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Served: Can I Go Home Now?

Posted by Hannah Howard, July 29, 2008 at 8:30 AM

I blog by day and wait tables by night. I'm excited to bring you Served, dispatches from the front of the house. Enjoy!

It’s one a.m. and the restaurant is hopping.

It was hopping when I got to work at six. It was hopping at eight, and eleven, and midnight. Now a gaggle of girls with glittery purses are huddled around the door. I am trying to ferry them drinks across the bar, and explain our different madeiras (and what is madeira, anyway? and how is it different from port?) to a friendly British couple, and clear plates from the corner of the bar to make way for an oncoming onslaught of cheese. The end is nowhere in sight.

Time To Chat

A friend I haven’t seen in awhile arrives. I give him a hug, pour him some prosecco, and clear those plates. I ask him where he's living these days and say hi to an impatient couple who flings open the door and eyes their nonexistent seating options. My friend asks what I'm up to, but I need to refill some empty wine glasses. I also need to run downstairs to the walk-in to get a lemon, snatch a knife from the cook, elbow myself some space, cut the citrus into pretty wedges, and give it the woman who innocently asked for some lemon with her water maybe five minutes ago, now. If only she knew.

My fellow servers are equally crazed. "Hannah, would you go downstairs and get some Lobster Key!" "Hannah, can you talk to table four?" "Hannah, do you have time to water my station?" If only.

Summers in Manhattan are notoriously slow for restaurants. People head out of town; they spend less time and money on indoor food and libation. But at my restaurant, these last days have been rocking. Hard. The weekend has left me feeling like I've been run over by a big, mean truck. As I'm writing this, I'm distracted by fantasies of bed. Oh, to be horizontal...

We're on our Own

Last week, the owner and the fromager headed to Chicago for the American Cheese Society Conference. They employed C., a fellow server, to take on manager duties.

C. arrived looking quite managerial. She stocked some white wine, talked to people at the door, (wo)manned the list. She had a glass of wine, a salad.

“This is kind of boring,” she said. We told her she needed to flirt with more women to pass the time, in the style of the owner. But soon we were back to our shuffle, and there was no time for boredom.

Sometimes, the Shit Hits the Fan

In the midst of a rush, our computer spazzed.

A small group of large men asked me for their check. By then, the computer, generator of checks, had been languishing in a coma for an uncomfortably long stretch of time. Everyone gathered bedside, trying their hands at various useless operations.

C. was not happy. "I' feel like I'm going to throw up," she said, and she looked like it, too. "Why does this have to happen on my watch?"

"It's not your fault! It’s out of your control!"

Bearer of Bad News

I explained the unfortunate situation to the big men. They were full of wine—I had sold them quite a few bottles—and at first seemed understanding.

I knew to stay away from the computer, as its magical ways remain a mystery to me. I tried to calm C. After all, we had existed computer-less for many months, writing orders by hand and punching numbers into an old-school calculator to determine sales tax. Our credit card machine existed in a separate computer universe, so we could still charge people's cards.

She had called the owner, who had called the computer guys. In fact, she had called everyone, and everyone had called back, but no one offered a solution that solved anything.

The bulky guys were growing impatient. "Listen," their ringleader said, "why don't you take my card and we can deal with this later." That wouldn't be necessary. I did what we did in the old days. I tried to remember what I had sold them: a bottle of this, a bottle of that, a bottle of something else, and many rounds of stuffed peppedews. The final glasses of wine, whose remnants still languished in their glasses, would be on me. I took out paper and a pen, and added up their bill. It came to a little less than two hundred bucks.

It's a small restaurant, and at the moment, it was a very crowded restaurant. So I had no choice but to perform this bill-tallying procedure in their proximity. For some reason, they found the process unpalatable. "What are you doing?" they asked, as if they were watching me feel up somebody's food before serving it.

"Adding up your check manually," I explained, "since our computer's out of commission. Will you look it over and make sure it's right?"

"I can't believe you're doing that!" one of them told me, disgusted.

"Why?" What else was I to do?

I bought them a round of drinks, but it turns out they were expecting some kind of broken computer free night out. "Can you believe our luck! The computer breaks, and we still have to pay!" If I wasn't so tired, I would have mustered a real laugh. Sorry, boys.

Sometimes, Everything Lives Happily Ever After

It turns out our cook used to be a computer engineer. He gave the sickly machine some T.L.C. and coaxed it into operation. Hallelujah! We shouted cries of gleeful relief into the restaurant night.

I printed out the check for my disappointed men. My hesitant recollections of what I served them were dead on.

The night did not fizzle out, as it often does. It just ended, the people piling out. Phew.

After all that, we proceeded towards the end-of-night paperwork full of trepidation.

And we were right to be worried. We were off by ten dollars. We had escaped potential havoc, but we couldn’t fine those ten bucks. We counted again and again. We ended up taking the ten dollars out of our tips. Split among us, it only meant a few dollars each. No tragedy, just major frustration.

The next night, it was four cents. It was after three a.m., and my brain and body ached. "Can't we just call it close enough?" I practically begged A., who was managing. I yawned, for good measure.

We Couldn't

I knew he was right.

"That four cents could be the tip of an iceberg," he told me. My self-audit proved futile. We found the mistake, after going through each check together. I rattled off numbers one by one, he checked them off. Then, there they were, those four, beautiful cents.

But then A. remembered, we needed to stock beers!

At four a.m., I could be seen hauling a carton of beer up the stairs, channeling all of my negligible energy towards not falling on my ass and sending a cascade of bottles onto the sidewalk. A man was passed-out on the steps next-door, collapsed into himself. I envied his restful state.

Surfing

Working in a restaurant, front-of-the-house or back-of-the-house, means sequestering a lot of control. If things are busy and you’re in the groove, throwing things in pans or shuttling things to table, you are riding a wave. It feels great.

But there are storms and such, and waves come crashing down. It feels good to have one or four things to do, but once you have ten, it’s a little too much, a little absurd. We ask for help (“could you please slice me a lemon!”) but often when you’re crazy busy, chances are everyone else is equally crazed.

I used to have nightmares: I couldn’t get the wine in time; I had dozens of tables waiting to talk to me. Or thousands. But that night, I was too tired for dreams.

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