stuff i think is totally stupid part six million

so, all the servers are dressing up for halloween, which i think is stupid.  i feel if you're an adult there's only two reasons to dress up in a costume...

1.  if you're going to a costume party.  that one makes sense.  costume parties can be kick ass.  i'm down for this.

2.  if you have kids and they want you to dress up and take them trick or treating.  i would totally dress up if i had kids.  no sweat.  i actually look forward to it.

however, if you work at a restaurant, especially in the kitchen, then dressing up makes no fucking sense.  first off, it's hot in my kitchen, and most costumes are a burden, unless you're a sexy blankety-blank, in which case you'll probably just get hot grease spilled on your naughty bits.  also i'm sloppy as all hell when i'm busy, so i would probably ruin a costume by spilling spaghetti sauce or gravy all over it.  also, i'm 32 goddamn years old.  i'm not gonna show up at work in a giant foam spongebob rig.  i'd end up lighting myself on fire.  one spit of grease and that thing would melt and collapse around me like a goddamn dying star.  also, it's stupid.  you think i'm gonna rock an eight hour plus shift in a goddamn spider man suit?  fuck off.  it's dumb.  and another thing, all the servers are dressing up as "hardcore griz fans" which is pretty much how they dress every saturday anyway.  i hear there's gonna be some face paint or something.  anyway, it's dumb.  tammy is going as prince, which will probably look maybe a little cool at first but after three or four hours of spilling ranch and taco soup all over herself, plus maybe crying a little, she's gonna look like hell.  people will probably think she has a zombie costume on.

listen, if you're twenty something, hot, and into the bar scene, fucking go for it.  play dress up.  i used to.  it's all good at that age, but man, you hit that thirty mark, and things like that start to seem childish.  i'd rather just go home and put my sweats on and sit on my couch and watch tv.  am i lame?  sure.  do i think coming to work dressed up as the joker or a sexy blankety-blank is considerably lamer?  fuck yes i do.

at least the other cook on saturday feels the same way i do and i'm sure we'll have a good time pointing and snickering and judging and telling everyone they look dumb and i hate their stupid faces.

anyway, it's only friday and it's been slow as hell all week.  i got a wee talking to about my on the clock cell phone usage, but so did literally everybody else that works there except the old ladies who can't figure out how to text.  anyway, i've been trying to be good, i keep my phone in my jacket in the back instead of in my pocket, but i still sneak back there and check my shit every once in a while.  i had been just standing in the kitchen for hours texting my boy mikey about tv shows.  the boss doesn't like paying me for that, and i can understand, but sometimes honestly, i got shit else to do.  i try to look busy but i'm not very good at it.

also, i'd like to make a request for everybody reading this to send happy thoughts to the greatest server ever and my good buddy tiffani, as the cancer she thought she had beat has come back agressively.  she beat it once and she can do it again, but she needs all the support she can get.  kick it's ass, tiff...we love ya!

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....

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.

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.

aah, friday...

another friday, another day closer to the weekend (my weekend actually starts on sunday).  i hope it's busy.  when it's busy you notice and complain about the heat but have to concentrate on banging out tickets.  when it's slow you just notice the heat and complain.  it's usually around 80 degrees in the kitchen, but if you have to stand over a broiler all night, with a heat lamp to one side and a leaky steamer to the other it gets over 100 degrees pretty quick.  and i do.  and it does.  believe me.  but luckily all the weight i lose every shift through sweating i gain back through beer and pork fat.  so i got that going for me.