Here’s some more Things Your Trainer Should Have Told You, formally The Rules. Rules just sounds too . . . imposing I guess. I like to think there’s a lost training manual out there from a lost restaurant that closed down in the nineties whose training manager was so full of pith and vinegar that little nuggets of wisdom such as these made their way into the manual:
The more you need to use the bathroom, the less opportunities you will have to do so.
It starts out as a tiny little pressure in your bladder. You think to yourself that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to drink all that water/tea/coffee/beer before work but it’s no big deal. Despite what you tell shy first-time customers who ask if you have a bathroom, you do not actually work in a truly authentic Asian restaurant that is all about discipline and thus does not have a bathroom, just like in Asia (I know it’s wrong but damn I love doing that). So you think it’ll be okay because you will have time to take care of it just as soon as you get this table their next course. But then you get sat again. And again. And it doesn’t let up for four hours, by which time you’ve got to piss so hard you can taste it, tears silently streaking down your cheeks as you regret having a bladder the size of a six year old Chinese schoolgirl’s. And then the clouds part and the torrent of people unleashed on you lets up for just that one necessary moment and you make your break for the crapper and it’s locked up, stopped up, or somehow blocked off and then you realize you’ll have to hold it for even longer, so you wind up running to the sandwich shop next door.
Yes, this is totally true. Either that or I’m getting incontinent in my old age.
Whenever any two or more people at your table argue over who is going to pay the check, the person that tips the least will almost always win the fight.
I’ve been tipteased so hard so many times by tables that argue almost to the point of violence over who should get the bill. It usually goes something like this:
‘I want blahblah blah blah blah with blah on the side, and make sure you give me the check.’
‘Oh no! I am getting the check!
‘Waiter, I am a much better tipper than he is. Give ME the check!’
‘Don’t listen to him! That man is a syphilitic homeless person who is babbling incoherently. He cannot possibly tip you more than I will.’
‘My BROTHER here is clearly the syphilitic homeless person. Plus, he also just lost his job, so you HAVE to give the check to me.’
‘I might have just lost my job but his wife just left him. Because of the cancer. On his balls. And his tiny wiener. And up his butt. In fact his junk is so jacked up it looks like a knotted-up ginger root down there. It’s pretty gross and sad. And that’s why it’s a moral imperative that you give me the check. Also, I used to wait tables so I know how to tip.’
‘Oh yeah? Well I CURRENTLY wait tables. At a fancy restaurant. That I own. So you know I will tip you better.’
And the more they build up how great they tip, the more disappointed you will be in the 10 to 12 percent reward that will be yours for listening to one of the dumbasses and giving him the check. The best thing to do is drop the check in the middle of the table like a referee drops a hockey puck and then get the puck out of the way. There is already no way to win in this situation, but at least you will avoid the appearance of any partiality.
If a party gets angry because the gratuity is added to their check and they tell you that you are making a mistake because they would have tipped you more if they weren’t being forced to, then know this: That statement has never once been true in the entire history of mankind. Ever.
The option will always be there to leave more if they want, but when people complain about a lousy 15% it’s not because they usually leave 50%. It’s because they’re cheapasses and they know they’re cheapasses and they feel like they’re being called out on it when it’s really just a policy designed to protect us from their cheapassery. Call me heartless but I’d grat my mother if she came in with enough of her friends. It always kills me when a party gets their check and does a head count and sees four adults and four kids and asks me with a serious expression on their face if their kids really count as people. Yeah lady, your kids count as people. You might not on several levels, but we give the kids the benefit of the doubt.
Dignity and Respect
Me, The JerBear
