The shift from hell
I just had he shift from hell. A lot of people said it was. People were amazed the dishwashers didn't walk out. I was thanked for my hard work a lot.
The night started out simple enough, I walk in after having a pretty good day. Driving up I see that the place looks relatively calm, I see that the parking lot isn't too full and I'm expecting a pretty calm night. I walk in and see that there aren't a whole lot of people there in the bar, usually a good sign. In the main restaurant its empty, also good. As I turn the corner I get very nervous looks from the waitresses. I look into the pit and see that all hell has broken loose. There are servers helping carry dishes out. Rob and Ryan, the two head guys have their sleeves rolled up and were armpit deep in dirty dishes. Ryan laughs and says, "Hi Travis, there's no hot water!" In the most sarcastic tone he can. I waste no time and run upstairs, change, and run back down.
Rob started testing different methods like putting bleach in the machine to see if it could make it wash with at least bleach water, although it was so cold you could chill drinks with it. Unfortunately I had to shoot the idea down because the machine is constantly draining itself into a grate in the floor so the bleach would leave in about 10 minutes, and we obviously didn't have enough bleach to keep doing that. We started boiling water in the steam cauldrons and switched back to the way they used to do it before machines like this: 3 sinks, one for wash, one rinse, one sanitize. Although we didn't really use 3 sinks, it was the same idea. Rob washed everything that came in by hand in a sink and gave it to Brice (pronounced breece) who fed it through the machine to rinse it off while utilizing the hard jets of water that the machine still produced. Then on the end of the line Chuck and I had to put the dishes in our own separate sinks full of sanitizing water and pull them out and dry them ONE BY ONE.
What makes this more interesting is that this is Friday night we're talking about. Everyone is done with the normal work week, and its time to party. Our restaurant is always full with a wait on Friday nights. I got in at 5 o'clock, a mere hour before things start to really pick up. Soon the restaurant is going to be full of hungry people wanting to eat and get drunk. Not only that, the entire restaurant has no hot water. There's no way to wash hands effectively except with hand sanitizer gel, and no way to cook food that needed hot water immediately. Fortunately I don't believe those were as big a problem since the dishes never seemed to stop coming.
Rob decides that we can go through with it; that we can actually withstand the rush, and since we had a guy coming to fix the water heater we'd be fine sooner than later. Since the only response you should ever say in those kinds of situations, no matter how bad is "Yes Chef!", we all appropriately did so and started in on the hard work. We managed to get a good chunk out of it before the rush really hit, but when it did, things just went down hill. The guy got there eventually and took a look at the thing. Sort of. He came back down and said he didn't have enough light to see. This is when I found out that our heater is on the roof. We offered him help, flashlights, anything he needed to get hot water into the restaurant again. He rejected our help and they needed our skilled hands in the dish pit anyways. He said it would take about 2 hours. Thats two hours longer than Rob expected. I think I speak for everyone in that pit by saying that all our hopes of any rest that night were completely shattered at that moment.
The most commonly used phrase tonight: "Its been a long night"
We washed, and washed as fast as we could to keep up with everything. Sisco kept bringing us 4 gallon buckets of boiling water to add into our wash and sani water. I started my sink later when we needed 2 sinks and my hands were numb the water was so cold. Rob gave us all big rubber gloves to use to keep our hands from drying out because of the chemicals. Much to our surprise 4 people were actually able to keep up with the demand of dishes, although the demand was constant. We couldn't wash glassware (drinking glasses and some serving dishes) because there was no way they would be clean enough to use through our methods. Luckily the mini-washer in the bar which they use specifically for bar glasses was not self draining, and although it was INCREDIBLY slow, it was able to churn out enough glasses (apparently). Silverware was also an issue since although we could actually wash it enough, it would still have sanitizer on it unless hand polished. Thats what the servers got to do after we did that. By the mood from the servers tonight I'm going to take a pretty good guess that didn't go so well. I wouldn't actually know, I was too busy hand drying individual plates.
At about 8:30 we got the news that although it would be slow to heat up, the water heater was now operational. Unfortunately slow meant about an hour more of washing by hand. Deep into the rush, things were really starting to pile up worse than they already were. Servers started complaining and while we hated them, we understood that the restaurant needed what it needed. Rob made several hilarious remarks about how he hated servers, which is a common thing amongst the back of the house since we actually work for our money and servers just have to look hot and get paid more than we do. That and they're extremely lazy and most of the time make our jobs harder. They're also not very bright, like the guy who came in and asked, "Hey guys how's it goin back here?" The machine stopped. Everyone looked at him. Rob yelled, "How the fuck does it look?" and then made the server get us all drinks. We constantly repeated that we couldn't wash glassware, yet the servers kept bringing it and yelling for racks of glasses to be washed. After I yelled that we couldn't wash it, the lazy asses just left it there anyways, and it continued to pile up. I eventually just yelled "Ya know what, fuck it" and took every bit of it to the bar and left it there for them to deal with. Took me two trips and the tool working the washer got discouraged. It made me happy.
At around 9 we finally had the water hot enough to start doing things the normal way. We cleared the sinks and started up, and in about a half hour we had finally gotten somewhere close to caught up. But of course, we couldn't stay there for long because we had to take our breaks, which its illegal not to take in Oregon. Since Ryan made us, I went first since I had been there the longest. After a nice break of talking with Rob and one of the hostesses about how awful her night was and how she just wanted to go drink herself into oblivion, I walked downstairs to see horror number two.
The dishes had piled up again, this time worse than before. I actually couldn't see into the pit stuff was stacked so high. Brice isn't a very fast washer, and I knew that, but still for things to get that bad that quickly is phenomenal. I went in and cleared as much as I could before Brice was again forced to take his break. I was left alone in a pit that was so bad I had never been that overloaded before. Even on days where I had worked by myself it never got that bad. And even worse, people were still in the restaurant. Abnormally late, the restaurant was still pretty much full at 10 PM, something that everyone commented on as being odd. It didn't help me out a bit, because thats the time that the kitchens start closing up for the night and sending us back everything. Usually its okay for us to be away then because there aren't many plates stacking up, but with a full restaurant and two kitchens bringing back stuff, I was actually dumbfounded at what to do. There was so much and I could do so little to keep up with the demands. I pulled it off at the cost of me burning every bit of energy I had until Brice got back. After that it wasn't too awful, the night slowed down and although we were still piled up we managed to get it all down in a timely manner. We ended on time, but after a lot of very hard work.
If most of you know where Manzana is, you'll realize its right next to another restaurant, Five Spice. The assholes wouldn't let us wash our important dishes like silverware and glasses over there. They didn't give us a reason either. So ya, next time they're in a crisis we're just going to sit back and laugh.
Be glad this wasn't you.
The night started out simple enough, I walk in after having a pretty good day. Driving up I see that the place looks relatively calm, I see that the parking lot isn't too full and I'm expecting a pretty calm night. I walk in and see that there aren't a whole lot of people there in the bar, usually a good sign. In the main restaurant its empty, also good. As I turn the corner I get very nervous looks from the waitresses. I look into the pit and see that all hell has broken loose. There are servers helping carry dishes out. Rob and Ryan, the two head guys have their sleeves rolled up and were armpit deep in dirty dishes. Ryan laughs and says, "Hi Travis, there's no hot water!" In the most sarcastic tone he can. I waste no time and run upstairs, change, and run back down.
Rob started testing different methods like putting bleach in the machine to see if it could make it wash with at least bleach water, although it was so cold you could chill drinks with it. Unfortunately I had to shoot the idea down because the machine is constantly draining itself into a grate in the floor so the bleach would leave in about 10 minutes, and we obviously didn't have enough bleach to keep doing that. We started boiling water in the steam cauldrons and switched back to the way they used to do it before machines like this: 3 sinks, one for wash, one rinse, one sanitize. Although we didn't really use 3 sinks, it was the same idea. Rob washed everything that came in by hand in a sink and gave it to Brice (pronounced breece) who fed it through the machine to rinse it off while utilizing the hard jets of water that the machine still produced. Then on the end of the line Chuck and I had to put the dishes in our own separate sinks full of sanitizing water and pull them out and dry them ONE BY ONE.
What makes this more interesting is that this is Friday night we're talking about. Everyone is done with the normal work week, and its time to party. Our restaurant is always full with a wait on Friday nights. I got in at 5 o'clock, a mere hour before things start to really pick up. Soon the restaurant is going to be full of hungry people wanting to eat and get drunk. Not only that, the entire restaurant has no hot water. There's no way to wash hands effectively except with hand sanitizer gel, and no way to cook food that needed hot water immediately. Fortunately I don't believe those were as big a problem since the dishes never seemed to stop coming.
Rob decides that we can go through with it; that we can actually withstand the rush, and since we had a guy coming to fix the water heater we'd be fine sooner than later. Since the only response you should ever say in those kinds of situations, no matter how bad is "Yes Chef!", we all appropriately did so and started in on the hard work. We managed to get a good chunk out of it before the rush really hit, but when it did, things just went down hill. The guy got there eventually and took a look at the thing. Sort of. He came back down and said he didn't have enough light to see. This is when I found out that our heater is on the roof. We offered him help, flashlights, anything he needed to get hot water into the restaurant again. He rejected our help and they needed our skilled hands in the dish pit anyways. He said it would take about 2 hours. Thats two hours longer than Rob expected. I think I speak for everyone in that pit by saying that all our hopes of any rest that night were completely shattered at that moment.
The most commonly used phrase tonight: "Its been a long night"
We washed, and washed as fast as we could to keep up with everything. Sisco kept bringing us 4 gallon buckets of boiling water to add into our wash and sani water. I started my sink later when we needed 2 sinks and my hands were numb the water was so cold. Rob gave us all big rubber gloves to use to keep our hands from drying out because of the chemicals. Much to our surprise 4 people were actually able to keep up with the demand of dishes, although the demand was constant. We couldn't wash glassware (drinking glasses and some serving dishes) because there was no way they would be clean enough to use through our methods. Luckily the mini-washer in the bar which they use specifically for bar glasses was not self draining, and although it was INCREDIBLY slow, it was able to churn out enough glasses (apparently). Silverware was also an issue since although we could actually wash it enough, it would still have sanitizer on it unless hand polished. Thats what the servers got to do after we did that. By the mood from the servers tonight I'm going to take a pretty good guess that didn't go so well. I wouldn't actually know, I was too busy hand drying individual plates.
At about 8:30 we got the news that although it would be slow to heat up, the water heater was now operational. Unfortunately slow meant about an hour more of washing by hand. Deep into the rush, things were really starting to pile up worse than they already were. Servers started complaining and while we hated them, we understood that the restaurant needed what it needed. Rob made several hilarious remarks about how he hated servers, which is a common thing amongst the back of the house since we actually work for our money and servers just have to look hot and get paid more than we do. That and they're extremely lazy and most of the time make our jobs harder. They're also not very bright, like the guy who came in and asked, "Hey guys how's it goin back here?" The machine stopped. Everyone looked at him. Rob yelled, "How the fuck does it look?" and then made the server get us all drinks. We constantly repeated that we couldn't wash glassware, yet the servers kept bringing it and yelling for racks of glasses to be washed. After I yelled that we couldn't wash it, the lazy asses just left it there anyways, and it continued to pile up. I eventually just yelled "Ya know what, fuck it" and took every bit of it to the bar and left it there for them to deal with. Took me two trips and the tool working the washer got discouraged. It made me happy.
At around 9 we finally had the water hot enough to start doing things the normal way. We cleared the sinks and started up, and in about a half hour we had finally gotten somewhere close to caught up. But of course, we couldn't stay there for long because we had to take our breaks, which its illegal not to take in Oregon. Since Ryan made us, I went first since I had been there the longest. After a nice break of talking with Rob and one of the hostesses about how awful her night was and how she just wanted to go drink herself into oblivion, I walked downstairs to see horror number two.
The dishes had piled up again, this time worse than before. I actually couldn't see into the pit stuff was stacked so high. Brice isn't a very fast washer, and I knew that, but still for things to get that bad that quickly is phenomenal. I went in and cleared as much as I could before Brice was again forced to take his break. I was left alone in a pit that was so bad I had never been that overloaded before. Even on days where I had worked by myself it never got that bad. And even worse, people were still in the restaurant. Abnormally late, the restaurant was still pretty much full at 10 PM, something that everyone commented on as being odd. It didn't help me out a bit, because thats the time that the kitchens start closing up for the night and sending us back everything. Usually its okay for us to be away then because there aren't many plates stacking up, but with a full restaurant and two kitchens bringing back stuff, I was actually dumbfounded at what to do. There was so much and I could do so little to keep up with the demands. I pulled it off at the cost of me burning every bit of energy I had until Brice got back. After that it wasn't too awful, the night slowed down and although we were still piled up we managed to get it all down in a timely manner. We ended on time, but after a lot of very hard work.
If most of you know where Manzana is, you'll realize its right next to another restaurant, Five Spice. The assholes wouldn't let us wash our important dishes like silverware and glasses over there. They didn't give us a reason either. So ya, next time they're in a crisis we're just going to sit back and laugh.
Be glad this wasn't you.