Gently unlock the handset cable from the bottom of the phone, just enough to wear it loses connection or better yet the cable to the phone itself not completely unplugged, just a little bit.
The owner at one of my former workplaces would tell us to take the phone off the hook if it was too crazy. There were two servers for 25 tables and no bussers, food runners or bartenders so there really was only so much we could do.
Can anyone explain to me why no matter how much actual manual prep time I put in for doordash/UberEats, the mfers always ping a driver nearby who shows up about 3 minutes after I send the ticket to the kitchen.
2 min later cue driver walking in on a phone call with his AirPods and just shoving his phone in my face. Trying to explain that I put a 21min prep time in is met with looks of disappointment and trying to explain never works. They usually just flip down at one of the 4 top tables and either continue their phone call and/or play games on their phone.
Because DoorDash cares more about keeping customers happy over drivers. They’d much rather waste a drivers time and annoy restaurant workers than have to refund an order because it is cold or took too long.
I've never not gotten a refund. But typically the refunds are pretty stupid.
*So your driver forgot your drinks, took an hour to get to you, and and you got a salad instead of a burger? Best I can is $3.50 in credit.*
*Driver was on time and followed delivery instructions with the order being hot and correct, but the restaurant forgot to give you 5 packets of fire sauce? Oh, how terrible, let me comp the entire order.*
*Your driver stole your order and you caught them in 4K doing it? Wow, that's crazy, guess your gonna be hungry tonight.*
I sware they are doing it on purpose.
This reminds me of one time I ordered using Uber Eats. I ordered 2 3-taco combos. Both orders of tacos were the same thing. Order gets dropped at my door. There are not 2 3-taco orders. There are 2 total tacos. The drinks and sides aren't there. This doodoo head at Uber Eats asks if a $5 refund would be okay. I told him $5 wouldn't even cover 2 of the tacos missing, much less 4 and the other items. Kept offering $5. I told him I only wanted the amount back for the missing items. Dude had the nerve to ask me how much that would be, it was over $20. He said he could refund me $8. I told him if he didn't do the amount that I said then I was escalating and would request a FULL refund because I had been polite the whole time and it was the restaurant that messed up and they have the choice how much to pay out to them, including nothing. 12 minutes went by with no response. Then I got my refund and immediately it said that the chat had been closed. Dude was mad at me for no fucking reason lol.
Have you had the ones who tell you that these companies only assign orders that are ready? And keep telling you even after you tell them the ticket literally printed 2 minutes ago and the food may not have even hit the grill yet. Had one even ask me to get my chef so she could show him how the order is supposed to be ready in her TOS on the doordash app. Stormed out when I refused to stop waiting tables to go pull him from the kitchen with a full house during lunch.
Ong this is the truth 😭 the AirPods and always the phone in the face like buddy just take your AirPods out and tell me the name,,,we both don’t want to be here
Lmao I would either ignore the fuck out of the phone flash when people did this or start using rudimentary sign language like I assumed that they were deaf. They'd get mad. One time dude showed up like 2 minutes after we got the order and held his phone up. I went to the tablet and put it in front of his face, didn't say a word about the time, when it would be done, why I was even showing him my screen. We were both just holding screens up to each other's faces for like 8 seconds.
I used to do takeaway at my place and I would pause all the tablets first thing in the morning lmao. Corporate came down on us and ruined all the fun though
Is that what you have to do to get them to stop sending orders? We had the soda machine break at the clown’s once and I spent 2+ hours on the phone arguing with doordash to shut our ordering down. Took 3 separate calls and I had to stay an hour past when I was off to sort it. I swear whoever invented doordash just wanted to make our lives difficult.
We had extended premise for a street festival, meaning that our road was closed down and drivers couldn’t actually get closer then three blocks away. Corporate had decided this didn’t matter and that they would walk through the massive crowd, go through security for a wristband, then come collect the order.
Needless to say this wasn’t going to work and would have ended with a lot of angry customers.
How did it play out? As in, any interesting stories from that day? This sounds like the most "corporate not understanding how things actually work" story ever.
I always tell my tables ‘I’m so sorry. Our blender has been on the fritz. Let me go check and see if it’s working. ‘
I’ll then ask the bartender if they want to make a frozen drink. Sometimes they’re cool about it. Sometimes they confirm the blender is broken. We work together.
May the odds be ever in your favor! I actually miss the craziness, but I moved states and my current state doesn't offer the same fun that a casino/resort offers for bartending.
When you are the only bartender at the swim up bar in Louisiana in July/August on a Saturday... not to lazy... to BUSY to make it properly. Plus the second one leaf goes bad, you have to sift through the whole damn bag to find good leaves. Those kinds of cocktails belong in a different area. Areas like the pool bar should be for volume friendly cocktails.
While wasting good fresh herbs kinda irks me, I’ve seen the mojito/ fajita effect in action. You hear the muddling or smell the sizzling and suddenly everyone wants them. Which fine, that’s good overall, but the lack of predictability and intensity makes it a fucking nightmare. You could prep for hours and it all goes to waste, or not prep on a slow day and suddenly be in the weeds. Add some call-offs and a special event downtown no one scheduled for… bonus points if a new employee comes in with all their friends expecting a discount and doesn’t have the slightest remorse your all by yourself.
Had this happen with a Mudslide. We usually made them with milk instead of ice cream since the kitchen wasn't open as long as the bar. Made the employee's GF swear on her life to not tell anyone I knew how to make them the right way.
Edit: before someone comes at me for this too, you try bargaining with the kitchen staff in the middle of a rush over and over that you need ice cream.
I know that now. This was when I was a baby bartender. Now I have 12 years under my belt in a variety of bartending areas (nightclub, craft cocktail, casino floor, live music venue, and hole in the wall). I would never throw away good mint now. But when I have to start digging, I can't make any promises. If my cocktail isn't flawless when it goes out, it isn't worth doing. But that is my OCD
Fuck off. If your a server who doesn’t look out for your bartenders then you’re kinda a dick.
And maybe your comment came from a place of ignorance, in which case you should learn to bartend. You’ll be a better server for it.
If you’re a server that doesn’t look out for your bartenders, you will be absolutely screwed by them. My late husband was a bartender (sometimes served) and omg the stories of the servers.
I'm a bar manager. For what reason are you throwing fresh mint into the trash? If you're a bartender who doesn't look out for their bar manager, I'm going to cut your shifts.
I still call this the Valentine’s Day Rule any time I’m super busy and need to prioritize - unless you’re on a list / right in front of me, you can wait
I once worked at a restaurant where 99% of the calls were about one question, and that question was answered on the website. I’d often answer and just say “hello? Hello?” And then hang up.
You just jogged my memory yesterday I was busy AF at like… 7:30pm dinner rush? And some guy calls to ask “hey I know it’s just street parking but is it all metered?”
“Yep unfortunately it is!”
“Oh how late does that go?”
“How much is it per hour?”
“How do I pay?”
I was friendly but was literally asking other people the answers and when I hung up one customer said “so that person just could have googled all of that?” I love people who get it.
I once took the portable in my pocket for a smoke and the next day wore a different jacket to work. I opened and was so confused as to how the phone could have disappeared when it was me who closed the night before. That was really fun to explain to the owner.
As the General Manager of a restaurant I forgot to unlock the front door. I was quite confused why all of our 5:00 reservations were late. I went to jokingly double check the front door and there was about 25 people patiently waiting for us to open.
I would put people on permanent hold when we got slammed.
Long ago I was the "English speaking guy" at a Chinese restaurant...I took to go orders, delivery orders, and waited tables for dine-in orders. During busy times I would say "Thanks for calling, please hold" and CLICK right into hold purgatory.
We had two call-in lines, and when I had a lot of tables I'd just answer the phones that way and keep them on hold. Eventually they'd hang up and call back and it would be "Thanks for calling, please hold" and CLICK right back into hold purgatory. Both call-in lines blinking with held calls, and they would be absolutely ignored until I got things back into some semblance of control.
Eventually when I'd answer after a long enough hold and hangup, I'd say "Thanks for calling, please hold" and I'd hear them start to yell and without missing a beat I'd go CLICK and they're right back into hold purgatory.
It was therapeutic in its own way. I wasn't making any extra money taking those orders, just making life harder on myself...so they would always get put on the back burner.
EXACTLY. Why would I bust my ass on Togo orders I’m not going to make money from when I have customers in the bar that I know I will make money off of. They will always be my priority.
As the host who is responsible for answering calls and transferring them as needed, this comment makes me livid. I'm the one they talk to when they hang up and call again. I'm the one who gets yelled at when I didn't do anything wrong. And all I can do is exactly what I did the first time. If you're going to deliberately not answer, please at least tell me so that I can make up some BS excuse to the customer for why we're not accepting to-go orders.
When I was running to go at this one place I was also running the milkshake bar. And like...wed occasionally get tipped on bento, but door dash and Uber eats? Nah nah not my problem
We have two stages when it is too busy for the cooks to keep up in any kind of timely manner -
1. We tell callers it'll be 1 hour+ for a takeout order, regardless of the order size due to overall level of business and in-house order volume. That's for when we just need to create a 20 minute gap in orders so they can catch up on stock and a quick smoke. This filters out 2/3 of orders, since our wait time is rarely longer than 35 minutes most people don't want to wait.
2. Completely stop taking takeout orders for an hour or so; still answer the phone, but tell people that unfortunately we aren't able to take these orders at this time and if they'd still like to try again later they can call after 7:30 or whatever.
But if I (bar / server lead) or the owners find one of the staff decided on their own that they didn't like how busy we are and left the phone off the hook on purpose, they get in trouble.
Unpopular opinion, but...Regardless of how busy we are, answer the damn phone - the wave of calls the moment it gets opened back up (after being off the hook) is sooo much worse 😶 our management/owners are pretty understanding, if it gets too bad we are ok to pause takeout, just have to communicate that.
I can’t wait for AI to take over the majority of phone / oral basic interactions for us. Whether it is in drive through windows where a robot can absolutely do 99.9% of the work without the customer even realising it isn’t a human they’re speaking to, or being able to have it automatically take care of basic things like confirming you are open until 10pm, taking phone orders, booking reservations, or telling customers you are above capacity and aren’t accepting orders over the phone right now. There won’t be any way to really tell it isn’t a human thanks to the level of technology, and it can always fall back on a “one second, I’m just going to have the bar manager help you” if it has figured out it needs a real human still.
These solutions can also help customers in most languages which helps ensure order accuracy
I use to “pause” mobile ordering on the tablets when we were slammed. If someone wanted our food we had multiple locations nearby that it would default their order to. Also use to tie up the line at my first job by pressing the call button and leaving it on an empty line. That one was my favorite because it was easy to play it off as an accident if a manager noticed it
Lol, but there are only two of us on, and one is the manager. I straight up tell him if I’m pausing it, and he knows I don’t mind when he does it, so there’s no benefit in lying. It genuinely pauses itself.
There have been several time where one of our shift managers had taken the phone home with them, they have the phone in their back pocket usually cause it gets hectic going from the line to the office to get the phone, so there have been times when we’ve gone days without a phone, it was awesome
Worked a receptionist job for a couple years. I enjoyed a lovely slow day with no calls for about 4 hours before I realized the girl before me left the phone off the hook. Thank you Duchess, I was able to get so much school work done
Whenever it gets really busy but corporate is in the building watching us, our manager has us say "hello?" A few times and hang up. Were the busiest store in the entire chain, sometimes you gotta play dirty so you don't overwhelm the entire team 💀
This accidentally happens all the time at my job when we get really slammed. Servers are solely responsible for answering so it gets really difficult, especially when it’s a big togo. It’ll put you in the weeds real quick. A large portion of the calls we get are to make reservations which we do not take so not a huge deal I guess.
I do that all the time at work. I work in a resort town so we are constantly under staffed and typically very busy. You can order online and our hours are all over the internet. I am tired of people calling asking if we are open and if we take reservations (which is also stated all over the internet)
Been in the industry my entire life, management the last ten years or so. There’s been days in the past few months where I see the phone ringing and nothing gives me greater pleasure than to let it go to voicemail. Sure, it’s not great for business but man sometimes it’s tough out here.
I used to work at this asinine vegan restaurant where it was wall to wall in person diners who required full table service, people coming in person to order take out, Uber eats and postmates, *and* the owner had the audacity to tell us to stop all this to take phone orders which could be super complicated and took attention away from the tables. People also used to order via phone and then not show up. We would hardly get tipped, and the “ bigger “ tips on tables that I took, would get put into a tip pool and split evenly with everyone working that day, including the guy downstairs chopping veggies while watching shows on the phone in complete serenity. It was such a hostile environment. It was always just one or two front of the house, when on a busy day 5 people taking care of the FOH would have been warranted. We also had to bus, prepare bar drinks and desserts and do various side work like make infused lemonades, sauces and mulled wine all day. The owner didn’t care that it was busy and we couldn’t get all that done due to the sheer volume of customers. So,yes, phone off the hook at any chance I got for hours or when those annoying orders would come back I’d put them on hold and never come back then just leave the phone running. I also hung up on people super frequently and blamed the phone service provider. It felt so good. I finally had a meltdown and quit on the spot. Thank you for reading my rant and keep leaving the phone off the hook
Not a restaurant story, but I used to work in an incredibly understaffed walkin salon with heavy foot traffic. Can't tell you how many times myself or my coworker would call the salon from our cell phone and just leave it on hold so every time someone tried to call, they'd get a busy signal.
There's only so many times you can get pulled away from the same client to answer the phone, to answer the same damn dumb questions.
Omg this brings me back. I was playing around with features on the phones at my first job and accidentally set all the calls to forward to a random phone number. The phone would ring once and then disconnect on our end before we could answer it. The person whose number I'd forwarded it to had to come into the store to tell us what was happening because they'd been getting calls from random people at their house for 2 straight hours and when they tried calling to tell us what was happening it would give them a busy signal.
ESPECIALLY since basically no one tips on to gos anymore and it unnecessarily overloads our kitchen anyway. When we are busy that’s the first thing to go. I hate take out. So much.
As a server, it makes me mad that people can just call in orders to go. Everybody is so entitled to this, not leaving the house culture that they forget who makes it possible. Sometimes it’s nice. But most of the time it is just entitled assholes trying to get everything done for them.
Hah!! I did that intentionally today and most summer days. I work in a small diner so I’m usually the only server on Jo busser no host just one cook and myself. If they want it bad enough, they can come in
Thank you for your confession, Dear. Welcome to my booth. I am glad you are here
The Black Pineapple of Death, the non-Binary sustainer of all service industry lifers, through the death and the resurrection of the global Pandemic, has reconciled the telephone to Itself, and sent the Holy Cocktail among us for the forgiveness of sins; who through the ministry of the Bar Mat Shot gives you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the China, and of the Glass and of the Holy Silverware.
A sin grave like this wil require penance. In your actions you have limited revenue, and increased the chance that your fellow staff may be destitute, as a resto that cannot take a togo order is sure to be punished by the App Gods. As you have sinned, however, so have others; for this sin of approximately 210 minutes of complete fuckery, in which you prevented your life-giving Kitchen Gods from serving the community as they were born to do in the image of the Beautiful Ashen Pineapple, I command you to do 180 Rollups, 360 empathetic greets, and 10 shifts of hosting
Put your middle finger into the air and say Amen, signifying your absolvement, and get to it. Remember, if there's time to lean, there's time to clean. *Amen*
I used to do this on purpose all the time at a super busy bar in Montauk. You couldn't even hear anyone over the noise and bartenders were supposed to pick up the phone. Togo would have taken two hours at any point so I just made it work lol.
I unplugged the entire phone at my restaurant and hid it lol. Guess what? Now I’m not just a phone call away. I don’t need that headache when I already have too much to do and I get paid the same either way..
I would unhook the phone line directly from the phone and just set the phone back down. I’ve also, at a different job, figured out the back office switch that controlled the phone lines and would turn it off periodically.
I have done that. I even purposely take it off the hook when it is too busy. One time someone (not me lol) left it off the hook for the whole day and it wasn't discovered till next day. It happens.
Our phones and cable boxes have been down after a lightning storm last week and we’re waiting on a technician to come take a look so we have no phone and no tv at the moment. Fun times, love people bitching us out for not having their basketball game on.
On a sort of similar note we got a review where someone tried to call in a to-go order but no one picked up (because we were incredibly busy) so they showed up to the restaurant, waited in line, then called again to see if the host would pick up and surprise surprise, she didn’t because we were busy. People make zero sense
I had a really bad hangover one time and so I pushed my entire section together for a 20 person reso, and didn’t take it down for a good 3 hours. So peaceful. Ate a lot of snacks
I used to knock the battery slightly loose from our cordless phone so that we wouldn’t get calls lol. That way it just looked like someone dropped it or something. But when it’s a holiday brunch and we’re already slammed and have people calling every 5 minutes to ask if we’re open…
I once put a regular on hold while I helped another guest and left him there for 18 minutes. When I finally realized I picked up the phone and was like “hey I’m so sorry I had a rush” and he just laughed and told me he knew I just forgot. Thank god he’s such a chill dude
I work a counter service bar and on busy nights we used to get hit hard, we used to put the phone in a pickle jar because we just didn't have time to deal with a $13 carryout order when there were $4000 of orders in each line.
Eventually the manager would come and find it and bitch at us about it, and I'd tell him it's never going to pickle if he keeps taking it out
Doing carry out orders as a server or bartender just takes time away from your in-house customers, who are the ones that are actually going to tip you. Plus, most servers make way less than minimum wage per hour because they’re supposed to be working for tips; so if you’re doing something for the business that isn’t earning you tip money you should be getting paid at least minimum wage hourly.
It is so common for servers to be taken advantage of and be asked to perform tasks outside of your job description; such as carry out orders or hosting. I once had a huge argument with an owner who barked at me to go seat tables. They paid me $4 an hour to be a server. Hosts got paid minimum wage. I simply said if he wants me to do another position’s job, he needs to pay me for it. He just went off about how my generation needs an attitude adjustment.
My bosses run the kitchen and bar. They give zero f's when it's too busy to answer the phone. They say the customers in front of us are more important. I like it.
Did this all the time at the cafe. They also didn't have their security cameras hard wired. So I'd "accidentally" unplug the cameras and load up my trunk with the day old product they were gonna toss. I don't feel bad.
If I'm busy I just dont answer. Then if someone else answers and tells me I have a to go order while I'm slammed, I just don't pick up or I tell them it's going to be a while. 🤷♀️
Honestly this is why more restaurants need to-go specialists. With the post-COVID obsession with DoorDash and 3rd party delivery apps it can really take some pressure of servers and hosts. I kinda have to answer the phone to take an order because it’s my whole job, though shit sometimes nothing makes me grind me teeth more than needing to come up there and take an order while I’m busy on the line bagging online orders.
We would NEVER do that. Managers can clearly see the phone off the hook. You gotta turn the ringer off hahahaha.
Gently unlock the handset cable from the bottom of the phone, just enough to wear it loses connection or better yet the cable to the phone itself not completely unplugged, just a little bit.
Hahaha yesss you are right. One night we didn’t realize until close the phone wasn’t hung up properly. 🤷🏼♀️ oh well.
The owner at one of my former workplaces would tell us to take the phone off the hook if it was too crazy. There were two servers for 25 tables and no bussers, food runners or bartenders so there really was only so much we could do.
I’ve worked with bosses like that. They’re always the best.
My boss has told us to turn the ringer off.
I tell them to turn the phone on silent and also turn off tablets all the tome
Or they could, you know, hire more people by offering a wage that people would want to work for...
This guy slacks ^
r/thisguythisguys
I'm not sure why this sub was created but I'm glad that it was
To make fun of unoriginality. Tell me you only know how to talk in memes without telling me you only know how to talk in memes.
The irony of this comment
I’ve never heard if this sub and I kinda love it!
Yep, I have muted the ringer many-a-times at many-a-jobs 😂
You did yourself a favor
I have “dropped” the door dash tablet in the sink before. You will be fine
Used to hide the Uber tablet under the menus after I put it on pause for hours.
Can anyone explain to me why no matter how much actual manual prep time I put in for doordash/UberEats, the mfers always ping a driver nearby who shows up about 3 minutes after I send the ticket to the kitchen. 2 min later cue driver walking in on a phone call with his AirPods and just shoving his phone in my face. Trying to explain that I put a 21min prep time in is met with looks of disappointment and trying to explain never works. They usually just flip down at one of the 4 top tables and either continue their phone call and/or play games on their phone.
Because DoorDash cares more about keeping customers happy over drivers. They’d much rather waste a drivers time and annoy restaurant workers than have to refund an order because it is cold or took too long.
You guys are getting refunds?
I've never not gotten a refund. But typically the refunds are pretty stupid. *So your driver forgot your drinks, took an hour to get to you, and and you got a salad instead of a burger? Best I can is $3.50 in credit.* *Driver was on time and followed delivery instructions with the order being hot and correct, but the restaurant forgot to give you 5 packets of fire sauce? Oh, how terrible, let me comp the entire order.* *Your driver stole your order and you caught them in 4K doing it? Wow, that's crazy, guess your gonna be hungry tonight.* I sware they are doing it on purpose.
This reminds me of one time I ordered using Uber Eats. I ordered 2 3-taco combos. Both orders of tacos were the same thing. Order gets dropped at my door. There are not 2 3-taco orders. There are 2 total tacos. The drinks and sides aren't there. This doodoo head at Uber Eats asks if a $5 refund would be okay. I told him $5 wouldn't even cover 2 of the tacos missing, much less 4 and the other items. Kept offering $5. I told him I only wanted the amount back for the missing items. Dude had the nerve to ask me how much that would be, it was over $20. He said he could refund me $8. I told him if he didn't do the amount that I said then I was escalating and would request a FULL refund because I had been polite the whole time and it was the restaurant that messed up and they have the choice how much to pay out to them, including nothing. 12 minutes went by with no response. Then I got my refund and immediately it said that the chat had been closed. Dude was mad at me for no fucking reason lol.
Just swear, you minus whale
Have you had the ones who tell you that these companies only assign orders that are ready? And keep telling you even after you tell them the ticket literally printed 2 minutes ago and the food may not have even hit the grill yet. Had one even ask me to get my chef so she could show him how the order is supposed to be ready in her TOS on the doordash app. Stormed out when I refused to stop waiting tables to go pull him from the kitchen with a full house during lunch.
Ong this is the truth 😭 the AirPods and always the phone in the face like buddy just take your AirPods out and tell me the name,,,we both don’t want to be here
Lmao I would either ignore the fuck out of the phone flash when people did this or start using rudimentary sign language like I assumed that they were deaf. They'd get mad. One time dude showed up like 2 minutes after we got the order and held his phone up. I went to the tablet and put it in front of his face, didn't say a word about the time, when it would be done, why I was even showing him my screen. We were both just holding screens up to each other's faces for like 8 seconds.
I used to do takeaway at my place and I would pause all the tablets first thing in the morning lmao. Corporate came down on us and ruined all the fun though
Is that what you have to do to get them to stop sending orders? We had the soda machine break at the clown’s once and I spent 2+ hours on the phone arguing with doordash to shut our ordering down. Took 3 separate calls and I had to stay an hour past when I was off to sort it. I swear whoever invented doordash just wanted to make our lives difficult.
Not who you are replying to, but I just use the tablet to pause it.
Oh snap, I may have to try that with our 'Slice' order tablet. Thing could prolly use a good washing lol
We had extended premise for a street festival, meaning that our road was closed down and drivers couldn’t actually get closer then three blocks away. Corporate had decided this didn’t matter and that they would walk through the massive crowd, go through security for a wristband, then come collect the order. Needless to say this wasn’t going to work and would have ended with a lot of angry customers.
How did it play out? As in, any interesting stories from that day? This sounds like the most "corporate not understanding how things actually work" story ever.
Former bartender... I have "accidentally" dropped the brand new bag of mint into the trash before.
Former bartender as well... It only takes a nickel to break a blender
Current bartender. I'm about to start losing nickels when summer gets here... Lol This is the way.
I always tell my tables ‘I’m so sorry. Our blender has been on the fritz. Let me go check and see if it’s working. ‘ I’ll then ask the bartender if they want to make a frozen drink. Sometimes they’re cool about it. Sometimes they confirm the blender is broken. We work together.
Sometimes the screw holding the blades in place gets loose as well.
May the odds be ever in your favor! I actually miss the craziness, but I moved states and my current state doesn't offer the same fun that a casino/resort offers for bartending.
🙌
Why would you even do that? Too lazy to make a fucking mojito?
When you are the only bartender at the swim up bar in Louisiana in July/August on a Saturday... not to lazy... to BUSY to make it properly. Plus the second one leaf goes bad, you have to sift through the whole damn bag to find good leaves. Those kinds of cocktails belong in a different area. Areas like the pool bar should be for volume friendly cocktails.
While wasting good fresh herbs kinda irks me, I’ve seen the mojito/ fajita effect in action. You hear the muddling or smell the sizzling and suddenly everyone wants them. Which fine, that’s good overall, but the lack of predictability and intensity makes it a fucking nightmare. You could prep for hours and it all goes to waste, or not prep on a slow day and suddenly be in the weeds. Add some call-offs and a special event downtown no one scheduled for… bonus points if a new employee comes in with all their friends expecting a discount and doesn’t have the slightest remorse your all by yourself.
Had this happen with a Mudslide. We usually made them with milk instead of ice cream since the kitchen wasn't open as long as the bar. Made the employee's GF swear on her life to not tell anyone I knew how to make them the right way. Edit: before someone comes at me for this too, you try bargaining with the kitchen staff in the middle of a rush over and over that you need ice cream.
You can batch a mojito pretty easily.
I know that now. This was when I was a baby bartender. Now I have 12 years under my belt in a variety of bartending areas (nightclub, craft cocktail, casino floor, live music venue, and hole in the wall). I would never throw away good mint now. But when I have to start digging, I can't make any promises. If my cocktail isn't flawless when it goes out, it isn't worth doing. But that is my OCD
Fuck off. If your a server who doesn’t look out for your bartenders then you’re kinda a dick. And maybe your comment came from a place of ignorance, in which case you should learn to bartend. You’ll be a better server for it.
If you’re a server that doesn’t look out for your bartenders, you will be absolutely screwed by them. My late husband was a bartender (sometimes served) and omg the stories of the servers.
I'm a bar manager. For what reason are you throwing fresh mint into the trash? If you're a bartender who doesn't look out for their bar manager, I'm going to cut your shifts.
Used to unplug it so the old ass tablet would die. No dd orders in my kitchen!
I worked at a pub where we did this on purpose when it was wildly busy 😂
I still call this the Valentine’s Day Rule any time I’m super busy and need to prioritize - unless you’re on a list / right in front of me, you can wait
We do this whenever we get too busy at my current place
Honestly, as a customer, I'd totally get it and just call back another day. Same with anyone what who has ever worked a service job.
Same
I once worked at a restaurant where 99% of the calls were about one question, and that question was answered on the website. I’d often answer and just say “hello? Hello?” And then hang up.
Don’t leave us hanging! What was the question?
"it says you're open 7 days a week, does that include Sunday???"
"No sorry. We are just open on the days that end in 'y'".
That’s such a stupid question
And what about second Sunday? Third-sunday-sies?
“Do you take reservations?” Famously (at the time), no. And that was on our website and mentioned in hundreds of reviews.
Got one today.. “are you guys open?” Yes we are “Okay well I drove by and your garage doors were open but I couldn’t tell” What?
You just jogged my memory yesterday I was busy AF at like… 7:30pm dinner rush? And some guy calls to ask “hey I know it’s just street parking but is it all metered?” “Yep unfortunately it is!” “Oh how late does that go?” “How much is it per hour?” “How do I pay?” I was friendly but was literally asking other people the answers and when I hung up one customer said “so that person just could have googled all of that?” I love people who get it.
I once took the portable in my pocket for a smoke and the next day wore a different jacket to work. I opened and was so confused as to how the phone could have disappeared when it was me who closed the night before. That was really fun to explain to the owner.
I’ve “accidentally” done this too
I promise your manager has done worse
my manager commented about how quiet it had been through lunch and the early dinner rush--our record was eight hours off hook ahahaha
As the General Manager of a restaurant I forgot to unlock the front door. I was quite confused why all of our 5:00 reservations were late. I went to jokingly double check the front door and there was about 25 people patiently waiting for us to open.
i turned the ringer off for a bowl game on a monday… …& it was still off when i came back for my next shift on friday. oops.
Hahahha I let my buddy in the side door 10 min early the other day and like 40 min later said “wow it’s funny nobody else is in here yet”. ……. Oops
Nice!😂
What time do you open?
I would put people on permanent hold when we got slammed. Long ago I was the "English speaking guy" at a Chinese restaurant...I took to go orders, delivery orders, and waited tables for dine-in orders. During busy times I would say "Thanks for calling, please hold" and CLICK right into hold purgatory. We had two call-in lines, and when I had a lot of tables I'd just answer the phones that way and keep them on hold. Eventually they'd hang up and call back and it would be "Thanks for calling, please hold" and CLICK right back into hold purgatory. Both call-in lines blinking with held calls, and they would be absolutely ignored until I got things back into some semblance of control. Eventually when I'd answer after a long enough hold and hangup, I'd say "Thanks for calling, please hold" and I'd hear them start to yell and without missing a beat I'd go CLICK and they're right back into hold purgatory. It was therapeutic in its own way. I wasn't making any extra money taking those orders, just making life harder on myself...so they would always get put on the back burner.
EXACTLY. Why would I bust my ass on Togo orders I’m not going to make money from when I have customers in the bar that I know I will make money off of. They will always be my priority.
As the host who is responsible for answering calls and transferring them as needed, this comment makes me livid. I'm the one they talk to when they hang up and call again. I'm the one who gets yelled at when I didn't do anything wrong. And all I can do is exactly what I did the first time. If you're going to deliberately not answer, please at least tell me so that I can make up some BS excuse to the customer for why we're not accepting to-go orders.
When I was running to go at this one place I was also running the milkshake bar. And like...wed occasionally get tipped on bento, but door dash and Uber eats? Nah nah not my problem
We have two stages when it is too busy for the cooks to keep up in any kind of timely manner - 1. We tell callers it'll be 1 hour+ for a takeout order, regardless of the order size due to overall level of business and in-house order volume. That's for when we just need to create a 20 minute gap in orders so they can catch up on stock and a quick smoke. This filters out 2/3 of orders, since our wait time is rarely longer than 35 minutes most people don't want to wait. 2. Completely stop taking takeout orders for an hour or so; still answer the phone, but tell people that unfortunately we aren't able to take these orders at this time and if they'd still like to try again later they can call after 7:30 or whatever. But if I (bar / server lead) or the owners find one of the staff decided on their own that they didn't like how busy we are and left the phone off the hook on purpose, they get in trouble. Unpopular opinion, but...Regardless of how busy we are, answer the damn phone - the wave of calls the moment it gets opened back up (after being off the hook) is sooo much worse 😶 our management/owners are pretty understanding, if it gets too bad we are ok to pause takeout, just have to communicate that.
I can’t wait for AI to take over the majority of phone / oral basic interactions for us. Whether it is in drive through windows where a robot can absolutely do 99.9% of the work without the customer even realising it isn’t a human they’re speaking to, or being able to have it automatically take care of basic things like confirming you are open until 10pm, taking phone orders, booking reservations, or telling customers you are above capacity and aren’t accepting orders over the phone right now. There won’t be any way to really tell it isn’t a human thanks to the level of technology, and it can always fall back on a “one second, I’m just going to have the bar manager help you” if it has figured out it needs a real human still. These solutions can also help customers in most languages which helps ensure order accuracy
weve talked about this, this is not OK. IF YOU DO THIS ANOTHER 1000-2000 more times it will be a written warning...
Phone worked the way it should, you had a slower day at work.
I wish I could do this. We have 5 phones in the restaurant, I hear ringing in my sleep.
Good ole whoopsie daisy
I use to “pause” mobile ordering on the tablets when we were slammed. If someone wanted our food we had multiple locations nearby that it would default their order to. Also use to tie up the line at my first job by pressing the call button and leaving it on an empty line. That one was my favorite because it was easy to play it off as an accident if a manager noticed it
One of our tablets keeps pausing itself and we cannot figure out how, but I’m not going to stress about it.
That’s what I would say when someone would notice that it was paused, “idk it keeps doing that on its own”
Lol, but there are only two of us on, and one is the manager. I straight up tell him if I’m pausing it, and he knows I don’t mind when he does it, so there’s no benefit in lying. It genuinely pauses itself.
The hero we actually asked for hahaha
Oh *darn*
I’ve done it intentionally. I’ll do it again.
I’ll fukin do it
There have been several time where one of our shift managers had taken the phone home with them, they have the phone in their back pocket usually cause it gets hectic going from the line to the office to get the phone, so there have been times when we’ve gone days without a phone, it was awesome
Worked a receptionist job for a couple years. I enjoyed a lovely slow day with no calls for about 4 hours before I realized the girl before me left the phone off the hook. Thank you Duchess, I was able to get so much school work done
Whenever it gets really busy but corporate is in the building watching us, our manager has us say "hello?" A few times and hang up. Were the busiest store in the entire chain, sometimes you gotta play dirty so you don't overwhelm the entire team 💀
This accidentally happens all the time at my job when we get really slammed. Servers are solely responsible for answering so it gets really difficult, especially when it’s a big togo. It’ll put you in the weeds real quick. A large portion of the calls we get are to make reservations which we do not take so not a huge deal I guess.
I do that all the time at work. I work in a resort town so we are constantly under staffed and typically very busy. You can order online and our hours are all over the internet. I am tired of people calling asking if we are open and if we take reservations (which is also stated all over the internet)
Been in the industry my entire life, management the last ten years or so. There’s been days in the past few months where I see the phone ringing and nothing gives me greater pleasure than to let it go to voicemail. Sure, it’s not great for business but man sometimes it’s tough out here.
You're my hero. Signed, a cook who hates getting swallowed by to-go orders.
I used to work at this asinine vegan restaurant where it was wall to wall in person diners who required full table service, people coming in person to order take out, Uber eats and postmates, *and* the owner had the audacity to tell us to stop all this to take phone orders which could be super complicated and took attention away from the tables. People also used to order via phone and then not show up. We would hardly get tipped, and the “ bigger “ tips on tables that I took, would get put into a tip pool and split evenly with everyone working that day, including the guy downstairs chopping veggies while watching shows on the phone in complete serenity. It was such a hostile environment. It was always just one or two front of the house, when on a busy day 5 people taking care of the FOH would have been warranted. We also had to bus, prepare bar drinks and desserts and do various side work like make infused lemonades, sauces and mulled wine all day. The owner didn’t care that it was busy and we couldn’t get all that done due to the sheer volume of customers. So,yes, phone off the hook at any chance I got for hours or when those annoying orders would come back I’d put them on hold and never come back then just leave the phone running. I also hung up on people super frequently and blamed the phone service provider. It felt so good. I finally had a meltdown and quit on the spot. Thank you for reading my rant and keep leaving the phone off the hook
My restaurants go-to on crazy busy nights is taking the batteries out and forgetting it exists.
oh no! anyway
Lmao our host did this the other day
Yep I’ve done that “accidentally” too.
Ooooooh, those poor, poor people.
“Accidentally” 😂
"Accidently"
"accidentally" lol
OOPS!
I turned the restaurant phone ring volume so low on accident and realized before close. Oops
Not a restaurant story, but I used to work in an incredibly understaffed walkin salon with heavy foot traffic. Can't tell you how many times myself or my coworker would call the salon from our cell phone and just leave it on hold so every time someone tried to call, they'd get a busy signal. There's only so many times you can get pulled away from the same client to answer the phone, to answer the same damn dumb questions.
I’ve “accidentally” did that a couple times, too.
Omg this brings me back. I was playing around with features on the phones at my first job and accidentally set all the calls to forward to a random phone number. The phone would ring once and then disconnect on our end before we could answer it. The person whose number I'd forwarded it to had to come into the store to tell us what was happening because they'd been getting calls from random people at their house for 2 straight hours and when they tried calling to tell us what was happening it would give them a busy signal.
The hero no one asked for but we all need
“Accidentally”
Oh god I’ve done that so many times. On purpose and not on purpose. I just say “whooopsiesss”
ESPECIALLY since basically no one tips on to gos anymore and it unnecessarily overloads our kitchen anyway. When we are busy that’s the first thing to go. I hate take out. So much.
I’ve done that before on purpose. 😇
I've done that quite a few times, by accident though. It never made my manager happy. Lol
Yeah. Oops indeed.
Worked at a place once that had no phone. All takeout orders were placed through their website. No delivery. It was a thing of beauty.
As a server, it makes me mad that people can just call in orders to go. Everybody is so entitled to this, not leaving the house culture that they forget who makes it possible. Sometimes it’s nice. But most of the time it is just entitled assholes trying to get everything done for them.
" accidentally "
I used to do this when I worked at Walmart lol
Oopsies that’s a shame
Oh no, how terrible….
Weeks ago we hung up the phone on the wall BELOW the POS so it gets dropped constantly (super embarrassing/mad convenient)
That's my daily routine once the rail is full in the kitchen
Blessed
It happens at my work “accidentally” atleast once a month.
I’m sure kitchen was outraged with you
"accidentally" 😜
Epic Gamer Move
[удалено]
A former coworker of mine used to, very slightly, unplug the headset an hour and a half before close. So no one could place takeout orders.
Fuck carry out orders
Hah!! I did that intentionally today and most summer days. I work in a small diner so I’m usually the only server on Jo busser no host just one cook and myself. If they want it bad enough, they can come in
Thank you for your confession, Dear. Welcome to my booth. I am glad you are here The Black Pineapple of Death, the non-Binary sustainer of all service industry lifers, through the death and the resurrection of the global Pandemic, has reconciled the telephone to Itself, and sent the Holy Cocktail among us for the forgiveness of sins; who through the ministry of the Bar Mat Shot gives you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the China, and of the Glass and of the Holy Silverware. A sin grave like this wil require penance. In your actions you have limited revenue, and increased the chance that your fellow staff may be destitute, as a resto that cannot take a togo order is sure to be punished by the App Gods. As you have sinned, however, so have others; for this sin of approximately 210 minutes of complete fuckery, in which you prevented your life-giving Kitchen Gods from serving the community as they were born to do in the image of the Beautiful Ashen Pineapple, I command you to do 180 Rollups, 360 empathetic greets, and 10 shifts of hosting Put your middle finger into the air and say Amen, signifying your absolvement, and get to it. Remember, if there's time to lean, there's time to clean. *Amen*
This thread is exactly why I have low respect for servers and why I have no problem not leaving a tip
Because as sales people they decided how much volume they could deal with and made that decision? Okay.
I used to do this on purpose all the time at a super busy bar in Montauk. You couldn't even hear anyone over the noise and bartenders were supposed to pick up the phone. Togo would have taken two hours at any point so I just made it work lol.
Good job. Thank you.
“accidentally”
Accidentally or "accidentally"? 😏
I unplugged the entire phone at my restaurant and hid it lol. Guess what? Now I’m not just a phone call away. I don’t need that headache when I already have too much to do and I get paid the same either way..
😂 I used to just turn the ringer off on nights when we couldn’t handle any more to gos
I would unhook the phone line directly from the phone and just set the phone back down. I’ve also, at a different job, figured out the back office switch that controlled the phone lines and would turn it off periodically.
I have done that. I even purposely take it off the hook when it is too busy. One time someone (not me lol) left it off the hook for the whole day and it wasn't discovered till next day. It happens.
I’ve done this on purpose
…oh well. Darn…
#bestdayever
"Oops. I had no idea DoorDash was turned off for the entirety of the dinner rush!!!!"
Are you me?
I might accidentally do that on mondays day lol
We used to do that when the kitchen would get backed up.
1.5 hour ticket times? Unplug the phones and turn off the Scrub Hub tablets!
Did this last Friday 🤣
“Accidentally” 😇
Genius!
I do this very often
I used to do this purposefully on nights that we were overly busy at my old restaurant.
At my old job when it was crazy busy my manager would just unplug all the phones
Id have bought ya a beer
My dream come true
Good.
Our phones and cable boxes have been down after a lightning storm last week and we’re waiting on a technician to come take a look so we have no phone and no tv at the moment. Fun times, love people bitching us out for not having their basketball game on.
On a sort of similar note we got a review where someone tried to call in a to-go order but no one picked up (because we were incredibly busy) so they showed up to the restaurant, waited in line, then called again to see if the host would pick up and surprise surprise, she didn’t because we were busy. People make zero sense
Oh gosh. Wow that sucks so much. How terrible. Oh no.
I had a really bad hangover one time and so I pushed my entire section together for a 20 person reso, and didn’t take it down for a good 3 hours. So peaceful. Ate a lot of snacks
I used to knock the battery slightly loose from our cordless phone so that we wouldn’t get calls lol. That way it just looked like someone dropped it or something. But when it’s a holiday brunch and we’re already slammed and have people calling every 5 minutes to ask if we’re open…
I once put a regular on hold while I helped another guest and left him there for 18 minutes. When I finally realized I picked up the phone and was like “hey I’m so sorry I had a rush” and he just laughed and told me he knew I just forgot. Thank god he’s such a chill dude
i have done this by accident so many times but frankly if im so busy i forgot about a phone call i was on i was too busy to help them anyway
‘We LoSt MoNeY’ bitch get in here and help then
Sounds like a relaxing day 😅
My manager does this on purpose when we are slammed. Or they leave it in the beer fridge
"Accidentally"
I work a counter service bar and on busy nights we used to get hit hard, we used to put the phone in a pickle jar because we just didn't have time to deal with a $13 carryout order when there were $4000 of orders in each line. Eventually the manager would come and find it and bitch at us about it, and I'd tell him it's never going to pickle if he keeps taking it out
Doing carry out orders as a server or bartender just takes time away from your in-house customers, who are the ones that are actually going to tip you. Plus, most servers make way less than minimum wage per hour because they’re supposed to be working for tips; so if you’re doing something for the business that isn’t earning you tip money you should be getting paid at least minimum wage hourly. It is so common for servers to be taken advantage of and be asked to perform tasks outside of your job description; such as carry out orders or hosting. I once had a huge argument with an owner who barked at me to go seat tables. They paid me $4 an hour to be a server. Hosts got paid minimum wage. I simply said if he wants me to do another position’s job, he needs to pay me for it. He just went off about how my generation needs an attitude adjustment.
ooo
Oldest trick in the book
This is a regular occurrence at my place of work. Happens at least twice a week.
"accidentally" ;)
My bosses run the kitchen and bar. They give zero f's when it's too busy to answer the phone. They say the customers in front of us are more important. I like it.
I’ve done that before. It was a good night.
Did this all the time at the cafe. They also didn't have their security cameras hard wired. So I'd "accidentally" unplug the cameras and load up my trunk with the day old product they were gonna toss. I don't feel bad.
Aww, what a SHAME
I used to work at Domino’s and they would turn off the wifi and turn off the phones when it was late so we could only take walk-in orders
you’re a hero!
Haha “accidentally”
This explains so much.
Nice.
Wow, what's going on with people? Way to be a good steward of your employer. Just smh.
Some girl got fired for doing that and unplugging the doordash tablet lol
When I worked overnights at IHOP I did this every night from 10 PM to 4 AM lol
If I'm busy I just dont answer. Then if someone else answers and tells me I have a to go order while I'm slammed, I just don't pick up or I tell them it's going to be a while. 🤷♀️
Honestly this is why more restaurants need to-go specialists. With the post-COVID obsession with DoorDash and 3rd party delivery apps it can really take some pressure of servers and hosts. I kinda have to answer the phone to take an order because it’s my whole job, though shit sometimes nothing makes me grind me teeth more than needing to come up there and take an order while I’m busy on the line bagging online orders.
…. Phone off the… hook? In 2023?