who's been a waiter before?

[araby]

I got a job at a Thai House a week after looking for jobs. I've never served Thai food before, and it's easy...the owner and her husband haven't had anyone experienced serving here before (I'm here now, ha) and they are so pleased with me. I don't make any money really, but it's nice to get hired quickly while still looking for dental jobs. This restaurant is fairly new so I hope that business picks up for them soon. They are good people. They feed me every night I come in.

Thursday I went out on foot walking around downtown to look for something to add to this, or replace it with, and got hired at the famous Hominy Grill on Rutledge Street. That job is going to pay =)
Of course, until I find a dental job.

I haven't had a day off since last Monday, which is fine since I had a week off before that, with no job. On Friday I worked at the grill during the day, then got called in by the owner to the Thai House that night, because she wasn't feeling well. I got here to find that I would run the place that night, which I've never done before, but I did pretty well.

anyway, it's nice to be working again. even if it's waiting tables, the two jobs are helping. I'm very excited about the Hominy Grill, they just won the James Beard award and when I start waiting tables next week, I can look forward to $100 shifts on weekdays and 2-300 on brunch shifts, which are Sat & Sun's 9-3. They close the restaurant after that, which is nice. I trained hosting Saturday and Sunday and I shit you not, we were on a 50 person wait for at least an hour! One of the waiters counted his tickets yesterday to find he waited on 37 tables total. Crazy...

[Jennay]

Araby and Leah are nice people and always seem very smiley so if they were my waitresses I'd totally tip them 20-25%. As a rule I start out at 15% and if you did your job just as expected, it stays at 15%. If you did extra things like bring me a refill when my glass wasn't even empty yet for example, that deserves an increase. I think if you're pleasant to your waitress from the get-go, they are nice in return. This past year I got hooked up like crazy at the regular places I go because I think they saw a bald girl who was obviously sick, but at the same time didn't act sick or miserable. Just cheerful and happy to be out of the house and keeping food down :P I'll never know if it was pity or if they my sunny disposition actually wears off on people.

[Martrae]

Hey Jennay! I was wondering how you were. So good to see you back again. <3

[araby]

I's tired massah. twelve days in a row...my feet hurt =(

My table asked me yesterday what my name was. I said, "Ma'am, it's Ashly." She said, "Well you didn't tell us that" and I said, "This isn't Waffle House."

she laughed!

[Drem]

i love this job i got. i'm in the minority as a white male, everybody's from random places like papa new guinea, africa, vietnam, korea, taiwan, burma, spain, etc., it's over-staffed, i'm under-worked, and it's fuckin badass. $$$$$.... this job is great

[Kramer]

i worked at a Chili's for 10 months as a server.... never had a shift i wasn't totally stressed, but luckily i was pleasant enough that i think most people let it slide and, i mean, come on, it's Chili's, this is a place where a customer wanted to know if the Key Lime pie was good BECAUSE IT WASN'T ELECTRIC NEON KOOL AID GREEN

but, i mostly like doing Expediter, loved being the go-between for servers and the kitchen and setting up food to get run, had a blast, get to help everyone and don't have to deal with customers

[leah]

expediter . . . is that what that's called? I used to do that on sunday mornings (our busiest time) and i don't think that's what we called it.

[araby]

they are called "expos" for short.

[Drem]

i've never had anything that like that. just servers to kitchen direct

[leah]

OH expo, that's what we had, durr. i guess i never knew what it was short for!

[Tikker]

i've never had anything that like that. just servers to kitchen direct

I thought you worked in some fancy restaurant?

most places have someone doing quality control/pass thru/expo

[Drem]

those are all manager duties. should be taken care of by the staff anyway. i could only imagine a separate position for something that automatic in a restaurant with extremely high turn-over and a bunch of sad angry bastards for employees that need to have someone hawking over them to make sure it's all right, like Chili's, Shari's, Red Robin, whatever. and that stuff isn't even real food as far as i'm concerned. it should cost as much as McDonald's unless you're buying a steak which should be about $8 for the quality of meat you get from places like that

also, i work at a culinary institution now, not a restaurant. tonight we served a 350 seat, $150 ticket, four flight wine dinner/auction (the vineyard representatives attended, as well as the heads of every major business in Eugene) and all the culinary students had to do all the waiting and cooking for once. it was great. i poured wine and relaxed for 8 hours muahahaha. i've never had a food service job where it's over-staffed and under-worked. since i'm going to school at the same time, i fuckin love it

and yunno i'm sure it's just different in different parts of the world. i've just never seen that job position at a restaurant here in Eugene. never heard of anyone with that job, never seen an add for it, etc. never even heard about it thru the grapevine until now. all that stuff is just always taken care of by the manager or the assistant manager if it really needs to be overseen at all

[leah]

i could only imagine a separate position for something that automatic in a restaurant with extremely high turn-over and a bunch of sad angry bastards for employees that need to have someone hawking over them to make sure it's all right

ding ding ding, we have a winner hehe that's exactly why we had someone do expo on sunday mornings. village inn sucked ass.

[araby]

yah I have worked with them in corporate places like Outback and Applebee's. I've also worked with them in other places though, where the servers run around like crazy and don't have to time to make sure the plate looks perfect before it goes out, like Rosebank Farms Cafe. Those cooks didn't have to make the plate just right when they put it in the window. They would plate a kid's meal on a piping hot plate, then the expo would turn around, transfer it to a cold plate, put the condiments on it or whatever, make it look nice and the food runner would take it out.

I love Hominy, the cooks make sure the plates look perfect before they go out. And we don't have a kid's menu, which I *really* love. No modifications allowed except on a few things, and it makes it run so much smoother and easier. It seems like the head chef/owner of this restaurant I'm in now really knew what he was doing when he put his systems in place. It's also great that we don't have ridiculous amounts of side work that require brut strength.

I'm looking forward to making bank at this place. Today was my last training day for brunch, so I did all the work, pretty much ran the section, and my server walked with $300. She was very happy for me, that I did all that myself! They are not required to tip us out, but she did, which was nice also =)

[Kramer]

sounds like a promising job! and yeah, we called it "expo" too now that i think about it.... been about 13 years since i was back in Chilli's!

[Drem]

PS: just got a second job as the lead evening chef for a restaurant in historic downtown that we'll be launching in about a week or two. never launched a restaurant before so needless to say that i'm pretty excited

[Tikker]

I'll take some fries with that

[Trielelvan]

Congrats Drem! That's very exciting

[Drem]

yeah it is, the other lead chef is some brother from detroit (weird coincidence considering my adoration of the Tigers) with a lot more experience than me so he's doing the day shift. should be pretty exciting

@tikker: funny you bring that up, because i think like so many restaurants on the east coast do, we're going to offer a 3lbs sirloin burger. i seriously doubt i could eat that much meat at once, but it's a novelty or w/e i guess, because you can't get a burger like that around here

our menu is based around simple american comfort food and desserts. and we're not serving alcohol so i don't have to deal with fuckhead clients or an OLCC update. can't wait

[araby]

Congratulations! I lost my waitressing job two sundays ago, but a week later I became a live-in Nanny. I finally have the day off today. I's tired, massah. But it's good that I keep filling in at dental offices.