I've heard of it being done before.
I know a few servers who have actually done it.
But I have never, ever, in 25 years of food-service experience, actually done it myself.
Until tonight.
Normally, I might leave you hanging a bit. Regular readers know, it *would* be kind of like me to just turn this into a two-parter, and not even tell ya what STUPID thing I did tonight.
But I'm home pretty late (I closed again ;) - Doxy Lady's in bed already, so I'm just gonna keep typing, and tell ya.
I threw away a customer's remaining food, that I was supposed to be boxing up for them to take home.
Not good, I know. But nevermind all that, all I know right now is that I desperately need it replaced, "On The Fly."
For those that don't know our lingo, ordering food "On The Fly" basically means "Super-fast." It's our little in-house slang term for telling the cooks "I need this cooked and to the table - Yesterday. Or as soon as humanly possible, O please, o please o please o please, can you put this order above every other customer in the restaurant and hurry this above everything else that you're doing?! PLEASE!?!?"
Usually, the most common reason for ordering something "On The Fly" would be that.. well.. you totally forgot to order the customer's food in the first place. Just got busy and spaced it. Hey, it happens.
Maybe one in a hundred times for long-term vets, probably one in twenty tables with servers who have less than a year or three under their belts. Just guessing.
There you are, just sailing along, having dutifully removed the guests' appetizer or salad plates, or whatever, re-filling some drinks, waiting on the main course to come out, maybe kinda skillfully making conversation and.. perhaps.. just stalling until their food comes out.
You've other tables to wait on and all sorts of other micro-dramas playing out at any given time, so maybe it doesn't really hit you, at first. Finally it starts bugging you tho, and you think to yourself "Hey, these people's food seems to be taking a rea-llll-y long time to get out." So all non-challant-like, you start poking around in the back. You start looking in "the food window" for anything that resembles this table's order coming together.
Hmmm, No, don't seem to see it.
So then you study the Grill and the Saute' area, still trying to both look and feel just overall pretty casual about the situation.
Nope, nothing jumps out. Then you finally start reading all the checks closely (a "becoming obvious to others sign that something is perhaps wrong") to see where in line your/this table's food is.....
Hmmmm. Not good. There IS no check for Table 53.
Okay.
Deep breath. Keep your cool. Casually wander on over to the computer. Punch up Table 53 to make sure you actually DID ring in their dinners before panicking ... maybe it all went out 20 seconds ago, while you were walking into the kitchen. This too, happens.
Ummmm, No, no luck here either.
And that's when your heart sinks and your stomach feels about a million gallons empty.
O .......... Shit.
You stare at the computer for the three seconds it takes for reality to firmly set in, hoping that what you're seeing isn't real .. or that it will somehow change, the harder you stare at it. But it doesn't. You see drinks, and maybe appetizers or salads, but no entree orders. You just screwed up. With a capital F.
You keep your composure just long enough to ring everything you should have twenty or thirty minutes ago into the computer, maybe type "On The Fly" and then press whatever button to finalize things and make it print out for the first time to the cooks.
That's normally when the floodgates open, and you have to start explaining what you did, admitting your mistake to the cooks and management - and most of all - begin the process of honestly begging. Whatever disciplinary actions you might have to face with management - and maybe "comping the food" for your table, are minutes away still. Right now what has to be done, is begging the kitchen to get this food out, Yesterday. Or as fast as humanly possible.
I'm sorry to admit to my former co-workers in fact, that the few times I have done this in the past decade, I have more than once personally given cooks CASH-MONEY to take food cooking for someone else's tables, and piece together my order to get it out even two minutes quicker than might possibly happen if they had to start the whole order from scratch. Sorry to say so now, but yes.. your table's food has once or twice taken a bit longer to come out, because I bribed a cook or two to "sell" my order asap, just because I screwed up.
You think perhaps that I'm digressing, but I'm not.
The second most likely reason to have to order something "On The Fly" would be a kitchen error. Maybe they over-cooked something and have to start over, or maybe they forgot something and everybody but one person at a table is eating. Not my/your fault as a server, and while extremely annoying and potentially detrimental to your income, yes .. bottom line is that it's not your fault, and hopefully everything's being done that can be done to fix this one. You keep checking sure, but you've got other tables to tend to right now as well, and at this point management should be on top of fixing this one for you anyways. On The Fly is understood.
The third (oops, I'm sorry to you customers, to say) .. but the third most common reason for "flying an order" (more lingo for ya - self-explanatory I think) would be that the guest(s) themselves actually express some sort of rush for some sort of reason. Concert, movie, show, airplane, fill in the blank... Yessir okay whatever. We'll all do our best.
I told them you're in a hurry and even typed in On The Fly, so not much else I can do, maybe you should have thought about going fast-food tonight. We're on it, but you're going to have to just sit, wait, and take your turn. Seriously, what I just said does indeed reflect our mental process in such cases, I hate to be the one to tell you.
HOWEVER, what I did tonight, was just so totally new to me that I don't even have a mental box for it! This one equalled a type of On The Fly stress I had no idea what to do with!
Some kid doesn't eat even half of his "kid spaghetti with meat sauce." We dont even OFFER a "kid spaghettit with meat sauce." Just to get it done, I talked with both a chef and a manager, and ultimately had to ring in a "Lunch Burger SUB Kid Spag" and do some explaining to the cooks.
Not to mention the Dad. His kid HAD to have meat sauce with his spaghetti, but just to get this done (for inventory's sake - always an issue in restaurants today) I had to charge $15 for the meat. (Sounds high, I know, but we only use Angus or Kobe meat for our burgers, okay? A little high-end for some people I realize, but that's how it is where I work.)
"Fine" the dad agrees, no biggie. The meal progresses, the fam's about ready to leave, and as I'm clearing the table I notice that the boy didn't even eat half of his meal, and so I routinely offer to box it up to-go. $15 for a kid's meal? Of course they want a box! "No problem" I say .. I do this every day. Quite happy to.
Usually, I just walk into the kitchen, put the to-go food on a shelf, bang and scrape the other plates into our trash can, then wash my hands and box up the to-go food and print their check.
Except that I somehow reversed one of those details tonight.
I found myself with a to-go box in hand, staring at a pretty empty plate on the shelf, and thinking to myself "Oh no I just didn't."
Oh yes I just did.
Okay. Deep breath. Keep your cool. I wander casually back over to the trash can, and there's the first-I've-ever-seen kid spaghetti with some pretty expensive meat sauce staring back up at me.
On The Fly really doesn't begin to describe what it's going to take to fix this one. That's hamburger meat people. You can't just cook up more in 60 seconds and be on your merry little way. And these people are about ready to leave at this point.
I'm pretty ashamed to admit here what went through my mind next.........
But yeh, I thought about it. "You know I could just grab a box... then reach in, and take however much of it I can off the top of the trash..."
But no. I can't. Well I could, but dang it, there's coffee grounds all mixed up with the spaghetti, so that's not going to work. Seriously - again I'M ASHAMED TO SAY but it was just the heat of the moment - but except for those coffe grounds, I might have done it.
(And maybe (?) for the first time in this blog's history - aren't you glad I wasn't your waiter tonight, if I would even think this?)
I don't have a mental box for this. This has never happened to me before. I don't have any skill-set that can just make this right in 10 seconds, and it's damned frustrating. There's no one I can just hand five bucks to to solve this problem in any quick way either. I have to be immediately honest, and I have to fix this, asap.
THAT'S when the floodgates opened, and the begging basically began. I ran to the Saute' chef - whom I'll call "The Jamaican" for our purposes here. I tell him "Blah blah blah blah blah. On The Fly!"
He laughs at me, and - thankfully - puts down another burger. This is unusual, because normally (for the sake of inventory) he technically should not have done so until after I'd gone to the computer, and rang in another burger SUB KID SPAG - before he should have started cooking it. AND THEN, I would have had to go to a manager, tell him what I did, and then get him to void the second burger/spag off of the customers' check. That's just how the industry works today .. everything has to documented for the sake of inventory and the corporate's bottom line.
Yeh, but that would take a lot of time I didn't really have. Not to mention, make me look really stupid to that manger for what I just did. And that's just something else I don't need right now.
My other tables' needs notwithstanding, I keep checking back with Jamaican every 60 seconds or so. "Nope, not ready yet," but he continues getting a good laugh out of my situation, and my desperation. I keep waiting on my section, all the while staying as far away from this one table who just wants their to-go spaghetti and their check.
"La-dah-dee.." I wander by them a time or three while doing other stuff, without ever really looking straight at them.
Finally, I'm standing by the cook's line with my to-go box and bag in hand, and Jamaican is mixing the burger meat with the red sauce and pasta I desperately need. We pack it up all quick-like, and I know I owe him one. You readers aside, what just happened here is his and my little secret.
Out of nowhere I appear back at the table with their to-go kid spag, and check, in hand. I act like nothing out of the ordinary has happened, and I'm pretty sure they've fallen for it.
They pay, tip nicely, and get back to their lives.
As do I.
All this before 7:00pm.
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