Waiter Stuff
Sunday, and the boss is giving me grief for not having given the little darlings colouring-in stuff, crayons and what have you.
“It’s the only way to stop the little sticky fingered bastards smashing the place up eh…”, suggested the boss as he fingered the Crayola with the distant stare of a Vietnam Vet.
Personally I thought the chefs had enough to be doing what with a full restaurant but what you gonna do.
Heh.
In the course of my day-to-day work I am required to contact future punters to check that the reservation they made a day a week or a month previous is still a thing they want to do and wasn’t just booked on a whim. Customers make reservations mostly in good faith but are inevitably let down by others welching on the plans and such. Or there is of course the shitty little trick of making equivalent reservations in various restaurants and then choosing which one to fulfil at the last-minute.
That’s a cunts trick and no mistake.
Look at you.
Sitting there like butter and other delicious dairy products wouldn’t melt in yer pie hole.
Eh, proud of yerself are ya?
Yes it’s you I’m talking to.
Sitting there all smug and happy with yer face and hair and arms and all that palaver.
Think yer the big fella/lassie [delete as appropriate] don’t ya?
Just because you’re the customer you think yer right all the live long day, don’t ya?
Hmmm? You like that don’t you, being the customer and being right?
I’m here to tell you that yer not right, yer most often wrong and if it wasn’t for people like me you’d spend your life smashing yer fists into bowls of spaghetti and wondering why you can’t get it in yer horse hole.
Ya dicks.
Oh hey, didn’t see you there.
*Lifts chair, sits on it back to front like a cowboy*
Actually that’s nonsense, I really can’t pull of the cowboy look…think of it more like a school councillor who is trying to get down with the kids.
*Lifts chair, sits on it back to front like a school councillor who is trying to get down with the kids*
You know, we’ve had a lot of fun on here. Well I have. I can’t possibly testify as to your level of amusement or otherwise. But suffice to say I amuse the b’jesus out of myself…and that’s important for my personal wellbeing. Continue reading “I am a bastard and no mistake…”
It’s the goal of every restaurant, every business, to turn new customers into regular customers.
It’s not my fucking goal. Fuck that shit.
It’s especially not my goal when the new punters are a pair of absolute rockets. They define the phrase “head melters”.
I am a terrible judge of character and when they first rocked up in my section late one Tuesday evening I couldn’t help but be charmed by their relaxed demeanor, chatty personalities and all round friendliness. Obviously I had no idea of the full horror that would reveal itself over the next few weeks culminating in the rudest moment I have seen in all my puff. Continue reading “Choobs n Wabs!”
The man didn’t react, well not how you’d expect someone to react when given such news.
He wasn’t impassive either. He heard, he understood, he looked…he looked weary…as if he knew it was going to happen, it always happens…to him.
He was a tall man, probably taller than his hunched demeanor allowed for.
He was grey…his clothes were grey, his face was grey. His voice, such as it was, was grey…monotone, lifeless, free from the colour of joy and mired in the nothingness of grey. Continue reading “Mr Grey…”
oh…
I’m very pro public services. If I could only a symbol that best represents my love for out of hours GP services I would get that done next.
Sunday and the restaurant was coming down with little people and their supposed care givers. There were sticky hands, grubby faces, tears, squealing and upset from the velvet curtains to the much sought after window tables and beyond. There were also a lot of children too. Seriously, I will stamp my foot an huff if and when the little darling imps are seated in my section.
I, like Whitney, believe the children are the future. I also believe hover boards and cyborg butlers are the future too but, like children, neither has any place in a restaurant. Well specifically any restaurant I’m either working or dining in.
I don’t come to this view lightly. I’m not one of those morose hate-the-worlds that hate the world and everything and everybody in it just for the ironic lulz of it all. No, quite the contrary. My despotic, dystopian and misanthropic world view is based on years of actual study. Only by walking with the civilian population have I been able learn their ways and their needs, so many needs, and form a balanced view of them.
And basically kids suck.
Kid’s parents really suck.
I wouldn’t go as far as The Onion and call a kid a cunt, I have class whilst they have four and a half million followers on twitter, but I would have strong words with their parents.
Take these slack jawed fornicators who managed to stop drinking and shouting at each other long enough to fuck themselves an old school nuclear family. Well done arm gnawers. They had been stressing me out from the moment they arrived. The kids managed, in their fucking stupid kid way, to knock over a glass and send the silverware to the floor within seconds of arriving.
“Ders a broken glass on d’floor”, says the mother to me with an accusatory tone like she suspected me of being the schoolyard heroin dealer. I counted to ten whilst getting the dustpan and brush.
Sometime later and having stripped all but the very essential items from the table I served the parents their starters and the little future people their main courses. Obviously there was wailing and gnashing of teeth and what have you as the plates had salad on them. “I’M NAT EATING DAT GET IT AFF GET IT AFF GET IT AFFF AAAAAAARRRGGGH!!” (the kids weren’t happy either) and because I hadn’t put down a gallon sized bottle of tomato ketchup red sauce.
Demanding ye say.
Obviously the crisis was averted with a spare plate, a bit of scraping and enough ketchup to float a battleship.
About a minute later and I’m bringing more drinks to the table. It’s important to be snottered by 2pm on a Sunday when out with the kids yes?
“Dis burger’s too big so it is…I cawn’t eat it”, screamed little-darling-the-boy.
“Cut it den”, says the mother without so much as raising an eye or a finger.
“I cawn’t…you do it”
“Eh…I’m eatin so ah am…get deh mawn til do it” and she gestured to me with her knife.
Get. Deh. Mawn. Til. Do. It?
In this scenario I’m deh mawn I assume. I’m not always deh mawn it should be noted.
Fuck.
That.
Fuck that with Jimmy Savile’s shoes on.
I DON’T CUT NO CHILDREN’S BURGERS FOR NO GOD DAMN LAZY ASSED MOM.
I cut something though…a look that said, Fuck you and the lasagne you rode in on. Hey I am here to help and if you’re struggling and a kid needs help I’ll be the first, well maybe not the first, but if there’s no one else about I will cut up your darling kid’s burger until it’s nothing but horse meat in the wind. But if you can’t be assed to do it, then fuck you, you’re on your own….or rather your kid is.
We barely spoke after that and service was conducted at arms length…which is not an easy trick to pull off.
An hour or two later and more children with more demanding parents happened to wander like lost sheep into my section.
These children were the delightful progeny of middle class parents. Mopsie and Dopsie or whatever the fuck they were called, but they were clearly named after important family rabbits, were chatty little urchins and had something to say every time I happened to be at their table. Oooooh look at you, conversing with an adult like a proper person. Fuck up and eat yer nuggets. I do the talking AND the looking cute round here.
Anyhoo, despite the constant conversation (them) and fake laughter and fake fucks that I give (me) we managed to get through two hours together with the need for infanticide most horrid. Well nearly.
Mumsie gave Mopsie or was it Dopsie, I’m not sure which, the precious tip money to give to me.
How cute. All those golden coins covered in snot and norovirus and chocolate. Brilliant. Anyhoo, down I bent (It was pointed out to me yesterday that I don’t have that far to bend down what with being a little fella myself and as such should stop whinging about it) to scoop the money and say something cutsie to the child when she stopped short.
Was I supposed to shuffle towards her? Because that was going to be a bit weird given that I was now bent over. But disaster averted and she stuck out her hand with the five pound coins in it (tight git) and thrust it in my direction.
“Oh thank you young lady” and went to retrieve what was rightfully mine. And just as I did she pulled her hand away.
Ha fucking ha very funny.
I fake laughed, as you do.
She put her hand out again but this time a pound coin had disappeared. Again I reached out to get the money only to be pwnd for a second time.
This time mummy and daddy darling joined in the laughter whilst Mopsie or was it Dopsie poured salt all over the table. I was now the main act in a live Just for laughs sketch. Brilliant. And my tormentor is a child and you can never get away with laying down the smack on one of them. Seriously, that shit will ruin your career.
In the end and after much fucking about I got a quid of the little dick. Can I call a kid a dick? Meh, Imma do it anyways. It took four quid of me, of course she’s a dick. Dick.
I hate kids, your kids that is. My kid is a good un. Sigh and grrrrr. Wine was drunk on Sunday night until the pain went away on.
Listen bring your kids to a restaurant, it’s good fun for all, well it can be, but don’t expect me to raise your kids for the two hours you are in the restaurant and don’t let them steal the tip.
So I had this table last evening of, wait for it, fish experts.
Can you imagine?
Fish. Experts.
Brilliant! They have everything these days. What a time to be alive! When I was a lad Captain Birdseye was the only fish expert I knew of.
Imagine running into your parents bedroom and jumping on the bed with a dead goldfish in yer childish and no doubt sticky hand and shouting loudly that you’re gonna become an expert in fishies and find out why Jaws the goldfish, that was fed three times a day, died. Yer Da would crack up and yer Ma would speak to the Priest about having you tested.
But apparently it’s a real thing and everything.
This was made clear to me when I asked the leader of the table of 40 what had such a large and varied group of people dining in Belfast on a Wednesday night…council funded campaigns aside. He explained, in detail too, the works and loves of a fish expert. It was all very Steve Zissou.
“Ha, very good sir…fish experts, pfft…no but really what has you out tonight?”
He blanked me. Mackerel all over my face. Fish expert, yes. Social skills, not so much. To be fair that was all of the table. There was 40 of them, representing over 20 countries which just goes to prove that there are assholes all over the world.
Asshole the first decided he was also an expert in setting tables and took it upon himself to redesign the carefully crafted and set with love table I had spent hours perfecting. The dick. The bucket of dicks, actually. He wanted to “create more space to breathe”. Oh fucking really? You’ll be breathing through a fucking tube if you move that table again fish boy. Every time he lifted a chair from another part of the restaurant I would put it back when he went to get another. To be fair the opening twenty minutes of this act were very reminiscent of Morecambe and Wise or one of those 1970s duos that people harp on about like they were the answer to something. In the end he got the point and stopped fucking with my feng shui. I do like it so when people bend to my will
Asshole the second was playing the hide n seek n ignore game. Either he wasn’t at the table when his food or drinks were being delivered or he ignored you when you asked him something. Not cool dude, not cool. I am a contrary and stubborn fucker at best. As the once wise guru of Salford so aptly put it, The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get. Oh I got all up in his schnizzle, it smelled of fish. I stood right up close to him putting my DANGER area right in his face, yes yes he was short. When I spoke to him I got right down into his personal space. He was wearing me like a skin-tight sweater by the time he left. Ignore me? Pfft.
Asshole the third was from the former Soviet Republic of Whogivesafuckistan. A charmless and grey shit hole of country populated by people obsessed with egg white based desserts such as Pavlova or as it’s called in Belfast, Pavalova. Dicks.
PAVLOVA
PAVLOVA
PAVLOVA
PAVLOVA
PAVLOVA
Repeated the man over and over in his booming Eastern European/Terminator voice for no other reason than he liked to say the word.
PAVLOVA
PAVLOVA
PAVLOVA
PAVLOVA
PAVLOVA
Brilliant.
He was repeating it like he was chanting for the head of some despotic former leader or something. Maybe in Whogivesafuckistan it’s called Chewy White Egg Cake or something. Anyhoo, he kept saying it and I kept telling him we didn’t do it. As double acts go Fred and Rosemary West were more fun.
Asshole number four was all forty of them as they insisted on splitting the bill…forty ways.
Dafuq!
I told them I would do it for them if they queued up. It’s the only way to make sure you don’t get ripped off innit. I’ve been burned many times before by the large table splitting the bill malarkey. The Brits, Irish and Eastern Europeans had no problem with this, in fact some of them seemed to think it was a very fine way to end the evening…with a lovely bit of queueing. Odd folks those Brits. Heh. The Italians, Spanish and what have you aren’t good queuers to be fair. It was like watching a line up of over sized puppies – fine for about thirty seconds then they got restless and stated knocking things over and peeing on the floor. Or something.
What a night.
Still international assholism is a welcome change from local assholism.
Well Done Fillet 