There's a Fly in My Chicken Soup For the Waiter's Soul: September 2006

Bad boss gets his comeuppance

I was working as an assistant manager at a mid-town restaurant (NYC) and in charge of hiring, training, firing and supervising the floor staff. We were looking for a couple servers when one day two adorable girls came in looking for a job. They were on a six month work visa and were touring the states. They were also friendly, young and ready to work. As they had some experience back in their home country and this was a simple restaurant to work in (it was a Friday's type place), I hired them both.

I hired based on enthusiasm and was willing to train those who had little experience. Also, I was very willing to hire latinas and blacks to work as servers as I knew from past restaurants they were often not hired because of their race and sex.

Now my boss and owner was a sexist and racist son of a bitch. I already knew this when he came to me a couple days later and after viewing the two new girls, told me my staff was getting too dark.

I was angry with Mr. Epstein and told him that my new olive skinned servers were Israeli, which they were. He turned red in the face and spun on his heels and walked out of the restaurant. I didn't see him for a couple of days.

Espanol 101

Now I took four semesters of Spanish in college as it was required to graduate. Unfortunately for the later me, I took it pass/fail because I had much harder courses in my major to do well in and I worked full-time in a restaurant (of course). So essentially, I didn't learn a thing.

Fast forward to moving to New York where knowing Spanish is nearly a requirement, especially in the restaurant business where bussers, waiters and kitchen crews are most often from Latin American countries. Now it didn't make much of a problem for me because they practiced their english as much as possible and what they didn't know, they were able to communicate by hand signals and such. Their conversations were a mystery to me, but as I felt shy about using the Spanish I knew, I never learned more than "Como esta" and "My nombre is...".

One night I was waiting on a table that needed their food prepared to take home. The busser, fresh from Mexico, helped me clear the table. I asked him to wrap it up. A few minutes later, when the food didn't arrive to the table, I found the busser scraping the plates into the garbage. I screamed, "oh, no! Shit!" and the busser looked at me strangely. I had to go to the table now and explain that their food was gone for good. As words in Spanish often resemble those in English (i.e. medico, invitar, norte) I remembered one word from Spanish 102. I exclaimed, "Estoy embarazada!" thinking I said, "I'm so embarrassed!" Little did I know that I had just announced to the whole kitchen that I was pregnant.

After that, the other employees treated me with kid gloves; helping me with my trays, clearing my tables and often asking me if I was all right. I had no idea that the word had spread or even that I had said what I did. I especially found it odd that other waiters were so anxious to help me in what was a competitive atmosphere for tips.

A couple days later the boss came to me and asked if my pregnancy would interfere with my ability to do my job. "What pregnancy? Who told you that?" He explained that the whole restaurant knew and that if I chose to have an abortion, I could get a couple days off. In return, I explained that I was not, in fact, pregnant and I had no idea that I had said anything of the kind. But he pointed out that I had announced it to the kitchen a couple days before. "Didn't you say you were "embarazada?" Yes. "Don't you know it means pregnant?" Oooops!

That night I learned my first most important restaurant Spanish lingo after that. Para llevar. To go.

So a prostitute walks into the bar and...

One night, a young, skanky woman, clearly a prostitute, walked into the bar. Within virtual moments, she was in the lap of one businessman and chatting up three others. Obviously entertained by her, they were buying her drinks. She told a story that had just happened to her.

She had an appointment on the executive floor. When she got there, the man had an unusual request. He wanted her to shit on him. She couldn't accomodate, so she dressed and left. Which goes to show that even pros have standards.

Or as someone else commented, maybe she just didn't have to go.

Take this order to the K-hole

I worked in NYC with this waiter, Raymond, who loved to party. He could party all night with the help of cocaine and other drugs and show up for the lunch shift right from the afterhours bar still drunk and high. Often enough, he failed to show up at all for the lunch shift and crawled in for dinner around four. Our manager had warned him several times and Raymond had been fired in the past several times for the same offense. He always got his job back because he was popular with the guests and other employees. He was funny and endearing. Also, we were always short-staffed.

We had nicknames for some tables that we all used and they had stories attached to them. Raymond was being punished for his latest missed shift and was working the hoststand. He was still reeling from the night before of drinks and drugs. As he was taking guests to their table, he started slipping to the ground. He managed to slide himself into the banquette of this table and to recover himself, spread the menus around the middle of the table and told them they were seated there.

From then on, the table was no longer known as 51, it was now the K-Hole.

Chateaubriande ala floor

I can't remember how to spell that correctly for now, but the story goes as such:

About twenty years ago, I was working in a restaurant called Delia's in East Aurora, New York. We served ceasar salads made tableside and cut shanks of filet and lamb chops and served them tableside. Chateaubriande takes at least 35 minutes to cook med to med well and even though every guest was warned, they often became itchy for their food as time went by, stopping us to check on the progress every few minutes.

One night, I picked up my food and headed for the service stairs to the upstairs dining room. The stairs were covered with tablecloths and napkins as the laundry bin was at the base of the stairs and bussers were too lazy to run them down, so they tossed them from the top of the stairs and they would land haphazardly all over. I had to negotiate this trail of linen and, of course, would occasionally trip. This night I did and the filet slipped off the back and rolled all the way down to the foot of the stairs. I screamed and Ron, the sous chef, came over, immediately saw the meat, picked it up and brushed it off with his dirty chef's rag and called to the kitchen to fire up more vegetables. Of course I served it. Hell, a couple extra minutes on the grill would kill anything and burn off any rug threads, right?

An old food story

I read this in a food critic's article about 20 years ago in Buffalo. Apparently, her and a guest were dining in a restaurant in Mexico. The waiter recommended the last two lobsters in the tank and promised they would be the best dishes they ever had. As the dish came so highly recommended, the food critic and friend ordered one for each of them. Unfortunately (and who hasn't this happened to?), when the waiter came out of the kitchen, he dropped one of the lovely lobster dinners to the floor. He quickly picked it up and the busser finished cleaning. A few moments later, he brought out another plate and claimed "It's another lobster!". The food critic didn't believe him.