These past 5 years, mostly while in college and soon after graduating I have worked on and off part-time and full-time at 2 different restaurants. Biaggi’s Italian restaurant, which is in the middle between casual and fine dining, what I like to call fast fine dining, and the other Fleming’s Steakhouse which is definitely fine dining. If my manager from Fleming’s were to read this right now she would get so upset that I did not refer to the restaurant as its full name, Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse and, this is important, Wine Bar.
Anyways I have been tangled up in all the problems and pleasures that come with waiting tables. From the awesome tips and great nights to the rude people and…well rude people is mainly the sole problem with waiting tables. But it’s not even the people who are naturally mean-spirited and hate their own life so must take it out on you, I call this the trickle down effect in restaurants (I know I have a lot of theories and formulas to waiting tables). If some one is treated bad at their work then they must come out to eat and treat their server like crap, because to them were not real people. By doing this it completes the circle. Again anyways, the people who upset me the most are the people who don’t understand the process and hard work it takes to bring them their bread, or their salad with dressing on the side; make sure it’s on the side because I have strict dietary restrictions and I can only have so much fat, but can you get me another 12 diet cokes. I could rant for the next 4 pages on this subject.
So to get back to these incompetent restaurant customers. When you wait tables you make barely anything per hour, nothing you can live on nor ever see because taxes take all of it out every 2 weeks, so your sole source of income is what you’re getting tipped. If you are not aware now I hope you will be after you read this but the standard tip these days is 18 – 20%, 15% is no longer the standard, so please adjust your wallet.
The new piece of legislation I would want to submit to Congress, if ever one day I might become a senator, is instead of a law forcing every citizen to serve in the military that some countries, such as China, enact, rather I would want a law forcing every citizen to work in the restaurant industry. By doing this you would understand what all goes in to make your food. Going out to eat is one of those activities you will do for the rest of your life. Birthdays, weddings, graduations, anniversaries, and any other holiday or special date you can think of most likely you will celebrate at a restaurant.
So this is my rant and what I would think is something most servers would agree with. So as today marks the 2 weeks left in America point I look back at the last 5 years I have been waiting tables and damn look forward to at least the next year not having to do it again. Thank God.
맥주 is Korean for Beer 