Drinks

I approach table 33 with the beverages for the party of six that anxiously awaits my return. It is customary to call out items as you serve them to guests at our restaurant. I start with the ladies, "Iced tea.....pink lemonade....and water no ice for grandma!". Now I hand out drinks to the neanderthal brothers and their father, "Coke....coke......and diet coke." As I get ready to tell the table about our exciting specials for the evening I hear a vacuum sucking noise from one of the neanderthal brothers as he inhales his coke. "I need another coke!", shouts the Cretan.

As I stand at the table dumbfounded like a deer staring into headlights of an oncoming truck, I think about what the kid shouted out. My first thought is to ignore this little monster and do my nightly specials schpiel. As I start talking about the fish of the night this little prick starts jiggling the ice in his Coke-free glass, "Ummmmm, my drink!" the kid says again. I look at the parents to see if they are aware of the code red this little shit is creating. The dad is goo-gooing the youngest girl and Mom is sitting there like "What about the specials????". I walk away in mid sentence to get the monster a replacement coke. As I come back with a replacement drink for both boys (oh yeah, a server has a preternatural feeling when a table will do the "domino effect" with re-fills on the free refills) I could swear the family didn't even notice I was gone. Like some funny episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Grandma is staring at the wall, dad is making embarrassing baby noises to sis, Mom is waiting to hear the specials (I swear she didn't blink---like she was in a catatonic state) and the neanderthal brothers are trying to set a new world record for most Coca Cola refills in a single sitting.

After I served this delightful family their meals I took a scouts eye view of my station. Table 44 was a couple on a first date. Say good bye to my table all night long if their night is going as well as they imagined it would when they met on the Internet in the singles section. My lone booth had two couples in their 50's or early 60's. I approached the table and offered the one lady another Sour Apple Martini (her third). She looks up at me very buzzed and kind of nods "Uh huh." I ask the other lady if she'd like another zinfandel, as she literally has one sip left in her glass. "No, I'm fine." she responds.

As I await my turn at the Micros (computer station to enter the orders) I watch the one lady gulp the last sip of her wine. You don't need to be a psychic to figure out what is going to happen when I go back to the table. I hand the lady the Sour Apple Martini and miraculously the lady with the empty zinfandel glass says, "You are going to kill me, but I need another drink!". Oh well. I won't kill you because you are buying our house zinfandel at $9.75 a glass, so I pull up the table in the micros and order the zinfandel and hit SEND.

Now this is the part that most folks think a glass of zinfandel magically appears by the time I walk around the restaurant and get to the bar. It doesn't. On a good night (or moment) my drink will be just about ready soon after I arrive. On a bad night (or moment), it can take 10-15 minutes to get my drink. "But it's just a glass of wine!", the customers will whine (ha ha ha). It doesn't matter----the bartender makes tickets in the order they were received. If that restaurant serves "foo-foo" drinks (frozen pina coladas, virgin strawberries...) it can take an awfully long time to get that glass of wine. Oh, and a bottle of wine? After the guest finally selects the bottle I have to get onto the Micros system and find the bottle (funniest abbreviations that make NO SENSE). I order the bottle and a ticket or chit prints out at the printer. Now I have to find a manager that has a free moment. Not an easy task in the middle of a rush. After I finally flag down a manager he will open the wine vault and give me my bottle. If it is a reserve I have to find special reserve glasses, and to find clean special reserve glasses on a nightly rush is unlikely. And let's be honest, it's embarrassing to serve a $150 dollar bottle of wine in a glass that has water stains or LIPSTICK on it!

Finally, I go back to the table and the two gentleman apparently stopped being engaged in their conversation and devoured their drinks. Another Beefeater on the rocks with three blue cheese stuffed olives and another Johnnie Walker Black neat. I walk towards the Micros station again and ignore the little shit at my other table shaking his pop-free glass like he is having a seizure or a fit. "SIR, MORE COKE!!!!", he rudely shouts across the restaurant. I see a free Micros station on the other side of the restaurant and it is like the old Hertz car rental commercials with OJ Simpson (before he did the double homicide thing). Duck. Turn. Stop to let the food runner go by with a towering platter of food. DAMN! Some other server didn't stop for the food runner, practically knocked him over and jumped in line right in front of you at the Micros station. It is a dog eat dog world to say the least!

I get the two neanderthals another Coke and their father another Diet Coke. Mom and the other girls are doing fine. It has been almost 5 minutes, so I waltz by the bar again. Apparently the printer ran out of paper, so the bartender never got my drink order, or the orders of four or five of my fellow servers, by the sight of it. "What did you order?", the bartender looks up with those thick rimmed glasses. All five servers shout out their orders simultaneously. All in a days work! I laugh. Normally I'd be freaking out having anxiety attack me right there on the dance floor. I laugh again. Is Alan Funt here somewhere filming this shit?

Drinks. On one hand you have to love them because they can REALLY push a check average up, but on the other hand they can be a logistical nightmare. Oh, and I'll have another coke!