The Breakfast Club

I work at a very busy breakfast restaurant in downtown Chicago. My title is Hostess/Barista, though sometimes I feel like Secretary/Girl Everyone Gets Mad At. I guess I never realized just how much anger is directed toward the girl standing at the front of the restaurant. It really isn't my fault if there is a thirty minute wait. I do not walk around the restaurant telling people to eat slower so the people up front have to wait longer.

For some reason, old ladies REALLY hate me. I'm attacked by at least one every shift. The other day one walked in and looked at the menu, then to me.

"I can't have dairy or eggs. I don't want pancakes or french toast. I don't want lunch either. What's on your menu I can have?"

I stared at her and then the line that was forming out the door. Did it look like I had time for this? This was a breakfast restaurant. Our menu was on the door...what did she expect?

"I'm sorry ma'am, if you don't want pancakes or french toast I'm afraid there isn't much you can have. We have oatmeal, but it's made with milk. You absolutely can't have eggs?"

"No, I just told you that! Why can't you accommodate people like me?! Do you know how hard it is to not be able to eat eggs? You need to have something on this menu for me!"

I want to point out that she just said she didn't WANT the pancakes. If she can eat the pancakes, then there is something on the menu for her. Instead I smile and apologize. She tosses the menu on the floor and leaves.

The next day an older couple came in and asked for a table for two. I wasn't seating at the time and motioned them over to a chair where they could wait to be seated by the other hostess. They ignored the direction I pointed them in and backed up, hiding in a corner. When it isn't too crowded, we don't have a list. So guests generally form a line to be seated. There was obviously a line. They were ignoring it.

A few minutes go by and the woman comes up to me, ridiculously angry. "EXCUSE ME! You said we would be next!" (No. I did not.) "She has taken other tables of two and not us!" At this moment in time I was on the phone taking a to-go order. I had to put the poor man on hold and step over to the woman. "Ma'am if you could just step right over here, he'll seat you as soon as he gets back." "Well hello, we've been over there forever! Why did you tell me to go over there?"

...

To customers at a restaurant, five minutes is forever. And um...I did not tell her to go over to the corner. She made that up. It was her decision to hide in the corner and let people take her table. How, exactly, this was my fault, I'm not sure. But she rolled her eyes and scoffed at me as she walked off to take her seat.

You'd think breakfast would be a happy time. I mean we load the customers up with sugar, butter, and chocolate. What more could they want? One day I'm going to blurt out that I'm not even paid ten dollars an hour and that if they want me to forget everything I'm doing just for them, they can hand me a twenty.

Just a thought...