You know that on any given day in this business, you are open to many different problems that you are expected to react to professionally and over come quickly. Some days may be completely uneventfully, where as others may bombard you into chaos. I had one of those days recently and here's how it went down.
Its early on a Sunday, when all the good church goers are released from the afternoon sermons. The restaurant hasn't done a whole lot until now, but here they come in groves. Mean while the restaurant crew is working furiously to get set for the on slot of hungry people heading their way. The first hurdle that we see is that we are short staffed both front and back of house. Down one cook and two servers. To late to call anyone in so you MFD.(make fuckin do) Its a ruff start but we make it through the first wave. The second wave comes through and our computers go down. We are unable to run credit cards, we hand write the vouchers and over come this hurdle. One of the servers came and said that a guest wanted to know if he could use his EBT card, I asked what that was and the server said "its a food stamp card" I simply shook my head and said "no".Now the computers are up, business slows down to a point where everyone working their ass off gets a reprieve. That's when the final straw hits.
One of my servers come to me to tell me that a guest needs to talk to me. I asked him what was up, he said that one of his guests was accusing him of stealing the mans leather coat. I said "WHAT?" Yea, the server said, Its the same guy that wanted to use the EBT card. I took a deep breath and I went to the table. There were three of them in their Sunday best. I asked what they needed and the big man, easily 350 lbs stood up and barked that his leather coat was stolen with his wallet containing two hundred fifty dollars and that they weren't going any where till he got his coat back. I told him to calm down that I would be right back. First of all the waiter weighed in at maybe a buck seventy wet, so why would he steal a coat that Mohmar the tent maker made. Anyway I went to the office and rewound the tape on the cameras and found that the man didn't have the coat when he came in. I returned to the table, told them my findings as I pointed out the cameras. Nothing else was said, they simply payed their bill and left. No apology to the server that was accused and of course no tip. I wanted to throat punch the asshole. Instead I chose to blog
