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dragonlady7So I turned in my badge, my bank key, and my Micros card. It was a busy day; I don't recall what my sales were but I made $111 in charge tips and around $70 cash. My deposit was $2 short; you don't get written up under $5 off, so I made out just fine.
It was a long and brutal day, with weather delays in intermittent bands-- just enough thunderstorming to wreak havoc. Delays began piling up early in the day-- I know I was awakened at 5 am by some thundershowers [and I never really got back to sleep, so this has been a long-ass day]-- and just kept snowballing all afternoon. At 10:45 the bar at gate 18 was jumpin' with some mild delays to Vegas; the bar at gate 10 [I was at every bar today, giving breaks] was steady with bored Chicago-bound passengers and a few mild JFK delays. But when I got down to my final destination, the bar at gate 6, the place was just-busy-enough-to-be-annoying with slightly-delayed LaGuardia and Charlotte passengers.
And it just kept getting worse.
I was never totally overwhelmed, but people were assholes. Just, assholes. One girl, while the other waitress was on break and I was it for the whole floor, was wandering around trying to catch my eye. Finally I paused, as she kept kind of getting in my way, and said, "Did you have a question?"
"Uh, yes," she said, in a Valleygirlish huffy sort of way. Very Manhattanite. "Is there any chance that table," and she points, "could get cleaned off for me?"
I looked around. "Well," I said, "there's no busboy, so it's unlikely." And made as if to keep walking. As I had ten tables of my own, and two of them were waiting for drinks.
"Well then where am I supposed to sit?" she asked.
I paused. "There are restaurants at gates ten and eighteen," I said, and kept walking. She was incredulous. Later I heard her at the bar complaining to a fellow-passenger about how appallingly she'd been treated.
"Honey," I said, perhaps audibly and perhaps not, "it really ain't about you, but that's probably not a concept you're familiar with."
I suggested to the other waitress that perhaps the two of us should retire to the back room and stick our thumbs up our asses, and let all the customers, each of whom was convinced that he or she was the most important person in the room, duke it out among themselves to determine, in fact, which of them was the one who should be waited on to the exclusion of all the others. Because it really was too difficult to attempt to explain, yet again, how the concept of "waiting your goddamned fucking turn" works.
There's also a tendency that makes me think homocide would be justifiable, that when someone's been waiting a long time for the waitress, they want to then take up a lot of the waitress's time, as though that somehow makes it worthwhile. These people-- one more day of this job and one of them would be having his own teeth for lunch. Friends: Do not do this. Do not fucking do this. If your waitress takes forever to get to you and her hair is stuck to her face and she's breathing a little hard and staring through you in distraction, just order your fucking drink and leave her alone. Don't make her read you the fucking menu.
Anyhow. My last customer of the day-- well, my actual last customers of the day were assholes, (first when I said, "Are you ready to order some food?" they answered "yes" and then the woman proceeded to read THE ENTIRE MENU, OUT LOUD to the rest of the table, as if she'd never fucking seen it before. They'd been there an hour and a half at this point, and the menu was on the table before they sat down) made me go run and break twenties for them on two separate trips and then left me $10 on $85, so fuck them (they were from Maine too and they mumbled, so I got my shouty on-- that's what I tend to do, when it's busy and people mumble, I just fake deafness and shout politely at them. "whzndrft?" "SAM ADAMS BOSTON LAGER LABATT BLUE MOLSON CANADIAN MILLER LITE BUDWEISER HEINEKEN YUENGLING I DON'T HAVE BOTTLES MEMORIZED LOOK AT THE MENU IT'S ALL LISTED THERE. also I just shouted this identical list to the table next to you not thirty seconds ago and it's all listed on the fucking menu you're holding in your sweaty hands you fucking oblivious morons")
Anyway.
My last customer, or so I've chosen to think of him, was a sweet little man who took up a table for four for two hours all by himself, while people were standing in the doorway waiting for a drink. But we forgive him. Because he mumblingly asked me the drafts, and I shouted my reply as fast as I could because I had a six-top sitting down and had to get over there, and he said, "Wow, you've said that a few times, huh?"
"Twenty or thirty times a day for two and a half years," I said, "but today's my last day, and I am done with waitressing, the end."
"Wow," he said.
His tab was $18.63.
He paid with a credit card and wrote, as his final total, $38.63.
Also Senior Cocktail Waitress came down with a card and a bag of sponge candy from the gift shop and said, "I miss you already," and hugged me.
It was a long and brutal day, with weather delays in intermittent bands-- just enough thunderstorming to wreak havoc. Delays began piling up early in the day-- I know I was awakened at 5 am by some thundershowers [and I never really got back to sleep, so this has been a long-ass day]-- and just kept snowballing all afternoon. At 10:45 the bar at gate 18 was jumpin' with some mild delays to Vegas; the bar at gate 10 [I was at every bar today, giving breaks] was steady with bored Chicago-bound passengers and a few mild JFK delays. But when I got down to my final destination, the bar at gate 6, the place was just-busy-enough-to-be-annoying with slightly-delayed LaGuardia and Charlotte passengers.
And it just kept getting worse.
I was never totally overwhelmed, but people were assholes. Just, assholes. One girl, while the other waitress was on break and I was it for the whole floor, was wandering around trying to catch my eye. Finally I paused, as she kept kind of getting in my way, and said, "Did you have a question?"
"Uh, yes," she said, in a Valleygirlish huffy sort of way. Very Manhattanite. "Is there any chance that table," and she points, "could get cleaned off for me?"
I looked around. "Well," I said, "there's no busboy, so it's unlikely." And made as if to keep walking. As I had ten tables of my own, and two of them were waiting for drinks.
"Well then where am I supposed to sit?" she asked.
I paused. "There are restaurants at gates ten and eighteen," I said, and kept walking. She was incredulous. Later I heard her at the bar complaining to a fellow-passenger about how appallingly she'd been treated.
"Honey," I said, perhaps audibly and perhaps not, "it really ain't about you, but that's probably not a concept you're familiar with."
I suggested to the other waitress that perhaps the two of us should retire to the back room and stick our thumbs up our asses, and let all the customers, each of whom was convinced that he or she was the most important person in the room, duke it out among themselves to determine, in fact, which of them was the one who should be waited on to the exclusion of all the others. Because it really was too difficult to attempt to explain, yet again, how the concept of "waiting your goddamned fucking turn" works.
There's also a tendency that makes me think homocide would be justifiable, that when someone's been waiting a long time for the waitress, they want to then take up a lot of the waitress's time, as though that somehow makes it worthwhile. These people-- one more day of this job and one of them would be having his own teeth for lunch. Friends: Do not do this. Do not fucking do this. If your waitress takes forever to get to you and her hair is stuck to her face and she's breathing a little hard and staring through you in distraction, just order your fucking drink and leave her alone. Don't make her read you the fucking menu.
Anyhow. My last customer of the day-- well, my actual last customers of the day were assholes, (first when I said, "Are you ready to order some food?" they answered "yes" and then the woman proceeded to read THE ENTIRE MENU, OUT LOUD to the rest of the table, as if she'd never fucking seen it before. They'd been there an hour and a half at this point, and the menu was on the table before they sat down) made me go run and break twenties for them on two separate trips and then left me $10 on $85, so fuck them (they were from Maine too and they mumbled, so I got my shouty on-- that's what I tend to do, when it's busy and people mumble, I just fake deafness and shout politely at them. "whzndrft?" "SAM ADAMS BOSTON LAGER LABATT BLUE MOLSON CANADIAN MILLER LITE BUDWEISER HEINEKEN YUENGLING I DON'T HAVE BOTTLES MEMORIZED LOOK AT THE MENU IT'S ALL LISTED THERE. also I just shouted this identical list to the table next to you not thirty seconds ago and it's all listed on the fucking menu you're holding in your sweaty hands you fucking oblivious morons")
Anyway.
My last customer, or so I've chosen to think of him, was a sweet little man who took up a table for four for two hours all by himself, while people were standing in the doorway waiting for a drink. But we forgive him. Because he mumblingly asked me the drafts, and I shouted my reply as fast as I could because I had a six-top sitting down and had to get over there, and he said, "Wow, you've said that a few times, huh?"
"Twenty or thirty times a day for two and a half years," I said, "but today's my last day, and I am done with waitressing, the end."
"Wow," he said.
His tab was $18.63.
He paid with a credit card and wrote, as his final total, $38.63.
Also Senior Cocktail Waitress came down with a card and a bag of sponge candy from the gift shop and said, "I miss you already," and hugged me.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-13 01:26 pm (UTC)Anyhow, since it was an awful day, you probably won't look back on it nostalgically, which is a good thing.
I'm sorry for SCW, though.