Waiting In Vegas

Anyone who has waited tables for a number of years has probably witnessed an advancement in the computer systems used within the industry.  Years ago, before computers, all servers wrote orders by hand and walked them into the kitchen.  Now most places use a computer system that stores the tickets in a database and sends copies wherever they need to go (bar, the various stations in the kitchen & to the expo station).

One particular advancement within the industry is the “course line”  key.  In most places, servers are required to use this to indicate to the kitchen the order in which the food is supposed to arrive at the table.  For instance, if you ring in a starter you would then hit the course line key.  This would place a line on the screen that says course 2 and indicate to the kitchen that everything above the line should come out first.  This feature prevents servers from forgetting to fire courses and puts the expo in charge of making sure the food is appropriately spaced.  Like all systems, this works out most of the time and fails others.  Here is an example:

An older couple came in this evening.  They both ordered wine and some food to share.  Their food consisted of a salad, which was requested to arrive first with an extra bowl.  They also wanted to share a rare burger, cut in half, and some fries.  Upon completing their order, the woman said “The salad will come out first, right?”  I assured her that it would and then rang their order in.  Their salad arrived a couple of minutes later and they began eating it.  About 10 minutes later they had eaten 75% of it and the remainder of their food arrived.  They looked outraged.  I went over to the table and the nice couple had been replaced with two raging fucking lunatics.

The lady looked at me and said “Well… they brought the burger out.  I specifically asked for my salad to arrive first.  They messed up BIG TIME.”  I explained that the salad did in fact come out first and that normally burgers come out 10-15 minutes later (depending on cooking temp) and sometimes there might be a slight overlap.  I then asked her if she wanted me to remove the burger until she was finished with her salad.  She replies “Why? So you can put it under a heat lamp until I am ready.  If I wanted to eat at McDonald’s I would have.”  She had previously been so nice that I was astounded by her transformation into a mega-cunt.  I offered to have another burger cooked from scratch and she just glared at me with such disdain that all I could say is “What is it that you would like me to do to resolve the situation?” The husband replied “There is nothing you can do. We will be fine.”  He then shooed me away.

I walked by a couple of times to make sure their drinks were full and once they had emptied some of their plates I offered to remove them.  The woman looked at me like I had just fucked her dead husband’s corpse right in front of her and said “What you can do is stay away from us.”  Having immense PMS forced me to begin laughing out loud and I walked away.  I told my manager how pissed the table was and he replied “Why, did you queef on them?”  I waited to go back to the table until the guy flagged me down for the check and requested a box.  When I returned with his credit card slip he said “You tell your kitchen they messed up BIG TIME and they know it!” I told him I would pass the message along, smiled, and told him to have a wonderful night.

Some people are just rude cocksuckers and nothing you do will ever make them happy but if you want to make them really unhappy be overly nice and cheerful to them while they are pissed off over something minute, inconsequential, and ridiculously fucking petty.