Restaurant 'fo

Work has been...interesting the last couple of weeks. And by interesting I mean chinese curse, stick-your-finger-in-a-light-socket level interesting.

First off, let me identify the day NO ONE EVER GOES TO A RESTAURANT: Monday. If you have ever had a Monday off (and I don't mean Memorial Day Monday. We're open then) and you've had to find someplace to eat, you've probably noticed that your options are McDonalds and That Cheesy Diner Nobody Eats At Because God, It Sucks. The nice places? Closed. Why are they closed? Well, in a lot of cases, those nice places are staffed by the owner, the owner's family, and the handful of good help they managed to scrape out of all the other Good Places. FYI, good waitressing is hard. And I am not a good waitress. I am an okay waitress. I manage to get drink refills, shrimp ends and sugar packets off the table, and plates cleared in a reasonable amount of time, but if you screw up my pattern you will probably have to ask me for a couple extra lemons.

And NO ONE EATS OUT ON A MONDAY. So if you don't have the staff (or income flow) to stay open seven days a week? You're closed Monday. I remember reading my favorite book, Sunshine, and wondering why a coffee shop/restaurant would be closed on a Monday. Now I know! NOBODY EATS OUT ON A MONDAY.

But lately we've had Random Mondays. As in Tuesday I get called in when we have two other people on the floor because we got slammed. Wednesday I am the only person on the floor and it is DEAD. Today probably went well. Friday and Saturday we will want to kill ourselves because shit, we DO make the best Margaurita in town AND THAT IS NOT BRAGGING ON OUR PART, it's just a shit town if you want something complicated. (Marguarita is not complicated. One part tequila, half part triple sec, one part sweet&sour, which is a fancy way to say Lemon/lime syrup. Why is this so hard? WHY CAN NO ONE ELSE MAKE A GOOD MARGURITA IN THIS TOWN?) so the tourists and such show up on our doorstep and wonder why we don't let them decide how they want the Salmon cooked. (Because we are not your personal chef. If you want a medium rare Salmon, please hire the chef for your own household.) (No, really. Get her out of our hair)

And then we have Those People. They are the ones that THINK they know the owner. They don't know the owner, but they THINK they do. So they THINK that on a busy night, telling me "Oh, (the boss) can pick something for me" is a good idea. THIS MEANS I HAVE TO GO ASK THE BOSS WHAT TO FEED HER CUSTOMERS. Just in case the all caps screaming isn't a hint, THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING. Do you see the menu? Do you see the entry that is fish in blue cheese? Do you realize this is her default for when people come in and ask that? I have FIVE OTHER TABLES, dude. Pick out your food, pick out your wine, and stop being a patrionizing asshole because, for the love of GOD mister, you are not the center of the freaking universe. It's bad enough you want me to do a side substitution that is totally and utterly inapproprete for the food your wife is ordering. And by the way? let your wife order her own fucking food. 

And don't ask me if the wine is good. I hate wine (Unless it is Italian Bubbles, or a really high end Malbec). I will lie to your face because it means I get you to order something faster. Don't ask me if the food is good, either. The answer is yes. I am paid to tell you yes. I will sell you on my least favorite dish because, if you look like you want it, it means i get to go do refills on all my other tables. And yes, the fucking cabernet is from fucking California and I know there are other countries on this fucking planet but DO! YOU! NOT! REALIZE! That I am POOR! And will never get to SEE those countries? And you are wasting my time telling me about things that I cannot change, BECAUSE I DIDN'T WRITE THE FUCKING WINE LIST?!?!

 *sigh* Here's your lemon.

Guys and girls, the person deciding whether or not the salad dressing/cheese/puree for your drinks is spoiled is the same person you're lecturing on why Talapia Is A Bad Fish To Serve. Please adjust your behavior accordingly. The next person might not be nice.

Okay. BOOK STUFF:

I have finished the next Exiles story (Silver Bullet sequel. You know, the one with Casey Winter and Marco Creed. There's going to be a series of them and every series needs a name, right?) so I have begun editing the sci-fi story (tentative September release date...sometime) which puts the next Exiles story either LATE September or early October. Note that neither of these dates includes artwork and (cringe) ebook coding.

There will also be another story to pick up where Winterlord left off. So the plan for the next three months, or so, is as follows:

September: Untitled Sci-Fi story

October: Exiles story

November-December: Winterlord story.

Mark calendars and make plans accordingly.

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.

Dear General Public (of the eating kind)

There is a reason restaurants take reservations. It is so that we can function as a business and prioritize both seating and food consumption. Meaning the people who are kind enough to call ahead? They get a good table, or at least a guaranteed seat during our rush hours, and (most importantly of all) when we run out of food, they get to eat.

So when the Owner is going out of town? And purposefully under orders so that food will not sit in the walk in and rot during the week no one is cooking? And then on Sunday night we have ten reservations, two of them over four people? And we start running out of food? We stop bringing people into the restaurant. This is not because we don't have enough food for YOU. It is because we might not have enough food for the people coming in at eight, and you, I am sorry to say, do not get preference over the people who took the time to call ahead.

So lovely people, if it is your wedding night, and you show up at eight on this particular Sunday night, and you have seven people, and a cake, and you did not make a reservation? You're not eating.

I do not care if it is your wedding night. I do not care if you have been planning this for six months--in fact, I am pissed off because if you HAVE been planning this for six months, which I highly doubt because I know that cake you are holding is the out-of-the-case-Italian-and-cream-cheese-buy-in-two-minutes cake and not a wedding cake, or even a special order cake, and you could have accomplished that purchase in two minutes, you could have taken two minutes BEFORE YOU WENT TO YOUR FUCKING WEDDING to call ahead.

I am a waitress. I have two jobs: make sure the people who either made reservations or are already here have a good night, and follow the boss's orders. Boss says no. Answer is no.

Screaming at me (literally. As in red in the face .Nice going, dude, your new wife is standing RIGHT THERE) will not get you a table.

In fact, you see that woman walking over in the t-shirt and apron? That's the owner. That's the boss. That's the woman who told me "no, don't seat them," and that's the woman who is coming over to see if maybe we can't swing it after all. She just heard you scream at her staff.

NOBODY screams at her staff.

You're telling your friends? She hopes you tell ALL your friends.

And slamming the door in her face as you leave? Yeah.

You're not coming back.