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Trebuchet King posted:ok pet peeve posting time: I dunno, that sounds kinda funny. Especially if they whine loudly to themselves about how hungry they are.
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Sep 1, 2017 17:38
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Trebuchet King posted:ok pet peeve posting time: this happens at breakfast/brunch places. Nothing to do but deal with it really.
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Sep 1, 2017 18:55
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oh, of course--i just think it's bizarre behavior and it makes me question people's upbringing
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Sep 1, 2017 19:05
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Chef De Cuisinart posted:There are also non-narcotic muscle relaxers, like skelaxin you could take as well. Does skelaxin turn you into a chill, relaxed skeleton? Because that is incredibly my poo poo.
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Sep 1, 2017 19:36
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Taima posted:Does skelaxin turn you into a chill, relaxed skeleton? Because that is incredibly my poo poo. Pretty much. Had some of the prescribed for a back injury that kept spasmong, and holy poo poo did it turn me into a pile of goo. Do not pass go, do not even reach for the remote because that is too much effort.
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Sep 2, 2017 02:53
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Liquid Communism posted:Pretty much. Had some of the prescribed for a back injury that kept spasmong, and holy poo poo did it turn me into a pile of goo. Do not pass go, do not even reach for the remote because that is too much effort. I had some prescribed for a muscle tear in my groin, and my doctor warned me not to drink on the meds. I did, had the most incredible nap of my life, and quickly got habituated to the sedative nature versus relaxant. When I mentioned to my doc that I didn't stop drinking (heavily), she expressed sincere surprise that I was still breathing. poo poo was rad.
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Sep 2, 2017 20:24
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The pet peeve I've never gotten over is when people leave utensils inside containers of stuff and they fall in and get the poo poo all over the handle.
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Sep 3, 2017 18:49
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Plan Z posted:The pet peeve I've never gotten over is when people leave utensils inside containers of stuff and they fall in and get the poo poo all over the handle. I bus tables as part of my serving job, and I usually just stick all the silverware in the cups.
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Sep 3, 2017 19:44
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Oh hey. This is a thread. Dishwashers is a job, that I do. Woo. So what even is morale in the kitchen? Is that when you drink the beer for the fish batter?
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Sep 3, 2017 23:50
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Found a yo-yo I got from a Sysco vendor event and it reminded me of when my then-boss tried to take a full sized box of kosher salt that was part of a display, thinking it was a free sample. You guys ever go to those? That guy loved nothing in the world more than free poo poo so he would go to every one and take me along in case he actually saw something he might want to try selling.
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Sep 4, 2017 01:36
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Republicans posted:Found a yo-yo I got from a Sysco vendor event and it reminded me of when my then-boss tried to take a full sized box of kosher salt that was part of a display, thinking it was a free sample. A friend of mine is the national brand manager (or something) for a distillery here in TX. A couple summers ago he needed a hand giving out free samples at some Texas Restaurant Association convention. Basically got to give out free booze, drink some, and get free samples of all sorts of stuff. Fun times.
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Sep 4, 2017 02:04
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I go to food expo every year for Cheney and GFI. Sometimes useful, always boring.
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Sep 4, 2017 02:29
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Time for another Make Vox a Better Diner Question. How should I arrange my plates/utensils when I am done to make the server's work as easy as possible?
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Sep 4, 2017 03:02
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Discendo Vox posted:Time for another Make Vox a Better Diner Question. How should I arrange my plates/utensils when I am done to make the server's work as easy as possible? Stack plates, then bowls on top. Bunch utensils up, but do not put them into a glass. Shove everything towards the kitchen, wipe up major crumbs and moisture.
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Sep 4, 2017 03:05
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Discendo Vox posted:Time for another Make Vox a Better Diner Question. How should I arrange my plates/utensils when I am done to make the server's work as easy as possible? Sandwich Anarchist posted:Stack plates, then bowls on top. Bunch utensils up, but do not put them into a glass. Shove everything towards the kitchen, wipe up major crumbs and moisture. This is good advice, but also, if a busser or server has started clearing, absolutely do not stack anything on top of what they are already carrying unless they ask you, not even a loving fork.
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Sep 4, 2017 03:08
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well, apparently new zealand has hospitality industry shortages and america keeps breaking my heart so i started the immigration application process. keep y'all's fingers crossed for me.
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Sep 4, 2017 03:28
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Republicans posted:Found a yo-yo I got from a Sysco vendor event and it reminded me of when my then-boss tried to take a full sized box of kosher salt that was part of a display, thinking it was a free sample. Back in High School (or Vocational to be technical. My last two years of high school were in the Culinary program at the local-ish VoTech school.) Our class went as part of a cooking competition of some sort to, I think it was a Pizza trade show. I don't think we won, but it was still neat.
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Sep 4, 2017 03:49
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Trebuchet King posted:well, apparently new zealand has hospitality industry shortages and america keeps breaking my heart so i started the immigration application process. keep y'all's fingers crossed for me. I might move also given the landscape shots from Lord of The Rings, I'll cross my fingers as long as you put in a good word next year for me.
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Sep 4, 2017 03:53
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Skwirl posted:This is good advice, but also, if a busser or server has started clearing, absolutely do not stack anything on top of what they are already carrying unless they ask you, not even a loving fork. I'd say just make it clear that you're done dining (napkin on table, utensils down) and let the server or busser clear it how they see fit. Different people have different systems, and I've run into one server who claimed it was against restaurant policy to stack plates (they had weird sort-of-square plates that apparently chipped really easily - bad decision for a restaurant). Certainly don't interrupt the process once someone has gotten started.
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Sep 4, 2017 04:29
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Adding to the above, if you ever ball up your paper napkin and stick it in your glass, I (and any other dishwasher) will come out and beat you with a dish rack. And you wouldn't think I'd have to tell grown adults this, but ffs don't stick chewing gum to the plates. loving army scrubs used to stick that on the trays like they were in elementary school, and that was one thing our truck-sized Stero just couldn't deal with.
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Sep 4, 2017 06:01
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Trebuchet King posted:well, apparently new zealand has hospitality industry shortages and america keeps breaking my heart so i started the immigration application process. keep y'all's fingers crossed for me. Good luck! I don't know what the pay's like down there, but it can't be worse, right? 
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Sep 4, 2017 06:13
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Adding to the above, if you ever ball up your paper napkin and stick it in your glass, I (and any other dishwasher) will come out and beat you with a dish rack. The worst thing is people who put napkins on runny yolks or syrup.
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Sep 4, 2017 06:21
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iospace posted:The worst thing is people who put napkins on runny yolks or syrup. Meh, the main difference is if it's cloth or paper napkins, and if it paper they made the job a little easier for the dishwasher and if it's cloth, you send that out .
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Sep 4, 2017 06:31
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So, post-Harvey Houston is under a curfew from midnight til 5AM to prevent looting (which means bars and restaurants are closing between 10 and 11). Every server I've talked to about it hates it if they work nights, every bartender I know is at least fine with it or loves it.
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Sep 4, 2017 09:08
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Starting to spend time each morning imaging shooting myself in the face, in really vivid detail, just to get out of going to work.
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Sep 4, 2017 14:30
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Shooting Blanks posted:So, post-Harvey Houston is under a curfew from midnight til 5AM to prevent looting (which means bars and restaurants are closing between 10 and 11). Every server I've talked to about it hates it if they work nights, every bartender I know is at least fine with it or loves it. The bar tenders I work with usually rack up about $500 in 8 hours and then I take out their trash for them on the 17th hour of my double because "(they're) girls and cant lift it!" mother fuckers
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Sep 4, 2017 14:33
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Thank you! Any more specific instructions for dos/don't s with paper or cloth napkins?
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Sep 4, 2017 17:12
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CHUCK WAS TAKEN posted:The bar tenders I work with usually rack up about $500 in 8 hours and then I take out their trash for them on the 17th hour of my double because "(they're) girls and cant lift it!" mother fuckers What're the hours of your restaurant and how much prep and shut down do you have to do? because I'm curious how a restaurant could have 17 hours straight of work for a person to do. Discendo Vox posted:Thank you! Any more specific instructions for dos/don't s with paper or cloth napkins? Put your napkin on the plate or next to it when you're finished with your food, if you're getting up to use the bathroom and don't want your plate cleared, put your napkin on your seat. Don't know what the guy was going on about napkins and syrup but I haven't worked in a dish pit for years so I'm probably forgetting something annoying, but paper napkins are compostable and you have to scrape a plate anyways, so you can use it to wipe the plate and throw it into the same bin as the food. Cloth napkins go into a laundry bag that's sent out, let them deal with sticky crap, they get paid for it.
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Sep 4, 2017 17:39
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iospace posted:I bus tables as part of my serving job, and I usually just stick all the silverware in the cups. Sorry, I meant as a cook. Like a whipped cream spoon being left in the container so I have to fish it out. Skwirl posted:This is good advice, but also, if a busser or server has started clearing, absolutely do not stack anything on top of what they are already carrying unless they ask you, not even a loving fork. Besides leaving trash all over the place, this has been the only thing to bother me about gathering plates and utensils. Like, I gotta carry this for a while and that monkey dish you're trying to throw on top wobbling around isn't helpful. CHUCK WAS TAKEN posted:The bar tenders I work with usually rack up about $500 in 8 hours and then I take out their trash for them on the 17th hour of my double because "(they're) girls and cant lift it!" mother fuckers I hate this so much and it's part of my current job. We have a girl who her main job is just taking orders at the register, making plates, and taking out food, but she has zero ability to multi-task, so it's really common for me to be bouncing between the stove, the grill, the plating, re-setting tables, my prep, and/or register while she scrapes a plate or something. Then when the doors close she intentionally spends the entire time sweeping the dining room and nothing else because that's all she's good for. When my friend/manager told her she wasn't sweeping tonight, I caught her wiping the prep tables with a cold wet towel and nothing else so when she started a fight over me suggesting to use hot soap and water, it's now something I won't let her do. A lot of it goes back to the fact that she's loving one of our managers who's twenty years older than her, so he just lets her do whatever so he gets his at the end of the night. They've both admitted to skipping mopping the floors and stuff because she takes so long sweeping the floors. I know that the next time I raise my voice I'm going to get the "she's a girl, so there are some things she can't do," which besides just sticking up for a lovely employee is a lovely thing to do to other women. Otherwise, I actually currently like my job. It's just that I'm doing more and more because of her and a useless new dishwasher whose closing routine I now regularly help with. It's loving night and day when I do a shift with the owner and my one other friend how much I actively enjoy it.
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Sep 4, 2017 18:29
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CHUCK WAS TAKEN posted:The bar tenders I work with usually rack up about $500 in 8 hours and then I take out their trash for them on the 17th hour of my double because "(they're) girls and cant lift it!" mother fuckers From the people I've talked to, people are simply going to bars earlier and not sticking around to eat late/keep drinking at restaurants. Bartenders are taking only a slight pay hit while getting out hours earlier, whereas servers are seeing fewer/smaller checks, even though they're working the same shifts as usual. 17 hours is a long day though, drat dude. Skwirl posted:Put your napkin on the plate or next to it when you're finished with your food, if you're getting up to use the bathroom and don't want your plate cleared, put your napkin on your seat. Don't know what the guy was going on about napkins and syrup but I haven't worked in a dish pit for years so I'm probably forgetting something annoying, but paper napkins are compostable and you have to scrape a plate anyways, so you can use it to wipe the plate and throw it into the same bin as the food. Cloth napkins go into a laundry bag that's sent out, let them deal with sticky crap, they get paid for it. This is pretty spot on, unless it's very very clear that you aren't done with your plate. Shooting Blanks fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Sep 4, 2017 |
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Sep 4, 2017 18:31
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Plan Z posted:I hate this so much and it's part of my current job. We have a girl who her main job is just taking orders at the register, making plates, and taking out food, but she has zero ability to multi-task, so it's really common for me to be bouncing between the stove, the grill, the plating, re-setting tables, my prep, and/or register while she scrapes a plate or something. Then when the doors close she intentionally spends the entire time sweeping the dining room and nothing else because that's all she's good for. When my friend/manager told her she wasn't sweeping tonight, I caught her wiping the prep tables with a cold wet towel and nothing else so when she started a fight over me suggesting to use hot soap and water, it's now something I won't let her do. A lot of it goes back to the fact that she's loving one of our managers who's twenty years older than her, so he just lets her do whatever so he gets his at the end of the night. They've both admitted to skipping mopping the floors and stuff because she takes so long sweeping the floors. I know that the next time I raise my voice I'm going to get the "she's a girl, so there are some things she can't do," which besides just sticking up for a lovely employee is a lovely thing to do to other women. i've come to think that one of the most important qualities of being an owner (besides not being stupid enough to own a restaurant in the first place) is the ability to set down a no fraternization and no getting high on the job rule and make sure it sticks.
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Sep 4, 2017 20:57
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:i've come to think that one of the most important qualities of being an owner (besides not being stupid enough to own a restaurant in the first place) is the ability to set down a no fraternization and no getting high on the job rule and make sure it sticks. I've never worked in a place that didn't have these rules, however they are incredibly difficult to enforce effectively. Getting high is a bigger problem in my mind - that just ups the chances of someone getting injured. Fraternization, if two employees can keep it to themselves then nobody will be the wiser. If they can't and it's a problem, just fire them both (especially if a manager is involved).
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Sep 4, 2017 21:03
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:i've come to think that one of the most important qualities of being an owner (besides not being stupid enough to own a restaurant in the first place) is the ability to set down a no fraternization and no getting high on the job rule and make sure it sticks. loving lol, a bunch of hot people in their early 20's who always have cash in their pocket aren't going to gently caress and get high constantly?
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Sep 4, 2017 21:11
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So, I posted the first part of my story of opening a doomed restaurant/nightclub for a bunch of clowns. I touched it up every once in a while, meaning it for an A/T thread or something, but I'm just gonna post what I have here. I posted Part 1 before, but I've touched it up since then and am going to  part 2 after.Part 1 The only work experience I have is as a cook/chef. I started working part-time in kitchens when I was seventeen, and continued to work full-time when I had to drop out of college. One of the worst of these was a semi full-time job (I did 40+ a week, but was not considered "full time") at a hotel/conference center on the campus of our local university. It was a busy environment, and they seemed to like me enough that they started giving more and more responsibilities while still paying me under $10/hr. I really genuinely enjoyed the job at the beginning, but towards the end I was just showing up to work stupidly early and given a whole bunch of extra hours and responsibilities but also yelled at for working extra hours. After a particularly long winter of serious E/N Brain Troubles, I decided I needed to quit the place as I wasn't going anywhere with it. And since I was pretty much hurting myself by working there, I quit without another job lined up. I spent the next few months basically catching up on sleep that I felt I needed since high school, and spending what money I'd earned and saved (I was about 24 at this time). This was the worst of my binge drinking. I don't remember being sober unless I planned on driving somewhere. After I was tired of unemployment, I applied to a job at a place that was advertising as a night club upstairs and a restaurant downstairs, both ready to open in a few months. I was hired on the spot by a pretty wound-up skinny little man from New Orleans claiming to be the head chef. The conversation we had seemed promising. They had everything ordered, the other owners/managers had opened bars/clubs before, and they felt they had the infrastructure they needed. I went home and didn't receive a call for almost a month. When they did eventually call me, they told me that it was for an employee meeting being held in the part of the building where the night club would be. When I arrived, there were about 20+ "employees" hanging around. I could pick out the bartenders, cooks, and servers out from each other just by looking. I immediately gravitated to a cook who looked exactly like a skinny Silent Bob, complete with hat/jacket. We got along well, and i made sure to remember him for the future. Eventually, everyone got there and the meeting could start. The leaders of the project introduced themselves, and it was the first time I got a really sinking feeling about the place. The first guy was billed as the manager for both the restaurant and night club (they were going to be separate ventures, more on that later). He was an off-and-on professional club DJ (who was supposed to have been pretty big but I forget his name) and former bar manager who looked like the kind of guy who was desperately hanging on to his twenties. He had a Smashmouth hairdo and chinstrap beard with clothes that were meant for a raver ten years younger and twenty pounds lighter than him. The second guy was billed as financier, and everyone in charge made sure that we knew it was his one and only title for reasons I'd found out later. I immediately recognized his name as a young guy who'd opened up a night club in town that did well until it got shut down for too many underage charges. Last I'd heard he tried to open up another night club about an hour away, which seemed odd considering how rural it was in our part of the state, particularly in the town where he built it. Third guy was the chef. It didn't take much to notice from his darting eyes and Charles Manson-esque body language to know he was on hard drugs this time. I mentioned it to Bob and he agreed with me. The tweaker chef had come all the way up from Louisiana and worked around town for a few years before landing this gig to cook authentic cajun and creole food for both the restaurant and club. Fourth was the girl who was hired as the bar manager. She looked like she was getting close to 30. She was pretty and small, but you could tell she was strong, had good sense, and did a lot of hard work in her time. I eventually really liked her company, even when things really soured between me and the venture, and I'd still be friendly to her today if I were to meet her. I later found out she had been a cheerleader at the local Big Ten university. The final one did not inspire confidence. I sort of recognized her face at first, but didn't immediately place it as a person I'd gone to high school with until she introduced herself. She was slightly older than me, but she did have a sister in my grade (whom I ended up on homecoming court with). I still remember the younger sister as a very smart, driven, pretty girl among other good qualities. The woman that was here announced as a pseudo-H.R. rep I only knew as pretty. Nice, too, I guess, and married to the Financier. After a mission statement and demonstration of the sound system (which would be a running occurance), we filled out our W-4s and were offered the opportunity to do setup work for on-the-clock time in the future. Since I was unemployed, I agreed to help out, said bye to Bob, and left. This was the beginning of some of several months of my life working for a bunch of weirdos opening a legally shaky enterprise.
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Sep 4, 2017 23:41
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Part 2, The Setup: So to get people into the mindset, I kind of have to explain how the building worked. There were two main rooms, one upstairs one downstairs. The upstairs area had been a large night club. It was a really nice space and I'd been there a few times when it was open, most memorably to see a really good Dinosaur Jr. concert. It also had a very nice jazz night on occasion. It looked like a standard night club complete with two long bars, a dais with seating, an outdoor balcony overlooking the street, and a an indoor VIP balcony over the dance floor. The downstairs business had been kind of a bistro/night club. When it was open, it had been hands down the best night club in town, despite being hands down the dirtiest night club I've ever been in (it was not uncommon for the crowd to die down and to see a few lost flip-flops stuck to the grimy floor in the summer). You'd actually get B-or-A list celebrities in town who were paid to show up at the other night clubs, and were then told to come to this place, where they'd often return. My friends and I were going on a cig/beer run one night when we caught Paulie Shore coming out of the place for some air. We started chatting him up and invited him to a party he never showed up to. He was a pretty cool dude. Anyway, the place had a small attached kitchen that served surprisingly really good food in low volume. both of these separate businesses were run by the same guy who still owned the building that we were opening in. Despite the good reputation as fun clubs for both establishments, they both had a lot of bad stories. There were usually fights, an occasional stabbing, and a student once choked to death on his vomit when a bouncer held him down. The place was closed down and the owner had his liquor license revoked with no chance of getting another. Afterwards, he opened up a restaurant and a bakery in two smaller parts of the building. The restaurant was well-regarded as it did fantastic proper Italian food but closed due to problems from lax management. The bakery is still going strong and produces some of the best bread I've ever had. Going back to the upstairs space, that area seemed to be in good shape. Lots of refrigeration, storage, bar room, equipment, etc. It was basically a dream setup for a night club. The downstairs was harder. The dining area had a beautiful long bar with Tiffany lights, Lots of real wood paneling, a beautiful mural across the entire length of the walls, really nice iron railings running across the two daises... it was a great bistro/club setup, even logistically. The basement largely consisted of a huge walk-in cooler that was used to house alcohol and beer tap machines for the whole building. The kitchen downstairs was a huge red flag. The owners wanted to seat up to 200 in the main dining room eating upscale cuisine and this kitchen was not remotely set up for that. With creative stacking you could at most get about 8-10 plates in the window of the miniscule line table. There was a single 3-bay sink, a few beat-up Coke fridges, one single-bay fryer that liked to move at the suggestion of a stray draft, a pretty damned good broiler and sautee setup (the latter of which had the only ovens underneath the range). There was also a single-rack dishwaser (one of those lift and drop box dealies) that received no hot water. I was told a grill and flat-top were on the way. Seeing the kitchen was when I decided that the whole venture was gonna fail and I was going to make what money I could and bail. That turned out to be harder than you'd think. First though, we had to get the place in some kind of reasonable order.
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Sep 4, 2017 23:42
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This is amazing. Please keep it up!
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Sep 4, 2017 23:51
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pls post more, I feel like you posted part 2 before also. Looking forward to the rest.
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Sep 5, 2017 00:11
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This is pretty interesting so far! I'm looking forward to the next part.
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Sep 5, 2017 00:12
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Part 3: Some Kind of Reasonable Order So the idea of the place was that tables/chairs/equipment/liquor inventory were all good to go. The restaurant mostly needed heavy cleaning, some minor maintenance (replacing lights and such), some rearragements, and we'd be ready to receive shipments then open the place. The owners had to wait like a year before their liquor license was approved, and even then they got nailed down with some hefty service restrictions not to mention the new exhaust and other such machinery that needed to be brought up to code before I got there. What I'm trying to say is that they had time to plan. The buildings were dirty. We had a 2F, a 1F, and basement that were coated in grime and mildew. Due to legal concerns, the owner of the building/former operator of the previous clubs could not advise or involve himself with any level of the new venture beyond a few basic ways. So the first task was to start cleaning. The former DJ/current manager/current owner rented a floor buffer and to his credit busted his rear end cleaning those floors. The grime was so caked-in to the floors we were genuinely shocked to see how good of shape the tiling was in. We spent the day pushing dirty water from the buffer into either buckets or just out onto the streets with floor squeegies. The walk-ins were a nightmare and smelled awful after years of neglect. The one in the main kitchen was the rattliest walk-in I've ever seen and could never hold a reasonable temperature. Next up was getting dust and cigarette grime off of the walls and surfaces. We were genuinely amazed at how nice the place looked after the murals and unscuffed tiling were cleaned away and were probably the first people to see it in that kind of condition in decades. After that, I had to do the lights. This wasn't easy as the lowest ceilings were about ten feet high and the highest fixtures were about 20 feet off the ground. I spent most of a day figuring out which long fluorescent light bulbs worked, then prioritized all working ones to be put in the dining room/dance floor. At the end, the kitchen was half-lit while the FoH was mostly fine. Oh poo poo I actually forgot about this until now, but it's important to note that 95% of the grunt work was being done by me, Former Cheerleader, Tweaker Chef, and occasional help from Skinny Bob. The GM (the former DJ) said he only wanted the BoH crew to do setup. He wanted the waitstaff to be "wowed" by the restaurant when it was ready. It is important to note that I was anticipating this place being open for all of a month and just wanted to collect what money I could while waiting for another job to open up. We also couldn't smoke in the place so a lot of us ended up doing chew. So imagine a humid summer (we're usually at about 75% humidity with minimum 85 degrees most days) in a derelict un-air-conditioned building with a few spit bottles going at any one time. The smell was pretty heinous, but hey we got some of the biggest stuff out of the way. We just needed to wait for the promised inventory. So far this has all been set-up for the weirder stories that followed.
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Sep 5, 2017 00:15
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This is awesome. Looking forward to more.
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Sep 5, 2017 00:37
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