A friend I met at Applebee’s was going for a hotel and restaurant degree and became the kitchen manager and then moved up and went to Bennigan’s eventually. He worked all the damn time.
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I mean I guess it’s to be expected, if you want to make a career out of hospitality you’re gonna be working when others are enjoying themselves and that includes holidays but if you are going to deal with being away from your family all the time at least get paid. As far as I know, no one in those chains other than the GMs (and above) make any real money. I know for a fact it’s that way for the Darden brands like Olive Garden.
Yeah he was living in a shitty apartment barely making enough money to pay for his kid who he never had time to spend with. Last I saw him I was in summer school business law class and he had gone back for a different degree.
I love food and cooking but the restaurant life is not for me.
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I’ve waited tables at Outback and TGIF and having food sent back was very rare, and it was pretty much always because there was something legit wrong with the food. And you’d usually have to proactively try to get the customer to send the food back – notice that they’re not eating and specifically ask them if they’re not enjoying their meal. I preferred having them actually let me know right away their medium rare steak came medium well rather than stew about it. Haven’t waited tables in over a decade so maybe it’s changed but I doubt it.
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I interviewed with Waffle House for a district manager job right after getting out of school probably in late 2008. I had a baby on the way and had worked in multiple restaurants so I figured what the hell. The pay they advertised was like 70k to start and you started supervising like 3 restaurants. Turns out how they work is that each manager at a Waffle House works 6 days on and then 2 days off. The district manager basically rotates through your 3 restaurants and works those 2 days at each one for your 6 days. I passed, just based on the 6 days on and 2 off and I think I was hoping I could manage at a district level and not a store level but obviously that was a bit different.
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True story about Waffle House: when I was tending bar in PCB in the mid 90s my girlfriend was in school for elementary education and waited tables there. She made absolutely sick money. She graduated and got a job teaching locally first grade and kept the WH job because she made more doing that than teaching lol. Also they paid her in cash, back then everyone was paid in cash and they also did not accept anything but cash until fairly recently.
My first job was a dishwasher/busboy at Shoney’s. Didn’t like it much, especially the late night buffets on Saturdays. But I think having that type of experience makes me a little more grounded than some people I know who have only done white collar stuff.
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Yea my first job was busboy at O Charleys, it’s a good experience to have if only to introduce you to a more diverse group of people, speaking for myself at least.
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Waffle House shutting down was how we knew shit was real during Katrina.
It was a staple of my younger years. Bottomless coffee and a good book put them at the top of my list for midnight hours.
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Yeah if people had a problem with their meals I always had to prod them to send the food back, eventually I would just flat out tell people their options like “i can run back to the kitchen with your tacos and have them make you a new one as fast as possible, or i’ll grab a menu for something different and send a manager over and he will fix everything, or you can just finish eating your cold tacos because you’re hungry and i’ll find a nice manager to give you a free dessert” and they usually got the point. Whenever people would say “oh you don’t have to do that” I would tell them like no I really do have to do that its my job to send your food back and try and fix things in this way if you’re not happy just play along.
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and if you want a good steak, order a ribeye
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#allsteaksmatter IMO. I love skirt, flank, flatiron, sirloin, bavette, NY aka KC strip, ribeye, even filet mignon but that’s probably my least favorite.
I do. I don’t even like KC Strip. Boring. But I will defend its name to the death.
I remember the worst table I ever had pretty well
- birthday party for teenage girl despite me working at a restaurant for adults
- almost 20 people, max is suppose to be 14, table was 4 tables combined together
- didnt sit down for a long time, stood around blocking the restaurant
- arrived in multiple waves, took like 6 separate 1st drink orders
- some people specifically ordered ice water which is a massive pain
- people who got ice water then were mad everyone didnt get one and they asked me to bring a bunch of glasses of ice??? and nobody used them
- we don’t have coke/pepsi and some people at the table really wanted to complain about that
- someone at the table ordered food one of our competitors makes as a joke
- someone tried to order their steak not bloody, almost explained to them how its not blood and gave up quickly
- multiple people ordered drinks we don’t make without looking at the menu
so my entire section went down in flames as i’m stuck dealing with these people and i finally get their order in and its $500 and i think alright at least I’m going to $100 out of this and right then my manager walks up to the computer terminal and says the mom complained and wants another server and I have to transfer the table so I didn’t get paid and karen basically owned my soul.
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I love dining out. It’s the easiest way I can hand money directly to immigrants. When the cages shit happened I started dining out almost every day at those places. LOL at eating at some private equity owned franchise bullshit.
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There’s a legit Mexican place here in a predominantly Mexican part of town. It’s old, filthy, tiny, and a little bit scary. The food is simply great (and cheap). It tastes like 1970. Yes, they have the legit stuff like cabeza and lengua. Yes, I’m a chickenshit gringo and order the asada or al pastor. We used to have a social night in the building and some Tommy Bahama-wearing redneck asked for Mexican recommendations once. After I finished breaking down all of the real Mexican places around town for him, he asked which one had the best tortilla chips and fajitas. That’s why this country sucks.
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Lol do you know the RL context of this?
This is gold. I can’t believe I’ve never seen this. I can’t stop watching.
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