To every single Don that has ever ordered food, and felt the need to spell his name for me. As though the name D-O-N incites some intrinsic need for an immediate spelling by it's owner. Thank you, Don, for reassuring me that, though I am going to college (as an ENGLISH major, no less), you do in fact see me as a complete slack jawed idiot who could never hope to spell such a challenging and glorious name as Don.
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| Welcome to the Don club, where you will go prematurely bald, and you will SPELL damn it! |
To the grown adults, who, I assume have been to restaurants before, but still apparently have no idea how to read a menu. Where are our sandwiches? Why, they're on the menu. The one page menu. Front page only. Right in the middle. Really, you can't miss them. How much does everything cost? Once again...right on the menu. Oh, don't worry, everybody asks that; they must all be just as experienced with dining out as you are. Do we have french fries? Well, you've been reading our one page menu for ten minutes now, and as far as I can tell, they're still not on there. No, we don't have french fries.
To all the customers who think they are the only people in the restaurant, nay -- the only people in the world. Yes, of course I have time for you to ask me about every single dish on the menu in great detail. Can I go into the freezer and look up the ingredients for the bread on the box it came in? Sure. You want me to call the morning cook and find out if that one salad is dairy free instead of you just ordering from the other seven or eight choices? Of course!
To the customers who either a) think it's hilarious to send me on six or seven trips back to the kitchen for various objects or b) are actually that oblivious that they don't realize they've sent me back six or seven times. Can you get an extra fork? No problem, I'll be right back with that. Here ya go -- oh, you want oyster crackers for your soup...alright, sure thing, I'll attend to all of my other customers after I sprint back to the kitchen for your damn crackers. Enjoy your -- some ketchup for your screaming child's hotdog? Of course. Can I get you anything else while I'm back there? No. Okay. Be right back. And inevitably, dear customer, I come back with the ketchup and you need a knife to cut the hotdog. No, no, don't worry about the throng of customers waiting for me to take their orders, you are the only person in the world that matters.
To all the tourist customers during the summer that know they will never see us again, so don't bother to leave any trace of a tip. Anywhere. It's fine, I love working in 90 degree temperatures for 8 hours straight with no breaks and nothing to eat to the point that I'm shaking as I'm bringing you your food that smells oh so divine but will get nowhere near the back of my throat. Seriously. You are the sunshine of my life, and just seeing your smiling face makes up for making minimum wage and the start of a serious shoulder problem.
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| Maybe if we smile as we slink away she won't notice there's no tip... |
Whew...I feel a lot better now. There are a lot more of you, dear, kind, considerate patrons of our eating establishment that I wish I had the time to write letters to, but I think I got to the best of you. And the rest may some day have a small girl hurled at them from across the counter. But until then you'll be greeted with a smile as I explain the same things 275 times in one day.
*Let it be understood that I work at a deli. It is in no way, shape, or form a full service restaurant. If it were, customers would be required to leave some sort of a tip; however, it is not, so most of them don't. Regardless of this fact, I still get roped into full service more often than not. I take the orders, I cook the food, I take the food out to the customer, I bus the customer's dishes, I wash the dishes. Granted, on busy days I have help and we all take turns doing all of these things, but at a tourist destination in the middle of summer it's lucky that more shanks aren't being forged in the make-shift backroom where we wolf down lunches in-between rushes.
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