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...

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.