The menu is your friend

I want people to read the menu. It's not hard to read the menu and that is exactly what the menu is for. It is not decoration, souvenir, sketch pad, nor phonebook. It is this crazy mystical book that we give you that has all the food that you can have simply by asking. Try it.

This lady comes into booth 205 and she was real nice. The man she was with was nice too if you could just ignore that huge scab he had all over his face. Seriously, all around his lips and chin area. I couldn't tell if it was from a beating or if it was a band of herpes simplex gone rogue. But enough of him. The lady ordered a Monte Cristo. In case you've never heard of a Monte Cristo, just know that it is a perfectly delicious piece of health food. After it was in front of her for about five minutes, she wiggled her finger for me to come over. She did not like her Monte Cristo. "I just find it odd that you put turkey, ham and swiss cheese together on french toast, sprinkle it with powdered sugar and then serve it with syrup and jam." Is she for real? "That's what a Monet Cristo is," say I. And then she says "I don't think so...bring me a menu." At this point it is my gleeful and sheer pleasure to get the menu so I can stand right in front of her as she reads the description of the Monte Cristo (a perfectly delicious piece of health food). I do. She does. She shuts up. I don't offer her something else, because she ordered it, it came out as described, get over it. She asks for it to be wrapped. Read the menu next time, lady.

Of course "reading" the menu is only effective if you can in fact read. I recall a lovely young man once who ordered the New York stripe steak. I asked him how he wanted his stripe steak cooked. "Well done, " he said.

I do NOT speak French

Somehow my restaurant got listed in a French guidebook about New York City. Do you know happy it makes me to know that there are scores of rude Parisians who are crawling through New York City with the address to where I work? I can spot them as soon as they walk in. It's usually a family. The son is usually kind geeky and maybe gonna be hot some day. The mother is usually a bitch. They always want a "coca-cola" and bottled water and have lots and lots of questions about the menu. And then they always order a freaking hamburger. They never order the french toast. Ever. Fucking French. One lady asked me if we had hot dogs today. Listen, Frenchie, if it ain't on the menu we ain't got it. Got it? I wish I could get my hands on le douchebag who put us in that guide book because apparently he forgot to tell his readers that in America we tip. WE TIP. Today at one point I only had four tables. Three of them were French. There goes my tip average because they think 5% is generous. They need to take their beret wearing, baguette eating, cigarette smoking asses to some other dining hole. Au revoir, old French whore.

Sexy Cougar Lady

We all know what a "cougar" is. The sexy older women who chases after the younger stud man and calls him her "cub". I don't get it, but whatever. This lady comes into the restaurant every Wednesday. Late fifties about. Wears her long peroxided hair down and her pencil skirt in about a size 10 while she is actually a size 14. She sits on a stool and puts her right elbow on the bar, rests her chin on the top of her right wrist while tilting her head a bit to the left and smiling with her right lip higher than the left. Can you picture it? Re-read that last sentence and act it out. Got it? She says' "Hello there. The usual please." I get her Bombay Saphire martini, very dry, slice of lemon, Tabassco sauce and a glass of water with a lot of ice.

One day she tells me the entire plotline of a Lifetime Original Movie. The song that was playing at the restaurant was that groovy Hawaiian version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and it reminded her of the movie because it took place in Hawaii. She tells me, while still in that original position as described above, "Well, it's about an older woman who meets a younger man..." She paused a second, tilted her head down and then raised her eyes back up to look at me without moving her head. Do that now, act it out so you van really picture her. She says, "I guess you could call her a cougar" and then tilts her head back and smiles as she brushes her right hand through her hair.

Bitch thinks she's a cougar.

She ain't.

Happy Birthday, Losers

We don't care that it is your birthday. Why would a waiter give a cheeseburger's ass crack that it's your birthday? But everyday someone comes in with a big shit-eating grin on their face looking like they got some big news to pop out and all it is is "It's my birthday. Do I get anything for that?" Yeah, you get my heartfelt fucking congratulations, asswipe. I would like to see someone go into Macy's and expect a free blouse or sweater set just because they were born. Hey, douchebag, everyone is born, it ain't no big whoop. I worked at one corporate owned restaurant that made a real big deal about it. Let's just call it Bendagain's. Sorta like the Bennigan's that used to be in Houston, Texas on Highway 59 and Shepherd. Man, when someone told us it was their birthday we had to make it a party. And we never asked for identification so you know most of them were making it up. As soon as they told us, we had to drop what we were doing and run to the freezer to get that birthday cake out. You just looked for the one that was the least frost bitten and least funky shaped. Then you had to ask all of your co-workers to come out and sing to the table when nobody has time to do it. And nobody gives flying flaming fajita. But we do it. Because this is how Birthday Boy wants to remember this momentous occasion: a bunch of angry, resentful strangers singing a horribly written and poorly performed Birthday song as he struggles to slice into a rock hard frozen cake that has about a year's worth of ice on it. Yeah, that is special. Happy fucking birthday.

LOST: teeth

Brunch was busy and full of the usual suspects of women and men who had way too many children. Just way too many. I seriously want to chip in and buy some of them a box of condoms. One table in particular had about four or five kids at it. They all wanted to order things we don't have and they complained too much. When they finally rolled out, we realized they had left a retainer on the table. I am not talking like "a partial fee paid in advance for professional services" kind of retainer (thanks, investorwords.com), I am talking about those ugly ass contraptions that go into a mouth to keep you from getting buck teeth and shit. That kind of retainer is what was on the table. Uh huh. Gross. I know. One of the bus boys brought it to me and I was like "I don't want that shit, throw it away!" Apparently though orthodontics are not cheap so it was determined that it would be saved for when they came back in to find it. I put it into a to-go container. Moments later the Grandma drags her bag of bones in yelping about it. I told her that yes, we had it and I went to get it for her. I handed her the box and she says "I better make sure its the right retainer." I looked at her in the one eye that was not clouded over with a cataract convention and said, "I assure you it is the only retainer that was left on table 101 all day long. It is yours." She still looked.

Reminds me of a time a few years ago that this man came back into the restaurant I was working at and asked me if I had found his gold teef. "Teef?" I asked. "Yeah, I took out my gold teefs and left them on the table and now they's gone." Apparently, some people wear removable gold teeth and leave them wrapped up in a napkin and then get really upset when said napkin with said gold teeth gets thrown away. He was not happy. Said he was gonna sue. Easy for him to say.