:: Life on Planet Dan-E ::

:: Thursday, October 05, 2006 ::

:: Server Stories: Part X - Our Restaurant is a Haven for Ex-Cons ::

You meet all kinds of people working in restaurant. Not just the customers, but the weirdos and freaks that are your fellow employees. Everyone has their quirks, a good number of them do drugs, and everyone likes to drink. And that's just the waitstaff.

The cooks, janitors, dishwashers, and everyone else you don't see have their own quirks. Interesting things happen back there, especially when you consider that English isn't the first language of just about 99.99% of the kitchen staff. Shit happens and stuff but the last two weeks have been bizarre, even for us:

• First, our cook/assistant kitchen manager Ralph, who's been working there nonstop for about seven years, somehow broke his ankle, leaving management scrambling to find a temp cook while he heals.

• Just before that happened, we hire a guy to work part time (like they knew what was coming) from a restaurant across the street. We joke that he's just there to steal the sauce recipes. He disappears after a week.

• A different guy we hired, Mack, seemed to be working out; he works hard, and unlike some of the other cooks, speaks perfect English and doesn't seem to have any predisposed animosity towards waiters. We take him out for beers for his birthday, and he sounds genuinely excited to be working there. Then he goes M.I.A. over the weekend. As it turns out, he borrowed his roommate's car, only to get pulled over and get caught with a suspended license, which resulted in a nice weekend in jail.

• Another newly hired a prep cook is there for about two weeks. He also works hard, and the managers seems to like him. Only he also goes M.I.A. for a couple of days. It seems he neglected to tell them that there's a warrant out for his arrest. (For what, I'm not sure.)

• There's a new grill cook that's such a flame that he might possibly discharge more BTUs than our rather sizable stoves. (Being as it I work in South Beach, I'm surprised there aren't more.) Last week when I show up, he seems a little moody and emotional. I know this because instead of saying "hi" he says "Dan-E, pleasthe go easthy with the orders, I'm a little moody and emotional." I simply nod, walk away and say "whoa" under my breath. Two hours later, he apparently stormed out of the kitchen in a, uh, moody and emotional fit. I say "apparently" because I was attending to my customers when this happened and didn't get to witness this meltdown (I need the blog material). The waitstaff has a good laugh about it, chalking it up to a "gay moment." (And before you overfeeling drama whores get all out of whack, the guy who said "gay moment" was a gay guy.)

• A few days later, Mack gets arrested yet again, this time for having violated probation.

In a span of just over two weeks, we have one broken ankle, one recipe thief, one gay moment... and three arrests. You'd think that as long as out managers have been in the restaurant business, they'd learn a thing or two about judging character when interviewing.

Then again, they did hire me.

:: Miscellaneous Ramblings by Dan-E at 1:32 AM [+] :: | 0 comments
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