The Horror of Being a Restaurant Server on Valentine’s Day

On an ordinary working day, performing in a cafe can be pretty challenging: Shoppers can be demanding or even downright abusive. You really don’t have a strong salary or regular pay back. The several hours are extended and chaotic. 

All of that is multiplied on Valentine’s Working day. 

For several decades all through substantial college and university, I worked at the Melting Pot, a well-known fondue chain restaurant that appeared to specialize in passionate grand gestures. Reservations would fill up months in progress, and as early as mid-January, guests would start off to complain about … nicely, all the things. 

The prix-fixe menu with a specialty dessert? Far too costly or way too elaborate. The deposit that they had to pay out to make sure their desk? A cost-gouging move, even however that deposit would be used towards the price tag of their food. The minimal seating time? Inexcusable. And all hell could crack loose if they couldn’t get the evening meal time they wished. I remember usually wondering that the man or woman trying to make a reservation should not be in front of their cherished a person, because how can you reconcile a intimate meal with screaming at me, an anonymous hostess who answered the cellphone?

By the time the holiday getaway — or the holiday weekend, due to the fact all of these passionate foods couldn’t quite possibly be contained to one particular dinner shift — rolled all over, absolutely everyone was on guard. Valentine’s Working day at this cafe was an all-fingers-on-deck working day, which means that no one could phone out or request the day off, so the kitchen was packed with servers and there were 50 percent a dozen hostesses crammed powering the entrance desk.

On Valentine’s Day, we could simply see much more than 300 prospects, or about 150 tables. This for a restaurant with just 30 or so tables meant that every thing experienced to be choreographed beautifully. Some tables, meant for 8, were break up into two parts for two, so that we could seat as numerous individuals as probable, and when visitors were being always advised upfront if they would be seated at one particular of these tables, at times they acted as if they’d in no way heard that data before. I was screamed at in excess of this. I remember after one more younger hostess crying just after becoming shouted at. 

On just one Valentine’s Day, I’d come straight from college to the cafe, switching in the kitchen area bathroom in advance of hurrying up front to make absolutely sure all the things was in purchase. There were being by now a handful of tables seated just before this table arrived. In excess of the telephone, the man who made the reservation had been told to hope a break up table, but when he observed his seat, his confront turned as purple as any Valentine’s Working day card. 

I cannot bear in mind just about every phrase of what he said, but I do bear in mind the way his day seemed embarrassed as he shouted, literal spittle flying out of his mouth as he very first berated me, then my manager for offering him such an “unsatisfactory table.” His date saved striving to get him to let it go, but he swore that he’d never arrive back again, swore that he’d never been dealt with so terribly, swore that he’d publish a awful evaluate. Lastly, his date ended the conversation by sitting at the desk, insisting it was great — and last but not least, the tirade finished as he gave up and joined her at the table. 

The very last I noticed of them, he was staring at his menu, indignant, even though his day looked bored. “He’s now irritated,” I keep in mind warning the server who got the table. Afterwards, she said that he experienced tipped less than 10% — mainly because nothing’s additional passionate than having a seating difficulty out on the waiter who experienced no involvement in it. 

A different Valentine’s Day, I remember just one server currently being notably pressured out. She’d had a horrible desk, followed by a single that did not tip, and then at the very least an hour of juggling a number of groups at when. Two of them were prepared for dessert at the same time, so instead than make both group wait around, she loaded dessert options for equally tables onto her tray. 

In her hurry, however, the tray was off balance, and the instant she lifted it to her shoulder, the whole point — steel pots whole of h2o, dishes of chocolate discs and plates full of dippable treats — crashed to the floor, echoing all around the kitchen area. When other servers presented to aid her, she had by now experienced enough: Following an amazing stream of cursing and a speedy speak with management, she quit and stormed out. 

These tales are precise to a handful of times at 1 cafe, but I’m sure that 1000’s of other cafe staff members have comparable tales. Valentine’s Day in unique appears to be a working day in which absolutely everyone is at their breaking level, and a minor kindness toward personnel can go a very long way.  

My pals from the cafe — who have been also my substantial university classmates — all have their personal horror tales about doing work on Valentine’s Working day. We all don’t forget working 10- to-12-hour shifts, driving residence previous midnight, scheduling homework and examination assignments around the nuts time period. Other workers were being balancing relatives lifetime and 2nd employment. 

Even though we generally produced a first rate amount of money of income close to the holiday, we each individual stopped doing work at the cafe one particular by one, and when we communicate about it now, there is always an element of trading war stories. 

This Valentine’s Working day, restaurant staff members are in even far more dire straits: Labor shortages suggest that numerous establishments are understaffed. Personnel may possibly be youthful than even my buddies and I ended up as dining establishments promote to young teens. Coronavirus policies give entrance-of-home employees even far more to police, and make even additional options for conflict. A restaurant host in Louisiana documented becoming assaulted for implementing social distancing, even though a brawl at a New York Town cafe right after a host asked for evidence of vaccination manufactured headlines.  

In 2022, don’t forget that the particular person serving your romantic food is, perfectly, a particular person — another person who is lacking out on time with their beloved ones so you can rejoice. And maintain in brain that yelling at waitstaff is no way to impress a date.