I was heckled

[customersruinmylife]

I was working in the kitchen today, and was due to finish at 6pm. We had sold a lot of roast dinners, and were running dangerously low. Fifteen minutes before my shift ended, a ticket appeared for TEN dinners. I started raiding the fridges and freezers looking for more food, but had no luck. There was no where near enough vegetables or meat left to make ten dinners. I called the manager into the kitchen.

M: So how many dinners can you make?
Me: Three...four at the very most. Whoever put it through should have really checked that I could make that many. I've given the bar enough warnings that we were low on food.
M: Right, I'll go and see what they want instead.

He returned a few minutes later.

M: Whole order is getting cancelled.
Me: So they don't want anything?
M: Nope. And, well, let's just say they're not very happy.
Me: Geeze, I'm glad I'm safe in here then!

Not for long. My shift ended ten minutes later. I left the kitchen and headed for the back room. Along the way, I happened to pass a table for ten. All of a sudden, I heard:

SC1: Oh look, there's the cook!
SC2: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
SC3: HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
SC4: BOOOOOOOOOOOOO! BOOOOOOOOOOO!
SC5: Where's our food, huh?!?! Why can't we get a roast dinner?
SC6: BOOOOOOOO!
SC7: If you worked for me, you would have lost your job!

I laughed at the childishness of it all, and went into the break room to get changed. When I went to leave the pub, the group was also leaving at the exact same time as me. They didn't recognise me without my uniform on.

[BrenDAnn]

Forgive me, CRML, but... Not to you, but to your customers, nay, hecklers. WTF did they think that was going to accomplish, aside from get them a lot of negative attention? Bwahahahahaha!

[Jester]

Yes, if you worked for them, you would have been expected to magically pull the ingredients for six roast dinners that you did not have out of your ass.

I don't think I am going out on a limb here when I theorized that the mental midget that said that has never once worked in, worked for, managed, run, or owned any type of food establishment ever. After all, had they done so, they would know that every now and then, a shocking then occurs: the place runs out of certain items.

I work for what I consider to be a fantastic bar/restaurant, and in the last couple weeks alone, at various times, we have run out of: mineral water, various draft beers, pinot noir wine, seasoned salt that we use on the rim of our bloody mary's, olives, mashed potatoes, the well dark rum, and one particular bottled beer. This did not happen all at the same time, but for various reasons, we ran out of said items on one shift or another, other due to high demand, something being on back order with a distributor, someone not noticing we were low on a particular item, or someone forgetting to order a particular item. These things happen. It's part of food service.

To be fair to the customers though, their server, if they had been warned about the low availability of the ordered items, should have checked with the kitchen first and, more importantly, advised the table that they would be checking with the kitchen to make sure they had the requisite items, as they had been running low on said items that day. At which point the kitchen would have advised the server that ten such roast dinners would not be possible, and the server would have likewise advised the table who, having been prewarned about such a possibility, might not have been such complete fucking assholes about the whole thing.

Though I'm not wagering the ranch on that last part.

[LillFilly]

I would hope there's some sort of policy that you stop taking orders for such-and-such 30 minutes before the end of the night so that problem doesn't happen. What the heck did they expect?

[tropicsgoddess]

I guess the SC's think your job is to be a magician and pull 10 roast dinners you don't have out of thin air for them. Idiots.

[Jester]

I guess the SC's think your job is to be a magician...

Actually, no....that's MY job. Every Wednesday night! And it doesn't involve any roasts, thank you very much.

[fireheart]

Actually, no....that's MY job. Every Wednesday night! And it doesn't involve any roasts, thank you very much.

or pulling stuff out of your ass....I think.....O.O

[godaistudios]

Actually, no....that's MY job. Every Wednesday night! And it doesn't involve any roasts, thank you very much.

But they should.

Well, Jay Sankey would say that everything is possible - which within that world, he's right.

Too bad the SC's don't live in that world - so they could be made to disappear - permanently.

[TelephoneAngel]

Exboyfriend and myself used to go quite often to a lovely little restaurant out in the countryside, we loved the food and the atmosphere.

It became a game to guess what they would have run out of each time we went, once it was beer, another time, potatoes, another time chicken...we just accepted that these things happened and took an alternative.

[MaseMan]

"You mean you don't have an unlimited supply of every food and drink item in your cavernous back room???"

[AriRashkae]

My husband and I used to go to this little ice cream shop near our house every now and then. I never had a problem, but no matter what my husband ordered, they were out of a key item. Banana split? No bananas. Hot fudge sundae? No hot fudge (but they had bananas). Eventually, he gave up.

It's since been sold and is now, primarily, a BBQ "shack", I think. I haven't had the opportunity to see what they're like now.

[Magpie]

Well I now see the dark side of DUSTED (Drink An Unsuspecting Small Town Establishment Dry). Of course, if they pick a small enough place (and I'm assuming they're not stupid enough to pick a brew-pub), the regulars would be used to the place running out of something or another, as some places it's very easy to drink up everything they have of one type of drink.

[XCashier]

"You mean you don't have an unlimited supply of every food and drink item in your cavernous back room???"

"You mean you don't have a cavernous back room?! What kind of establishment is this?!"

[CaroPhoenix]

"You mean you don't have an unlimited supply of every food and drink item in your cavernous back room???"

"You mean you don't have a cavernous back room?! What kind of establishment is this?!"

"This is just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill establishment. We do not have a cavernous back room of holding."

[Pagan]

To be fair to the customers though, their server, if they had been warned about the low availability of the ordered items, should have checked with the kitchen first and, more importantly, advised the table that they would be checking with the kitchen to make sure they had the requisite items, as they had been running low on said items that day. At which point the kitchen would have advised the server that ten such roast dinners would not be possible, and the server would have likewise advised the table who, having been prewarned about such a possibility, might not have been such complete fucking assholes about the whole thing.

But it sounds like CRML had been telling the bar all along that the kitchen was running low and they didn't pay attention for some reason.

Me: Three...four at the very most. Whoever put it through should have really checked that I could make that many. I've given the bar enough warnings that we were low on food.