I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

Server edition!!!

It’s cold out there.  And I mean cold.  Painfully cold.  The kind of cold that makes every part of your body shiver.  Of course it’s mostly the wind.  Here in the city, it’s blowing about 20 miles per hour and with the temperature around 20 that makes for COLD.

Work was  a dud tonight.  We were off our wait by 8:30 and by 9:15 the place was a ghost town.  I actually ended up leaving early.  I was bored and the money had been crap all night so I said what the fuck and called it a night.

Lovely things I heard tonight at work:

“I’d like to order the nachos and the fried cheese.”  (This is only interesting because we don’t sell fried cheese).

Do you sell turkey burgers?  (No)  Well why not?  (Well you see, I only wait tables part time.  The rest of the time I’m at our corporate offices doing menu development.  And after massive test marketing we’ve discovered that there is not a huge demand for turkey burgers, chicken burgers, pork burgers, buffalo burgers, or rabbit burgers.  What we have discovered is that there is a HUGE demand for beef burgers).

I don’t see soup on the menu.  (That’s because we don’t serve soup).  Well what kind of soup do you have?  (What kind would you like?  Since we don’t sell any soup, might as well pick something exotic and hard to make).

“Do you have Coke Zero?  (No).  What do you have then?  (Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Mt. Dew, Dr. Pepper, Sierra Mist and rootbeer and lemonade).  Good then, I’ll have the diet 7-up.

I’d like the veggie burger.  And I think it will taste better on whole wheat toast.  (Cause we have a whole selection of bread in the back just waiting for someone to order the veggie burger on whole wheat bread).

Are the ribs pork or beef?  (Pork).  I’ll have the beef ribs.  (Yes, we just happened to get an order of beef ribs in today and we were saving them just for you).

The conversation with the man above continues:

Okay then.  I’ll have a bacon cheeseburger but hold the bacon and the cheese!  (I wasn’t mean enough to actually charge him for the bacon cheeseburger.  I was nice and only charged him for the hamburger).

And after he wanted the cheese and bacon held he said,

I’d also like a fried egg on my burger.  (Really?  Really?  When was the last time you were in a chain restaurant that wasn’t Denny’s that actually had whole eggs lying around so that they could put them on burgers.  Really.  I think you’d be much happier (he was with the whole wheat toast woman) heading on over to the Cosmos Diner on 9th Avenue where you can get everything you wish for including the fried cheese, the turkey burgers, the soup, and maybe even the Coke Zero).

And I’ll end with this little ditty.

This one didn’t happen to me but it’s my favorite restaurant story lately.  On a Saturday lunch a couple of weeks ago, my friend David was waiting on a table of six women from the south.  They mostly ordered water, but one of them got a glass of wine and one of them ordered a margarita.  David dropped the drinks off and told them he’d be back in a couple of minutes to get their order.  When he returned the woman with the margarita said, “I think the bartender made this wrong.  There’s tequila in this drink.

And I heard all of this in one shift.  On a slow night.  Just imagine what a busy night is like for me.