I just need to let off steam, you guys don't have to read it all or respond, but thanks a million to those who do cause it's a novel.
Work was going pretty well until about 20 minutes before close (9:40 pm), some people walk in and ask if they can eat. There's 17 of them so my coworker tells me to deny them entry because there's no way the chefs can cook 17 meals plus meals for our other walk-ins in 20 minutes. However, my manager decides that it's technically not closing time so we have to let them in. She makes us seat them, knowing that we don't want to, that everybody's going to have to stay way past close to serve them, and then she doesn't even help us, she goes in the back room to eat her dinner.
Things are going ok but I notice some of them seem a bit anxious after a while..one girl got uppity at me and said "Can we order after this???" - no, you're in a restaurant, but I'm not going to let you order after you get drinks
. Come to find out, they live in dorms and they have to be back by 11:00, which means everyone has to be done and paid for by 10:30. It's taken a while to get everything set up for them to sit down - I'd say maybe 10 or 15 minutes...so let's say it's about 9:50 when they all get seated. Another 5 minutes to take drink orders and hand them all out - 9:55.
I get their orders and submit them and suddenly everybody wants their checks and they want their meals to go. Our computer only holds 10 tickets so I had to distribute the first 10, cash them out, and then submit the other seven, manually. Separating 9 tickets, handing out half of them, and then cashing those 10, separating and handing out the last 8 tickets takes some time.
Apparently, not enough. All 17 girls get up and rush to the front at least 3 times. I have to keep telling them that they NEED to go back and sit down, so that I know who's getting the correct tickets. Do they listen? NOOO! Meanwhile, their food is coming out and my coworker is in the process of boxing them. So now things are a mess and I'd say at least 20 minutes have gone by. So now let's say it's about 10:20.
Food is still coming out. all these girls have repeatedly come up to the front instead of keeping their asses down, and now they're bitching to me that they really need to leave right now. They call their dorm guard and blame their being late on me. I'm in the process of separating and printing the last few checks and my coworker has started handing out the to-go bags. Everyone is standing behind me and I make them follow me back to their table, where I lay out the tickets in order. It's about 10:30 now.
This is when I've found out that half of the people who still hadn't paid just walked out on their bills. By the time the last few leave it's about 10:45 and all their bills are in a pile, I have no idea who paid and who didn't.
And then to top it off, I tell the manager, and she doesn't blame me, but I think she may have tried to insinuate that it was my fault cause she said "Those kids are regulars here" in response to what I told her.
So then I had to sort the remaining tickets into piles, which lasted til 11:00. And I left at 11:30.
WTF!? How the hell can people be so damned STUPID!? How can ANYONE expect to come in with 17 people, order 17 meals, and expect all 17 to be in and out in 1 hour, especially 20 minutes before close when the restaurant is in the process of putting things away? And then they have the nerve to blame ME??? Especially when we initially TOLD them are cooks can't get all that food out on time. And I don't even wanna get into the way I feel about management, right now.
I was so raging mad...I swear, the anxiety completely left me and if one of those girls had gotten to close to me, I would've decked her.
And now I feel better, although I'm seriously considering going out and taking a jog around campus in the middle of the night because now that anger has subsided, anxiety has taken over and I need to release it. Even when I know I didn't do anything wrong, I can't help but wonder deep down if maybe everything that happened is because I'm incompetent and I worry that my coworker thinks less of me and will gossip. I can't win...
Holy f-ckballs, I am so pissed! #$%!$%#!$#!@!!!
