Damn did NOT realize my last post was October last year and this while my reader hits had doubled ?!? Basically the odd job had gotten horrendously toxic. Old chef had left in Sept to pursue opening his dream place and it took months to get a replacement. I initially really liked him and enjoyed his own dishes he was introducing to the menu. He also made huge improvements on our cook times (we had a tiny kitchen and most pop dishes had fried items and we had a total of 4 fry baskets-cook times could get horridly long.)
But I lost respect for him when the chef lost repeatedly order tickets then blamed us for it and was making verbal post bitchout amends to some servers but not those that called him out on it being a kitchen error. I will stand there and take criticism of the most vehement form IF I am at fault but if you screw up and try to blame me I have a very low tolerance shouldering the blame for your fuckups. We later noticed through observation of the expo that he was pulling tickets and throwing them away when in the weeds leading to lost tickets. Then when communicating with the cooks he would say it had already gone -he was handling the salads and desserts so those dishes never got started. 30 minute desserts times just blow.
Lets see we had live music so I had heard the same bands playing the EXACT same freaking playlists 100-150 times. My owners only focus was making profit very little was being plowed back into the business. Some kitchen upgrades. Took over a year to get the hot water heater permanently fixed (health depart shuts you down when you have no hot water as the dishes in the dish machine are being sanitized by the high temp water (160 degrees). Ugly nasty bathrooms NEVER reworked. OOh and they paid bartenders $3 /hr. I never did that kind of work anywhere in town for less than $6.
Needless to say I had lined up 2 different jobs but had them fall through. Finally old chef opened his new place.
OK guys I recently changed jobs-well its a unique situation I just followed my original chef at my last job to his new gig. Basically a regular of ours with deep pockets financed his dream place which was very similar to the last place including the menu. I have to say that so far anything I tasted at the new place is an improvement upon the nearly the same dish at the old place.
However its not all joy in the new place. SO far we have developed a local Traveller following. For those not familiar with them they are a rather odd duck group of extended families who congregated in a clan type system. They locally are based on a westside suburb in a few clan owned trailer parks and they enforce aggressively the no tresspassing policy of the parks. They travel in RVs sev months out of the year running home improvement type scams targeted on the elderly. They are basically American based Gypsies. From research on the net they can be English, Irish, American, or actual Rom (Mainland Europe gypsies). You might have sen national news coverage of a youngish (mid 20s) mom who got prosecuted for child abuse for beating her child in public with it being caught on store parking lot security cameras. These folks tend to do sev things were odd clothing-the little girls can be overtly dressed in old fashioned style dresses even ballarina outfits, pay in 100 dollar bills which happens to be a pain when they all try to pay at once, and they will try to make multiple manager complaints to get free food. Here they have tried to get into a verbal fight with manager 1 to get manager 2 to do the comping.
Then last night my GM is told by a young black couple Im very rude and they tip me a quarter in coin on a credit card transaction of 60 odd dollars. This is going on while I have a table of 4 who is clueless to fact they arent my only table who need something every time I am within 10 feet of them irreguardless if I am walking by with hands full of food and drink. I also have a quick drinking party of 8 who are VIP friends of my GM. So at first it stumps me on the rude complaint as I barely interacted with the complaining couple but I dont rem any bad interaction and I know their drinks were never empty and while it took a few minutes to drop the check when asked -it was obvious I was busy as I dropped it while carrying a tray of 8 bar drinks.
Then I rem asking the lady what drink was that she needed me to fix as it was…”REALLY, REALLY, REALLY too strong.” She replied it was a long Island Iced Tea. This drink depending on formula consists of equal pours over ice of gin, rum, vodka, triple sec plus maybe gold tequila with a splash or 2 of sweet n sour and a tiny splash of coke to give it a weak tea coloring. SO complaining your LIT is strong is about as moronic as mentioning your water sure is wet. I discuss with here I could weaken it with Sprite which would dilute it, sweeten it, and the carbonation would make it less strong tasting too. I get it over to my drink station which is more brightly lit than the table and otice the LIT with all the ice melted is very dark colored which tells me the bartender made it heavy on the tea ie coke so she already gotten a weak LIT.
My last table I expected to have an issue as she came from the bar drinking a frozen daquiri then ordered a LIT. But she sucked her LIT without complaint. If that doesnt make sense servers and esp bartenders who have to blend by hand a frozen anything dread these drinks. A frozen drink serves the purpose of giving the drinker the option of drinking a a less potent beverage beside providing a really cold drink. Its the higher water content that is the frozen part of the drink. SO basically no matter what the bartender does its too strong or weak or not fruity enouigh or some other not articulated whateverness. Trust me folks if you can in simple terms tell your server my drink/food is bad BECAUSE ____________ then they cant fix it except to get you another one which is most likely means the next one with have the exact same problem. We stay in business by having guests like our products and when they return giving them the exact same product-this is the very reason fast food joints do so well.
My Life as a Food Service Ninja 