this crap always happens

so, last night we had a party scheduled...supposed to be 20-25 people, and it's actually pretty rare when all of them show up, and it's even rarer for them to show up on time.  if we have a group scheduled for twenty people at six thirty, chances are that we'll get sixteen or seventeen of them around seven, seven fifteen.  and i love how nobody thinks its a big deal.  it's not like we set up half of our restaurant for them, and brought in extra help....oh.....wait....

anyway, the group last night turned out to be 31 people, which was awesome, and they all ate dinner and drank some beers or wine each, so the ticket was huge.  peggy took part of the table and jeana took the other part, and even though peggy's part was 19 people and jeana's was only 12, jeana ended up with more tips.  and peggy threw a hissy fit, and it became this whole big thing, and jeana was crying at one point, and it turned out that i finished before any of the servers.  ANY of them.  only one is supposed to close!  and peggy and jeana were still there, mostly cause peggy was whining and calling the boss and jeana was trying to not bash peggy's head in and get her sidework done, which had gone unattended due to the drama. 

so, from the kitchen perspective, the table went fine.  the boss was hanging around wanting to help but i've told him a million times, as long as i have one other person in the kitchen everything will be ok.  and i had tina and even though she's a little slower than i'd like, she did just fine.  boss is kinda cute, though, when he stands there asking if we want help...he looks like a kid asking for cookies.  we let this group order off the menu, and a lot of times with groups that big, we'll give them a limited menu just to make it easier on the girls and on the kitchen.  lemme see if i can remember what they had..

five matadors (one split)
four tuesday spag specials
one half rack ribs, mashies brown gravy
two chicken fried steaks, mashie chicken gravy
salmon and caper sauce, rice
almond salmon, rice
hamburger steak, mashie brown
meatloaf, mashie brown
two chicken strip baskets
cheeseburger, fries
single lumberjack cheeseburger, fries
country harvest salad
blt wheat toast
french dip, fries

that's all i remember off the top of my head but that's like 23 out of 31 meals.  and i have no reason whatsoever for remembering that.  i'm not gonna need to know that today when i go to work, but...there it is.  anyway. 

back to the salt mines...

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.