...but I can sure complain sanity wise. After a full year and a half, I am back. I am working in a corner restaurant bar and grill, or should I say, lack of. Nothing peeves me more than outdoor dining...NOTHING!
As much as I hated the outdoor cess pool at my old chain restaurant, I hate it even more where I am now. One of the biggest peeves has to be the fact that I am not only the bartender on duty, but sometimes also the manager and server on duty. Rather than just make things easy, our bosses will not allow us to write "Seat yourself" on our black board. Instead, when I am doing at least two of the three above tasks, I am interrupted by some person who looks like a deer in headlights who asks sheepishly "can we have a table outside?" I tell them "I'll be right out there, sit anywhere you'd like" only to be told a number of drinks and things I can get them while I am busy making things for my other guests. A simple thing, a blackboard, "SEAT YOURSELF." What is so hard or uninviting about that? At the chain restaurant, once we started doing that, we eliminated the problem of people sitting down at tables that still had money and dirty plates, utensils, and glasses on it. Of course, that was after we added that "at a clean table" to the end of the invitation. Either way, as uninviting as it sounds, it's a little less annoying to deal with than being interrupted every five minutes during a dinner rush for some idiot who can't figure out that the other twenty five people have seated themselves and were greeted by the waiter or waitress who is walking around.
Another highly annoying peeve is the people who are seated outside and insist on coming into the restaurant to pay their bill by handing it off to anyone on duty as their server is coming outside to pick up the payment. There is no cash register for the servers, and if you bother the bartender, you're only taking away from their main focus. People reading this, grow some patience. Your credit card and the bill will still be there in five minutes. If you're in a rush to see a movie, eat after the movie.
