get the food in their mouth, and so help me god if I go in their reaching to drop off another glass of Diet Pepsi, I lose a finger…

But lets get to the story that brought on this topic. I had a family of three come in last night, from what I gathered it was an Aunt with her niece and nephew. Now the children were quite well behaved as far as children go I had no problem with them. Used their please and thank you, asked me questions about their selections, used napkins etc. However the young nephew had the annoying habit of either asking me questions while I was at another table or asking me questions trying to get alcohol or using alcohol lingo. Now the first one, I can understand if you haven’t been to too many restaurants and your a kid, you get excited so it happens. I take it in stride and move on. It also helps that the hot aunt was apologizing to me every step of the way because she knew what it was to me, slightly annoying. However the alcohol thing pisses me off, its the same type of thing that I wrote my horror story on over at ragingserver.com, these kids that think it is funny to hold me up so that they can get alcohol. First your fucking like 10 years old and second I have the right to refuse alcohol service to anyone in this province so if you asked me for a drink like that if you were 18 I would still say no. So to parents and kids who read this blog, don’t let your kids ask for drinks, it is not funny or cute to the server, it just pisses me off and wants me to get you out of their faster than letting me dazzle you all night long.

Now to the adults of the post…

I still have no idea how people get to the age of 30 and above and still have no clue about table manners. To be honest my parents taught them to me before I ever went out to eat in a restaurant. If I didn’t use a fork I was rapped across the knuckles with a knife. Yeah it hurt and yeah it is child abuse now, but it sure as hell did the trick I tell ya. When I went out to eat I was a perfect gentleman and server’s always commented to my parents how well behaved me and my brother were. So for those of you people who come out and cut the server off when they are trying to tell you something, or if we are asking you how you are doing today, “Coffee” is not an acceptable answer to “Hi, how are you folks doing today.” Table manners are not a lost art, and being polite is something which we should all do while we are out eating.

Stay tuned this week guys, Stampede starts tomorrow and the city comes alive with the spirit of the old west. You know what that means, rednecks descend upon the city like a cloud of locusts.

As well if any of you would like to pick up a book on manners, this is just one of the books which I have read, you can find it on Chapters.com for the price of $12.54

How to be a Gentleman.