Monday, January 31, 2011

Monday, January 31, 2011

It was cold when I walked 50 minutes to my 7am shift at the resturant and I fucking froze. I did it all last winter and when people ask me how I manage I Tell them the truth and say, "I don't know".

The 6:30am person makes coffee and sets up everything. I like that shift because it allows 30 minutes for my face to thaw before the doors open at 7am. As the 7am guy I take off my coat and hat and start serving customers right away.

I like everyone who works on my side of the resturant. There is one girl, however, who, although we are friends, kind of bugs me. She's chipper and too excited and at the same time very serious and a perfectionist. She'll have a valid complaint against me or someone else but treat it like a crisis and go over-the-top. It's maddening sometimes.

She's vegan and big into recycling and conserving. We all compost what we can if it's easy and doesn't take extra time. She composts everything, even our many coffee ground-filled filters- that's fine, but things like that take her away and leave more work for the rest of us.

There was some conflict this morning and it still "grinds my gears". All phone calls to the resturant come to my section. Not long after I started working there someone called for the owner and I took the message and asked if they'd like to leave their phone number. "No, they've already got it."

I posted the message and later on that day the manager had a talk with me and explained that the owner always want the phone number with the message because they don't want to have to look for it. It's a good point so since then I've always made sure to get the caller's phone number. The callers sometime get annoyed but I don't care. A couple people refused and the moment they hung up their message went straight to the trash. There's no way I'm gonna get yelled at for them.

A girl- I'll call her Aimee- started working here 3 months ago. She did badly at first but she's gotten better. Still, almost everybody dislikes her at varying degrees. She's got her problems but I don't think she's as bad as everyone says. I've made excuses for her and defended her to a lot of people, including the girl I mentioned above. She used to hate Aimee but recently she's started to soften, thanks in part to me.

This morning Aimee had one of our vendors on hold; they were looking Ronnie, the main baker who also does all of our purchasing. I said to Aimee, "Be sure to get their phone number. They might not want to and they'll say that Ronnie already has it but get it anyway. Ronnie doesn't want to have to look for it".

I can see why people here get frustrated with her- as she hung up the phone I looked at the paper: no fucking phone number. Twenty minutes later, I had to go up to the office and- stupid me- I handed the message to another manager to give to Ronnie and the manager politely gave me shit for the message not having a phone number. I should've just tossed out the note and I'm still kicking myself.

It wasn't a big deal but it wasn't something I wanted to hear about at all. The manager then made it clear that I wasn't in trouble or anything, she just wanted me to spread the word and make sure everyone knew. But I got defensive and couldn't make it clear enough that I had flat-out told Aimee, "Get a phone number".

It pisses me off. I fuck up enough and I'm always happy to take the blame, but I'm not a manager or anything so I don't wanna be responsible for thing other people do.