NO, PLEASE! MAKE ME A -- Tonight's Episode -- WAITER AT RED LOBSTER

What's important to remember is that I love people.

And so I was bit disturbed to work at Red Lobster and discover...God doesn't feel the same way.

I had a handful of friends and everything, but you should always realize that there's a reason why you can get hired tomorrow at alot of jobs -- because they suck.

They say you can make 800 dollars a week at Red Lobster. After dealing with YAHOO and their at home business bullcrap, I can't be-LIEVE how HONEST my supervisors were when I would take home about 400.

Red Lobster is a hot bed of two very irritating things -- extreme lack of professionalism in the management, and extreme lack of manners in the customers. Bosses and costumers combine to destroy your life. Literally destroy it. It is not worth the time disappearing if it's being filled by that crap.

Alright class, let's begin with the first lump of crap at Red Lobster --

CUSTOMERS

One slovenly, trashy family after another thinking they're going to send your right on back to the kitchen to grab whatever, whenever they can get around to reminding themselves. You've been out to eat many times, right? Don't you normally make a point to TRY to include everything about your order IN YOUR EFFING ORDER?! Have you ever looked into these waiters eyes and thought -- I really would feel bad about making him haul ass? Well that's why you're not human trash that goes to Red Lobster.

They say the most uncalled for stuff. Grown gap-toothed hairy women yelled at me because their margarita isn't up yet and they want to see the manager. Well it's not even 11:30 in the morning, ma'am, wouldn't you like some bread to soak up that alcohol? Or the couples that come out, and Weezy Jefferson is just killing me over how salty the crab legs are. I got no control over the meat inside the shell and neither does anyone else. There's always some fancypants that comes in with a hundred old people and tells you he's deathly allergic to shellfish, complains that things are taking too long when he brought in thirteen people, insists on seeing the manager, and then turns to you and says "I know it wasn't your fault."

One little gangbanger guy shows up with his girlfriend and a huge, huge path over his black eye and you can see some of the rest of the punch he took underneath. He spends the whole time talking smack. You watch this and think you're watching Pulp Fiction or some kind of non-linear film where his ass kicking looked like it already happened but is actually coming if he doesn't stop dogging me.

Oh I did that alot for the first month I was there. Screwing up. Forgetting stuff. I would straight up forget to ring in people's orders, I'd do five tickets at once, punch them in the computer, end up doing four and think I did them all. 45 minutes later they're both staring at me with their ugly faces. Whoops.

it's like bitch -- They come in the restaurant when it's third seconds to close. You want to get the hell home, you've already been cut (the term for "after your last table you can go"), and these people are going to...oh alright! Here's three of their friends who showed up late! Yeah, hi-five! How's it going, dawwwwwwwg?!

AND now the second group -- the MANAGERS

The top manager I love. She's the one who let it slide when I was screwing up and I eventually got pretty decent. But she straight LEANED on people. She was manager of the year at her other store, tops in the district or whatever, and they paid her a ton more money to go to the crappiest restaurant in the whole city -- which was ours. With the extra incentives, she then went and figured it wouldn't be so much of headache if she -- for the next eight months -- fired, replaced, fired, replaced, fired, replaced. SURE ENOUGH...as if out of a handbook...we were #1 THE DISTRICT by the time I got tossed. People were all "I can't believe what's been going on here." Either in reference to how fast things were moving or how unlikely it was you'd get your favorite waiter again within two consecutive outings.

Well Stacy knew that if she simply kept people from leaving and told them instead to do free cleaning, and threatened to fire anyone who left or tried to leave, what are you gonna do? Oh man have you ever tried to dust the inside of a RED LOBSTER?! Half the sailor and boat decorations are wedged forward and she was telling us to dig down and deep in its' armpits. The light fixtures have YEARS of dust in them. Nobody nobody but NOBODY dusts those things because nobody thinks twice when dimmed lights appear dim! I don't care if it's damn near illegal, you and your friends are like those kids who squat in people's basement when they're away. We don't have lawyers. We couldn't even speak eloquently to a peer counselor. All over the world, bosses simply add on chores, threaten to fire, and what are you gonna do?

We were #1 off free labor, extortion, and untold human trauma, and alot of unfair casualties. And like American government, played before a very, very rough crowd.

There were four assistant managers. Two were cool, one ran the bar and the other ran the kitchen. But the two service managers -- hated me.

Now before we briefly discuss the service managers, let's take a second to discuss what the problem was. These nice people needed to know about how to do QED reports and spreadsheets and all that. They were expected to. And so they basically anointed one of the waiters to be an official supervisor so that he would do the spreadsheets and stuff for them. As an ex-general manager, this waiter did all their administrative work for them.

And thus thought he could tell us what to do.

This big bitch goes right to the assistant managers every time someone doesn't clear their tables the instant a customer leaves. You never know when they're going to leave, and you're usually running around. I didn't get into it with him though. I got into with it the supervisors for not telling him what to do too. They said that he knew what he was doing. One day I had to catch a huge tray that guy was trying to balance on one finger like a basketball. There was over 300 dollars worth of food on it.

One of the service managers, Julie, got mad that my friend Ryan played her out but that's what you get for being my boss. Country ass Julie.

Then the other one, this dude, walked around angry at me all day long. He heaved a tray at me once.He heard me call him a bastard. He hit me with a grade of 2 out of 5 on my evaluation.

But then something interesting happened.

That Christmas Eve I was supposed to work, I didn't want to, sick of walking to that god damn place, and then when I was there...those god damn customers FILED IN. Christmas Eve is the most crowded day at Red Lobster next to the 4th of July and New Years Eve. Worked every one. But on Christmas this guy was all snippy with me so when I went to make his stupid salad I didn't feel like going in the back and getting new lettuce. So I took the lettuce from the bottom of the bin and made their salad with it. They get a salad that is FILLED with water. I got sent home.The service manager, I was pretty sure, was going to fire me. Red Lobster fires you if you're complained about three times. But all those ugly Munster bastards who eat there ever do is complain. They're like the teachers -- they want to believe SO SO SO SO bad that they're in a classy environment when they couldn't be more far from it. When a Red Lobster customer gets 40 dollars, it's something that may never happen for a long long time. And they demand perfection.

Perfection.

They buy two Ultimate Feasts, then have three kids split one single kids meal.

And leave you 2.00.

What's important to note yet again is that Red Lobster has a very very very high turnover rate. Not because of guest complains, but because of STEALING. Half the bartenders stole when I was there. They would give out continuous refills that would never end up on the bill so everyone would get a bigger tip, some even stole from the register. And you would just be SURPRISED by some of the people who would get busted for this. People who were there for 5 years and balancing heavy trays on their fingertips while they did dance numbers around crowded rooms. Out.

Anyway me and the service manager ends up being really tight. But on January 11th I would be fired because of something that didn't happen. I was glad to be fired at that point. It was All-You-Could-Eat-Shrimp Night and the place was packed with the usual fat cheap-skate asses. We were doing nothing but running around to work harder and harder and faster for these freebie bastards, meanwhile the one family that ordered an Aztec Chicken meal or something couldn't keep me standing in front of them for less then ten seconds. They got mad because they were blind and couldn't see the New York Stock Exchange going on around them. And they swear that they heard another waiter tell me to avoid them because they weren't going to tip me any good. So the manager got rid of me.

But I got to live off unemployment for the next eight months.

Now search for gornerp's hubs on triond.com. It's worth it.

Otherwise here's an earlier tale...

http://hubpages.com/hub/NO-PLEASE-MAKE-ME-A-Tonights-Episode-TEACHER-ASSISTANT

http://hubpages.com/hub/NO-PLEASE-MAKE-ME-A-Tonights-Edition-WAITER-AT-RED-LOBSTER