Clusterfuck

Some nights, everything goes wrong. Just when it seems it can't get any worse, it does. We call these scenarios "clusterfucks," and if you are involved in it, it can bring you to your knees. Make you curse God whether you believe in him or not, make you cry, make you want to walk out and never look back. But if you aren't involved, they are fucking awesome. And hilarious. Tonight I got to watch the freak show, and only got gently clipped in the process.

It's been very sunny the last couple days. And also warm, which is just unheard of in a Washington winter. Thus, everyone has been outside every second of daylight they can manage soaking it up. This means that until about 6 when the sun fully sets, we are dead as a doornail, then we get hit with a big old clusterfuck. You can't prepare yourself for it, really. When the first two hours of your shift are slow as hell you get lulled into a sort of trance, serve like a zombie with little to no effort. why exert any when it's not necessary, right?

So anywho, we all slugged around for a couple hours on cruise control, and as soon as we got hit weird shit started happening. I only got a taste of it. I had a two top that was a Russian couple (I know) that ordered raspberry lemonade with whipped cream in it (I know) and sausage potato soup (shocking right) and a steak dish cooked well. Well the cooks at IR tend to have issues with cooking steak correctly, usually it ends up one to two preparations farther than requested. And in true style, they burnt the shit out of the well done steak. And the the chicken too, for good measure. I walked up to the table as the food is being dropped by the culinary assistant and I can immediately see that the lady is not pleased at all, and that her dish is burnt. Like it's black. Like my dog probably wouldn't eat that shit. He is telling her "you just let me know if it's too burnt and I will make you another one" and she's looking at him like 'motherfucker i am not eating that!' So he takes it back to the kitchen, the GM sees it and yells at him and the CA who is cooking on line until she is literally red in the face. Then goes out and licks their butts, takes it off their check, gives them a giftcard yada yada. I didn't really care because they were Russian after all and weren't going to tip me anyway (horrible but true). Alas, my slight brush with the clusterfuck was no biggie.

Other accounts were; 50 minute ticket times for a dish that should take 3. A fat bitch who sat by herself and ordered chicken parmigiana, no sauce, no spaghetti, sub french fries. No soup or salad, just bread. So pretty much fried chicken with french fries, cheese and bread. Why don't you just go to fucking KFC? She allegedly ate about a dozen bread sticks, had an entire block of cheese grated onto her chicken and fries, then ate it all and complained it was dry so she could get another one. Another server had a woman freak out and say she was too slow (this is a person who has been serving for years and years) and demanded that another person serving in that area whom she had had before be her server or she would leave. This meant the desired server had four tables, one of them being a ten top. I'm guessing he didn't give her the same service this time.

But the icing on the cake, in the middle of all this, was the puke pile in the lobby. I got the lowdown from a host who witnessed it firsthand. A kid about 7 or 8 couldn't handle his chicken carbonara (maybe because it has almost 2,000 calories and an entire stick of butter in it?) and en route most likely to the bathroom, he projectile up-chucks it in the middle of the lobby. In the middle of an hour wait. There were people packed like sardines in there junior blows chunks. His mom stood by it briefly to watch the crime scene until kiddo started to cry, no doubt from embarrassment, then she booked it. Someone stepped in it, as evidenced by a footprint. The host are not supposed to clean up this kind of "spill" nor is anyone really besides a busser aka a "sanitation technician." They are trained on how to pick up what kind of mess, and as this one contains bio hazards, the hosts really aren't supposed to and don't know how to safely clean it up. So while one of them has gone to find a busser to clean it, a woman waiting as part of a large party starts flipping shit. "You need to get this cleaned up!" she shouts very very (very) loudly at one of them. "We are getting someone right now to clean it up" she says. "No YOU need to clean this up NOW!!!" About this time, the lucky bastard who has been nominated to clean it up arrives (he has a baby about 5 months so I guess they figured he's used to dealing with puke). The woman yells at the manager because her staff didn't react appropriately, so she in turn yells at the hosts because she needs to yell at someone. She tells them they should have put paper towels on it. Cause that would have helped a lot.

What a beautiful clusterfuck it was. In my excitement  over writing about it I spilled my wine on my lap and broke the glass. Of course I swept up the larger pieces then picked up the smaller ones with a wet paper towel. Just procedure really.

On Sunday morning I will be taking off to Phoenix until next weekend to see my big brother and his beautiful family, so don't expect to be hearing from me in this forum. Unless of course anyone wants to write a guest spot? Anonymously of course ;)