Serving in the Land of the Smiling Burger[1]
(Become a Waitress in Four Easy Steps)
Anyone who has ever been a waitress knows that it isn't easy. You must be willing to work for atrocious pay trying to make annoying people happy. You must also be ready to enter into a sort of secret club; an organization ripe with rules and hierarchies where, at any moment, you could find yourself the target of an angry customer, or worse, manager. After working on and off as a waitress for three years, I am confident in my ability to declare what I don't want to do for the rest of my life. Being a waitress is certainly not be the most satisfying job and may not even pay the bills, but it is an opportunity to witness how silly people will be for the sake of making a buck. In my experience, restaurants abound in strange rituals and re-namings of things in attempts to make them sound more appealing when all they really need to do is speak the plain truth: a burger is a burger, no matter how many fancy adjectives you add to it.
When I first set foot inside a brand new Red Robin Gourmet Burgers restaurant to apply for a seasonal job, I had no idea what sort of adventures were in store for me. I embarked on the journey of my first real job readily equipped with a fashionable robin-red polo tee, a pair of non-slip shoes with matching belt, and a spotless black apron tied around the waist of a new pair of blue jeans. Before I was able to step onto the floor as a waitress, server, or whatever you want to call it (the politically correct and not-as-clever-as-they-think-they-are managers of the Red Robin corporation labeled us members of the "sales team"), I had to endure two weeks of mental torture training. After making flash cards of all twenty-seven gourmet burgers and countless alcoholic drinks whose ingredients I couldn't even pronounce, I would enter the restaurant for my POS[2] training (Workbook 73). Sweat would drip slowly down my back as I navigated my way through the computerized ordering system, filling checks with the most random combination of oddly-abbreviated items the designers of the training manual could come up with. I might be required to ring up one Freckled Lemonade[3] (Freckld Lemnde), one Sand in Your Shorts[4] (Sand In), and one kid's strawberry milkshake plus an arbitrary listing of food items all on one check, sending the order to the kitchen (firing) in the right combination so that each item would reach the table in the correct number of minutes after they had been ordered.
At Red Robin, and I imagine this goes for all restaurants, there was a system for everything. The first system servers are taught is the proper order and timing of the events which take place between guests arriving at and leaving your table (Workbook 27). The first, and by far the silliest, step on this service sequence is the "30 second greet[5]." From the moment the hostess (member of the hospitality team, or hospo) deposits a number of guests at your table, you have 30 seconds to reach them, hand out cardboard coasters, and run through your "welcome to Red Robin" spiel. We were told that if we fail to meet this simple standard, our guests would not receive the "gift of time[6]," would become terribly upset, and would most likely burn down the building upon leaving. Of course, this isn't what the management told us but because the rule was so silly, we had to think up exciting reasons to stick to it.
After greeting your table, the next step is to take drink orders. These drinks are expected to be on the table no more than two minutes after you've taken the order, assuming they are simple fountain drinks or iced teas. If the order is required to go through the bartender (or mixologist, another one of those crafty Red Robin nicknames), you are allowed an extra two minute grace period. Following the drinks, appetizers are to appear on the table within seven minutes, entrees within nine, and the check is to be deposited (along with customer comment card) before the first guest is finished with their meal (Workbook 27). Okay, maybe I lied when I said that the "30 second greet" was the silliest of the rules. In my experience, dropping the check before anyone is finished eating[7] does not, in any way, add to the customer's receipt of the "gift of time." On the contrary, it usually results in decreasing the server's gift of tip[8]. The management tries to explain the process as giving guests the option to pay immediately and leave whenever they please, to order dessert before they finish their meal, or to camp out at the table for twenty minutes in protest to the premature dropping of the check. I find that, in most cases, when I subscribe to this particular rule, the final of these options is most frequently the result.
Once I learned my way around the POS system, everything else fell into place. The time I lost asking mumbly customers to repeat their order I made up for in a quick flurry of screen-tappings as I processed it. I soon fell into a rhythm. I became a master of balancing small round trays and, eventually, the larger, less practical oval trays as I glided around the restaurant taking orders, dropping off extra napkins, and picking up processed payments all in one trip. I learned that while eleven may seem like an obscene number of pens to carry on any singular person, I found that I never had to run back to the POS station when one ran out of ink or mysteriously disappeared over the course of a shift. At the end of the day my legs ached and my once-spotless black apron looked like it had had an encounter with an overfed baby. I would drag myself out to the car, stash my tips in my wallet, and drive home to sleep before coming back to work the following morning.
As a waitress, I was one of the lucky few who didn't rely on my tips and meager paycheck to survive. My job at Red Robin was merely something to keep me busy during breaks from school and to provide me pocket cash for shopping trips to the nearby mall[9]. Many of my co-workers, however, were not so lucky. There was Denise, the blonde mother of two who kept an eagle eye on the front door, ready to pounce on the hostess if she neglected to seat someone in her section. Casey, a server when I first started out, learned that the tips as a waitress didn't compare to what you could make as a mixologist, or mixo[10] especially a cute one. If I'd been old enough at the time, maybe I would have followed in her footsteps, not for the extra money but for the chance to stand behind a counter with a soft-serve machine and wait for somebody else to run food to my tables while I chatted up the guys who sat at the bar.
While I don't think I could earn a living as a waitress, at least not a very good one, I learned a few tricks to pass on to others who find themselves in my situation. Throughout my almost three-year stint of working at Red Robin on Summer and Winter breaks, I developed a list of the four key requirements of being a waitress. If you anticipate ever stepping foot inside a family restaurant with the intention of making some cash, you would do well to follow these four easy steps.
Though all restaurants may not be the same, the founding principle of a waitress' job remains constant memorizing tons of information that has no use outside your job. The managers at Red Robin had an endearing habit of quizzing the servers randomly on the ingredients (an amount of each ingredient) on the most obscure menu item that came to mind[11]. Each time a new menu came out we would be given a packet including picture, ingredients, and preparation instructions for each item. We would then memorize the material and be given a quiz which we would retake until we passed, thus certifying us worthy of selling the Honky Tonk BBQ Pork Burger and the Blackened Bayou Burger (Red Robin Menu). Not only are waitresses expected to know the ingredients and preparation of each item on the menu, but they must also know countless safety regulations. CCP, or critical control point, is an acronym forever burned in my memory along with the phrase, "fat pig big chicken[12]." The CCP is the temperature to which a product must be cooked in order for it to be deemed sanitary and fit for sale (Workbook 47). The illogical aforementioned phrase is one I came up with to keep the temperatures of each item straight, in order. Seafood, my trainer told me, is very oily and thus contains a high percentage of fat, is therefore first in line. Pork products are next followed by beef burgers (the abbreviation should be "bg" for burger but I changed it to "big" for the sake of using an actual word) and chicken comes in last with the highest CCP.
Step number two involves mastering the constant juggle a waitress performs between being quick and being accurate. It might save you some time to scribble orders illegibly, but by the time you make it to a POS station you're bound to forget the modifiers the customer specified on his burger and he will be highly dissatisfied. Another cute Red Robin trick is to practice the three R's: write, repeat, review. No, write' doesn't start with an r,' but saying "the W and two Rs" isn't nearly as catchy. Not only must you make note of the customer's request to substitute ranch dressing for the barbeque sauce on the Whisky River BBQ Burger[13], but you would also be advised to repeat the customer's order after copying it down to ensure the accuracy of your hearing (Workbook 5). Then, in order to ensure that you would be able to blame the cooks if anything should come out of the kitchen wrong, it is a good idea to review your selections on the POS before firing them to the printers in the kitchen.
I'm sure that by now explaining the third step is unnecessary, but it must be said that in order to become a waitress you must develop a coat of armor. Of course, real armor doesn't fit well under blue jeans and polo tops, but mental armor goes well with any uniform. It is imperative that you have something to position between yourself and everyone else. Doubtless, you have heard the clichd phrase "the customer is always right." Perhaps, in the food industry, this variation might be more precise: the server is always wrong. You will learn that even if you know you rang in the substitution of a wheat bun on the Lettuce-Wrapped Protein Burger[14] and the kitchen missed it on the ticket, it will be much quicker to admit to the mistake rather than to explain to the customer how someone else must surely be responsible. This is also a good tactic to adopt when being lectured by management. While you might fantasize about telling off the manager who insists that everyone roll seventy-five sets of silverware on a Sunday afternoon when a total of one hundred sets were used, it will preserve your job and your paycheck to accept abuse without question now and prank call their house later.
The final step in succeeding as a waitress is to stay on the bartender's good side. During my time at Red Robin, I had my fair share of run-ins with moody mixologists. Zach; the tall, dark, and jerky type, was known for his bipolar tendencies. One minute he could be heard singing to the latest medley of radio hits and the next minute he would be slamming glasses down on the counter or disappearing from behind the bar entirely while tickets piled up and servers bit their fingernails over the decision of whether to wait or risk stepping behind the counter and fixing their own drinks. While it may not always be simple, it is much easier, and exceedingly more pleasant, to be on the bartender's good side than on his bad side. If you say please and thank you, stamp your ticket[15] when you're finished, and don't take someone else's drink just because you're in a hurry then you have no need to fear the wrath of an overworked mixologist and your shift will proceed smoothly.
Congratulations! If you have followed all of these steps then I welcome you to the ranks of the underpaid and underappreciated servers of America. For your sake, I hope your stay with us isn't long. If, however, you find yourself working at your restaurant of choice for longer than you anticipated, you would do well to find something on which to anchor your sanity. You might, for example, wear un-matching socks a few times a week for your personal enjoyment. If you're up to a little more risk, which also reaps higher rewards, then you may try adopting a positive outlook. Sure the pay is awful and you get treated like dirt, but what other job in the world provides you an opportunity to watch someone's face light up with joy as they bite into a smiling burger? Of course, they'll have a stomachache later from eating too much, but you'll go home knowing that you made a difference in somebody's life and, even if it was only a hamburger and you had to do it with a fake smile, it's almost worth it.
[1] Red Robin is the home of the smiling burger. There are seven key elements to a great smiling burger. The tomatoes should be Stage 5 "Ripe and Ready," the cheese is "hugging" the patty, the patty is juicy (no hockey pucks), there is coast to coast coverage of mayo and relish, all ingredients are visible, buns are evenly caramelized, and steak fries are piping hot. The motto every sales team member must memorize about the smiling burger (accompanied by humiliating hand motions) goes "A smiling burger wows our guests every time. The bun is wrapped, never torn. All ingredients are fresh and visible 100% of the time."
[2] The Point of Sale (POS) system used by Red Robin Gourmet Burgers is the Aloha Touch-screen System. This Windows-based computer system is housed in four stations throughout the restaurant and one behind the bar. Servers use this computer system to clock in and out, process food orders, and register tips.
[3] The Red Robin International Food Beverage Study Guide, page 9. The Freckled Lemonade is one of Red Robin's most popular "bottomless" beverages. Red Robin's bottomless beverages, which may be refilled for no cost, include water, tea, fountain drinks, and coffee. Presented in a "tornado glass," the Freckled Lemonade is prepared with a full glass of ice, 5 ounces of lemonade, and 2 ounces of strawberries and served with a lemon wedge garnish and a large red straw.
[4] The Red Robin International Food Beverage Study Guide, page 12. The Sand In Your Shorts is one of Red Robin's signature alcoholic beverages. This beverage consists of a mixture of fruit juices, vodka, triple sec, Midori, and Chambord and is served with a tropical orange flag garnish (a maraschino cherry and orange slice speared with a plastic sword) and a large red straw.
[5] There are three key components of the 30-Second Greet: appreciate, educate, and accelerate. Appreciate: thank the guest for choosing Red Robin. Educate: speak to the guest about the menu, make suggestions, and explain promotional items. Accelerate: ask the guest where they would like to begin and determine whether or not they are in a hurry to leave.
[6] The Red Robin Sales Team Workbook, page 17. The Gift of Time exemplifies Red Robin's belief that the time of team members and guests is valuable and that guests should be in control of their own dining experience. Thus, it is the server's duty to customize each guest's dining experience to suit his or her time constraints by being quick and efficient.
[7] The Red Robin Sales Team Workbook, page 33. At Red Robin, checks are presented inside our two-fold dessert cards. Red Robin protocol states that a check should be "dropped" before the first guest has finished the meal so that they may choose to pay if they are in a hurry or may order dessert if they want to. The check is never dropped without an explanation that the server is not trying to rush them but merely wants the guest to remain in the "driver's seat" by giving them the choice of when they would like to pay.
[8] Of course, no matter how good a waitress you are and how well you explain the check drop, there are some situations when receiving a bad tip is unavoidable. For example, the groups of teenage couples who stop in for dinner after a movie typically run a waitress ragged for refills of Coke and leave a tip of nothing but the spare change they have left over after raiding the candy claw machine.
[9] Unfortunately, if I had had to rely solely on my paychecks for shopping money I would have been limited to perusing the local thrift stores. Wages for servers are excruciatingly low; $2.83 an hour supplemented by tips which must be recorded in full and taxed by the government. Because my work week usually averaged about thirty hours or so, my paychecks were never high enough to compensate for the removal of taxes so I frequently received $0 checks.
[10] The mixologist maintains a position one or two stations above the server in the Red Robin hierarchy and plays several important roles. One: the mixo is in charge of preparing all drinks other than the bottomless beverages. Thus, if your guest orders something from the "Refreshment Center" you are required to go there and wait for the mixo to prepare your beverage. If they are in a good mood, this can be a simple and painless process; if they are in a bad mood, it can be torture. Two: both mixos and bussers (those unfortunate souls who occupy the ranks below servers and clear tables all night) receive 1% of a server's sales in tip-out at the end of each shift. This process is designed to punish the servers who barely manage to make 15% of their sales and to reward the mixo for an excellent job standing behind a counter making drinks all day. Three: the mixo is the person employees go to if they want to order food on breaks. Again, the speed of this process is affected by whether or not the mixo likes you. If he does, you'll get your food before you have to go back on the floor; if not, he'll leave you standing at the bar waiting to order until he feels like acknowledging your existence.
[11] Actually, this process isn't as random as it sounds. At the beginning of each shift servers, mixos, bussers, and hospos are required to fill out a Ready Set Go (RSG) slip. These slips include a number of different questions about current menu items, cooking temperatures, or miscellaneous trivia questions the manager decides to throw in. Each team member must fill out their RSG slip, bring it to a manager, and have their uniform approved before being sent out to begin their shift.
[12] Critical Control Point temperature regulations are enforced in order to minimize potential food-borne illness. At Red Robin, hamburgers are cooked one of two ways: some pink or no pink. Some pink burgers are cooked to 160 and no pink burgers are cooked to 175. Poultry and poultry products, like eggs, must be cooked to an internal temperature of 165, pork products to 155, and seafood to 145.
[13] The Red Robin International Food Study Guide, page 5. The Whiskey River BBQ Burger is one of Red Robin's most popular entrees. A 6 oz. burger patty is ornamented with two slices of cheddar cheese, 1 oz. of BBQ sauce, 2 oz. of onion straws (like miniature onion rings) and the Big Three (mayo, tomato, and lettuce). Also included are Red Robin's bottomless steak fries dusted with their signature seasoning.
[14] The Red Robin International Food Study Guide, page 11. The Lettuce-Wrapped Protein Burger is an ideal choice for those who desire a low-carb meal. Instead of a bun, this burger is housed within a layer of iceberg lettuce and adorned with tomato, red onion, and cheddar cheese. The entire point of ordering a Lettuce-Wrapped Protein Burger would be for the lettuce wrap. Without that, it is just a regular cheese burger.
[15] Proper Refreshment Center protocol involves firing your drink order via POS and stopping by the RC to pick up your beverage before running it to your table. Once a beverage order is fired, the Mixo receives the order via a printer located at the RC. Once your beverage is made, the Mixo will place it on top of the ticket. Before taking your beverage, the ticket must be stamped in order to record the time it took to make the drink once the order was received.