Okay, so the drama.

The other day, I'm minding my own business, and I hear/see a lady screaming in the front of the restaurant.
The story goes: she and her dining partner were blocked in by our delivery truck. The dining partner (coworker, husband?) ask the driver to move, and he does. He waits for 5-10 minutes and they don't return to move the car. So Driver moves back, he has to finish his delivery and go on to his others. 

The lady comes out and immediately tears into Driver. "All I did was go to the bathroom, WTF you  effing this and that," etc. So Driver tells her, "okay. You asked me to move, I did. Then you disappeared. I would have moved a second time, but you caught an attitude, so nah I'm gonna finish my job."

Lady comes back in to the restaurant, our assistant manager says he'll talk to Driver, who tells him the same story and, "I'm going to finish unloading, if you want me to move, call my boss." Since technically, we are not the boss of Driver, we only employ the delivery company.

So. While AM is doing that, our GM comes out to talk to her and she again immediately says, "this is fucking absurd, I have to get back to work, etc etc," just losing her mind. GM is trying to tell her they're working on a resolution and please stop yelling and cursing. She walks out and calls the police and the Department of Transportation, who both tell her she's insane and wasting their time. 

Finally, truck gets moved. But she's not done. She comes back in to tell my GM he's a POS who sucks at his job (and believe me, that's the cleaned up version). 

He follows her out and tells her: "Real fucking mature. I was trying to have a conversation with you and tell you we were fixing it - you screamed and cursed and walked out. Go fuck yourself, I hope you're late enough to lose your job."

My First Trainee!

I went to a coaching workshop last week set up by corporate for team members to learn how to effectively train new hosts/servers/bartenders in the "brand style." I got to meet people from other stores in the state, and spend 8 hours roleplaying and practicing the "compliment sandwich" - a compliment, constructive criticism, another compliment. It was actually pretty fun, but the hour and a half drive either way and sitting in a conference room all day left me absolutely beat.
So I have a few "homework assignments" before I'm an official trainer, such as teaching my GM how to do basic stuff to show I can be an effective coach, but they threw a trainee at me anyway and I feel really good about it. It was nice to be able to go through everything, tell her the things I felt I didn't learn in my training, just set her up for success! She told me yesterday she had to work with someone else on a day I was off, but she was so glad to be back with me because that's where she started and she felt most comfortable. Her validation is on Monday, wish us luck!

Later tonight or tomorrow, I'll write a post about how my GM cursed out a lady yesterday and it was the greatest day of my life.

What I wish people understood about restaurants.

Just because there are empty tables, does not mean you don't have to wait.
I was reading some random restaurant reviews, like I do, and one was 1-star because, "we had to wait even though there were five empty booths."

We have specific sections, and servers have specific tables.
The table you "need" may be in a closed section. We would have to pull someone from their other customers to run over and take care of you. Which we will do, as soon as we can.
If you want the service you *expect* (and I think you're the type of person who needs 100% attention), you might have to wait ten minutes so you can be seated with a server who has the time and resources to give you the standard of service the restaurant, the server, and you, expect.