Thievery, Alec Baldwin, and Wine Keys

One of the truly great servers, Tina, dealt with a four-top tonight who accused her of stealing their credit card.

Poor thing. She had to drag Owner's Wife over to the table, and plead with the four to look into their wallets to see if the card could be found. Of course one of the four had mistakenly placed it in his own wallet. No apologies were made. Tip was standard.

Meanwhile, a different four-top had been seated in her section. Busy solving problems with Table J'Accuse, she had neglected her newest table. When she finally had a moment to take their orders, after apologizing profusely, one of the table mates said, "Thank you for acknowledging your sloth," or something even more eye-roll worthy, as she described it. Again, maintaining her bad four-top streak, one of the party ordered veal, which had been 86'd by the kitchen, unbeknownst to Tina, during the time she dealt with Table J'Accuse.

When she asked for a Sam Adams and Manhattan on the fly, I leapfrogged her to the top of the order while she literally ripped the Sammy and glass out of my hand.

A toast to Tina, who held her shit together during a night of hell, while remaining more kind and professional to all than reasonably expected. This is the stuff which defines great servers. Appreciate!!

Waiter has a great post about servers and wine openers. It's a given that servers will forget/lose/apologize about wine keys every single night. I tend to pack two of my favorites, and one backup, for that reason. I'll lend out two and keep one. Every. Single. Evening.

Servers, take good care of your wine keys. I do hate to scold, but a wine key is as much a part of your uniform as your shirt, apron and pen. And if not, take good care of your bartenders who snarkily lend you their wine openers, and believe me, we hold them precious and dear to our tendin' hearts. Return them, and don't bitch about those crazy double-hinged pulltaps and how you don't know how to use them, and shit. Beggars shouldn't be choosers. Say thanks, and give us an extra buck tip-out. Just because you forgot yours, and we remembered yours.

Am I wrong to enjoy Alec Baldwin? I know he's a bit bloated, and political, but I just get the biggest kick out of him. I revealed this to my coworkers tonight during the after-work wine-n-chat, and was confronted by moans. I guess it's just me.

To Alec, and Tina. Two of my favorites.