There’s not much I can say about ‘Help’ without first explaining that most of the people I served needed Help. Not in the usual way of, say, needing a new fork after dropping one on the ground for the fiftieth time or with understanding how to pronounce the word ‘chinotto’, but Help as in I-need-a-full-time-nurse-to-care-for-me Help.
There are a few different kinds of Help, the first being:
Silent Help:- People in need of silent Help come to expect that help will be given because they have been expressedly silent about their situation. It is a particularly circular argument that goes something like this:
Customer: “My (x) was wrong!”
Me: “You never mentioned (x) was wrong before”
Customer: “Exactly.”
This may seem completely stupid (mostly because it is) but this has happened to me more times than I care to explain. My favourite particular instance of this happening was when I was working at what was possibly the most disgusting and poorly run establishment in Leichardt going by the name of Al Martino’s. To the customers credit, the food was shit, and I knew this. However, when this particular table of three failed to finish their mains, having left well over half of it on their plate, I asked them if they wanted desserts. They said no, and asked for the bill. I gave them the bill, and after a good fifteen minutes I see the manager (who is a moron) talking to them and being the wormy little coward he was. He called me over angrily and said:
“These people said they didn’t like their food, why didn’t you tell me?”
I mocked surprise and said, “They never told me, what wrong sir?”
The (one) guy on the table said, “Well I didn’t finish all of it did I? You didn’t ask if anything was wrong.”
At this point in my life, my anger and stress levels were at an all time high. While I am normally charming and polite, it didn’t take much at this point to send me into a state in which stabbing myself in the leg would have sent me a much needed and appreciated rush of endorphins.
I leant over the table, grabbing the edges hard until my knuckles went white, grinned like Jack the Ripper at a hooker convention and said through tightly clenched teeth:
“Sorry, sir, I assumed you were full. Unfortunately, I, nor anyone else on this planet, can read your mind. If you had a problem, you should’ve let me know instead of feverently hoping I would develop psychic powers to help you in your devastating fettucine crisis”.
I straightened up and walked away, and as they all stared after me with looks of shock, awe (and in the case of the women pure lust) I clearly said ‘idiots’ and went back to work wiping tables.
Loud Help:- This help is more in common with Yanks than Australians, yet I’m not sure which is more stupid between Loud and Silent Help. Loud is definitely the more annoying whilst Silent is infinitely more frustrating.
Loud Help can be perfectly described by an instance in which I was serving a table of Yanks and one of them knocked his fork on the ground. I said,
“Don’t worry mate I’ll get you another one.”
He picked it up, held it over his head and said,
“I’ve dropped my fork”
I was taken aback for a second before I began again,
“Don’t worry I’ll grab…”
“Excuse me, I’ve dropped my fork”
Again, taken aback, and then he continued.
“Excuse me, I’ve dropped my fork. I’ve dropped my fork. I’ve dropped my fork’? I’ve dropped my fork, see, I’ve dropped my fork”
All efforts on my behalf to ensure him that I was getting him a new fork fell on not so much deaf but retarded ears (and before some of you begin wondering if he did have any impairments, he did, but it was only a severe case of being a dumbarse Yank).
At this stage in my life I was serving many of our overseas cousins because there was the old peoples olympics happening at Homebush. It was, for these Yanks, the first time any of them had tried espresso style coffee. Tring to explain espresso to a senior Yank is like teaching a Yank volume control. It can’t be done.
“I want a black coffee”
“We do it a little differently over here, I’ll get you a long black with a side of hot water, it’ll be the closest thing you’ll get to a black coffee”
“Is it black?”
“…yes, it’s a long black, it just means coffee with no milk”
“What’s a long black?”
“…right, you see, a long black is like a black coffee, it’s got no milk”
“But I want a black coffee!”
“…one black coffee coming right up.”
Observational Help:- Observational Help can be endearing but is more often than not stupefying.
I once watched a date progress where the male was some form of bogun trash who decided that spending thirty dollars on parmagana somehow made it classy and the lady had gone out on a limb and ordered the rack of lamb (which was an excellent dish).
After watching the woman turn over the lamb a few times, and ask her partner about her dish and his subsequent shrug, I thought I may have made a mistake. Walking over I asked if everything was alright. She looked into my eyes, pointed her knife at the lamb and asked:
“How do you eat this?”
After a very careful explanation in which I showed her the sawing motion the knife is supposed to make whilst the fork holds the food in place, I was asked to take it back for the chef to cut up into sections. The chef called her an idiot, me an idiot, everyone in the kitchen an idiot, before cutting it up. She ended up eating it with her hands.
Waitress Help:- I’m partially sorry to say this, but waitresses can be their very own particular brand of evil. I don’t know much about female etiquette except that dress standards are now measured in ‘sluttiness’ (a conversation I’ve overheard several times where one girl will say, ‘I’m only dressing a little slutty’ and another one will say, ‘No, i’ve decided to go full slutty tonight’).
The first, and mostly benign example of Waitress Help is when a group of these witches gathered around to silently giggle over a woman whose tag of her dress was hanging out. I asked why they didn’t tell her, and judging by the look on their faces I may as well have asked them to eat a living foetus.
Deciding that their retarded giggles were worse than suffering retribution from a ladies tag situation, I made my way to the table, pretended to say something about this particular ladies meal before very quietly letting her know the tag was hanging out. She thanked me profusely for my discretion and left me a twenty dollar tip. Waitresses 0 Mark 1.
The worst and most abhorrent version of Waitress Help came when a couple asked a waitress if they could take the bones of the poussin (game hen) home for their dog. Upon hearing the plot of these two would-be ignorant retard assassins I let them know that dogs+cooked chicken bones = dead dog. They thanked me for letting them know, though they did look a little confused. I can only pray that when their combined retardedness did end up having consequences for the dog is was quick and painless, unlike the death I hope they suffer.
Anyway, the waitress in question accosted me and asked why I threw out the bones. I let her know the situation, and she simply said:
“So? Who are you to tell them they can’t feed their dog bones?”
I calmly and carefully explained that choking to death isn’t pleasant for anything, including our canine friends, to receive a similar answer. A few nights later when this waitress wasn’t on, I conveyed the story to the rest of my waiting team (about 90% female {there was ten of us and I was the male}) and they all had eerily similar theories, that I should’ve let nature take its course.
Til this day I will never understand how they could blithely accept that they would have killed the dog as surely as they had cut off its legs and thrown it into a river. It’s just so…well it’s not even stupid, understanding you’re killing something without feeling compuction is just straight evil.
Anyway that’s enough from me for this post as re-living my days in hospitality brings back my night-terrors.
Til next time, don’t kill your dog.
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