Old stories and new stories

   I'd apologize for not updating this blog in over a week, but I've been busy with the new job, and a new improv class, and driving people's pets to Ohio and stuff. Seriously. I lead a very exciting and fulfilling life.
I went by the Cafe last Sunday to pick up my final check and found out they were featuring this as a special:

I'd like to say that everything has gone to hell in my absence, but really....shit like this has always happened.  Because nobody really gives a fuck.  Lame shanks are lame, bro. It's just how it is.

I have a couple stories from the new Uptown Restaurant, though none so exciting as anything that ever happened at The Cafe.

Mainly, Tuesday night I waited on Dr Ruth, who to my great surprise was actually still alive. She's batshit as fuck but in the best way possible. She also came equipped with a handbag stuffed with "Sex for Dummies" key chains  and proceeded to hand them out to everybody in the damn restaurant.  Seriously.  When I first greeted her she asked me if I could make her plain pasta, and when I said I was pretty sure we could but I would have to check, she said "I am Dr Ruth. I will give you sex for dummies key chain." Okay then.

I also somehow wound up with two key chains, so now I have obviously have to wear them as earrings.

We're also selling pie that saves kids or some bullshit.  I keep forgetting what the thingy actually is, but all the proceeds for this pie that we sell goes to like, starving children and crap. Which is cool. It also makes me want to tell people that if they by any desert other than pie a child will die a horrible death.  

Because I'm an asshole.

Anyway. I  continue to sift through years of backlog and look at hilarious stories of Roasts of Yore.

Apparently at one point we were keeping a running tally of which busboy could break the most glassware in a single shift.  I don't remember who the fuck Mohammed was, but apparently he broke a shit ton of glasses. I imagine he's somewhere else breaking large amounts of glass on a much grander scale.  

Oh and then there was this:

Jan 2, 2012

Old man eats oatmeal with a fork. I show him the spoon I've brought, and he continues eating oatmeal with his fork.

Yes, that happened to me.  And weirdly enough, that's the kind of shit I miss and don't miss at the same time. Weird fuckers eating oatmeal with forks.

In the meantime, I shall continue to sell life saving pie, and revel in the lack of complaints that creme brulee "tastes like burnt cream" Yes, that actually happened.

Hopefully I'll return later this week with more stories. Lord knows I have plenty left.

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.