So, not to make this blog all about the trials and tribulations of a chain-restaurant worker, BUT . . .
We have this new server, we’ll call him Matt (because that’s his name), and I hate him.
I save the venom most of the time, and hating isn’t really my thing. Ask my friends, they’ll tell you I put up with a lot of bullshit. A lot of bullshit (I give it too. Another story). But I do not like Matt one bit. Matt has been around the chain for awhile: he has three little stars on his apron (figured out where I work yet?) and he has recently moved from whatever the hell location he used to work before he came to ours.
Our particular link in the chain opened last February. We are a new store. And as a new store, the corporate folks sent a crack team of red-apron servers, cooks, cashiers and hostesses to set up the new store and train all us brand-spanking new to the company employees in the ways of the restaurant. For two weeks before we opened, we spent five hours a night studying the corporate handbook, learning our table numbers (there are a lot of tables), practicing on the Micro ordering machines, and role-playing our new positions. It was a mini server boot camp. Very exciting. After we opened, they stayed on for another three weeks to continue training us, helping us out with tables, keeping after us about pre-bussing and tray running, etc. Then, when they felt we were ready to operate the joint on our own, they dispersed back to their own stores and left us to our own.
Most of the people who trained with me are gone now. Quit, fired, walked out on a shift – gone – but those of us who are left have been tasked with training new employees in the ways of the server as passed down to us by the Red-Aprons. Subsequently, the most any of us has on our little aprons is two stars. There are one or two exceptions, employees who have come over from another location because we are closer to their home or whatever, but for the most part, two stars is it.
Matt is one of those exceptions. And because Matt is an entire star ahead of the rest of us, and despite the fact that last night was only his third working with us, Matt has taken it upon himself to tell us how much we suck.
I do not like Matt.
Perhaps I mentioned this.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think when a person’s a stranger, they should act a little strange. In other words, you’re new around here, Matt, so back it the hell up.
But does Matt heed Mother Brice’s advice? No. At every turn for the past three nights, starting with the very first hour of his employment with us, Matt has consistently pointed out all the things that we do wrong. And by wrong, I mean different from how “we did things at our store.” And by different, I mean who the hell cares?
According to Matt, we do not ring our orders in correctly. According to Matt, our side-work chart is inefficient. According to Matt, we do not greet our guests properly. According to Matt, our kitchen is set up backwards. According to Matt, we are all a bunch of incompetents who are damned lucky he showed up to save us from tarnishing the corporate name and running the place into the ground.
I do not know how we managed to stay open for the six months before Matt arrived, but hallelujah, he is here to rescue us now!
And it isn’t just that he insists on pointing out our “faults” that makes me loathe Matt so. No, it’s that he also insists on telling us how much better his other store was. To hear Matt tell it, his store was some sort of freaking Shangri-la and ours is the seventh level of hell. Which leads me to this question:
Why did Matt leave Paradise for the Trailer Park?
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