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did I say thousand island?
don't get me wrong, I actually like waitressing.
but.
there are some days where all I want to do is walk out of the restaurant. it doesn't help that I have little to no confidence in what we make there, because if I did I'd prolly weather shitty people a whole lot better. then there are some evenings where one table can restore my entire faith in mankind.
for example, wednesday afternoon I had a snotty white woman who believed it was proper to stand up and yell for me AS I WAS WALKING TOWARDS THE TABLE. oh yes, I'm sorry. I didn't see you there. I was just going to stare at you blankly and walk away. later, a country black woman thought it was proper to scream for me across the restaurant just to ask if we served pizza. and after that, a granola-crunching IY employee insisted that it was ridiculous that he had to wait for bread to warm in the oven. I asked if he'd prefer cold bread, and he said no, but it was still RIDICULOUS.
last night, I had one couple who not only were polite, but friendly. they used "please", "thank you", and at the end of the meal chatted me up about their two spoiled golden retrievers to whom they were taking food home. I smiled and laughed and wrote the dog's names on the to-go box. they left me almost 30 percent as a tip.
one good table, one table that says thank you or looks me in the eye when I ask a question, one table that even smiles is enough to make me happy. the tip just affirms what I already knew; these people are aware.
the other week I had a fat woman walk in with five fat girls in shiny dresses and one baby, asking for a table. the nice version of the story is that the girls complained that we didn't have subs, complained there were no croutons on the salad, and one girl even sent back her shrimp alfredo.
"did it taste bad?" their waitress asked.
"no, I just don't like the smell. and if it don't smell right, I ain't eatin' it."
never in my life have I sent back food. especially without tasting it. the smell? it was shrimp she was smelling. I overheard the fat woman comment, "this place is too goddamn expensive, I shoulda just brought y'all to mcdonalds".
ooooh, that pissed me off. yeah, the restaurant sucks and I hate it. but if you can't afford it, DON'T EAT THERE.
at the end of the meal the woman came up to me, the "manager", and asked me how we went from a 73 dollar check to an 86 dollar one. I pointed out the clearly marked "PLUS 18 PERCENT GRATUITY" written on the bottom. she threw a fit. "73 is okay, ain't no 86 that's okay, y'all tryin to rip me off, you motherfuckers can't charge me that because you didn't let me know when I walked in!"
apparently she's been under a rock, with the whole parties of 6 or more who get autograt. especially when you have a screaming baby you refuse to take outside and when you send back an entree without tasting it, and your ghetto ass is complaining about the prices loudly enough to disturb my other tables. but I didn't mention that last part.
as I walked her through the whole "this is auto gratutity, dumbass" speech, she was going off about how horrible we were and how she was a single mom and whatnot. I calmly replied, "why didn't you take your kids to mcdonalds, then?"
whoo buddy. it's like someone lit the pilot light under her jcpenny jeans. she yelled about how I was being nice but in a mean way but not really mean in the way she could see it because I was hiding it behind the nice and how I was taking her money just because she was black.
do huh?
I blinked at her and grinned, and said, well you might be a single mother, but have you thought about your waitress? she's got several kids at home, too. I looked over at the waitress, who at this point was hiding behind the fake ficus tree. she's about 20 and looks like she's never popped out a kid in her life. ah, not the point.
the point was, the woman was going to leave poor tasha without a tip. AT ALL.
after I gave her her change, the woman stormed out, leaving all my tables scrambling to ask me what had happened. luckily, every last person in the place heard the altercation, and thought it was perhaps the best free entertainment yet. they congratulated me on being professional and cool, yet still managing to tell the woman her place.
as I chatted with... well, the entire restaurant, the woman stuck her head back in the door for more.
"AND I AM GOING TO REPORT THIS PLACE, YOU HEAR ME?"
the door squeaked shut and twenty people looked at me. bewildered, I said, "to who?"
anyhow, I was reading an article about how apparently waitressing has gained a new sort of "cool". uh, yeah sure. but still pretty interesting. especially the title of the woman's book upon which the article is based... "did I say thousand island?" I can't tell you how many times I recite dressings and people say one that WAS. NOT. LISTED.
"house italian, ranch, blue cheese, and parmesan peppercorn."
"honey mustard, please."
"french."
"thousand island".
"russian."
russian?
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http://jobs.aol.com/article/_a/waitresses-at-last-get-starring-roles/20070621162509990002
LAKE GENEVA, Wis. — Diner owner Andy Griffith turns to piemaker Keri Russell in this spring's well-received film ' Waitress' and gives her what he thinks is a compliment. "You're not just some little waitress," he says. "Do you understand what I'm saying?" Patti DiVita cringed when she heard that line, but she understood. Even DiVita, who fell into waitressing in college, concedes, "No one wakes up in the morning and says they want to be a waitress." But DiVita has been just that for 30 of her 48 years. She loves the profession so much, she wrote, produced, directed and financed her own movie, 'Did I Say Thousand Island?' She also hosted its low-key premiere this winter in Colorado, where she spent much of her career.
As the summer waitressing season begins here in this resort area popular with the Chicago crowd, DiVita is making the rounds of some of the old haunts where she also has worked.
Although injuries caused by a fall from a horse put an end to her waitressing career, she still knows how it's done and what a waitress is up against.
"For some reason you can get a seemingly nice person, set them down at a table, have them be waited on, and they change," she says. "Why is that? I don't have a clue, even after all these years. How you treat a waitress says volumes."
What DiVita's homemade production lacks in Hollywood slickness — and it lacks plenty — it makes up for in sincerity. It's a labor of love, an honest look into the world of six-tops and bad tips, a glimpse through the round window of a restaurant's kitchen door.
"We took people right off the street," she says. All of her actors were amateurs, many just friends who worked in the restaurant business. "I'm a waitress who made a movie, not a filmmaker who was waitressing. What I want to come out of this is to help people, to make other waitresses feel good about their jobs."
Many roles
DiVita shopped the movie (didisaythousandisland.com) around the National Restaurant Association's annual show in Chicago last month, thinking it might be a good teaching tool, something restaurateurs could show would-be waitresses and waiters about what they're really getting into.
What they're getting into is a job, DiVita says, in which "you have to be a spy, an actress and a diplomat." (The movie's title, incidentally, comes from the fact that people will still order Thousand Island dressing, say, despite the waitress never giving it as an option.)
Young waitresses working their way through college can relate all too well. Yesenia Castillo, 19, is a college student who waits tables at Daddy Maxwell's Arctic Circle Diner in nearby Williams Bay, a local landmark shaped like an igloo and known for its big breakfasts and Friday night fish fries.
"People don't see me as a person," Castillo says. "They can yell at me and think it's OK."
But, like DiVita, she loves waiting on tables, getting to know her regular customers. As for the summer crowd, "you can tell they're from other places," Castillo says tactfully.
Janelle Zahn, 20, a college student, is starting her third season as a waitress at the nearby Grand Geneva resort's Grand Cafe.
"I enjoy getting to know the people. They're on vacation, and I like to make sure they're enjoying themselves."
And the difficult patrons? "It helps to get away from the table quickly," she says. "You just breathe through it."
Adds Zahn's colleague Alicia Mireles, 23, who is starting her fourth summer at the Grand Cafe: "People think I can't get another job."
DiVita knows all about it. As she says, "You have to let people roll off your back. They're going to be gone."
The college kids are mirror images of the full-time professional, says DiVita, who interviewed 150 waitresses in 15 states for her movie. She found that most felt the same way.
"We're not worth your attention," says DiVita, following up with a question. "But what would happen if all the waitresses didn't show up for work one day?"
'They love their jobs'
She says 89 percent of the waitresses she polled believe they're not portrayed accurately in the media, yet 95 percent love their jobs, including a 67-year-old woman named Lil who has worked at Harry Caray's at Chicago's Midway Airport for years. She remains among DiVita's favorite subjects.
One of DiVita's complaints with the critically acclaimed Waitress is that Russell's character and her crowd look upon their lives as a dead end, something she doesn't think is true with most waitresses. "They love their jobs."
She also didn't like all the hanky-panky going on in the movie's kitchen, something else she says isn't true. "Upstairs, maybe, but not in the kitchen."
Like many waitresses, DiVita, who now drives a horse-drawn buggy here, is a gypsy. It's one of the perks of the job. You can move around. She has worked here, in Colorado (where the movie was made), in Illinois (college) and in Florida. She's living in a camper on a nearby farm so she can be with her horse, Jimmy.
The tables were turned on her the other night as she dined on black bass and risotto at Gilbert's, a high-end restaurant overlooking Lake Geneva where she used to waitress for chef/owner Ken Hnilo.
"I do think a lot of waitresses are looked at as second-rate citizens by many people," says Hnilo. "I think they think something must be wrong. It's not a real profession, but that isn't true. It is. And it's hard work."
No one knows this more than Carolyn Gable, author of Everything I Know as a CEO I Learned as a Waitress. Now head of New Age Transportation in Lake Zurich, Ill., she worked as a waitress for 12 years while raising seven kids by herself.
"I had to deal with a bartender who might not have come to work in the best mood. I had to charm a chef who, like most chefs, thought the world revolved around him. Part of the fun was charming the chef, befriending the bartender and making a game out of filling the salt and pepper shakers," she says. "A CEO's life is littered with similar chores requiring a similar mind-set."
Bruce Johnson, director of food and beverage at the Grand Geneva Resort, understands where Gable is coming from. "People think they know what they (waitresses) do, but they don't. The training, the price points, the dietary restrictions now," Johnson says. He adds that service expectations have "gone through the roof."
"They're professionals. They know what they're doing. If they didn't, they wouldn't last very long."
But if you do know what you're doing, Johnson says "you could live very comfortably. I'll leave it at that."
Gilbert's chef Hnilo says his waitresses can make up to $1,200 a week in the summer. Not that you don't earn it.
Many of the incidents in DiVita's movie came from actual experiences she had over the years, including a lengthy scene involving a patron who repeatedly demands she prove that she's being served decaf coffee. "And I cut it down for the movie!"
"They say the customer is always right. Bull — - — -! They aren't," DiVita says with a laugh.
They might not be right, but they can still win. Once, she rolled her eyes at a patron, who ended up getting a free meal from the manager. DiVita got a lecture.
As for tips, that could be another whole movie, DiVita says.
"A good tip isn't the only thing. If you have nice people and they tip crummy, at least they were nice people," she says. "You're going to have tables where you bust your butt and only get 8%. You just have to roll with it."
(Her best tip ever was $75 on a $26.54 bill, not that she remembers the details.)
As for feeling as if you have to leave a 20 percent tip even when the service is bad, she says don't. "It's just reinforcing bad service. You should just tip on service alone."
But there are certain things she'd never do, good tip or not.
In all her years in the business, for instance, she never once greeted a table with "Hello, my name is Patti, and I'll be your waitress tonight."
"I worked in places where I was supposed to do that, but I didn't," she says. "Obviously, I was their waitress, and they didn't need to know my name. Or want to."
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