My friend and soul blogger No Love For Fatties, recently discussed her first job as a server (go check her out!) and it got me thinking about my own experience, considering I grew up in the restaurant business. Although some may think it was a cake job, being the owner’s daughter, it was tough. From day one, my father told me he would be tougher on my sisters and I. This was the right thing to do and made me who I am today. Working in a restaurant and then on to retail, taught me to have the utmost empathy and kindness towards servers and retail associates. So much so, when an ass hole is being an ass hole to let’s say…a Target employee, the minute said ass hole leaves the counter, I strike up a conversation in the hopes to make the person feel better.
“Ok….that guy was a COMPLETE jerk. I am so sorry you had to deal with that.”
I’ve never spit in anyone’s food. But once, a kid my age (we were both around 15 I’m guessing), came into my dad’s restaurant and was about as obnoxious and rude as one person could be. He was being mean to me, his parents and loud enough that he was beginning to piss off nearby tables. This was the one and only time I screwed with someone’s food.
“You want an antipasto salad?” I asked king ass hole, hoping I mis-heard him.
“Yup…unless that’s too hard for you.” He replied back like the snot he was.
“It would be my pleasure,” I said, smiling coyly and collecting his menu.
Antipasto Salad
Now, if you’ve ever had an antipasto salad, and at least the way we made it in our restaurant, there are a million ingredients. All of which needed to be sliced. Not a hard salad to make, just time-consuming. When you’re busy on a Friday night, you pray to Jesus, Allah, Buddha and any other God, that no one orders this salad.
But ass hole ordered an antipasto salad and ass hole will get a special antipasto salad, lovingly crafted by yours truly.
I went into the large walk-in cooler, pulled out the tub of salami, opened the lid and pulled out 3 slices. Without fan fair, I dropped them on the floor.
“Oops!” I exclaimed. “3 second rule!” I said as I picked up the pieces and brushed off the debris from the floor. I laid those aside and pulled out the tub of provolone cheese, again selecting a few slices….then dropping them on the floor.
“Wow, I’m so clumsy today!” I said to no one since I was the only one in the cooler. My dad would have killed me by now if he knew what I was doing.
After repeating the same step with the ham, I gathered it up along with the provolone and salami and walked out to the salad table to assemble the salad.
Sweet Revenge
Smiling, I delivered the salad to the kid. A little worried now, I placed the salad in front of him wondering if I didn’t brush off all the little pieces of concrete that had attached themselves to the lunch meat. know I had, but our brains sometimes make us paranoid.
And you know what? That ass hole ate EVERY…SINGLE….BITE.
So folks, the moral of the story is if you think you are better than the server serving you at The Olive Garden or better than the retail associate unsuccessfully zipping your size 12 ass into a size 6 dress….your not. Treat all of these people how you would want to be treated.
This has been a public service announcement of the Hot Mess Memoir Station.
Thanks for the shout-out and for the early morning giggle over your experience! I hope that kid grew up to be a decent human being. Maybe his parents forced him to get a retail job and it broke him?
My hope is he is making 35k as a Sprint Store Assistant Manager, divorced and paying $600 a month in child support. Oh, should I have kept that to myself?
Lol no this is a safe sharing place
Thank you friend!
Any time! ?
Some people like Antipasto Salad a la ground dirt…
So, one time I was having dinner someplace and there was a mistake with my food. And I completely understood how busy the place was, but called the server over. I explained, “I know you guys are completely swamped and the last thing you want to deal with is a picky customer, but would you…?” I don’t really remember what it was…some ingredient I didn’t like or whatever…and I wasn;t in a hurry, so I said I didn’t mind being patient and waiting, since the place was so busy. Then, when I got the food, I smiled and I teasingly (what?! he was good looking…) said, “So, how much did you spit on it…?” He got this serious look and said, “I don’t spit on people’s food…”
That’s when I got worried…lol
I ate it anyways.
Sounds like hot server had little to no sense of humor. See, I think there is a right way to complain and you just demonstrated it. If you need to complain, you must inject a bit of empathy (as you did).
Yeah, I mean poop happens and I don’t know if someone is responsible or if it’s a total accident, so I prefer to give people the chance to make things right. And I’ve worked retail…never as a server…but retail. Good-gawd that sucked.
And too bad for him he didn;t have a pretty personality too.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a little payback. Some people deserve that, especially those who treat servers like second-class citizens. I’ve never been a food server, but I have worked retail. People are terrible to the individuals serving them. It’s a total disgrace. On the flip side, there are many terrible servers and people working in retail- people who wouldn’t know customer service if it slapped them in their RBF.
Right? It’s the ones who think they are better than everyone else! And I’m like, why the hell are you in this job?
I worked in retail for more years than I care to remember. It taught me very quickly that the human race is a bunch of arseholes. I have been screamed at, spat on, a knife pulled on me.
I think the worse memory though was a 40ish woman screaming at a 16 year old assistant, blaming this poor girl for her child’s Christmas being rude, because we had sold out of the best seller at 3pm on Christmas eve. I took great delight on throwing her out the store and banning her.
Good times
A knife pulled? Whhhaaatttt???? And that person screaming at the assistant, she was clearly delusional. The store personnel aren’t the buyers and allocators of the merchandise!!!
I worked in some rough areas. I don’t think people pay attention to that. The words “let me go out the back and pull that out of my arse” have come out of mouth once or twice.
I am not really a people person anymore, so I don’t think I can ever go back into a customer facing role, without killing people
Did you read my post about working at Express in the ghetto? There was a fight that broke out on the sales floor between 2 baby daddys.
No I must of missed that one
When it was all said and done, there were faux nails, faux hair and bath salts (they used the jars of bath salts as a launching device) all over the floor.
Jeez, that must of been interesting