November 30, 2023

Greetings Laff Lovers,

It was my third week washing dishes and running food at one of my local brew pubs when I got an unexpected promotion.

It was a Saturday night and I knew business was jumping because every five minutes I was running downstairs with a plate of food and the pace was only getting quicker. But I wasn't concerned about it because I was in my little corner of the kitchen contentedly splashing around in hot, greasy water. That was until the GM came in and said, "Joe, can I talk to you for a minute?"

I followed him out into the hall where he told me that two servers had called in sick and there was only one waiter downstairs trying to handle the entire barroom by himself. "You feel up to waiting some tables?" he asked me.

I knew they needed servers, and the idea was that after I got familiar with the routine in the kitchen I would be moved up to waiting tables, but up until that moment I had received zero training. But a cap trooper doesn't refuse anything; he steps up and takes a swing at it (according to Bob Heinlein), so I headed downstairs into the melee.

In the old days a waiter used a pad of paper and a pencil to take orders, but in the modern era it is a handheld device a bit larger and bulkier than a smart phone. On that device is a layout of the entire establishment, and every item on both the food and drink menus is programmed in. All the server has to do is touch which table he (or she) is serving and then navigate a series of screens to select the food and drinks the customer orders.

It's a computer program. A computer program that I got about 5 minutes of training in from the lone server, Jack, while he was running from table to table - me jogging along at his elbow.

After I entered a couple of orders under Jack's direction he asked me, "You got it?"

I shrugged my shoulders, "Sure."

"Great," he said. "You can have the next table."

As it turned out the next table was a group of seven! As I walked up to them I was repeating to myself, 'Please just order beer... please just order beer...' because the beer screen was the only one I had figured out in my couple minutes of training. It is the first one to pop up after you log into the device. After that comes a maze of screens that I had just caught a fleeting glimpse of.

Finally I stood next to the table. This was it. My very first order! "Hi," I said, "Thanks for coming in. My name is Joe. Can I take your drink order?"

The first woman put down the beer list she had been looking at, turned to me and said, "Can you make a Blue Hawaii?"

And it only got worse from there. Another person ordered a Moscow Mule and another a champagne cocktail - whatever that is. At each order I was frantically swiping through screens randomly jabbing at selections.

Finally I brought my device to Jack and said, "Uhhh... I think I entered this order wrong."

It took Jack about 5 minutes to re-enter the orders correctly, which in the service world is half a lifetime, and, of course, the bar was ridiculously backed up, so that table didn't get their drinks for about 20 minutes. Needless to say I never saw that group come back.

But after that little nightmare things went a little more smoothly. By the end of the night - 3 and-a-half brutal hours later - I was actually able to take and enter an order more or less without help. But it was a tough way to start.

And when it was all over Jack cut me in on his tips to the tune of 50 bucks.

That's $12.50 an hour.

Email: joe@gopher-news.com

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