ONE perfect day...

I can hear the gasps as you all recoil in shock. Yes, I said it. A "perfect Day" at Captain Rigatoni's!

We must remember that perfection is relative; what might seem perfect in a normal workplace is never, ever going to happen at Captain Rig's House Of Pain so we must take whatever bone life throws us.

To achieve the day of perfection there is a key ingredient: the elimination of almost 100% of the staff. This includes the obvious players: Capt Rig himself, Jan, Her Man Slave, Bobbi, Ashley, Gina and pretty much any new people who declare retarded things like "Where is Captain Rig today? Things just aren't the same without him!!" VOM DOT COM bitches- don't say ridiculous things like THAT if you wish to live in my little world.

The perfect day would be rather overcast because who wants to be inside on a nice day (I'm getting picky here but am actually setting the scene for the "perfect day that WAS") On the "perfect day that was" it was cool and cloudy out.. The perfect day would also be a weekday, because the head-honchos are always there on the weekend (and the "day that was" was a Monday- rock on!)

I arrived at my own personal hell to find that things were going to be fan-freaking-tastic! On the schedule in big, obvious letters were my Fab self, my HWF, the NNG (who was slightly less new at that point) Marissa and (sadly) the HWF's nemesis before she got fired for running her mouth. Bobbi was there but was in a magnanimous mood because she had just fired several people and that get's her feeling all powerful and kind of... high. Yipes!

Since The Nemesis was good for garbage I proclaimed myself to be the Boss, the queen of The Kitchen and the master of Everyones Domain. Watch out suckers, there was a new sheriff in town! No doubt about it: I spent the night hollering at everyone to dry silverware, to not be idiot douchebags and I generally tried to morph into a little hybrid of Jan & Gina. I kid, I kid!

Somehow even without Jan there to micromanage our every move we got things done! It was busy enough to keep us all moving right along and- GASP- by some stroke of luck everything got taken care of (including, rather shockingly, the CUSTOMERS) and nobody felt like killing anybody else because we all were nice to one another. We were a happy group of people and to add to the joy I hollered "THIS is the BEST DAY EVER" approximately every .2 seconds. I like to make my feelings known to the world.
The good feelings and happy mood must have rubbed off on my customers because I made an absurd amount of money for a Monday. A two top left me a 110% tip which had me literally bouncing off the walls in joy and ecstacy! (I'm really annoying when I get too happy. Oh well!)

The whole night was the bombdiggity and it was determined that if every day on the job was like that we would all work there forever with smiles on our faces and springs in our steps. High fives were exchanged for jobs well done. We all patted one another on the backs for being a team of rock stars who do not need to pillage and plunder in order to take care of business. None of us missed the Head Harpies even one little bit (maybe the Nemesis did. She did not enjoy working with a kitchen full of happy "new" people. Poor her!)

It was no shock to any of us when things returned to their hateful norm the very next shift. The good thing was we all had memories of the one and only perfect day ever to make things a little bit better. Like I mentioned, in a crazy crummy place like Capt Rig's you take what you can get, make lemons out of lemonade and appreciate the luck that is getting ONE great day.

Resturantitis. The plague of DOOM.

Restaurantitis: A plague of epic proportion, possibly contracted at said place of employment and most certainly vile enough to prevent one from functioning at a normal level.

Yes my friends, as I mentioned a week or so ago I was struck down by the horrible anthrax like bubonic bug that is restaurantitis. Hence, the lack of blogging as of late as I have been so crippled by congestion that my thought process has slowed to a turtle like shuffle.

After 5 days of laying low, moaning and taking large doses of sudafed I deemed myself non-contagious and bravely went back to Captain Rigatoni's to kick some ass.

Guess who got her ass kicked?...... I got thru the sidework portion of the day in grand style, despite not being able to hear anything whatsoever due to my completely blocked ears. I tried to look on the bright side- not hearing means being somewhat immune to the high decibel level of screaming. In reality, not hearing makes it very difficult to take orders, or to hear what sorts of food need to be brought to what table.

As the evening progressed I noticed that the air in the restaurant had turned into the consistency of pudding. I found that it was a great struggle to move thru the jello-air, or to breathe properly. "Suck it up!" I told myself sternly "thick air has never stopped you before!!" Slowly swimming my way into the kitchen I heard the chefs call for someone to run food to table 47 so I grabbed it and headed on out. Only to find that table 47 had nobody at it. Struggling to get enough oxygen into my addled brain I heaved back into the kitchen. "Table 47" I gasped "has nobody at it." "TWENTY SEVEN!!!" hollered the impatient expeditor "I SAID TWEEEEEENTY SEVEN." Armed with the correct table number I labored my way over to table 27 only to find that they were already eating. I could not believe my eyes... I felt that I was rapidly nearing the end of my rope, and that a freak out was imminent when the Tattletale grabbed the food from me with a curt "the party at 27 moved to 29. They should have told you that." Completely exhausted form the walking back and forth, and the considerable confusion, I tried to remember what on earth I had to do next.... Check on my own tables. I tediously made my way over to my side of the restaurant when out of the blue the whole floor tilted to the left. And then to the right. Grabbing table 26 to stabilize I broke into a cold, nauseated sweat. Looking around cautiously so as to not disturb my equilibrium any more I confirmed that the earthquake had only happened in my brain. Tiptoeing along as the floor continued to buckle around me I finally reached the security of the wait station where I was able to prop myself up against the counter. My human work friend walked by and looked at me with a significant level of parental concern. "I'm not gonna make it" I moaned into my palms, sick frustrated tears oozing out of my eyes "I JUST. CAN'T DO IT" "Have you asked Bobbi if you can leave?" my HWF asked logically. "No way" I moaned, all sweaty and shaky "She's gonna yelll at meeeee" "PFFFFFT" said my HWF "You're a mess, I'm going to go and tell her." As the world continued to tremble around me and my eyes continued to leak in extreme frustration the Tattletale came upon me. "What's wrong with YOU??" she asked indignantly. "I'm SICK and the floor is TIPPING and I need a minute to cry by MYSELF!!" I said crabbily. "Are you going to throw up?" she asked nervously. "YES" I said "ON YOU." (I had no intention of vomiting, but it made her go away.)

Thankfully, I was sent home. Luckily, once I sat down in my car the world came back to a place of stability. Happily, I was in bed, with loads of decongestants in my system by 7:30. My conclusion is that working at Captain Rig's on a normal day is bad. Working with restaurantitis is fully impossible.

Love Fest Oh-Ten. Here we come!

Valentines Day. Just the thought of this holiday makes me cringe a little. Both from sugar shock sappy overload and the thought of the tidal wave of "happy couples" who descend upon the local restaurants. (good for my bank account. not for my mental health...)

This will be my first V-Day spent in the always loving embrace of the good people of Captain Rigatoni's. I fear that the bitter feelings from the Tattletale alone could be enough to plunge the rest of us into terrible, hate filled moods. Not being a huge fan of the holiday I rarely care much about it- other than to know that I'm going to get to see society at its finest and hopefully line my pockets with 100 dollah bills.

I remember many a V-Day at the place I used to work (and subsequently went on to develop a fairly bad feeling about the holiday in general.)

What a waitress observes on the most romantic of romantic holidays is a lot of people feeling obligated to go out and have a damn good time. Due to the pressure (and crowds) this is often just the opposite of what happens. (come on peeps there are 364 other days to tell your loved one/s that you love them. you should do this and avoid going out on freaking love fest oh-ten. unless it is to come have me wait on you, and take all your money!)

Sure, I have seen lovers-in-love, people who really do enjoy the holiday and obviously care for one another. But the depressing fact of the matter is that on any given V-Day I have waited on so many more people who hate each others guts that it's downright depressing! GAHD! Why can't I be the waitress who gets the guy about to propose with a diamond ring that he wants me to put in a champagne glass!? Because, if that were my table the fiancee to be would either swallow the ring or say no, HAH!

I love to see people who lunch with their spouse and then dinner with their lovah. In the same restaurant (and since I was working a double I was their server both times. YUCK-OH!) This was terribly troubling to me, especially as the wife got some generic gift and the lovah got all sorts of exotic things. Jeepers.

V-Day is a day to enter the walk in cooler at your own risk as you might find the sexual tension between coworkers had just become too much, and they decided to ease said tension upon the boxes of tomatoes. Nothing says romantic interlude like doing the nasty in freezing temps in with the produce!

If nothing else Valentines Day provides me with an oh-so-sappy moment to feel lucky to have a nice normal husband who I am still married to (I'm a freaking minoroty!) Looking at the epic hatred that flows between he so-called friends at Cap Rig's I am also very glad to have a group of kickass friends. Who I actually like. A lot. And do not try to stab when they are not looking....

I hope that tomorrow I make an absurd amount of money. I hope that the bitter ladies who I work with can get thru the love-dipped-day without too mane displays of hatred towards one another, or their ex-es. I hope that I DO walk into the cooler to find people gettin' it on. That would be hysterical, especially since I can NOT for the life of me figure out who would do that with WHO. I hope that I get to put a diamond ring in somebody's creme brulee. And I hope that I can get past my sarcastic feelings for this Holiday enough to brighten up somebody's dinner a little. Because when you really think about it, the world needs a little more love... And if a Hallmark Holiday and a happy waitress is what it takes to get it? Then so be it.

And speaking of money...

What do servers dream of.... Ahhh, the possibilities- do we dream of frolicking in a restaurant filled with daisies and cabana boys? (or girls, depending on who you are) do we dream of a magical kitchen where you snap your fingers and your tray is filled instantly with whatever your customers desire? Perhaps we do, but other than the nagging and constant nightmares that accompany a waitressing job the number one thing we dream about is making so much money that we can throw it all around and roll in it while screaming in glee. I actually did that once, but sadly- only once... Money is the number one motivator for most servers and that is the bottom line. Back in the day, when I was young and carefree my motivation for making cash was so that I could live in a totally awesome apartment and drive a super fast car. Now that I am a woman of more advanced years I wistfully dream of paying the bills, and being able to make the car payment on my very average and painfully slow Toyota.

For many it seems that the dream of cash involves making so much of it that you can move on to the career you were destined to do. You do not come across many servers who admit to being happy and satisfied, trotting about with trays of daiquiris and popcorn shrimp. It's almost taboo to confess that you wait tables because that is what you do. Case in point: Throughout my waitressing career I have always held down another job, and am self employed. For many, the fact that I waitress means that my business must be quickly sliding down the path to destruction or bankruptcy, which fortunately is not the case at all. Many customers ask "What else do you DO" (like is is shameful to be making more money than they probably do, by bringing them their dinner, right?) My reply "I own my own small business and wait tables to earn some extra money, and to enjoy time seeing all the local patrons" (suck up!) They will look at me quizzically and say something to the effect of "Boy, bet you can't wait until your business isn't suffering so that you can get OUT of THIS!!" No reply can satisfy this particular customer unless you are willing to beat your brow, and declare that you can not wait to give up a couple hundred dollars of fast earned cash, you have always dreamed of a life that involves less money.

If the majority of my table waiting life had not been in a small town where everybody knew everybody else's personal business I would have concocted a lie about my need to wait tables. There seem to be several appropriate answers to the "What else DO you DO" query. From my own coworkers I heard several excellent, and vaguely true, reasons that would get a response of sympathy and a $50 bill from the customer. "I wait tables to support myself and my deadbeat ex-boyfriends baby." (you do not. you wait tables to help put your 3 kids through private school.) "I am working on my screenplay/my novel/I plan to win a nobel peace prize." (a common one, this dream rarely works out.) "I am putting myself thru business school and my only other option was working the street corner of my town but it was already taken by a few underage girls." (OK, that's one that I always wanted to use but thought better of it.) So my basic view on the situation is that if you have a BIG dream, or are suffering grandly it is A-OK to spend your free time waiting tables. But if you are already a professional and hold down a day job it is confusing, and questionable to be waiting tables for extra cash.

What many do not know, is that if you are a good waitress, or waiter and are willing to work hard you make a good chunk of change. It is one of the only things that you can legally do, with no formal schooling that brings in that kind of cash flow. And honestly, looking out at my street corner I know that I could NOT do good business there so throwing around chowder and Cesar salad is still my best option.

I crouch behind the bar, frantically attempting to replace a keg when the panicking bar tender comes back to where he belongs. "Just goooo" he moans "I just put a 4 on 21, a 3 on 8 and a 6 on 12. I survey the mayhem that has fallen upon our previously dead quite dining room and attempt to plan my next move. Hard to believe, that just 15 minutes earlier I had been having a serious test of skill with my co-workers in the kitchen trying to see how many steps it took to cross the room. Needless to say, shortly after we discovered that 41 was the number, absolute madness had overtaken our restaurant.
I quickly cross the room, drinks in hand to figure out how to best deal with the cold, hard fact that there are now over 50 people in the restaurant, who have all come in within 5 minutes of each other, a packed bar, and just me myself and I to deal with the chaos. Since "Drinks" is always the answer to that question I set myself to the task of taking and delivering 50 (oh no, we'll up the total to 60 as the door opens again) drinks before people start getting testy.
As I sprint back to the bar I realise that this is going to have to be a team effort. The sweating, trembling bar tender looks at my drink ticket and in unison we grab bottles of tequila and sour mix and start pouring. "What are you going to DO?" he hisses at me thru clenched teeth. "Triage" I declare, as I grab a shaker and start a-shaking, "that's the only way to deal with this. I have to get the most critically hungry people fed first and out of here before they kick up a huge stink." As the bar tender turns away, moaning and growing more pale by the second it becomes painfully clear that there is no "I" in team and I'm going to be running a one woman show from here on out. I run around making and delivering drinks, pausing to take appetizer orders from what appear to be the most desperately in need of sustenance. I bring baskets of bread out along with crackers and coloring books to pacify the kids. Taking dinner orders becomes my next order of business as well as the difficult decision of how to replenish drinks, deal with my new tables that have arrived and how to fend off the stink eye I'm getting from table 7 due to the insanity that is far, far beyond my control. I hear a commotion in the kitchen and step back to see what the fuss is. "86 Prime rib!" shouts the cook while flipping burgers with one hand and flipping veggies in a pan with the other. "Tell table 2 that we don't have anything on their ticket, no Prime Rib, No shrimp, No Cajun Chicken!!!" AND TELL THE BAR that we have EIGHTY SIXED those items FOR THE NIGHT!!!" Okay, having to go out and tell people that they can't have anything they want can put a waitress in a sticky place. What to do, I ponder to myself... Blame the Kitchen staff! They are always out of sight and rarely discover that they are the scapegoats of many situations. Crisis neatly averted I decide that all things being taken into consideration my next move is nothing short of revenge. Nothing good ever comes from putting in dinner orders for 60 people all at once, especially in a restaurant that can only hold 60 people but it happens. I cross my fingers for myself and sprint off again, to replenish drinks, make sure the bartender is still on his feet and tell lies that "we have NO creme brulee" tonight- because I don't have time to brulee the damn creme, thank you very much. I can hear the sounds growing louder and louder in the kitchen and I know I have only seconds until mass orders of food start piling up. As I make my way to the back of the house to organize myself as best I can, I hear a huge crack and all the lights go OUT.

As I open my eyes I realise that I am at home, in bed. Breathing a huge sigh of relief I look at the clock "3:55" it reads and I groan and strike my pillow with disgust, as I only have 5 minutes to go until the alarm goes off and with all the waitressing I have been doing, I'm anything but well rested. I reflect upon the toll that the years of waitressing have taken on my fragile psyche. That night in my dream DID happen, but many of my waitressing nightmares have more to do with not being able to find the bar, or discovering that my feet are glued to the floor and I can not get the drinks for table 6 than actual reality. It has been 2 years 6 months since I have found myself on the wrong side of a table and I must still be deeply haunted by the trauma of that time. I roll out of bed and look at my floor where I see them sitting there, the items that I had cast out of my life never to be seen or heard from again. My waitressing shoes. "Hmmm", I ponder, only a few days left until I strap those bad boys on and head back to the front lines of the food service industry. As I rub the sleep out of my eyes I try to remember why I am going back... WHY? What is possessing me to relive my waitressing nightmares. Simple answer, MONEY.