The Madcap Adventures of Turtle Man and Raccoon Lady

The other day two of our most notorious "animal" guests where in at the same time, and I almost felt like I was in some sort of low rent zoo. To be fair, most days at work I feel like I'm in a low rent zoo, but that's kind of to be expected.

There's a man who comes in that everybody calls "Turtle Man," because he looks like a fucking creepy ass turtle.  He's probably in his 60s, he walks hunched over with a cane, and he has giant glasses. He also usually wears a bucket hat.  And I should mention the reason that he walks hunched over is that he has some kind of back brace equipment strapped to him, and normally I'd never make fun of somebody with a genuine medical condition, but he's so damn weird and annoying that he's exempt from any exemptions of mockery.

He actually looks a little like this:

except older and more hunched over and not wearing a big green suit...and okay maybe only vaguely like this

Turtle Man requires a full glass of ice on the side for his glass of tap water, extra napkins, and no matter what he orders he asks for a soup spoon. He has never actually ordered soup.   He usually orders a steak and eggs or a roast chicken, and woe to those who don't bring him a soup spoon ahead of time. He will get up and start waving.  It happens.  I'm not sure what he does with the soup spoon, since I've never actually watched him eat. I just know what when he's finished his plate is a mess and he only ever tips two dollars no matter how much his bill is.

The Raccoon is a whole different breed of crazy.  She has crazy dark brown hair that seems to be a cross between an 80s perm and a mullet,  but more importantly she has her entire eye area covered in black makeup.  All around the eye. Big black circles. We've actually debated whether or not this make up is tattooed on or if she actually just smears big sticks of charcoal around her eyes every morning. The Raccoon comes in with her comparatively normal looking husband/boyfriend/whatever and they always get one cup of coffee and one order of scrambled eggs.  If the eggs are too well scrambled they will send them back. They also request a bread basket, but only the brown bread, not the white bread, and for the love of god don't forget to give them jelly.

I long for the day when I can tell Turtle Man we are out of soup spoons, and Raccoon Lady that there's a shortage of brown bread. I doubt it'll ever happen, but it's good to have dreams.

In other news, all that ever plays on our radio any more is six different versions of  "Girl From Ipanema" and now the slightest mention of that song makes me want to punch somebody.

Love to say "you've gotta be fuckin kidding me"

Hello internet!  I've been a bit MIA the past couple weeks due to working every day until going out of town, and then you know....actually going out of town.  And, well I love writing this shit but I'm sure as hell not going to update my blog via smartphone.  Way too much work, too much potential for typos, and anyway I was too busy living it up in my hometown, The Rubber City (that's rubber as in tires btw, though rubber as in condoms would be way sexier.)

I have to say, going back to my hometown and seeing how other restaurants are run, and speaking to Akron waiter friends, it once again occurred to me how goddamn weird my job is.  Not to say that it was always easy working at the chain restaurant but problems were pretty "normal" as far as problems go.....shitty tippers, unruly prom kids, drunks at the bar, Lebron being a non-tipping classless asswipe.  The rest of the time it could be a hell of a lot of fun.

I do love my job at the Cafe despite all the weirdness, but it really is filled to the brim with insanity.  Anyway.  We have a policy at work called "Love to say Yes." It's a pretty straightforward spin on "the customer is always right."  Basically, do whatever you can to accommodate. And, in the most basic sense, I do support this.  My job is to make sure that my guests have a good experience. It actually benefits me for my guests to have a good experience. If my guests have a good experience they will tip well, come back, and maybe even compliment me to my boss.  If my guests have a shitty experience, they won't tip, they'll demand free shit, they'll complain and they might yelp me.  I have never actually tried to make somebody have a bad experience.  Yet the entitlement in the neighborhood is off the charts, and often "love to say yes" just turns into "bend over and take it."

Way back when we first instituted "Love to Say Yes" as a rule back in January 2012, a co-worker of mine drew up this response in the notebook.

And honestly it's not too far from the truth. Everybody has gotten so chicken shit and paranoid about what crazy bullshit these nut bags may post on yelp, that they've taken to bending over backwards to please these people.

Here are some things people have asked me over the years:

Can you butter my toast in the kitchen?

Can you cut my food up in little pieces?

Can I have hummus instead of salad dressing?

Can I have pancakes instead of toast?

The list goes on and on. One time I had a woman who wasn't even my table flag me down and demand that I open her butter packets for her.

Which....just. How helpless are you? There's actually a guy who comes in who either has an artificial arm, or just a non-functioning arm, and he somehow manages to cut his own food and spread butter on his toast. If he can do it, so can you.

One time I had a guy demand that I have the kitchen hand make a custom sauce from scratch for his mussels, because he didn't like the sauce we offered. I made the mistake of saying no and he complained to the manager about what a horrible rude excuse for a human being I am. And honestly, I kind of am a horrible excuse for a human being, but not because of refusal to hand make mussels sauces.

The problem is that these people are so used to having everything exactly as they ask for it, that they actually don't know how to respond when any minor conflict may arise. Last week we had a woman come in who asked about a cocktail we featured last summer.  I recognized the name of the cocktail but couldn't recall the ingredients off of the top of my head.  I told the woman this and she started to tear up. Actual tears were dripping down her face.  And I kept telling her that if she could tell me the ingredients, we'd probably be able to make it for her. But the level of distress was unreal.

My former co-worker once told me he had a theory about Upper West Siders:

You could take them out of the neighborhood, drop them anywhere on earth, and they'd all look around horrified and say "What?! I have to wipe my own ass?!"

Yep. That pretty much sums it up.

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.

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.