Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Memorial Day.

So it is now summer, and I have discovered a spectacular thing.

Other than the heat. Of course.

My job? Has just gone from six hours to something more like sixteen. And I don't get to complain, because it's "summer".

I am trying not to turn this into a reason to complain until my ears bleed. Because this is boring.

Memorial day weekend was an ungodly stretch of exhaustion and rude people who expect our Shack to carry Cafe Americano and triple shot expresso lattes. Which we do serve, under a different name (Cafe au lait. You pronounce it "Oh Lay". It means the exact same thing as "latte")

I think my favorite are the people who show up and, without glancing at the menu, order a venti triple shot no-fat latte with a vanilla syrup shot for good measure. And then stare at me in puzzlement as I try to explain that we don't do Expresso shots, we don't do no-fat milk (It. won't. foam. Excess periods indicate extensive attempts to get no-fat milk to foam. It won't) and we don't have vanilla syrup. It is as if they are thinking "What the hell do you serve, then? Just coffee?" only they don't want to say it out loud because then they would be rude assholes.

Too late.

Look, I understand that we need you to buy our food so that we can get paid. But needing to be paid does not mean we need to do every single fucking thing you ask us to.

When you order the fancy french doughnuts, the coffee and the fancy fried sandwich, it takes time to make all three. It would take time to make them if you went to Macdonalds, and unlike fast food we do it cooked-to-order. We cannot just take your money and then hand over food that isn't cooked yet. You can't wait? You can't eat. Yelling will not make food magically appear. Go away.

We will open and pour your wine for you because this looks classy. We will not give you samples of said wine before you commit because it is a fifty dollar bottle of wine.

Also, we cannot serve said wine before 10am on Sundays. This is not a will not. This is a cannot. It's called "Texas Blue Laws", sunshine. Asking will not help you. Threats to go somewhere else won't help you, because no one else can serve it either.

We will make you coffee and fancy french doughnuts at seven am. We will not become Starbucks. We had a Starbucks. You did not go get coffee often enough, so they left. We are not going to replace a coffee shop you could not keep afloat. Not if you ask nicely, and certainly not if you start whinging about how much you want that Venti mocha cafe americano.

PS: Americano means expresso diluted with water. You just ordered something with extra water. Buy a fucking cup of coffee.

And it's large. L-A-R-G-E. You can say it. Starbucks has not permanently damaged your vocabulary.

Don't ask for a frappuchino. Especially not in front of the boss. She will offer you a Viet Coffee (which you should take) and will just shrug and go to the next person when you refuse and start whining.

And no. We're not bringing your food to the table for you. We can't run the shack AND maintain full service AND still keep our prices low enough for you to eat here. You can spend five minutes outside and come up to the window to get your food just like everyone else. Yes. I know we used to have a full service brunch. I know we were the only people in town who ran a full service brunch. We hated the full-service brunch. We will start doing the FSB again when Babe the pig gets his pilot's license. Yes. I know you won't come here anymore if we don't.

This is not a threat to us. It is Memorial Day. Sunday broke all our records and you are one more person standing between us, food and bed. We have made our money. We just want to go home. Stop being an ass, order what we offer, get it when its cooked all the way.

As for the rest of you lovely people who came up to the window and ordered food exactly as presented, who did not go all "Well...just leave off the (thing that is insanely hard to leave off). I don't want to be too much of a bother" but who actively wanted the ham on the Eggs Benedict, and who only returned to get another cup of coffee and to tell us it was wonderful, you are the reason I will be back next weekend. Please stay nice. Please.

Thank you.

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