The First Week of Live Serving

Last week, Tuesday, was our premier day of serving to genuine live customers. I was lucky enough (not really) to be the Beauty, or opening manager, that day. It was stressful. The instructor was introducing a new food running system that we had not practiced and explaining it and remembering all the details of how and why it worked were difficult. Additionally, a key staff member decided to be absent from class that day. I had to pull someone from dishwashing duty and assign them to bartender.

I had two tables. Table One was a table of four women, all wearing red hats. Yes, they were members of the Red Hat Society.

I greeted my table and took their beverage orders. Upon returning to the table, I forgot who had the iced tea. My notes were of little assistance; I wrote the orders incorrectly related to their table placement. I need more practice.

I then took the orders of my guests and made a special effort to appropriately assign them to the correct seat. I remembered to ask about sides also. I loaded the orders into the computer and moved to my next table to greet, again making special effort to get all correct. Upon taking Table Two's menus, I realized the Table One still had their menus. Duh!

Meanwhile at the bar, my substitute worker was thanking me sarcastically for assigning her last minute to this post. The head chef from the school decided to sit there and order everything on the menu while simultaneously pointing out every error made in the food's delivery and presentation.

Soups were ready to be delivered to Table One so I brought these out on a service tray. Luckily everyone gets the same so one couldn't erroneously give the wrong soup to a guest. I did however forget to put my soup bowl ears/handles at 9:00 and 3:00. Jeez! There is much to remember!

With soups done, salads were next. I was excited that I remembered the pepper mill. Score one for Dallas! Table Two seemed a breeze after either correctly serving or learning from my mistakes at Table One.

Oops! I forgot to tell the Chef that I was clearing Table One of their salads. This is the signal to fire the next course. This could mean a longer than usual delay between courses. Luckily, that didn't happen.

The next courses progressed well. I tried to be sure all the beverages were appropriately full, straw and sugar wrappers removed, etc. Last, desserts were delivered. I forgot that someone might like coffee so when I checked the table soon thereafter I got a request for hot tea, "What types of tea do you serve?" and a latte. Table Two asked me to explain the difference between a latte and a capaccino. Luckily we'd been briefed on this during class lecture a week or two earlier.

I found when I went to order the tea for Table One that we don't have Oolong, Green and Earl Grey teas. We have Darjeeling, Green and Earl Grey. I didn't bother telling my customer that her Oolong would be Darjeeling instead and she didn't seem to notice. This same customer asked me what came in the Greek Salad. I promptly replied Romaine lettuce, tomatoes, feta, olives and an oregano vinagrette. (Duh! Isn't that why it's a Greek Salad??) I theorized that the instructor had planted this woman to quiz me on such specifics so I was pleased to at least appear knowledged.

Finally service was over and we all breathed a sign of relief. I believe some servers actually didn't have as smooth a service as I did. I almost sabotaged one of the servers by being proactive and clearing his table of dishes, but forgetting to tell him to call the next course from the Chef. Luckily, he was attentive and noted this on his own. Phew!

The next serving day I was the steward, aka dishwasher. This started relatively uneventfully since at the beginning of service there are not very many dishes to wash. To entertain myself I reminded runners as they left the kitchen with soups, "Ears!!" or with salads, "Pepper!"

Then the instructor noted spots on the glasses. "The glasses are all dirty." Luckily, that is something the last steward should have noted. I washed some again and verified, yes the dishwasher was not working properly. The instructor then in the middle of service decided to disassemble the dishwasher looking for lodged lemon seeds or other debris that might be clogging the rinse and/or wash cycles. This set me back several loads. (The sprayer is already broken on the machine which meant I had a disgusting tub of dirty water in which to rinse dishes before loading them.)

I caught up and all ended fine. I'm looking forward to getting back to serving. This week I'm a lowly runner.