well that was worthless

so, i'm sure i have worked a saturday night slower than last night, but i can't remember one.  it was bad.  the griz game was on tv at 4 so i know a lot of our customers were at home watching, and i just figured it would get busy afterwards.  nuh-uh.  it was funny, when i came in at two the boss, who was already working for somebody in the am, told me he called off jenney again and that he was coming back for dinner.  i told him he didn't have to, that i could handle it by myself.  then all night when it was slow i keep looking at him going "see?  i told you i could have done this!".  it seems like when i get super prepared for a rush i never get one, and last night was no exception.  i worked furiously to get things done for dinner rush and then there was no freaking dinner rush.

here's a timeline of my day

1:40 pm - leave house, stop and get gas and smokes, head to work
2:00 pm - arrive at work, excited it's my friday and hopeful of a slammin dinner
2:20 pm - finally get everybody else out of kitchen and get it somewhat clean.  cooked a six top.
2:25 pm - flipped the sammich bar--22 containers, washed said containers
2:30 pm - got a few open minutes to change the oil in the fryer--this is important, as we're running fish n chips for special, and it's better when the oil is new.
2:45 pm - got bakers washed and in the oven, got more mashed potatoes and chicken gravy hot, made sure garlic butter was topped off, filled water and oil squeeze bottles, cooked a couple more tables
3:00 pm - smoked.
3:10 pm - made a double batch of beer batter, complete with six bottles of bayern amber.  wanted to take a bath in it.  we had 17 orders of the halibut prepped up so i needed a ton of batter.
3:15 pm - washed and thinly sliced 8 or 9 russet potatoes for the pub chips, got them blanching in cold water with a splash of lemon juice.  the way i slice them, half a potato will yield about 20-25 slices, and that's plenty enough, it's a nice pile in the basket.

now i'm kind of losing it...i remember cooking a few orders, consoling jessie (as much as anyone can console jessie) about getting screwed on like three tables in a row (two bucks on a forty five dollar ticket, four bucks on a seventy dollar ticket, and one other i can't remember), and i probably smoked a bunch more times. 

4:00 pm - had the prime rib on the board to let it rest for an hour, had the bakers on the line, mashies full, reach in cooler stocked (cheeses, diced/sliced veg, sammich meats), stand up cooler stocked (burgers, chicken breasts, salmon filets, racks of ribs, lasagna, meatloaf, pesto, heavy whip, sirloins, ribeyes, pork chops), line freezers stocked (fries, sweet tater fries, chicken strips, chicken fried steaks, breaded mushrooms, cheese sticks, fantail shrimp, pastys, kid burgers, p & d shrimpies), all breads and buns stocked to the gills....pretty much just fucking ready for anything.

4-6 pm - was sort of busy...not busy, i guess, but occupied the whole time.  still convinced a good dinner rush would happen.  by myself since two (usually the second cook comes in at 5, i told boss he could come in whenever or not come in at all) bossman gets there a little after six, and i had just rocked what would turn out to be the only significant rush of the night.

6-8 pm - nothing.  just me and boss bullshitting in the kitchen, cooking the occasional table.  messed about with the girls and danny boy.  oh, actually i told a story that made my boss hustle out of the kitchen toward the office with his fingers plugging his ears.  it was hilarious.  he's super easily grossed out.    i smoked a lot in this time frame.  at 8 i told boss to "get his shit done and get out of here" like i would with any other cook.  "sweep this fucking floor i'm gonna go smoke"

8-10 pm - also nothing.  just a busted ass saturday.  we would have saved money by being closed.  there was me, three servers, a dishwasher, and a hostess, and i bet there wasn't 800 in sales all night.  on a good saturday all three servers can do 800.  out of the seventeen fish n chips we had prepped up, we sold a whopping TWO. 

yeah, two. 

and i think i only sold like four or five cuts of prime.  we did a lot of standing in what i refer to as kitchen pose, one hand steadying you against a counter or cutting board or freezer or whatever, and the other hand on the hip.  we all do it.  it's not terribly comfortable or manly looking but i've noticed i slip into kitchen pose a lot and so does everybody else.  if we lean back against anything that anything just starts scooting backwards and pretty soon the steam table in in the dish pit.  so kitchen pose it is.

anyway, what a long post about absolutely nothing happening.  till next week y'all, i gots some sunday morninging to do...

uno mas

so, friday went pretty well.  the halibut and pub chips started off slow but then went on a little run and we sold quite a few...at least ten orders, and i think we only had 12 prepped up.  we ran out of the chips three times, though...two times coming within a minute and a half of another.  plus boss took two orders home and crystal and jessie each had one.  and my usual friday night kitchen compatriot was out with the flu and tina came in and she's never worked a friday at this restaurant, and her and i only work together one day a week (spag day!) and we don't really have a good routine.  aaron (usual fri closer) and i have been working together for seven or eight years, and can pretty much knock out a dinner rush without having to talk about food or tickets...we each kind of have a side of the kitchen that we're responsible for, but we also swap back and forth if need be.  i call it the kitchen dance.  we're so used to scooting past eachother with knives and plates of hot things in our hands that it flows like a little dance.  i sometimes feel clunky working with other people.  anyway, tina did a helluva job.  i dunno how busy she gets on sunday or monday, but i know how busy we get on tuesdays (not much) and we got hella busy for a little while yesterday.  not super good friday night dinner rush busy, but busy enough that i had to pop to her side of the kitchen and help her out a bit.  it's okay, i'm cool with that.  also boss was kind of hanging around the kitchen and i like it when he sees me kick the shit out of a dinner rush.  i've worked for him for many moons and he's seen it countless times, but it's still fun to show off to somebody who appreciates it.

anyway, we're doing the halibut again tonight, and hopefully jenney works...she's supposed to, but she also called in with the flu yesterday.  me and tina are the only not-sick night cooks, and she has to have a day off...i may end up working dinner rush with the boss.  and lemme tell ya, i've worked for a guy who would never in a million years put on an apron and rub elbows with the kitchen staff for a lunch rush, much less help out doing dishes or waiting tables.  my current boss actually works every sunday morning, knocking out hashbrowns and pancakes, is around pretty much every day with an apron on at some point, doing prep or washing dishes or letting a cook go home early and watching the kitchen.  it's great.  it's good to have a boss that knows exactly what it's like to be on the line getting your ass whooped.  anyhoo, if bossman has to work tonight that's fine, cause we get along great, he laughs at all my dirty jokes, and i can cook circles around him and i like showing off.  plus i like letting him get a little behind and then yelling "i need those fucking fries!  goddammit, keep up with me here!"

i'd like to address what has become somewhat of a question for some folks i know (mainly mikey and his gf over at http://www.mikewatchestoomuchtv.blogspot.com/).  yes.  most chefs/cooks/kitchen folk smoke cigarettes.  theres's two main reasons, for that, i think...

1.  it's hot, hectic, and at times, frustrating and annoying working in restaurants.  especially in the kitchen.  we stand up all day, and it's at least 90 degrees at eye level in my kitchen with the potential to get much hotter, everything is kind of smoking and steaming and throwing wavy heat lines in the air, it smells of fryer and grilled meat, and smoking a cigarette is a welcome relief to all that, providing an opportunity mostly to sit down and get some fresh air.  and the front of the house has it's own frustrations, like screaming children, demanding customers, and in our case, pervy truckers.  sometimes a server just HAS TO GET THE FUCK OUT for a second so she doesn't stab somebody.  it's funny, in my experience, cooks smoke and make dick jokes and laugh a lot, and servers smoke really quickly and in a tense manner, usually texting somebody.  anyway, most of us smoke cause it's an excuse to leave for a second and we don't normally follow any regimented break pattern.  i just smoke when there's no tickets and i feel like it.

2.  i feel like this is the most important reason.  remember when you were in high school, and when you went to lunch at taco bell with your buddies, you drove past all those metal and punker kids across the street smoking?  remember those kids?  the ones with dyed hair and ramones and slayer t shirts?  yeah.  we grew up.  you went to college, and we took menial jobs right out of high school (if indeed we graduated at all).  we smoke so much cause we started early.  most of us in the restaurant biz, and in the service industry in general, are those kids.  granted, some of us went to college (like me), graduated (like me), and couldn't find a job in their field of study (like me).  i just realized i liked cooking more than i liked business management.  i don't want to wear a polo shirt with a corporate logo.  i don't want to wear khakis.  anyway, we in the restaurant business, and cooks especially, are the kids you saw out the window skateboarding while you were actually sitting in history class.  we're the ones who smelled like weed after lunch, and who carved metallica and van halen logos into the desks.  and we just got older.  but we're still the same kids.


hope that helps.  anyway, i'll give ya the lazy sunday am post and let ya know how much ass i kicked tonight. 

huzzah!

i'm so stoked right now...i just read a comment from somebody i don't know!  like, i mean, there's people besides me and grandma that are reading this!  whoo-hoo!  whoever you are, tell your friends, there's literary lunacy to be found here!

literary lunacy would be a good name for a band

haha i'm dumb

so, er...i guess some of the posts i tried to make actually made it to the blog.  sue me.  it's not like i read it, i just write it.  i look at the posting page mostly.  sometimes i look at pictures of ladies with their clothes off. 

ok it works

alrighty...well, it's been a long week already and i still got two shifts to go.  i've been kind of bumming this week, for reasons unknown.  tuesday i had a pretty bad day at work and i came home and rattled off a ton of shit i had on my mind and that's when the website crashed and my post was lost.  it's probably better that way.  it was a fairly depressing rant that turned into an ugly tirade.  i feel better now, i guess, for having written it, even though it didn't get posted.  kind of the old "write a letter mad letter to someone but never send it".  i dunno.  i think i saw it in a movie.  anyway.  whatever.  work is work.  it sucks sometimes but it also rules occasionally.  i can't complain.  i got it a hell of a lot better than a lot of folks.  i laugh a lot at work, and i get to smoke all the time, and i cuss and make dick jokes constantly, and sometimes i wear a fake moustache, and i'm always busting people's balls, and i'm comfortable shitting there.  it doesn't sound like much, but i know a lot of people who don't feel comfortable pooping at work.  actually, i don't, really...i barely know anybody, but i would imagine lots of people hate it.  whatever, we got hardcore strength poo spray, and i pick my times wisely.  i'm by myself in the afternoon a lot.  plus i got a blackberry so i can totally surf the web when i'm in there.  it's pretty awesome, actually.

wow.  ANYway...

once again it's friday, and i'm stoked cause we're running the gnar halibut and pub chips.  we've done it a few times this summer and it's always gone over well.  i'd just like to point out that i suggested it well over a year ago as a special, because the boss used to have the best fish n chips in town at the old restaurant.  our current fish and chips are mediocre at best.  at first when i suggested it he kind of balked cause we already have fish n chips and running a different fish n chips as a special would confuse our customers.  and i kind of agree...most of our customers and old and/or truckers.  anyway, it was when i suggested doing fresh pub chips with the fish to set it apart from our menu fish n chips that he decided to do it.  the pub chips are a huge hit (boss's mom loves them, so that helps considerably) and they're SUPER easy...i just slice russet potatoes on the slicer, not too thin...then i blanch them in water and a bit of lemon juice for a couple hours, and then just chuck them in the fryer and toss them with some seasoning mix (i tend to meddle a bit and make a different one every time i do the chips).  they come out somewhere between home fries and lay's chips, and everybody seems to like them.  and the halibut, with our kick ass beer batter, is awesome, and the girls usually bug bossman until he tells me to cook one for the crew.

anyway, so that's what's on tap for tonight.  i'm listening to ice cream man by van halen right now, and it's near the top of itunes when i sort by times played.  it's pretty much the best song ever. 

so, yeah...that's it.

is this working today?

i had written an epic post...thirty paragraphs, pulitzer-worthy investigatory journalism, the cures for both AIDS and monkeypox, and blogger.com fucking FAILED and lost all of it.  i apologize to all one readers who may have been inconvienced by this.

stupid blogspot!

i just had a huge post and fucking blogspot FAILED and it's gone now.  i just want to say that it was pulitzer worthy, sixteen paragraphs long, and contained to answer to world peace.  also there were pictures of my junk.  too bad, world!

sorry bout that, folks

whoa, it's been over a week since i've posted.  work has been ok, i guess.  i'm in a really wierd headspace about where i'm at right now.  not really burned out, cause i still love cooking, but kind of a been there done that sort of feeling.  it's not fun anymore.  at least it hasn't been lately.  we've had some busy nights; last saturday was good, there was a football game and we got tons of business both before and after.  i can't remember anything going wrong on saturday, but i can't remember enjoying myself either.  and usually i love rocking out a frantic dinner rush...it's kind of my gig.  line cooking is wierd...some people have jobs where they're occupied all day but not what you'd call busy, some people have jobs where they don't do shit, but i have a job where probably 70% of the time i have nothing going on, with intermittent bursts of frantic cooking.  last night was spaghetti night (my loyal reader will be familiar with spaghetti night) and it wasn't as busy as some, but right when tina got to work she started on some prep and i got like eight or nine tickets within about five minutes of eachother.  it wasn't anything i couldn't handle (i can handle damn near anything.  bring it on.) but for a couple minutes there i was a bit under the gun.  not in the weeds, mind you, just under the gun. 

this might need explaining.

we have cook talk in the restaurant.  anybody who's read any bourdain knows about it.  for the uninitated, here's a little glimmer:

in the weeds--busy, behind, lost, etc.  i usually only feel in the weeds if i've forgotten to do something important like cook baked potatoes, get the prime rib ready, or maybe i burnt the spag sauce.  doesn't happen often.

under the gun--not as bad as in the weeds, but more a time crunch sort of thing.  as in "it's already 4:30 and i'm under the gun to get the special ready by five".

fifo--first in, first out, in regards to tickets.  sometimes there's no avoiding one ticket dragging past another as different items have different cook times.  but generally it's fifo.

single, deucer, three top--refers to the number of customers at a single table.  self explanitory.

there's a lot more that i'm not gonna get into right now, mostly cause i don't wanna just plagurize tony bourdain and i'm brain farting a lot of it.  but around my kitchen, a frenchie is a french dip, bullet is a blt, we refer to prime rib in ounce-per-cut, as in "i need two twelves and a sixteen", d spec and l spec, or speckle refer to dinner and lunch specials.  and if i get an order for a chicken walnut quesadilla, you have to sing it like "ah-chickenannawalnut quesssa deeeia".  most of the time when i get an order for anything i just yell "aahhh cheeseburger cheeseburger!"  (it's an old snl skit reference.  nobody i work with gets it.)

anyway.

nobody reads this thing.

and now that i think about it...

ladies and jerkfaces, we have a menu for a reason.  it IS NOT just a guide to what you can and can't order.  my boss frustrates me this way, allowing people to pretty much order whatever they want.  he thinks it's good they're spending money, i think it's disrespectful to the restaurant.  we change our menu pretty regularly, three times a year or so, never too drastically, (we keep most of it the same all the time), but let's say we had a sandwich two years ago that you liked, but it's not on the menu currently.  so, yeah...don't order that.  it's gone.  we don't have a club sandwich or a patty melt on our menu, but surprisingly i have to make club sandwiches and patty melts pretty regularly.  for a while we didn't have hamburger steaks on the menu but i made six or seven of them a week.  listen, just because i have the ingredients in the back to make something, (and i can make damn near everything with what we got back there) THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU CAN ORDER F**KING ANYTHING YOU WANT.  the menu is like a list of what you can have.  i dunno...i know i have never in my life ordered anything that wasn't on the menu.  why would i?  i promise you any restaurant in america can make a blt with supplies on hand.  but if there isn't a blt on the menu?  don't order one!  it's like going into best buy and demanding blankets.

"hey, yeah, i want a blanket."

"sir, this is best buy.  we sell electronics."

"dammit, i want a blanket."

"sir, look at all the televisions."
"i came here for a blanket!  that's what i want!"

"sir, we don't sell blankets.  this is an electronics store."

"i don't see why i can't just get a blanket."

it's kind of like that, except we give them the goddamn blankets, so now they're gonna want a blanket every time they come to best buy.  goddammit!!

and also i understand (and am continually frustrated by) dietary restrictions and allergies.  but go easy on us.  don't change an entire dish to your liking.  find something that works for you and order that.  we're not your bitches.  this isn't some a la carte thing where you just pick ingredients and tell us to throw them together.  USE THE MENU!!

aah, another week in the books

not much to report on this week.  decent business, but not busy.  not what i'd call busy anyway.  i can't even remember anything interesting or funny to talk about.  oh, wait...one asshole on tuesday ordered a buffalo burger with fries and a soda (bill was $12.95) and left three dollars on the table and left.  i don't understand people.  we're good folks at river city.  if this guy forgot his wallet he should have just told peggy and im sure she would have let him run home and get it.  we do stuff like that occasionally.  but we also get these people every once in a while, that just grub and go.  it's not even teenagers trying to be funny, it's like, older people who should damn well know better.  a couple years ago this trucker had two teenage girls he picked up hitchiking and they all ate and then just snuck out the side door.  they even took the plates!  luckily it was winter, there was fresh snow, and tammy mantracked them back to the truck and called the cops.  this 50 year old loser had to call his elderly mother and wake her up to get her credit card number so he could pay for the food.  i'm sure it was embarrassing for him, and, well, fucking good.  what a jagweed.  listen, if you don't have any fucking money, you don't go in to a restaurant and order food. 

oh, and another thing, general public, just so you're aware...generally in the middle of the afternoon there's only ONE server, ONE cook, and NO hostesses or dishwashers.  so do bear with us.  it's tough.  actually now that i think about it a couple of people walked out in the afternoons this week cause either peggy or jace couldn't get to them soon enough.  look around, people...if you see a lot of customers but only one server running around, then have paitence.  she wants to take your order.  she needs the tips.  but thirty customers haranging one server for refills on sodas and sides of ranch makes said server occupied and scatterbrained.  she'll get to you.  just wait.  both the guys (truckers) waited about three minutes then made disgruntled noises and left.  have paitence, guys!  and i don't understand how we get ten and twelve tops at 3:30.  who goes out to eat with that many people in the middle of the afternoon?  dinner i understand, even weekend breakfast, sometimes lunch, but just randomly in the middle of the afternoon?  i don't get it.  no matter how long i serve people food, they'll still surprise me.

spag day remix

well, another tueday in the books...and it wasn't much.  sold about half the spaghetti we have been doing on tuesdays.  a lot of times it's busy but ridiculously easy, cause it's 90% spag, and i just have to steam the noodles in the ol cleveland steamer (seriously, that's what it's called, it's got a big sign on it) for about a minute, then plate them and ladle on some sauce, which i have convienently placed on a burner right next to the steamer.  so it's a kind of bang-bang-bang thing.  i also made a huge double batch of beef stroganoff, cause we were going to run it wed night anyway and we had a busy as shit weekend and we're kinda low on burger buns, so it's better to run a lunch special that doesn't require buns.  i mean, i'm sure we'll sell our fair share of burgers today, but we don't get buns till tomorrow, so here's hoping...i think there's around thirty buns left and that is not very much.  anyway i'm happy about the stroganoff cause we have a good recipe, plus it's an easy as shit special too.  so 11:30-8 today, which on wednesdays usually isn't a problem.  it seems like the same shift takes longer on thursdays.  anyway, off to the salt mines....

hey everybody

hey if anyone at all is reading this thing leave a comment and let me know.  i like writing it cause it kinda lets me vent my frustrations and share my glory.  i just don't think anybody is reading it.  ah well...

saturday birthday day

so yeah, my friday (which is saturday) and it's also my birthday.  i hope to hell i have a better night tonight than i did last night.  it was busy like i wanted, and that was ok, but the prime didn't get in the oven until after i got to work at 2, which doesn't leave a hell of a lot of time for it so slow cook and be ready by five.  usually we get it in around noon, blast it at 400 for forty mins, then turn the oven to low and let it go slow and low for the next few hours.  here's the thing...a rib roast (cut of meat, prime is the grade designation.) has a lot of connective tissue in it, which is made of collagen.  when put to long, low heat cooking methods (slow roasting or barbeque) the collagen turns into gelatin, which in turn keeps the meat juicy and tender.  when you cook a rib roast fast it still may be juicy but the collagen doesn't have time to melt.  anyway, after cooking it at 350 for an hour and a half after i figured out slow cooking it was a no go i got it done.  by 5:40 i had it on the cutting board ready to go, and by 7:20 we ran out.  we haven't ran out of prime (completely out...end cuts as well) since last fall probably.  so good stuff there.  and the first u of m football game is today so we'll probably be busy after that, which in turn means dinner rush starts earlier, so i hope we keep it going for two or three hours, just banging it out. 

i was really pissed off when i left work yesterday and i had tons of shit i wanted to blog about but i just played super mario galaxy and now today i can't really even remember what i was mad about.  oh well.  it's my birthday, so i'm gonna try to be in a good mood, although when turning 32 and feeling older by the second it's kind of difficult.  but chin up, loyal reader (readers?  do i even have one?) cause i got the ultimate awesome tool for keeping it light at work...

FAKE MOUSTACHES!!!

hopefully later i"ll have a pic of me and danny boy with some porn staches.

friday friday friday

ah, yes, school is back in session, which means it's the time of year we lose our daytime dishwashers (high school kids) and most of my servers are back in college so they're stressed out and preoccupied. 

yay.

anyway, last night wasn't anything to write home about.  my back actually hurt pretty bad.  i mean, my job requires me to stand up all day (we sit when we smoke) and it seems like all the surfaces of our equipment are just a little too short for me and i have to bend over very slightly all day, which leads to a wicked sore back in the evenings.  but last night i had this pain kind of inside my shoulder blade that i just couldn't stretch out, and i couldn't really turn my head to the right very good.  i think it's from how i sit on the couch when i'm playing mario on the wii (which is super badass, btw) cause when i came home i sat like that to play and it effing hurt.  anyway, what's this got to do with friday, you ask?

nothing, really.  i'm just typing.

so, yeah, friday.  hopefully it's busy.  i love being busy.  most of the time.  i should load some new music on my crackberry to plug into the stereo in the kitchen.  i got like six hundred songs on it and i put it on random but i seem to hear the same songs over and over.  what it's been rocking lately:

anything by the real mckenzies
lots of dance hall crashers
tons of the darkness
weezer
lots of michael jackson
early metallica
the same less than jake song (last one out of liberty city)

what it has on it but refuses to play

30 dropkick murphy songs
15 van halen songs
20+ green day songs
10 def leppard songs
10 lily allen songs

i like to keep it pretty random when i'm at work, a little something for everybody (except jenny, who hates most everything and insists that metallica "isn't metal".  sheesh.)  i have been turning people i work with (especially the high school kids) onto new stuff.  daniel likes the fratellis.  sticks likes dance hall crashers.  i blow peoples minds with eddie van halen's eruption solo.

jesus christ, i'm off topic.

so, eh....friday.

yeah.

hope it's busy.

oh yeah, tipping

yeah.  you fucking bastardos.  let me say this once and for all...TEN PERCENT AIN'T SHIT AND IS NO LONGER THE STANDARD.  listen, all my girls make minimum wage, none of them get full time, and half of them are trying to put themselves through college.  they need that money.  it's not just a matter of "well, she did a wonderful job, so i'm going to tip her aplenty!"  tips are part of the bill, period, whether we add it ourselves or not.  we're allowed to add a 18% gratuity on tables of 8 or more.  some places in town do it starting at five people.  so yeah, this twelve top i mentioned, tammy said they were wicked nice so she didn't add the gratuity cause she thought they'd be down with a big tip...anyway, the bill was like a hundred and twenty bucks, and they tipped i think fourteen dollars, with the comment "there, that should be plenty!"

fuck you.

listen, if you want something that's ten bucks, bring fifteen.  drinks cost money too.  and don't complain about what anything costs after you get your bill (i'm looking at you, mr. redneck guy with the tank top and mean kids) because all our prices are clearly stated.  and don't try to talk us down on milkshake prices (i'm looking at you, two stupid kids with all the change mom gave you).  this isn't a car lot.  we don't haggle.  and leaving a dollar on the table no matter what you have (i'm looking at you, most everyone over sixty) is not fucking acceptable.

late tables and tipping

ok.  lemme break this down for you.  just because we're open until 9 (or ten.  or midnight.  it doesn't matter.) DOES NOT mean it's okay to come in at 8:56.  i don't understand this thinking.  if best buy closes at ten, they don't let you in at 9:55 to spend forty five minutes looking at tvs.  if the grocery store closes at midnight, then you can't go in there at quarter to twelve and spend an hour shopping.  IT'S NOT ALLOWED.  so why then, in the restaurant biz, does 9:55 mean "they're still open!" as opposed to "shit, they close in like five minutes"?  i don't get it.  at my place we have people coming in after the open sign is off and just sitting down.  even though there's no other customers and the waitress is mopping and i'm standing there with my fucking keys in my hand.  wtf?  on tuesday night (which is all you can eat spaghetti night...more on that later) we had a 12 top come in at about 8:15.  we started closing at nine last week.  so forty five minutes before closing, ok, i can handle that.  except that those people didn't order for twenty five minutes.  and in the meantime we got like three four tops and a few two tops.  so tammy was the only server, and was running her ass off, and ended up having to put most of the orders in at once at about ten minutes to nine.  so most of the food came up right around nine when we were closing.  whatever, just eat fast.  only nobody gave a shit that we were now closed...boy, they got there when we were still open!  i mean, don't hurry to eat and leave, it's not like any of us have families we want to get home to.  and tuesday is the one night a week i barely get to see my wife because i close the place, and i was all excited because we're back on fall hours and i was going to get an extra hour to go home and hang with the wife. 

BWA HAW HAW HAW!!!

fucking customers....

oh, and the spaghetti....well, first off i burned the sauce heating it up, and absolute rookie mistake, but my boss was talking to me and i got sidetracked.  anyway, if you ever burn spaghetti sauce, don't throw it away!  put a lump of peanut butter in it and wait a few minutes...you wouldn't believe how well that works...i thought i was going to have to throw six gallons of spag sauce away (very expensive) but a dollar's worth of peanut butter fixed the whole thing.  dig that!  if you don't have peanut butter, however, you're probably fucked.

dammit i keep forgetting

see?  see how i said i was gonna really try to get this blog rolling?  yep.  that's how i roll.  sometimes i want to write about work, sometimes i get off work and want to think of anything but work.  so, yeah.  it's been a week or so.  whoops.