Waiter Rant

I'm currently reading the book Waiter Rant.
"The Waiter" writes about how it is for a waiter/waitress to take a Friday or Saturday off.
I'm taking this Friday off for Amanda's birthday. When I told her, literal tears came to her eyes. She's a former waitress and knew how much it was for me to take off work on a Friday.
If I take a Friday off for you thats 200 dollars I won't have come Monday.

I thought that, until I saw my schedule.
Apparently, my boss decided to keep my income the same. Even though I'm taking off Friday evening, I'm working Friday day bar. That means my income for Friday is more than halved, but I still have something. He then provided me with a bartending gig on Saturday, making my income more than if I worked as a server.

If you work at some place fancy like "The Bistro" in Waiter Rant, then you depend on just the Friday and Saturday to pull you through. If you work at "The Pub" like I do, and your boss allows you to learn the bartending trade, then you can sometimes take off a Friday and Saturday and it won't hurt you because you get the ever elusive bartending shift on Friday or Saturday. If you don't get the bartending shift, then yea, you are screwed.

Here is how "The Pub" works:
Friday you have the following possible options to work.
1. Day Bar = a lot of bitch work for the night bar people. Your job is to get fruit ready, squeeze juice (unless you are lucky enough to have a bar that doesn't require 'fresh squeezed' stuff), clean glassware, wait on tables, make cocktails (it's five o'clock somewhere on Friday) and carry all incoming beer stock upstairs to the liquor closet. You get usually 50 - 70 bucks in tips. Best part = getting paid 7.00 an hour to do it. Very best part = you usually are completely done by 7 o'clock leaving your entire Friday night free.

2. Day server/ 1st off = Somewhat of a bitch shift as well. You are scheduled 10am - 2pm for Friday lunch. You usually make about 20 bucks. Then you are off until 5pm. At that time you come back for 5 to 1st off shift. This shift is interesting. At 4:30pm everyone decides they are done for the day and they start coming in to The Pub. The Day bar catches a lot of these tables but usually by the time you get there, they are willing to let you have anything else that comes through the door. Sometimes they even give you some of there tables because they haven't gotten through all of their bitch work or because they have too many to handle. By the time the 6 - 2nd off guy comes in, you are serving half the tables at The Pub allowing you to make a shit-ton of money. Everything that comes in after that has to be split, so the 6 to 2nd guy only has the possibilty of owning 1/4th the tables for a little while until some of yours leaves.

3. 6 to 2nd off = Nicest shift for servers. You get a piece of the Friday dinner crowd but you also get a piece of the night crowd. Your sales are usually around 800 - 900 even during the slow summer. During the Fall they could grow to 1,000 - 1,200. Take 20% of that! The best part, if we slow at all from the time 1am to 3am the boss will cut you and you don't have to close the bar. Usually that person spends the most on booze, because once you are cut, you tend to become one of the customers.

4. 9 to close = Also a good shift, but only because you make money. This shift for a woman sucks. You get the alcoholics, workoholics, sexaholics, commitment-phobics, peeping toms, megalomaniacs, emotional fuckwits, or perverts (yes, it is Bridget Jones). Most of the time you get really wasted men hitting on you and trying to put their hands anywhere near your body. Luckily, they also think if they hand over lots of cash then you'll stick around them longer. Take the money and run, is my policy. You also have to close, so when the 6-2nd (and sometimes 5-1st) is still drinking at the bar and you want to join them, you can't. Sometimes they are nice and help you, sometimes you are alone. This means putting up all the cars, cleaning up the station, putting up rugs, etc.

5. 6 - close Bar (2 people) = Lots and lots of money. You get paid 5 dollars an hour. You walk away with 300+ bucks in your pocket. You have tons more work at the end to close. You walk back and forth all night and deal with some of the most obnoxious people (aka, servers won't wait on them because they don't tip, so they come to the bar, and you get to wait on them). You rarely deal with food orders. Everyone has to give you a card or money to get their drink. And people have to tip you out.

Saturday only changes a little, you have no day bar, so the bitch shifts don't start until 3pm, and only last until 9pm. Saturday 3 - 1st off serve is one of the worse shifts you can get, you might as well take the night off. 3 - 1st off isn't much better.

This weekend, I took off for Amanda's birthday. I got Friday day bar and I got Saturday night bar.
Really, I'm not sacrificing much.