9 Restaurant Realities

1. Not all customer are assholes
Contrary to popular belief, most people are not cruel assholes. Honestly, the people I come across everyday for the most part, are nice people. Even if you’re having a bad day, a nice customer will give you a compliment to brighten your day. But there are those select few who are just mean and impatient people who don’t give an ounce of a fuck about your feelings. You could be smiling at them and they give you an intense bitch face for absolutely no reason.
2. Your memory can make or break the efficiency of your job
So the ability to remember an order is something that took me a very long time to learn because my STM (short-term memory) was horrible when I started my job over a year ago. Then factor in the need for people to modify the shit out of an item that you already vaguely remember being a certain way. It’s terrible and can be an extremely stressful part of your job. But from my experience, the more you do it with trial and error, the less errors you make and people will be astonished by how well you remembered their order, no matter how complicated. When I see my colleagues who aren’t fully trained try to avoid being at a certain station that requires more focus and multitasking then others, I’m like, “bruh, how the fuck are you going to learn, if you dodge it all the time.” SMH I love them, but goddamn can ya’ll at least try!?
3. Fast service during lunch? Psh!!
Fast service is typically the M.O for a lot of restaurants. But people should honestly have the common sense to know that a lunch based restaurant that is very popular, will not be fast at all from 11-2 because of the continuous long line. If I were on my lunch break and walked into a restaurant and saw there was a long line, I would walk right the fuck out because screw that crap. Or if you want to eat there for lunch, have the shit delivered or arrange for it to be picked up at a certain time. The majority of people who are hungry and have little time to eat, do not have time to deal with a goddamn line.
4. Children should not be given free range
“If you were my kids (insert punishment here)”, is normally my reaction when I see kids acting up, grabbing shit, climbing on counters or running around. I cringe when I see parents leave their offspring unattended in public. I get that kids don’t have a full grasp of how to act in public, but if your kids are bad as fuck, at least fucking try to control them or leave them at home. If your children grab a whole bunch of sweets and your bill is like $45, don’t look at me crazy like I did something wrong. Bitch you’re the one who let them pick up whatever the fuck they wanted.
5. Catering during lunch is a fucking nightmare
OK, so you have a $1,000 worth of catering to do along with the line of people in your face, along with the tons of pick up orders that are pouring in by the minute. FML. Unfortunately, dealing with the lunch rush and the fuckshit amount of catering simultaneously is inevitable. It’s extremely annoying and you will hate every moment of it. But on the plus side, typically the day goes faster when it’s busy, but the stress level will not lower until it’s over. When you walk into work and see everyone running around and chaos everywhere, you just know your day is not going to be pleasant.
6. You seriously grow to not like people a little bit
I heard the idea that “restaurants make you hate people” a lot from friends who have worked in them, but I never really took it to heart. Now after being there for over a year, oh dear god. Dealing with people all the time can get annoying after a while. From their constant neediness to their over complicated demands can make the most friendly person a little crazy. Especially, if it’s nonstop for 3 hours.
7. On hands training is more efficient than listening to you talk
Kinesthetic learners (KL), those who learn by physically carrying out activities, absolutely hate listening to their CT yak on for 30 minutes about the technicalities of your job. It’s like, ugh GTFO with that book and just let me do it. When I had to go through training and saw my CT pull out that book and talk, I would just tune it out. I understand the need for it, but we KL find it absolutely dreadful. But I think for anybody, hands on training is efficient because it’s repetitive and the shit eventually becomes second nature.
8. Multitasking is inevitable
You know that unfortunate time of the day when a few people have to go on deliveries and it’s only like 3 people to hold down 3 stations that normal requires 2 or 3 people each. Its sucks not having any help during the time of day when you most need it, but this is where knowing how to multitask is going to have to kick in, if you don’t want pissed off customers. And if you don’t know how to multitask—->>
9. Your coworkers are great. Most of the time
You’re with these people every day, so you naturally grow some sort of bond with them. They cheer you up when you’re having a shitty day, you can bum a ride if need be, they might be nice enough to cover your shift, you can borrow money from them and things of that nature. Sometimes friendships are formed and other times it’s strictly professional, but regardless you’re a team. But not all coworkers are awesome, we all have those lazy fucks who sweet talk their boss into letting them go home early or do something that requires less work or they’re just talking and walking around not doing shit. It’s like “how the fuck do you still work here dude?” As someone who’s had coworkers like that, it infuriates me. Like, why the fuck do I feel like I do more work then I need to when I work with certain people? Why the hell am I sweating bullets getting stuff done, and you’re over here chilling on your phone looking at Vines and shit?! Then when corporate bosses come in, your ass wanna play like you’re a hard worker.

Although working in a restaurant is not ideal and can be extremely shitty, I truly believe that the experience teaches you a lot about yourself, those around you and that the service industry is a lot more than what it seems.