Yesterday marked the start of my second job, which involves serving various beverages at a cafebar type thing. It was a seven-hour accelerated course in hotel management and rather stressful to say the least - every time I made a mistake it seemed rather dire, and there were two of us (my boss, ie the owner and myself) serving six tables and a bar. I felt like I was expected to know how to do everything already, and I kind of wanted to vehemently explain, "I'm seventeen! I don't know how to serve beer on tap, ok? In the country where I live most of the time they don't allow seventeenyearolds to serve beer on tap and thus I haven't had much practice! Please be patient with me!"
Lessons learned:
-Serving beer on tap is complicated as there are high standards of presentation and thus it is woth taking the time to do properly.
-Don't ask whether capuccino is served with milk. It's not. There's already milk in it and things like "extra milk" are not de rigeur and you look extremely stupid.
-You get interesting types in any sort of establishment. We had a lady (evidently a local) who looked like a Hell's Angel (I actually couldn't tell she was female initially), ran some sort of international magazine publishing and during the four hours in which she was there drank an entire liter of white wine and various whiskeys and suchlike. Totally fascinating character.
-When the customer simply orders "red wine", don't just grab any red wine. Ask. (Ok, this was one of my rather weaker moments, but shouldn't the customer know better when she is sitting next to a full glass case of red wines?)
-Don't calculate tabs until the customer has paid, otherwise you cause panic and disorder backstage.
-When your kitchen is three feet by three feet and there's a giant black dog standing in it, simply shove the dog out of the way. The dog isn't paying you.
Actually, the owner hasn't paid me yet either.
After that job I handled two separate distant relatives, neither of which was pleasant, so at about eleven after everyone had left I collapsed in a corner and called my mommy. Very independent of me. Here's to hoping I don't get kicked out and do eventually get paid.
