There are few places more serene than a restaurant in the morning prior to service. At the time of this writing I work a few breakfast shifts at the Farm of Beverly Hills at LA Live (Man, that’s a mouthful! Even Carol Channing couldn’t swallow it.) Anyway...the tables have been reset from the night before. The place is clean, and the kitchen is peaceful in its austere chrome magnificence. The prep cooks are quietly going about their business. An hour later it looks like a bomb has gone off. Cooks are screaming, the printers are ticking a seemingly endless stream of orders, waiters are hustling to refill coffee and making up plausible explanations for why the toast hasn’t come out yet.
Maybe it’s my own personal Jesus complex, but my weakest skill is that of delegation. I try to do it all. Sometimes it works and the result is a semi-fluid auto pilot vibe. Other times it becomes a first class cluster fuck. I hate rejection of any kind, so I don’t ask the busser to bring coffee because if he says “No” then I will be angry. Typical alkee doesn’t want to ask for help. Of course it also depends on whether or not the busser is being tipped a high or low percentage. Every restaurant is different. The Ivy had a high tip out rates (24%) so I could play “Whack an Immigrant!” with my bussers there. However, if they are not getting a high percentage based on idiotic house rules, then I feel guilty bossing them around. I always tip the house percentages--no more no less. Believe it or not, there are waiters who get to keep a large percentage, treat their bussers like TJ whores, and then on top of that, under tip. Hell has a special place for these kinds of miscreants.
No comments:
Post a Comment