Can I just take a minute and thank all of the amazing, thoughtful and efficient waiters and waitresses out there? It's not easy serving people, especially when it comes to food, and you are the BEST. Thank You for taking such good care of me and my messy family!! If I could, I'd tip you 100%. :)
Now, to the rest of the idiots working in restaurants out there - you know the ones, the waiters and waitresses that don't really want to be there, but are too damn lazy to find another job (or one that starts after 1pm!). The college drop outs that just don't want to do any work and enjoy snorting or smoking something out behind the dumpster before work, during a break, after putting in your order, after work, really whenever they get bored because they don't take their Ritalin. The dumb chicks with an IQ roughly the same as their shoe size. I'm not exaggerating either.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that if there are young kids at the table, you should probably wake the feck up and pay attention to your surroundings! Stuff you do with a table full of teenagers or grown ups cannot be done to a table with small kids. And you don't have to be a parent to know these few simple things. I call it the "How to Ensure a Great Tip" list:
1. If you put a 32oz glass full of ice and freezing cold carbonated liquid in front of a 2 year old, that glass and all of its contents will be on the floor, an adult and the now screaming 2 year old before you are done handing out straws. Give the kids their kiddie cups FIRST and then place the grown up drinks AWAY from the little ones.
2. Kids can only play with a piece of paper and 2 crayons for about 5, 10 minutes tops, depending on their age. Bring the kids more crayons and a basket of chips or breadsticks. This will give you another 5ish minutes. This is plenty of time to get orders filled and entered, I have seen it done countless times. And don't ask if they want more chips or something else to drink, JUST.KEEP.BRINGING.IT!
3. If one of the Parent's starts ordering by saying "Can we get the kids food as soon as it's ready, before our food comes?" then LISTEN to the word BEFORE. Not WITH their food, not AFTER their food, BEFORE. And not 30 seconds before. Like a good 5 minutes, so that Mom can cut everything up and swap out the pickles and add 90lbs of ketchup so that she can actually eat a hot fecking meal for a change.
4. Before you actually head out to the table with the kids food, stop and check it. If the plate is hot, then the food is hot. Have you ever seen a 2 year old pick up a steaming hot piece of pizza and start munching away? No! You've probably never seen a grown man do it either, because your mouth doesn't like scalding hot food. And my ears don't like the sound of a toddler screaming at the top of his lungs because he burned off all of his taste buds. And it defeats the purpose of bringing the kids food early, since Mom will spend all 5 minutes getting dizzy blowing air all over the plates and trying to use ice cubes to cool it off without making a watery cheeseburger. Hot food = Screaming Kids, No Tip. Warm food = Happy Kids, Good Tip. P.S. The Chef (my brother) told me the fancy places put the kids food on a pre-chilled plate. Now THAT is a smart idea! :)
5. Bring extra napkins. Extra paper towels. Extra linen. Extra hand-wipes. Don't wait around, don't ask, just bring them when you deliver the drinks and bring more about 5 minutes after we start eating. It'll be easier to clean up the napkins than to clean what was done on, around and under the table, trust me.
6. If you don't like kids, don't want kids, can't stand kids... SWITCH TABLES with another waiter for feck's sake! Don't act all depressed and rude and obnoxious because we chose not to ruin our dining room floor that night and now you have to carry food to our table. I didn't ask you to sit down and feed me my soup, so grow the hell up. Either suck it up and be nice or swap tables with someone who doesn't mind side-stepping the half-chewed cheese scattered around the high chair.
So there you have it. These are the top 6 things that are important to us, anyway. If you have more to add to this list, feel free to comment below!
Adios, people.
