First confession

My first post! I’m not really used to posting blogs so I am not following any particular formula. I’m just here to vent and rant about the happenings of where I work and share some tales that hopefully other people will be able to relate to!

I am 21 years old and I am studying at university, so waitressing is not my career or anything. I do enjoy it most of the time; I like my co workers, and the rapport you develop with the cooks. I like serving customers and dealing with people and I like the fast paced nature of the job. I love working at night (though sometimes this gets a bit restricting when it comes to my social life) and I love the fact that when I am on break from studying, some of us regularly go out and get drunk together whenever we clock off. But there are, of course, drawbacks.

Some things that frustrate me:

• Basically the rudeness of some customers. I still cannot get my head around how you can treat a complete stranger like they are dirt, particularly when they are approaching you with the biggest smile they have stored up. Though they are rare, I have had a few shockers and the nasty ones always make me cry. This is nothing short of humiliating in a busy, crowded restaurant on a Saturday night.
• People giving me the “verbal tip”. Unlike America or Canada, we don’t really have tipping indoctrinated into our culture so we rarely get tipped. This is because casual workers minimum wage is pretty high, high enough to survive without tips. Unfortunately my particular restaurant has found a loophole to pay us quite low rates for how hard we work. As a result I work my butt off for tips. I won’t hate on you for not tipping me, but the verbal tip is a cruel way to end the night. If only you could show your appreciation with monetary compensation!
• Parties not tipping. If twenty five meals arrive on your table perfectly, in order with no mistakes and you rarely have to wait more than five minutes for a drink or any other requests, then chances are your waiter/waitress has sacrificed the chance of getting a tip out of other tables, giving others good service or threatening the good will of the kitchen managers to get everything done perfectly. If your table has a particularly complicated order, with a lot of changes, or steaks or something and there is no problem then they did a damn good job. And its not hard to tip them well if everyone pitches in an extra dollar.
• Hosts. The hosts I work with are actually really nice and generally pretty good but nothing makes me see red more than getting triple sat with a large party, being assigned to a table outside my section without anyone actually telling me I am meant to take that table, or sitting people without cutlery.
• People who try to split the bill even though we specify that we cannot physically do it. I always cave and it usually takes up at least twenty minutes, leaves my other customers neglected and takes up on of the three computers in the restaurant that we rely on
• Copping abuse from the kitchen. It’s not like our job is easy as pie. And their mistakes fall on us just as much as ours fall on them. Next time I accidently forget to write “without mushrooms” and you feel this deserves the most severe reprimand, I will remind you how I got abused by my table because you took half an hour to cook a pasta and tried to pass off a bleeding sirloin as “well done”.
  

I just clocked off work this evening, but there has been little to report. Only my KM berating me for drinking too much and my manager delightfully telling me that being on close tomorrow night, a shift I picked up for a co worker, means I get to help her with stock take… counting all the products we have in the bar. I guarantee I will only return in a good mood if during this process I manage to swipe a bottle of grey goose vodka without her noticing. I will keep you posted.

J