In which all names are changed for obvious reasons...

Arriving at NASA (oops, I mean the restaurant) on my second evening I was filled with trepidation. I had been told that my duty for the night was to shadow a server named Jan, who I assumed was the head waitress. Observing her the night before had lead me to believe that if not the head waitress, she certainly was the head harpie. Her temper was short as her stature and she was very quick to fly off the handle at the drop of a hat.
Reminding myself that this was not my first rodeo by any means I gave myself a shake and headed into the lions den. Jan was clearly not thrilled to have a newbie on her tail all night long. She drilled me about what I had learned the previous evening with the flighty waitress. Not satisfied with my answers she snipped "Well, last night was a huge waste of your time because not only is the flighty waitress an idiot but she's on drugs." "Nice" I thought to myself, accuse people of illegal activities.. Thinking back to my previous evening of training I could not think of any reason to think that the flighty waitress was on drugs.
We plowed forward with the staggering quantity of side work that this particular restaurant has the wait staff tend to. Since this is not my first time around the block I have a good outlook on side work. It can be an organized and rather fun time to ease into an evening of food and chaos. Here, it is a way to prep for the drama and hatred that you are going to be witnessing for the remainder of the evening. These people like to take the claws out early! As I was filling parm shakers (a job that it took 4 people to decide that I was qualified to do) I listened in to the chatter in the kitchen. As servers would come and go the conversation would transition from how so and so hated so and so, to how the server who just left was a waste of space, to how nobody liked anyone (evidently this is ok converstaion to have recorded on the kitchen audio system. HMM.). I mulled over how as much as I was not planning to make life long friends it was a bit alarming to see this level of animosity. My thoughts were cut short by the 3:55 flip out of Captain Rigatoni. He hurtled into the kitchen like a tsunami with high blood pressure and extreme anger issues. "WHAT TIME IS IT???" he ranted "WHY IS THIS PLACE A F***ING DUMP? WHY DO I PAY ANY OF YOU???" As his rant continued I looked around the immaculate kitchen and honestly wondered if my eyes were playing tricks on me. Out of all the places I have worked this was the cleanest, most organized kitchen that I had ever seen so his anger over the mess was baffling.

As the evening progressed I was educated in the way that checks need to be handled. This is a restaurant that operates under the outdated and archaic method of hand writing tickets. In my experience this is a one way street to incorrectly ordered food, lost tickets and general chaos. However, I am a quick learner and felt that I was swiftly getting a handle on the finer details of the method. I was rapidly learning to use the prehistoric cash register and feeling pretty proud of my skills until I was interrupted by Gina, another server who I assumed was pretty high on the food chain. "I don't know if Jan bothered telling you" she snarled "but half the prices on the register are incorrect and if you don't remember to punch them in by hand you pay the difference." My world came crashing down as I realized that out of the 40+ items pre-programmed into the register I would have to be remembering to ring in completely different, and mysterious (and ever changing from the sounds of things) prices.
Jan took me around the restaurant in between serving everyone's food to let me know about what our duties were during the night. "As you know we do all the salad, bread and table prep at the start of the night" she squawked "in addition to that we make about half our own appetizers and we prepare all of the desserts to order." "When we have pizza as a special we make and bake that and prepare all the toppings" (at this point my notes started getting a bit shaky.) Trundling thru the restaurant, muttering criticisms of the other servers under her breath she continued "We get all the fruit and gelato for the frozen drinks, we make our own cappuccinos and coffee beverages." Spinning around to face me she continued "We bus our own tables and put away all the dishes and you NEVER, EVER leave that kitchen empty handed!!!" Lecture out of her system she continued on with some of her most heartfelt thoughts "I have OCD and everything about this place drives me insane... I often dream of blowing away every single person who works here because all of them are pointless idiots and I hate them... God, I hate them...." Noticing what must of been an expression of terror mixed horror on my face she laughed hysterically and said "But that's my problem not yours right?"

I spent the reminder of the evening keeping my head down trying to stay out of trouble. It was not an extremely encouraging situation to be shown how to do something and then to have it shown to me a completely different way by the next person to cross the threshold (and to be told by each that their was was the only correct way to do it and not to question the wisdom.) However, I managed to avoid breaking anything, getting too badly in the way, or catching the eye of Capt Rig.
As expected, at 7:30 Captain Rigatoni had another epic meltdown, there was shouting, swearing, getting into peoples faces, and from the looks of things another step was made towards a major coronary. I was not as bothered by this outburst as I had already borne witness to one earlier in the day.

While leaving I was asked by one of the servers how I was faring. I had to think about my reply carefully, as not only was I not exactly sure how I was doing but I knew that whatever I said was going right back to the kitchen. I replied that I thought I was learning the ropes as well as could be expected. She encouraged me to stick it out, as she had felt very insecure for her first couple weeks there but had adjusted and had been there for 7 years. Armed with this encouraging statement I tried to shake off the strangeness of the evening and develop positive feelings for my next shift.