1/1/10

Come, my children, and I shall tell
A horrible tale of restaurant hell.

The week after Christmas,
They came to this board.
The raging, ravening
Hungering hoard.
The waitress she smiled,
Though it seemed rather strained,
And did her level best
To keep the hoard contained.
They pushed and they pulled
And they wore her down,
But that cheerful young woman
Just wouldn't frown.
She was thinking of money,
great loads of cash;
And even the smaller tips
Were added to the stash.

Hello Blogland! As you can probably guess, I've been pretty busy these last two weeks. The week before Christmas is always busy in any kind of business, and Pizza Hut was no exception. In the past week and a half alone I have made almost $600 in tips. The week after Christmas was even busier than the week before, and I was regularly making over $80 a day in tips. Granted, I was working hard to make that money.
Very Hard.
By myself.
Well, not entirely by myself, but I was the only waitress. There was a very kind woman on Wednesday who told me that she thought Matt and I (the only two up front) were doing an excellent job keeping business at bay. She said that for the amount of people coming in and out of our store, we were doing amazing work.
The bonus to that customer density is that I get a lot of "pity tips" from people who see me working the entire dining room plus half of the front counter by myself. They feel bad that I'm alone and (usually) think I'm doing a bang-up job of handling everything so I get a bit of an extra tip. And while I don't care much for the pity part, I'll take any extra money that my customers are willing to dish out to me.
The flip side is that by the end of a six-hour shift I am so thoroughly exhausted I've let just about everything go for almost two weeks. The dishes have only been washed piecemeal, the laundry is piling up (I'm doing it tomorrow), and the apartment in general is messy. I gave my shift away tomorrow night so I'll spend tomorrow afternoon catching up on the cleaning.
And then Patrick and I have off on Sunday, so we're going to go on a date. I got a $25 gift card to AMC theatres from my parents, so we're going to catch a movie and get lunch/dinner. The rest of the day will probably be spent relaxing. I'm also off on Monday, so I plan on being completely lazy until D&D at 7.

Knitting has been done very little. I have cast on for my Adamas shawl again, and promptly fell in love with the yarn/pattern combination. It's Moda Dea Eclipse yarn in a lovely dark gold color. I immediately discovered that the Eclipse line has been discontinued and that I am about three balls short of having enough to finish my shawl. I'm prowling around on Ravelry to see if anyone else has it and is willing to destash or make a trade. Thus far I have been unsuccessful, but hope remains. Sock Wars starts soon, so I'm going to be absorbed in that, and the post-holiday drop in business will mean I'll be much less exhausted and more ready to knit.

Kelly is spending the night tonight, and I taught her how to make bread pudding. We watched Star Trek (I jut got it today) and now she and Patrick are playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl. It's a ridiculous fighting game comprised entirely of Nintento characters. People like R.O.B., Lucas, Mario, Peach, Sonic, and Link beat the ever loving crap out of each other in silly, unique ways.

I'm going to go enjoy spending some time with them and probably get my butt kicked by them in SSBB. Hooray!

Here's hoping your new year goes better than all the others.

2 comments:

roxie said...

So, why are you so short-staffed? Hooray for the tips, by all means! And I bet you sleep like you have been shot and stuffed. This is how we learn to relish days off!!

Donna Lee said...

The memory of the large tips will be a fond one when the business dies down again. But at least you won't be so tired.

Enjoy these days off. And btw, dad was totally impressed with the poem.