After a lovely weekend at home - complete with Yard Work and Easter Dinner at the neighbors' - the start of the work week (our Tuesday is your Monday) brings some left over issues from the previous week to deal with, and of course the new issues that haven't made themselves apparent but are sure to arise. For instance, I forgot yesterday to order beer from G&G - they deliver on Tuesday. I had them on my to-do list...lot of good that did! G&G carries Yuengling and Coors, and, what I am in need of, DogFish Head. For some people, DogFish is a "local" brewery, and it is a very popular beer. We could run out. Not a life or death issue involving Pirates or anything, but...
This past Saturday night we were very busy. Very Busy. Everyone - front and back - was working hard to see to it that our customers were having a good time. We had a full staff - luckily - including Matt-the-new-guy on the salads. I had four servers on - one "running trays" (meaning ferrying out and often serving all of the plates of food) and three on the floor. We had a large party of 18 that Joy and Ashley were waiting on. Things started getting pretty hectic around 6:30; that is when I seemed to start spending most of my time putting out fires. Unfortunately, a few meals were a little slow to come out of the kitchen, and there were the inevitable mistakes in the ordering process that sends one correct meal out but not the other. I bought a dessert here, a glass of wine there, but it doesn't really make up for the poor experience when a couple dining out on a Saturday night can't eat their meal together. One customer I served received the same meal for her second (main) course that she had already received (and eaten) as her first. She was a little confused - both because the first course that came out was what she'd ordered for her main, and then because the same dish was served to her again!! Lucky for us, the missing course was soup, easy to replace, and also that the customer suffering through this confusion was a personal friend... But still, mistakes like this do not make for a smooth dining experience and can often be costly, both in the loss of product and potentially the loss of a customer, if they are terribly upset about our poor service. Plus a mistaken order - say a customer orders one thing but receives another - has to be corrected right away, regardless of what is going on on the line at that time. If Mr. Man got the Carolina Crepe when he ordered the Flounder, it is going to not only mess up his meal (and perhaps entire evening), but it puts a stop on anything the kitchen is trying to put out because they have to correct Mr. Man's meal first. And if it is going to take 10 or 15 minutes to get out the corrected meal, Mrs. Man is going to either eat alone, or send her plate back to be kept warm, which is not necessarily a positive thing for that meal either. All in all, mistakes are not good and everyone tries very hard not to make them. There are plenty of tricks to prevent things like this from happening, and a good server employs them on any given night, whether they need to or not.
All of this being said, it is not a matter of life or death. Obviously there can be life or death issues in a restaurant situation - food allergies being the most common arena for concern - but for the most part, we are just trying to insure that our guests have a good time in our place of business, that they get what they are paying for, and that they will want to return. A hectic Saturday night, even with a full, professional crew, can involve some human error, some miscommunication, some confusion that can result in a failed experience on both sides of the table. The lessons we learn from these mistakes and the methods we employ to correct them are what make a difference to our guests and to our staff.
This past Saturday night we were very busy. Very Busy. Everyone - front and back - was working hard to see to it that our customers were having a good time. We had a full staff - luckily - including Matt-the-new-guy on the salads. I had four servers on - one "running trays" (meaning ferrying out and often serving all of the plates of food) and three on the floor. We had a large party of 18 that Joy and Ashley were waiting on. Things started getting pretty hectic around 6:30; that is when I seemed to start spending most of my time putting out fires. Unfortunately, a few meals were a little slow to come out of the kitchen, and there were the inevitable mistakes in the ordering process that sends one correct meal out but not the other. I bought a dessert here, a glass of wine there, but it doesn't really make up for the poor experience when a couple dining out on a Saturday night can't eat their meal together. One customer I served received the same meal for her second (main) course that she had already received (and eaten) as her first. She was a little confused - both because the first course that came out was what she'd ordered for her main, and then because the same dish was served to her again!! Lucky for us, the missing course was soup, easy to replace, and also that the customer suffering through this confusion was a personal friend... But still, mistakes like this do not make for a smooth dining experience and can often be costly, both in the loss of product and potentially the loss of a customer, if they are terribly upset about our poor service. Plus a mistaken order - say a customer orders one thing but receives another - has to be corrected right away, regardless of what is going on on the line at that time. If Mr. Man got the Carolina Crepe when he ordered the Flounder, it is going to not only mess up his meal (and perhaps entire evening), but it puts a stop on anything the kitchen is trying to put out because they have to correct Mr. Man's meal first. And if it is going to take 10 or 15 minutes to get out the corrected meal, Mrs. Man is going to either eat alone, or send her plate back to be kept warm, which is not necessarily a positive thing for that meal either. All in all, mistakes are not good and everyone tries very hard not to make them. There are plenty of tricks to prevent things like this from happening, and a good server employs them on any given night, whether they need to or not.
All of this being said, it is not a matter of life or death. Obviously there can be life or death issues in a restaurant situation - food allergies being the most common arena for concern - but for the most part, we are just trying to insure that our guests have a good time in our place of business, that they get what they are paying for, and that they will want to return. A hectic Saturday night, even with a full, professional crew, can involve some human error, some miscommunication, some confusion that can result in a failed experience on both sides of the table. The lessons we learn from these mistakes and the methods we employ to correct them are what make a difference to our guests and to our staff.
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