Entries from January 2007 ↓

I don’t remember my first table the first night I went solo. I do remember having a three table section on a Tuesday night in the back dining room. I made $34 after tip out. Yes, that first night on the floor I truly learned how restaurants earned a profit: the tip out. Not only do eateries pay their employees just over $2 an hour (in TN), they can also pay their busboys, bartenders, hostesses and to-go cashiers the very same rate, and many do. In many a restaurant across this great nation waiters and waitresses pay the bulk of the earnings for front of the house employees.

At Outback Stake House* servers were required to tip out 3% of our total sales for the evening, despite what we made in tips. I tipped out well over $30 after many, many long and grueling shifts, sometimes taking home just 7 or 8% of my sales, instead of the 12-15% that people leave on the table.

However, at the Cooker tip out was voluntary, and I use that term loosely. Tip out there was given to the bartenders and the busboys, not the hosts. This happened at the end of each shift. Tipping generously resulted in promptly cleaned tables and quickly made cocktails. Skimping on a co-worker due to a bad night was considered bad form. Skimping could also get you talked about, or worse, stalled at the bar’s well, waiting for a frozen daiquiri that is melting just out of your reach. Tipping out is a fucking racket.**

The staff at the Cooker was huge, as was the place itself. It took a while to get to anyone, so I kept sticking with Lia.  I felt lost on the days she didn’t work. They scheduled us for the same shift a lot, which looking back now, was nice of them. There were so many servers on the schedule, I shit you not, there were at least eighty.  Some people worked just one day a week. I would for a month or more, working, getting familiar with folks when some very tanned girl with beads in her hair would show up, saying she’s been waiting tables for a while on an island somewhere.

We always had "line up" before every shift. We’d stand for 15-30 minutes getting a pep talk from managers, drilled on the specials, scolded for last night’s slackery. The bosses even came by to to individually inspect our uniforms. In line up we were assigned our sections and opening sidework. This was labor you did while waiting for your tables to fill up, anything from scooping butter balls into ramekins (easy, but messy–plus you had to put the butter scoop in hot water while working, which created a nasty hot butter water that would always make me gag) to hauling buckets of ice from the back to the bar. As an aside, the design of the West End Cooker was atrocious–the bar and the kitchen on opposite ends of the building. There was no ice machine up there!

After the rush of people died down I’d get "cut," stricken from the floorplan, finito, done bringing anybody anything. I had to roll up 150 forks and 75 knives up into linens, "spec out" all my tables by topping off condiments, wiping and sweeping and then so closing "sidework." After my first solo shift at the Cooker my task was to consolidate salad dressings and clean out that bin. The closing server who had to okay my work before I could leave made me go back and scrub the bin five times. Maybe six; it was a lot. I nearly cried that night, scrubbing the stainless steel, wondering what spot or crumb he could possible have been talking about. He was so vague in his demands to redo it. That dressing bin shone like the top of the Chrysler building!

It wasn’t until I stared at my bedroom ceiling that night, tired but unable to sleep, that I realized I’d been hazed. The next day when I asked him why he did that he said it was for my own good.

*They accepted checks way back in the day, and I will always remember seeing one with that written in the Pay To line.
**Though I benefited nicely some years later when I moved behind the bar.

Day 31: Project 365, originally uploaded by brittney.

I like beverages.

• Aunt B’s bear with adorable bear butt tail makes me want to get crafty. I’m hardly ever crafty.
• I took two enormous naps on my new pillow-top mattress. I haven’t slept this good since I was a baby. Perhaps not even then, what with the way my mother talks. ("I swear, you cried for about 51 weeks straight. Nonstop.")
• I did not clean out my car like I’d planned. (See above.)
• The sister and her boyfriend came over on Friday night. I like it when they do that.
• Despite being really, really nervous I went to "church" this morning. I don’t know why I think it is funny to call it church, but I do. It’s on Sunday morning, that is the only similarity. I’m glad I went. Thanks be to Jon for the information.
• Cooper fucked some shit up.
• Dreamed that I was the captain of a deep sea vessel that had only 8 hours of oxygen left. That was, to say the least, a fitful night.

Saturday night was the same as Friday night, except I had a little bit more confidence. But not much. I got Sunday off, thankfully, because beginning on Monday and going through that Friday I was on the schedule to train. I was exhausted and sore after my double dose of food running that weekend. I’d spent hour after hour balancing heavy things, all the while maintaining a smile. The most I’d carried at my other job were stacks of movies and video games.

The training class was scheduled in the evenings, after my classes. There were five people in my training group, an elementary school teacher, a 40-something former alcoholic, and three college students, one of which was Lia. I got to know her better as we continued to be introduced to everything at the same time. She was a member of a sorority at TSU. She kept long acrylic nails with tiny jewels embedded into them, and they never seemed to hinder her. It was impressive. Her makeup was always flawless. She was older than me by three or four years, and I think she found my naiveté amusing. We stuck together.

Our trainer was an immaculately dressed and coiffed man named Gregory. He was one of the most effeminate men I had ever met in my life. He was also one of the best waiters I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.

His training was nearly as good as his serving. For five days he quizzed me about drink ingredients, wine, liquor and beer lists, dessert options and "pivot points." But more than that he taught me how to take control of a table and orchestrate the meal without it seeming as though I was the one in charge. He taught me how to consolidate trips to the kitchen or beverage station and how to subtly upsell items without seeming pushy. I didn’t take to all these techniques like a duck takes to water, but he did arm me with a shit ton of knowledge.

Towards the end of the training week I was allowed to shadow Gregory as he waited on the tables in his section. He introduced me as his trainee and let me fill up coffee mugs and water glasses. He also allowed me to fetch bread. By the end of the week I had my own two table section, a veteran server watching over me like a hawk. She took home all the tips I earned that night. They were her tables, after all. She said she usually gave her trainees a cut of the earnings, but that she was trying to make rent. I knew from being nosy that she took home more than $100 that night. Just that was satisfaction enough.

I had the weekend off after my intense training week. It would be the last weekend I’d have free for a long time to come.

[This is another installment in a retrospective series I’m writing
about working in the restaurant industry.  I will attempt to tell the
tale of my ten year stint "in the trenches" as one of my bosses used to
say. (Constantly.) Names and other minor details have been changed to
protect the not-so-innocent. But the rest is totally true. Or, at least
that’s how I remember it. To read just the installments in this series,
click on The Restaurant Chronicles in the category cloud on the right-hand column.]

Here’s my impression of a certain local blogger:

I hate all those idiot leftards who use terms like "ReNAMBLAcans" or "rethuglicans." Those freakin’ commie Defeatocrats can eat my butt.