Wow, I'm tired. Crazy day yesterday. I was busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.
I'm taking today off to relax.
Hope you had a great Easter and the bunny stopped by to say hello.
See you tomorrow.
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I cooked a ham yesterday. Scored it and studded it with cloves and put a nice glaze to it. It made me miss the days when I'd have eight of them coming out of the oven, with Legs of Lamb and Steamships too, all set for the carving Station.
Then I made Potato salad. I named it 14 year potato salad because...I had not made potato salad in 14 years. Cut everything up, put in a bowl with mayo, mustard vinegar and seasonings, gave it a mix and tasted....PERFECT, no adjustment neccessary!
All i could think was
"I still got it Babay!"
i miss the priveledge of working with all that food, and decorating a nice buffet but I do not miss breaking it down after!
just had my first easter brunch as a server and i am tired as well....enjoy your comatose
HHH
I was off to have dinner at home this year. Nice.
Hey Bullet, can't give up the chef in you huh?
HHH, first time's the charm, or curse.
Waiter Extra, I'm jealous!
Four years Easter Brunch free!
My last Easter Brunch was in 2005.
I don't miss those holiday brunches.
All the headaches and no grats.
And the servers walking out with hundreds of dollars in tips as I earned my base salary that day which was about nine bucks an hour.
What a pain in the ass.
Mystery reservations that sales would forget to tell us about, and porters bitching, rightly so, that the servers weren't tipping out as much as they should.
And the bottleneck, the fricking kicker was the 1980's vintage Micros system that we had.
What a piece of crap that machine was.
My old cellphone has more computing power than that hunk of obsolescence.
Is it any wonder that my interest in electronic engineering was spurred on by my real world hope in a better way of doing things?
Thankless work.
Especially if you had to reset for the next day before you left.
And nobody gives a shit that you have no family life.
The gm is in his hometown.
Sales are all off safe at home with their families.
But there I was for ten years, stuck on Easter Sunday feeding all those people and putting up with bullshit.
Other bullshit:
"Whaddya mean you fired three of my porters?!"
That was my staff, in my department.
And as department head I deserved to know these things.
"Oh someone saw them on the fifteenth floor balcony."
So what.
They were good workers.
They were kids, who make mistakes.
It's not as though they were waving their dicks around up there.
And if they were who could have discerned that?
Besides, YOU guys made me hire them because they were related to some client or department head.
And now when they screw up you have right of first dismissal?
I worked in a crazy circus.
Maybe some of you banquet managers have better deals than I did.
I was once younger and just a little more stupid than I am now.
I actually believed in banquets.
That it was something worthwhile.
I spent my nights alone wondering how I could maximize profits.
How I could minimize labour costs.
How I could improve productivity by reducing staff turnover.
I am actually very proud of the turnover thing.
I started with a staff of about sixty.
And labour cost was at twenty seven percent.
I pared staff to thirty and labour cost to twelve percent.
We only had a million and a half in sales.
I could have cut it more but I had to keep that many staff to manage these goddamned brunches.
So I shave $225,000 off the payroll and what do I get?
First, I get fuck all, reflected in my yearly bonus.
Then I get my FnB Director telling me that I shouldn't make those numbers.
Well he used to have my job years ago.
But he isn't me.
He says one, they will get used to them, and two, they will expect them.
I say at the time that this is the way the department can be run.
You keep the people who will work the hours, who will learn the Standards, and who will stay because they are being given a fair shake and the chance to work full time.
In a fair and real world I am right.
In the banquet world he is right and I am wrong.
Old gm retires and new gm on scene.
New gm sees my boss as unnecessary expense and persecutes him.
New gm throws me under the bus at some point.
I get pissed off enough to change careers.
I go back to school.
I should wash my hands of this but hard feelings remain.
My boss would have fired me to save himself.
But I fired myself.
In this business it is only a matter of time before somebody fucks you over.
I remember the look on his face when I served him my letter of resignation.
The writing was on his face.
It said I can't use you as an excuse, what am I going to do?
And, no you can't, my wild eyes said to him in my five by five banquet managers office.
I am free even if I haven't done anything yet.
It took them four months to replace me.
And twelve months for new gm to fire my boss.
My staff scattered like the wind.
And god knows what labour cost is these days.
Or service.
I live in the real world now.
The banquet world is so far away.
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