Waiter Superstar

Ever hire someone that seems too good to be true?  Maybe it is.

I hired a new waiter that started last week.  A female in her 40's with a nice smile and pleasant personality.  Her work history seemed pretty solid, had experience with setting up buffets, taking orders table-side and even had some wine knowledge.  Hey, maybe I got lucky this time.


I put her on her first job last Tuesday, an easy party for 40 people.  She was working with 2 of my other solid waiters so I knew she would be fine.  Well, she kicked-ass!


She took the initiative to setup the buffet, complete with decorations.  Not the "perfect" way we would have done it but a pretty damm good job it was.  She asked the right questions of a person that didn't want to know how to do something, but as a person that wanted to know how we did things here.


"Just let me know how you want it done so I can learn your way" was one of her first comments.  Wow, I was impressed.


Then again this past Friday night she was paired with another one of my better staff for a 188 person wedding.  You would think she worked here for years.


This ones a keeper.  I just hope I don't wake up and find that this is all just a dream...

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I'm Featured as a Blog of Note, Wow!

I'm happy to accept this award.  Does it come with any cash?  A trip to the Netherlands?  A car?  Can I at least get a dinner?

Oh well, at least someone recognized all the hard work I put into this virtual sounding board for us banquet managers. 

I'm not familiar with this other site but I do appreciate their good taste.  Check it out here



 

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New Blog Feature

The banquet manager just wanted to tell you all about a new feature on this blog, in case you haven't noticed already.

On the left side of the screen I've created a heading titled  "More to see around this site".  There are sub-headings to separate pages with direct links to past posts about some of the more popular topics I've covered on this blog:

• "Weddings & Bridezilla Posts" - pretty much says it all
• "Let's Bitch About Those Waiters" - you know I had to include this one
• "That Chef Sucks" - here I rant on the many ways my chef has screwed things up

There will be more pages to follow.  Please check it out.

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16 Days Straight Without a Day Off

16 days straight, 14-15 hours each.  I've been a waiter, houseman, dishwasher, and everything else in between. And not a day off.  WTF!  My back hurts, my eyes are getting bloodshot and I'm getting cranky.  

Friggin' brides have been driving me nuts.  The staff are getting cranky too and our buffet decoration room is a mess.  Looks like a hurricane just passed through.

I haven't seen my wife & kids except to kiss them on their forehead while they lay in bed sleeping.  This sucks.  I can probably take off this Wednesday.  Let me rephrase that... I WILL take off this Wednesday.

I hope the sleep fairy doesn't wake me up.  I'll kick her ass!
  

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She's Sleeping With Him?

We just found out that our new restaurant waitress is sleeping with the Director of Catering.  She's moving up the corporate ladder for sure.  We're all waiting to see which one of them gets fired first... 

Gotta love this place.

Related Story: Two Doctors Having Sex

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Newlyweds Spend First Night in Jail

HYANNIS, Mass. - A newlywed Massachusetts couple spent their wedding night in separate jail cells after police said the bride tried to run over an old flame of the groom.

 

Police said 22-year-old Hyannis resident Marissa Ann Putignano-Keene tried Monday to run over the other woman and the woman's son in a parking lot. The intended victim later told police that she had previously been in an intimate relationship with the groom.

The couple got married at Barnstable Town Hall and split a bottle of champagne afterward, police said.

The bride was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Her husband, 37-year-old Timothy Keene, was riding in the car with her and was charged with disorderly conduct.  Keene, a registered sex offender, was convicted of lewd and lascivious behavior in 2000, the Cape Cod Times reported on its Web site. 

Both were released Tuesday. It was unclear if either had hired an attorney.

Link to original article

Do you believe this stuff...you sure can't make this up.

Related Stories: 

• The Gracious Mother of the Bride

 

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Where's The Milk, and Juice, the F'in Bagles and ...

They fired our purchaser Frankie last month because they thought he was to chummy-chummy with some of our vendors.  So they kicked him out.  His stupid-ass replacement Wendy, has been a flat-out disaster.  (Who the hell hires a chick for the purchasing department anyway?).

Now this new one can't seem to keep the basics in-house like milk, orange juice and paper coffee cups if her life depended on it.  And trying to get fresh bagels delivered before 7am in the morning is the latest shit-show.

I'm tired of running around at the last minute stealing milk from the restaurant just so I can setup a few coffee breaks each day.  Now I rip Wendy a new one each morning and make her go out to the local Sam's Club to bring in some milk.

Hey, the banquet manager has his own issues to deal with.  Let her deal with handing in those petty cash receipts 3 times a week.

Who agrees with me?

 

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I'm Voted #2 of The Coolest Blogs

Yes, that's right.  I'm voted #2 of the list of Coolest Blogs on the Wassup Blog.  Check it out here.  Hooray for me.  Does this come with a check?
 

 

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Say Hello To My Little Friend...

Too bad we can't type with the Al Pacino accent from Scarface.  Anyway...

I just wanted to say hi to a few of the newest readers of this blog.  Their support and comments are appreciated as well as those from all the loyal readers over the past 2 years that I've been writing this stuff.

Ms. Attitude: A member of the hospitality trenches that deals with some of the same crap that I do

The Innkeeper: Deals with housekeeping issues and all the so-called fun side of running hotel

Please visit their sites and support the people that support the Banquet Manager.

 

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Has Anyone Seen Freddy?

In one of my recent posts, National Waiter and Waitress Day 2010, there was a great back and forth discussion between "Dance" and "Anonymous" regarding whether we should bitch about our fellow servers since those managers are sometimes just as bad.  Anonymous also mentioned about managers that disappear at times.  This reminded me about a past restaurant manager that I used to work with around 7 years ago.

His name was Freddy.  All you ever heard from his waiters was "Has anyone seen Freddy"?  This guy had the title of Restaurant Director but all he directed was his ass taking a smoke break out in the parking lot.  Or directing his bullshit pickup lines on the new housekeeping supervisor.  And sometimes he seemed to just vanish into thin air.

Either way this guy was never around to deal with the usual day-to-day crap of his restaurant.  My department had meeting rooms on both sides of the restaurant so I was always around and his staff constantly asked me for help in voiding a check or dealing with a customer.  WTF?

He was always there at the beginning of the shift, doing the pre-shift meeting and food tasting.  He would greet the first 20 or so customers that walked in but then...like the phoenix...he was gone.  Everyday between 6:30pm - 8pm you were lucky if you saw him for more that 20 minutes.  

And the f#@^ing GM loved this guy.  'Cause Freddy had a line of bullshit that the GM always fell for.  I wasn't that good of a bullshitter, I just had to deal with my department's issues everyday and couldn't rely on some other manager.  Just like Freddy always did.

Hey, I wonder where Freddy is now?
 

 

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