It's quite petty, yet again, but this waitress spoke to me in a tone that I certainly did not appreciate. It was about an hour and a half after I arrived for the day. I am busy as hell from when I get there until I leave. There is so much to get ready, especially for a Saturday service, and I try to be as prepared as possible for when the other cooks arrive, normally late or not at all, so all they need to do is quickly open the other side of the kitchen to provide me with some relief.
I try to have the opposite side all stocked and utensils ready to where they only have to basically walk on line and begin cooking. This is a huge benefit to not only me, but the customers and waitresses as well, because you know, we are then fully operational to the best of our ability to provide our required services. So yeah, anyways, I bust my ass solo to get this to happen every morning I work.
All I did was ask one server in particular a simple favor. Since at the time there were now six of them and only one of me, and I was getting hammered with tickets, I didn't feel it would be too much of a burden on her, that and she was the only one in the pantry as the others were too busy kicking my ass table-hopping and inputting multiple orders concurrently.
I say politely, "Would you please get me a glass of ice water, Brandi?" She say back to me, "OOOOOOOOOKAAAAAAY! Like I have time to do that, I'm busy!" Oh, well you didn't need to say it that way, but I suppose I understand. As the moments pass I notice she hasn't moved from the very point she's been standing in, but whatever.
I just say to myself, "Fuck it. Fuck the tickets. I need a damn glass of water.", and I go out to get one. As I pass her, I notice she's texting on her phone. I just sigh to myself. You asked for it baby girl. I know this is probably only a job your rich parents made you get over the summer, but I now feel it is my duty to teach you that there is some good that can come from being a decent person, and sometimes, even though you are very pretty, you're going to get a rude awakening by someone like me who really doesn't give two shits about you in general.
I don't give a fuck if your a twenty-something babe who is working on her Ph. D at our town's illustrious private college, I may have when I was ten years younger, but now I only really care that you are a self-entitled bitch that can't be bothered to grant the most mundane of a request to help out a co-worker, and at the very least, a human being. It's not like I said, "Hey bitch! Get me a damn glass of ice water, and right now!" Who knows though? That could have very well worked.
Anyways, I take a few slugs from the glass and go on about my business, hating every second. The more the minutes passed, the more disheartened and grumpy I became. Then there was this little ray of sunshine glimmering through the clouds. Brandi placed in her meal ticket. How much more epic could this get for me? I was just shifting into my normal rage mode, when I began to smile a little inside. I was, of course, still all by my lonesome, cooking roughly ten/twelve tickets, and there was princess Brandi's rounding out the end of the line. And it was a fucked up cornucopia of modifications. I don't even know how she thought it wasn't out of the question.
As soon as I notice her eminence grace the panty, I gleefully call her over for a quick conversation. Smiling, I say, "Do you remember when I asked you for a glass of ice water and you were too busy?, as I move my arm in a motion as to present a member of royalty I go on to say, "Well now I'm too busy to cook whatever is on your food ticket." I grab the ticket off of the board, crumple it up, and bounce it off the pass and it tumbles to the floor right beside her.
This chick was pissed. OMG she was likely as mad as I am after a day's shift, but probably because some lesser creature had the gall to speak to her like that. Yeah sweetie pie, I'm here all day and this is just the beginning. She runs off out of the pantry, and what do you know, returns with the GM. AHAHAHAHAHA! Yeah, surely I'm in hot water now. My mood is becoming more enlightened with every moment.
I was finally not too lazy to recheck some recent posts and found out the I named the GM Roy. So, Roy comes marching back down the cooking line with Brandi meeting his pace, though from the other side of the pass. If I'm a dog's ass, the sun is absolutely shining on me at this moment, I mean, seriously, what is going to happen now? Am I going to get disciplined? AHAHA, really? What ever will this scary exchange of words become? I can't wait for him to open his mouth and I don't. Before he can say anything, I calmly and quietly tell him, so that dummy sever can't hear, "Don't say to me what I think you're going to say to me. She had it coming and I'm not cooking her food, period. I'll explain it later if you want but I'm starting to get behind." He replies, "Oh nah, I don't care what happened. I just want to know what she ordered so I can cook it on the other side and shut her up." I respond, "It was some messed up thing and I don't remember it all." He looks at Brandi and asks her, "Well, what did you want?"
Before she can answer I interject, "It was something stupid so why don't you pick the ticket up off the floor and show it to him." She's now in a pouty/pissy state and she finds the ticket and un-crumples it and hands it to him. As he's walking to the other side, I hear him start to tell her, "What is this? You can't do this. Void this ticket out and retype a new one in with all the charges if you want to eat." She says something but I can't hear as she's now too far away. She walks out of the pantry.
Roy comes back over and tells me that I can't cook tickets like this. I started laughing and said, "Um, well, I wasn't going to?" He says, "No, I mean with...just forget it." He walks away and I go on about my business, a bit more satisfied with how the morning has went so far; a meager two hours into a gruesome shift. To be honest, I really felt bad later, but I think it's still justifiable considering how she initiated the redemption. Had she been even a little polite rather than spewing that garbage from her mouth in our inaugural exchange, her day would have turned out much more pleasant, I'm quite sure.
She did her absolute best to keep her tickets off of my side. She nearly perfected it other than the fact that I go over and bail the other side out a bit here and there, which means, yeah, I'm probably going to end up with a few of hers. At one point I overhear her asking for a specific item that isn't up for her order via yonder, and shout out to her, "Here, just take this from our side and deliver it to your table. We'll grab theirs when it's done." She comes over, grabs it, and actually says, "Thank you.", as she hustles away.
Yet again, I make myself sound like an asshole, but I assure you I'm not. It just genuinely disgusts me when actions like this occur; and believe me, it's very accurate. I am definitely not misogynistic. I adore the female version of our species very much so and probably treat them better than the opposite in general. I'm a hater when it comes to ANYONE who thinks they are better on a BASIC level as another, and especially for no reason other than ego. If it had been a dude, he would have probably received several "fuck offs" sprinkled into the conversation as well as me trying to hit him in the face with the ball of a ticket as a fastball and not a reflection off a metal counter. We'll possibly get along very well tomorrow, at least I'll be civil, we'll see I suppose. Sometimes people just need a quick lesson in humility. Hell we all do, myself included.
Anyhow, the day went on in pure misery. Three, count them, three of our additional staff called in sick. One in general had the excuse, "Because I'm tired." WTF!? And that shit apparently was okay with our ever-knowing overlord. After our hellish shift ended, I inquired about that guy in general and jokingly said, "Well, no consequences equals no fear of repeat." Roy said that he will most assuredly be "written up". Fuck, whatever. That has never meant shit to anyone and never will. I think it goes into their file or something but who really cares when it's a horrific job, and temporary at that? Meh, I digress, once again.
If any of you think I went over the line, Lord knows I'm due for a mental break at any time, please feel free to let me know. The whole ordeal is quite accurate, however, maybe some people feel that I was being a "doodie head". It won't bother me if someone thinks I was being a jerk, and maybe if so, it will help me re-evaluate some of my decisions. Maybe environment does dictate psychological and physiological behavior, and the nature vs. nurture does have significant merit. Do any of us ever stop developing as individuals? Way off tangent, so I'll end this here.
I have found a nice job and investment opportunity but am not sure on what to do just yet with all of the other things happening in my life. I'm here for a little while longer, at least, and have made a deal with my current restaurant employment. I'll possibly post some details next time. See you all again, in another day in the life of a line cook.
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