Father's day...Need I say more?

At our restaurant, it is almost expected to be very busy on the holidays. In fact, our restaurant on a weeknight used to be packed like the holidays at my old restaurant, but something has gone wrong. Our restaurant has lost its spark.

If there's one thing I hate, it's serving on days like Mother's day and Father's day. For as long as I can remember, I've always had to work these two Hallmark holidays while leaving my parents an IOU on the table.

My night started off with an extremely steady rotation of tables. I had a lot of $20 tips on bills $100 and lower. Even the highest bill of $115 landed me a $20 tip. By 7PM I realized I had hit close to $200 in tips before tipout. I just had to maintain the 15-20% tips to keep a good portion of this money.

At $1700 in sales, I walked with $217 after tipping out $20 to the food runner who well deserved the money. I did fairly well for what is usually considered a trash type of day at work.

Now for the people who really stood out...(did you really think I would have nothing to complain about?)

After my crashing for two hours last week over one table of old people, they once again came back and graced my section inside the restaurant. These folks ordered the same drinks as last week but also added in one of the new promo drinks. They order everything with house liquor which is garbage and tastes like pure rubbing alcohol, but that's their problem, not mine. They make a point of it to only give them house liquor because they don't want to pay for good liquor. I greeted them, and was only recognized by half of the table. The old Cryptkeeper look alike old lady greeted me back with "listen, we're not in a rush, i'm going to say this again, we're not in a rush, we're not ready, come back and take our drink order, we don't want to be rushed." Smiling at her, I said "Okay" and walked away. I took care of greeting and serving four other tables with drinks before returning. I took down her heavily modified vodka & tonic with the tonic on the side and a lime twist, and the rest of the table's house drinks and put them in. I then waited about 40 minutes to put in their food order after crashing the entire kitchen last week by having to cancel their order for 40 minutes because one of these old ladies took that long to eat a house salad and didn't want her food served until her salad was finished. When their food was out, I did a check back on the table and everything was fine. The Cryptkeeper then looked at my nametag and remembered who I was from last week. She apologized for yelling at me several times about not being in a rush. Gee, thanks, I only heard it several times last week. Anyhow, their $10 on $50 was worth the hassle, and gave me a lot of time to talk to my other guests who left me $20 on their checks in that hour.

Later on in the night I had a guest order the $6.95 cheeseburger, and would only allow her children to order fountain drinks because they could get free refills.

I also had a guy and his girlfriend camp for two hours, sent 2 appetizers back because they got cold while they both took trips to the bathroom, and complained about various minor things. They also found ways to special modify the simplest of things. They left me $3 on $68.

For the most part, the shift wasn't so bad despite the few people who worked my nerves.