Flashback Friday, etc.

     Before I get into the whole Flashback Friday thing, I just want to take a moment and jot down a couple weird things my co-workers said yesterday.  A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about our busboy Fonzie, and his weird love of Saved by the Bell, among other thing. Anyway yesterday he just came up to me, said "Star Wars" and walked away. Not like, "Yeah, I love Star Wars!" or "Hey, I just watched Star Wars!" just...moderate, calm voice..."star wars" and continued on his merry way. I really have no idea what the fuck that was about but....hey....Star Wars everybody.

Oh and then I had the following conversation with my little Ukrainian co-worker.

He: I am so stupid!

Me: You're not stupid, you're just from Ukraine.

He: What does this mean?

Me: It doesn't mean anything. It's just me teasing you about where you're from. You know, like when you say somebody isn't stupid, they're just from Florida.
He: Oh! Well people from Florida, they are like villagers! Everybody knows this.

Anyway, now I want a t-shirt that says "People from from Florida, they are like villagers."  I would totally wear the shit out of that shirt.

And now, let's wrap up the week with a few tales of Roastings Past.

Dec 16, 2011
Lady was here for about 3 hours, then asked to see the manager. Told Gus she didn't have any money because she's "dealing with settlements" but would pay us by January 2nd.

Okay, I totally remember this lady.  I guess I could have put this in the Funny Money blog from earlier this week, but I forgot about it til now.  Anyway. I remember this pretty distinctly because it was the first person I dealt with that morning.  This customer was a transfer to me from the overnight waiter, and I'd guess she'd been there a while.  So she finishes eating, then asks to see the manager. Then she explains to him that she doesn't have any money, but that the police are "aware of the situation" And then she wrote us this weird IOU on the back of some prescription for rash cream.

Who the fuck goes out to a restaurant with no money??? Who does that?!  I mean luckily it was like a 15 dollar check, and we just voided it but...what? What the fuck is that? And I wondered at the time if she had tried it before. Like....just spend a small amount of money at every restaurant in the city, and then explain that you have nothing because you're "dealing with settlements" but it's okay because "the police are aware of it."

And no, she did NOT come back by January 2nd. 

This also kind of reminds me of the time that my co-worker Cris had a table who only paid half their bill, and then they left her a note with an address where she could pick up the rest of the money.

Seems legit.

Funny Money

    Somebody gave me a traveler's check the other day, and after I figured out how the hell to process that bullshit, it got  me thinking about all the various ways people have tried to pay their bill.  I mean we all know old people can be cheap as fuck, and teenagers tend to just pay down to the penny because they don't know any better, but it's so much more than that.  Like, you know, this bullshit:

What am I supposed to do with this? No...really. I want to know.

Somebody just left my former co-worker a pile of Canadian coins once. I mean...why leave anything? What the fuck am I going to do with Canadian coins?    Fuck that shit and leave nothing. Because this is what we do with Canadian coins. Tape it into the bitch book.  Another time I had a dude pay everything but two dollars of his bill in legit, American money, tell me he was out of American cash, and give me a Canadian 5 dollar bill to cover the rest.  Because that helps me.

Foreign money done right: I recently had a guy leave me a twenty percent tip in proper money, along with a Euro. For good luck, I guess? I don't know. But now I have a cute little Euro in my change pocket and that's kind of fun.  I mean, if you want to unload a foreign coin or two on me, I guess I don't really care as long as you pay your bill in legal tender first.

Loose change and foreign coins aside, the best/worst thing that ever happened to me was when somebody paid his bill in pennies.  Straight up.  A few summers ago (I think it was 2011) I was working a lunch shift and had a guy who was a little twitchy sit at one of my outside tables.  He immediately emptied a large bag of coins onto his table, and though he ordered, he kept insisting that I didn't bring his food until he was finished counting.  He was really intent on his counting and kept meticulously organizing these coins, so at first I thought he was either preparing to roll them, or maybe he just had OCD.  However, towards the end of the meal, THIS was laid out on the table for me:

Five fucking dollars in pennies. 500 pennies.

And wanna hear something fun? This wasn't even the entire payment. Three years later, I remember the exact amount of the bill because the whole situation was so odd.  The bill was 22 dollars and some odd cents.  He laid out five dollars in pennies. He then told me that he thought he had a twenty on him, but he didn't so he had to go get it and he'd leave us his apartment keys as collateral. So for those of you that are up on your math skills, this means a full payment of 25 dollars, which is a less than three dollar tip, and also...fucking 500 pennies.  Anyway, he did end up coming back with the 20.  However, in the meantime I'd made everybody aware of the penny payment, took a picture of my phone, guests were pointing at it etc. So when he came back to drop off the twenty and get his keys, he saw some people looking at the pennies, and got all indignant that he was being mocked or whatever, and proceeded to tell us:

"You know, in Brooklyn this would be considered ART!"  

Fucking take that shit to Brooklyn then.

My bank cashes in coins for free, so I ended up putting all the pennies into a couple of to go soup bowls at the end of the day and lugging them home with me.   That shit was heavy, but I didn't know what else to do with it.

In conclusion:

1) Pay in American money

2) Tip in American money or don't tip at all

3) If you must pay in coins, at least use quarters so I can do my laundry

4) Don't ever pay with those godawful fucking annoying gold dollar coins.  You can't use them in vending machines or laundry machines and they're a pain in the ass.

Above all,

Use your common CENTS!
Get it? Sense/cents?  I made a fucking hilarious pun. Oh my god I'm so smart.

I'm going to end this entry now before somebody punches me through a computer screen for my horrible use of puns.

A few snippets.

It's been a good couple of days for crazies! Here's a few stories.

Thursday night I worked dinner and had a woman order a chicken caesar.  Our chicken caesar comes with a full paillard style chicken breast on top.  It also comes on a plate.  That's a huge problem.  Said salad was sent back because

1) It should have been in a bowl, not on a plate
2) The chicken should have been chopped up.

She went on to tell me, "It's not that it's BAD....I've just....I've never had anything like this before!"
I honestly thought she was going to cry, her level of distress and confusion was that bad.

So that was Thursday night. Today we had a couple winners on brunch as well.  First, I had an old man order a glass of wine, a gibson, a large soda, and eventually some food and dessert.   After I gave him the bill, he waved me back over to show me something. I'd double checked it before giving it to him, and knew everything on there was correct. Or so I thought....

He waved the check at me and said angrily:

"We go through this every time! If somebody is paying 12 dollars for a cocktail, the soda is free!"

Uh....What?  Since when? Who told you that? Does it say that on the menu? Are you just pulling rules out of your ass? I didn't put a gun to your head a force you to order a twelve dollar drink AND a soda AND a glass of wine and food and coffee and dessert.  Calm your shit. Of course I had the soda voided because I was scared he'd yelp me. But seriously. Who are these people? I'm going to start making up my own rules too. Like....if you do dumb shit in my restaurant I can charge you five dollars extra for being a moron.

Last but not least we have the lovely man who ate his entire Eggs Florentine without complaint, and then told me he had a message for the chef. Of course, it started with the phrase "I don't want to complain, BUT..."

Bitch, shut up. Yes you do. You totally want to complain. If you didn't want to complain you wouldn't complain.

Anyway, this man's gripe? 

"You need to tell the chef to cut the stems off of the spinach. I mean....if he did that on Top Chef he'd be kicked off right away!"

Yeah, and if I went on Top Model I'd be kicked off right away. What the fuck does Top Chef have to do with anything? First of all, you're too whiny about your spinach, and secondly if you're going around expecting everything in life to be like a reality TV competition, you're going to have problems.

I swear, I don' t know where they come from....

These are the people in your neighborhood....

Shout out to anybody who recognizes the song title in the heading, first of all.  No guesses?
It's this shit:

Yeah dude. This song is my jam.  Anyway. I think one of the things that makes work so "special" for lack of  a better word, is the fact that UWSiders are just all kinds of crazy.  Also, we're located directly across the street from an old people's/ people with various other weird shit problems home, and they come in a lot. Honestly, I feel like I have a unique perspective on this, since I did spend some time in a ward back in the day, and the guests we get at work could give those patients a run for their money.

Like that one time that guy came in at 9AM, demanded pork chops, was sad when he couldn't get them, and then  sat talking to his invisible friend "Ivan" for an entire hour, sipping grapefruit juice out of a soup bowl. He was fun.

Guys like that always stand out because they're so far gone into weird territory, but if we're lucky they're one time visitors.  Sometimes they're not. Leg Juice Debbie came in for God only knows how many years before we could ban her.  But often the crazies tend to come and go.  The severe ones anyway.

Then there's the lesser category of crazy, the "not quite dangerous but definitely weird and annoying as fuck" people that you're forced to see every day.  Specifically, the booksellers.

There's a group of crazy old booksellers that set up camp directly outside the restaurant, and damn are they weird.  They don't seem to sell more than a book or two a day, but they're constantly coming in to use the toilet or ask for change.  There's a few of them, but the most notable are the guy with the horrible troll laugh, and the guy who looks like Exeter from This Island Earth.

And actually, he doesn't even look like this anymore because over the winter he grew a giant fucking Santa beard and also grew his hair out. So now he just looks like a crazy bum with a yellow beard. But when he's clean shaven he looks like Exeter which reminds me of MST3K, and because of that I end up hating him a little less.

The troll guy is a fat little fucker who wears a squashed pork pie hat, a t-shirt that says "Feh", and headphones ninety percent of the time.  Sometimes he'll come in and eat yogurt or something, but mostly he sits out on the street laughing like a hyena in a blender. I've actually been waiting on outside tables and heard some sort of hair raising other worldly sound, only to discover our friend the cackler laughing about God knows what.

The other day they were all out there measuring the sidewalk. Maybe they're planning a hostile takeover.  Books V Baguettes the EPIC SHOWDOWN.   One day the crazy book men will storm the premises, and I'll lackadaisically barricade myself behind the chairs, while deciding whether or not I actually care.

Weekend Update: Blasts from the Past

Once again, I've proved myself horribly incompetent and for the second week in a row failed to write a Flashback Friday entry on an actual Friday.  Anyway, I've been delving into the Notebook of Roastings Past and reminiscing about things that happened a few years ago.

Like this delightful gem:

"Today I found a cheese sandwich sitting on a chair by the coat closet."

This was actually me. Like I've said before, the old journal that I get a lot of my old school postings from was a communal employee journal for a while, but the cheese sandwich thing actually happened to me.  I'm pretty sure it was a brunch shift, because that's when all the weirdos come out of the woodwork more than usual.  Anyway, I happened to look over towards the supply closet/bathroom area, and sitting on an extra chair was a plastic baggie containing a cheese sandwich. And I was just like....

Seriously. Bitches be leaving cheese sandwiches everywhere. Who the hell do you people think you are? I mean really.

I'll never understand people who bring extra food to a restaurant.  I mean....our purpose is to have food for you.  Do you think you'll get trapped in here and we'll run out of food and you'll need your cheese sandwich to survive? But then....if that's the case you should take better care of it and not be leaving it on random chairs by the bathroom.

I also had somebody pull out a pizza once, and just start eating it at one of the outside tables.  I didn't really know what to do, because it was after they'd already ordered a bunch of food. I just thought it was really fucking weird that they didn't like....finish eating at our restaurant and then go to a pizza restaurant or something.  Actually I can't remember if they ate the pizza pre or post brunch.  Maybe they brought it with them ahead of time because they were SO STARVING that they needed to eat a pizza while they waited for their eggs. Or something.

Speaking of fun food items, let's kick it back old school to the days of misspelled specials.  We used to have an adorable little Israeli manager.  And seriously, she was fun and I miss her, but her spelling was atrocious.
This was often listed as our soup of the day

I don't know how many times I had to explain to her that we don't want people to think our food will make them "leaky" this happened time and time again.  I think at one point we also had "Pumpkin Brisket" (bisque) soup and "Butternotscoth" cookies. I don't know what the hell a Butternotscoth is, but to me it sounds like some kind of freaky character from The Dark Crystal. 

These days there are less misspellings on the menu, and less weird random food items to be found, and I'm not sure if that makes me happy or sad.    

The weird shit keeps it all interesting, that's for damn sure.

Things you shouldn't do in a restaurant

    I wasn't planning on making such a "generic" post this week, but then my sweet overnight waiter was punched in the face late Sunday night/early Monday morning. So I thought I'd make a list of guidelines for those who seem to be in the dark on the dos and don'ts of...you know, not being a complete fucking asshole. Some of these reference past blogs, some are just things I'm thinking of off the top of my head.

DON'T
Talk to your waiter about your sex life.
This is grossly inappropriate.  I don't care how many chicks you banged, who you went to Vegas with, what sort of weird hookups you had.  I just do not want to know.

DON'T
Make gross sexual advances towards your waiter. Casual flirting/joking is fine, but don't be pushy. If the server or bartender actually IS interested in you, they'll let you know.  One time when I was a 19 year old hostess in Ohio, an old man asked me to sit on his lap. Don't do shit like that.

DON'T
Change your kid's diaper on the table in the middle of the dining room. That's fucking gross.

DON'T
Come in and shit all over the bathroom floor. We had a problem with this for a while. There was this dude we called "The Pooper" because....well, he'd come in and shit all over the bathroom floor.  We had to ban non-customers from using the restroom for a while, and of course that got people all crazy as well.

DON'T 
Wander around the outside of the restaurant topless, and then eat the potted shrubbery when a manager asks you to put a shirt on.

DON'T 
Punch your waiter in the face. Seriously. Who does that?  I don't care what you think they did, or what's going on, you can't go around punching people in the face. Wanna punch people in the face? Go start a Fight Club or some shit like that.

But really, it all comes down to:

Flashbacks: Special Requests.

Hey hey. I know I blogged on Tuesday, but it feels like it's been ages since that happened.  Normally I do a "Flashback Friday" edition of old school stories, but yesterday was July 4th, so I spent the day getting wasted, like any able bodied American woman.  Because everybody knows if you don't get drunk and/or blow shit up on July 4th, it means you hate America and then the terrorists will win


     So anyway. Today I have two stories to share with you, both written about upon request.  The first is dedicated to one of my dearest friends, Mich , who I met while working at the restaurant.  A few summers ago, we were both working a morning shift, and a somewhat insane looking woman came in and demanded a to-go coffee.  Our bartender was in the bathroom, so Mich attempted to help the woman.  Bartender returned, Mich directed the woman's attention to the bartender, and the woman asked him for a coffee.  As it happened, the bar coffee pot was empty, so our bartender asked Mich to go get him a new one, which she did.  In the meantime, he began to make drink tickets that servers were waiting on. Because...you know...why would he just stare into space and wait for a coffee pot? Gotta get shit done.  So apparently this woman thought we were all ignoring her desperate need for coffee, started screaming about splenda, and stormed out of the restaurant.  Of course in the process she shoves right by poor Mich, hits the tray that she's carrying, and ends up clocking Mich in the face with it.  Our manager at the time saw the whole thing and chased the woman down the street, which was pretty great.  So yeah.  That's the kind of customers we get in my workplace. And I love coffee. I understand the need for coffee. But I can't say that I've ever thrown a fit and clocked a waitress in the face with a tray.

    Our second story today is one that lives on in infamy for those who were there.  I almost didn't write about it because it deals with public breastfeeding, which I know is a touchy subject for many people. I'm not a parent, nor do I ever plan on being a parent, and it's not up to me to tell people how to feed their kids. Honestly 99 percent of the time, I could give a shit about women who breast feed in public, because really what are you supposed to do? Not leave your house for a year? That being said, I do think it's a little bit weird for people to be breastfeeding toddlers in public(or at all), especially when those toddlers are also eating eggs and pancakes and various other items ordered from the menu.  A couple summers ago, a rather odd looking family came in. A mom, a dad, and two boys. The older one was six or seven, and the younger one was three or four.  The younger child had a full vocabulary, was wearing sneakers, and rode into the restaurant on a tricycle.  But hey, whatever. So they sit, they order food, and then the mom takes her entire tit out of her dress and starts feeding the toddler. So he's kind of sitting there awkwardly on her lap, sneakers up on the table, sucking away.  Weird enough. Once he's finished he proceeds to leap up and run around the restaurant yelling "I eat the boob! I eat the boob!"  Oh, and then his mom looked at him and said "you love boobies don't you? yummy yummy boobies!"  So yeah, the whole thing was just really fucking creepy. And again, I know I'm in no place to comment since I'm not a parent, but I like to think if I was in charge of a kid, I'd teach them not to scream phrases like "I eat the boob!" all over the place. It's just not classy. I think at one point my co-workers and I decided that we were going to use "eating the boob" as code for being so drunk that you can't function the next morning. As in "Man, I really ate the boob last night. I'm totally hungover."  That never really caught on though, mainly because aside from myself, all the people who worked there during the great "I eat the boob" debacle of 2012 are no longer there. Ah, the memories.

So. What have we learned today?

1) Don't hit your waitress in the face with a tray.
2) Don't let your kids run around screaming about eating boobs.

Stay tuned for more lessons. Because learning is fun.

The Saga of the Butler

    After about a year of butler-free bliss, we've recently seen a resurgence of The Butler at the restaurant.  The Butler is a curious looking fellow. Short, portly, bald except on the sides. Snow white hair on the sides of his head, and a snow white handlebar mustache.  He also wears a monocle. I've never met anybody in real life who wears a monocle.  Basically, he looks almost exactly like this:

except minus the tux, and plus a monocle.

     The Butler is English, and plays up his accent quite often.   By the way, full disclosure here, he's actually an ex-butler.  He went to a special "Butler School" in England, and I guess worked for a family here on the UWS til they couldn't pay him because of the recession, and now he's a doorman or something.  Still, he must be proud of his past, because he seems to begin every other sentence with "Back when  I was in butler school....."  Now honestly, I couldn't tell you what happened back when he was in Butler School, because I kind of just learned to tune everything out after I heard that phrase. Something about folding napkins into swans, or something.   I also somehow got it into my head (maybe because of the whole England thing) that there's some kind of secret Hogwarts-esque butler school out there, where they have secret passages, and I don't know.....magical wine cellars or something.  I was actually thinking about this for a while, referring to it in my head as "Butwarts" but I realized that doesn't sound too enticing.

(Also, I was totally tempted to google image search "butwarts" just now, but I completely wussed out.)

Anyway. Back to our friend the Butler. The Butler drinks house vodka martinis with extra olives, no matter what time of day it is. He also loves red wine, and actually threw a fit when we changed the wine glasses around a couple years ago. That in itself actually prompted an entire "butler school" tangent, and a lecture on proper glasses for the serving of red wine.  It was quite the kerfuffle, to say the least.   He's also got a bit of a pervy side to him, and when I say that...I mean he's a fucking creepy motherfucker. Way back in 2010, when I'd only been at work for a couple months, he added me on Facebook.  Because he's the kind of guy who likes to stalk the entire restaurant staff on Facebook. Maybe he doesn't have any real friends? I don't really know. Anyway, I didn't know that much about him at that point, so I added him back.  A few days later he was in with his wife. I waited on them and chatted about the weather, and mentioned that I had the next day off and would most likely be going out to Brighton.  He looks up and yells, "Oy! Does this mean we'll see more pictures of you in a bathing suit?" I'm sorry...what?!? First of all, don't say shit like that in front of your wife, and don't say shit like that to your waitress.  Secondly, I'm not ashamed of my body or anything, but I've never been the type to make a bathing suit pic my profile picture.  The most recent bathing suit pictures of me were from an album two years prior.  Meaning...he basically went through all of my photographs.   That was a little creepy, but I didn't delete him until I got annoyed as fuck by him making weird comments on all my posts. So I "unfriended" him, thinking he wouldn't even notice.  Of course he came in the next day and called me on it. So I had to block him completely.  Honestly though, this isn't even the weirdest shit.

     One time he found out via Facebook about a birthday party for a co-worker of mine. No, he wasn't invited, but I suppose lonely butlers have nothing better to do than stalk wait staff.  Anyway, he ended up showing up at this party on the LES, and he was already there when I got there and I spent the entire time hiding from him, which wasn't exactly easy to do in a tiny dive bar.

     I used to work with a  girl who happened to have rather large breasts. As in, sometimes she couldn't button her uniform shirt all the way up because....well, it just wasn't going to happen.  Anyway, one day we caught The Butler taking pictures of her with his iphone....and when we called him on it, he basically laughed and said "Can't blame me for trying!" DUDE. I totally blame you for trying. You're gross.

     Lest you think The Butler spends all his free time visiting the restaurant and harassing waitresses, I'll have you know he has a very exciting collection of hobbies.  He's some sort of volunteer New York policemen, which I've gathered involves carrying a fake badge and riding a horse around Central Park. I'm not sure if anything else is involved, because like I said....I try to tune it out. I also remember him telling me in great detail about some sort of British war reenactment that he participates in.  Again, not sure what all is involved, but he showed me some pictures and I know it involves wearing funny clothes and carrying a musket.  

     However, probably the most legendary of all his odd jobs would be "writer of erotica."  I actually don't know too much about this one because I heard it from a co-worker rather than The Butler himself, and that was traumatizing enough, but apparently The Butler has a little side business writing dirty stories for the internet.  Some kind of secret website that you have to have a password for, and also have to pay money for.  Fifty Shades of Butlers, perhaps? Honestly I really don't know.  All I know is that he gave the "business card" for these stories to my co-worker and she promptly threw it out.

     He stopped coming in for about a year, but now he's back with a vengeance.  He tries to chat me up by asking about friends of mine who haven't worked there in years, but so far he hasn't done anything too terribly disgusting. Then again, he's only been back a month, so only time will tell.