FJL’s Watery Soup

When you work at a chain restaurant, you feel like a tool. No ifs ands or buts about it, you just do. You are burdened with responsibilies that you wouldn’t dream of doing in your worst nightmare. Example: singing a variation of Happy Birthday to guests/strangers on their birthday with a cake and candle in hand, wearing a name tag, offering mediocre wine samples, and other atrocities of the sort. After working at a chain for many months, these types of phrases and requirements that come with the job and once horrified you, fade away and just becomes part of everyday life.

The restaurant I work at has some “funny” rules. If you get a guest complaint, you’re demoted to working in the back of the house. And let me tell you, the type of people that come to my restaurant are quite the complainers. I was at work last week, doing my normal serving thing working a double with a 30 minute break. It was kind of slow because it was right after the holidays, which is why I offered to stay on all day (Makin’ Chedda). It was right before we switched to dinner menus around 3:30 when some monster comes in with her two sons. She was wearing a fur hat and jacket and was from out of state saying I had to rush her meal because “she had a plane to catch”. I went over and greeted the table, did my normal shpeel when I got interrupted with a finger in my face. Her sons translated this rude gesture and said to come back in a minute. So, I cooled off in the kitchen, told some other servers about the Fur Jacket Lady, and went back out in the dining room. She ordered, and I was still polite to her although I didn’t want to be. I brought out their tap waters with lemon, their lunch specials and then checked back up on FJL and received a horrible look and a very rude comment (that I cant remember word for word) I was confused because I made sure their meals arrived really fast (due to the flight they had to catch) and that I was polite.
I like to adhere by the kill them with kindness routine. It almost always works and usually makes the rude person dumb and sorry. The reason they are being rude is usually because they feel bad about something, and making other people feel bad will make them feel better. The only way I can pull this off is maybe throwing a breadstick across the kitchen and venting to some other servers in the kitchen (kitchen made for cooking food? Ha I don’t think so; it’s a therapeutic place for servers to vent about lousy customers).

So, the FJL and her family have finished up eating and I went around the corner to drop their check and gave them best wishes on their flight. I went back to the table minutes later as the Wolf ran past me as she bumped into my shoulder softly body checking me into the wall. I asked her if she needed change and she threw her hand and nose up in the air and replied,
“No, I am going to the FRONT!!”
Oh yeah, the front, where the hosts are. They really know what’s going on. I saw her walk up to the host stand, grimacing, as a host walked back over to me.
“Whoa, is she from your table?”
“Yes”, I replied, “what’s going on?”
“What a bitch, huh? I have to get a manager for her…sorry,” as she walked into the back of the kitchen to the office. One of our managers walked out and we made eye contact and I looked down. It was then that I realized I actually like my stupid-corporate-chain-restaurant-tie wearing tool-faced job. I saw her squawking away to him and I think she may have caught me spying. I waited in the kitchen, as they were my only table at 3:45 there are not many people coming into the restaurant. My manager came back with a very stern look on his face.
"So, you got a customer complaint,” he says as he hands me the exact change for their bill without a tip.
“Okay…”
“Bwahahha did you see her Princess Jacket? You’re not getting in trouble for this one, Claire. Do you know what she said?”
“phew! Oh man, I don’t even know she was so rude to me!”
“She said,” as my manager mimicked her, “’My waitress watered down all of our soups!! And she didn’t put any dressing on our salads!! She had absolutely no personality!’ Haha, let’s go check her salad and soup that she left on the table,” he said as he walked towards table 51.
“Take a look at this…this salad is SOGGY with dressing,” I said as I lifted a heavy forkful of wilted waterlogged iceberg.


We laughed and checked out the “watered down” soups I severed her, had laugh and then went back into the kitchen where I had to relay the story to other servers who wanted to know what FJL was doing bitching at the host stand. We all had a good laugh and then continued to serve semi-normal people for the rest of the evening.


So, I got to keep my job, and for those of you reading…try to be nice to people you don’t know. Don’t treat them like scum because you may or may not have more money than them. We’re all innocent until proven guilty, and if you’re rude to a server they will remember it, and tell all the staff about it, sometimes laughing at your expense.* So save yourself the embarrassment and wasted energy and be kind. Or don’t be kind. Just don’t be rude and mean.


*Also remember that servers are bringing you your overpriced food. They handle YOUR food. If you piss them off, you never know what they may do. (In all honesty I’ve never done anything like that, but its crossed my mind.)