'Better not to know what is being done with your food': New York restaurant through the eyes of a waitress from Russia
'14.09.2019'
Marina Sokolovskaya, author of ForumDaily
My companion, a pretty young blonde named Maria, came to New York from Moscow a few years ago when she was just 22 of the year. In the capital of Russia, it rotated, one might say, in a bohemian environment - she worked in the theater as an artist-prostitute, she studied. They say about such - a raised girl from a decent family. In the US, Maria was not entirely on her own will - her relatives persuaded. Long rushed between the two countries, but eventually settled in New York. And she got a job in one of the restaurants in Manhattan as a waitress. She didn’t have experience of such work, except for a two-month internship in a Moscow bar a long time ago. I had to learn everything in the shortest possible time. There was no money for life - she did not communicate with her relatives by that time. Maria quickly joined the team, started earning, and also noticed everything that she had no idea about before.
Mary, if you compare the service sector in New York and Moscow, is there a difference, and if so, what is it?
When I come to Moscow, all the time I compare our, American, service and them. In Moscow, you will wait for a hundred years until you are seated at a table and accepted. Usually half of what is indicated in the menu, no. And the more pathetic the menu, the greater the ambition of the staff ... No one is in a hurry and trying to "serve". In New York, on the contrary - here the client is a god, a star, yes, that's all! And therefore everything will be done here to please him. Sometimes in an effort to please the guest, the staff comes to marasmus! And by the way, I don’t like it either from the bartender’s position or from the client’s position.
Sometimes you write posts on Facebook about the wrong side of the restaurant business ... Frankly, after reading you do not really want to go to restaurants. And you yourself go?
I myself go and go with pleasure, but I can not get rid of the professional habit of seeing, noticing and evaluating everything. I involuntarily follow what is happening around as a hall manager. I go, by the way, to restaurants to friends, where I know, everything will be not only tasty, but also fresh. But even in such places I try not to think about forks, knives, napkins, ingredients, sanitary conditions .... After all, you can go crazy. But many friends, having worked in this area, really stopped going there somewhere. By the way, there are films on this subject. For example, “Soul kitchen” is there about us, the waiters, and in general about the darkness that is happening behind the doors to the kitchen.
And what is the darkness going on there? And is it worth telling the general public about it?
It seems to me yes. This will help someone avoid unpleasant moments - I mean both visitors and potential waiters. Here we, the staff, are smiling at you in the restaurant, but, of course, I never want to do this, just everyone is trained. With a smile on your face they will put you at the table by the window, from which you will blow like a precipice in the face or back, or by the kitchen, where all the running and running waiters will stumble on your legs and jackets, and you will hear all the abuse languages of the world coming from this very kitchen. But I guarantee, if you ask to be transplanted, they will refuse you with the same sweet smile, referring to the reserve of tables, or, if transplanted, will be cursed to the seventh knee. And the waiter assigned to you, most likely, already expects you, sorry, Mr. ***, and it will not be easy to deal with you.
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Ok, you sat down, they brought you a menu that you just started reading. And your table already has a waiter with a white-toothed smile and asks - what kind of water should you bring? Believe me, he doesn’t like it very much when you say that you don’t need water, and immediately start listing: “Please give me squid for starters and hummus ...”. The waiter is unhappy: “Answer the question about the water, s ** a !!!”, he shouts to himself. But she smiles and quickly starts chattering a memorized phrase about today's specialties.
That’s what I don’t advise you to take especially, is special fish dishes or some filet mignon. And in general I do not advise taking anything from what the waiter particularly recommends. Because, most likely, this good lies completely in the kitchen, and the cook told the waiters to sell it at all costs. And whoever sells more will get a bottle of beer or inexpensive wine from a nervous manager who finally managed to shove an expelled batch of bronzini.
And if you can not push the customers?
Then feed it to the staff! So about the water. In a jug there will be, of course, tap water, in New York everyone drinks it, since it is tasty and pure. But in the jug itself can be absolutely anything.
After you have ordered food, wipe with a cloth all the appliances. And God forbid you do it fabric! Only disposable paper! Wipe the plates too. Because both appliances and plates are washed this way, one hundred and fifty times fall along the road to the table, rise from the floor and put on the table. Cloth napkins are folded with dirty hands (without gloves) by tired and swearing employees. You can easily find hair in them (often not even the staff, but the laundry workers where they are washed), and even when they are delivered from washing, they are first thrown wherever they need, then they are already folded in the original form and put where the dust was last wiped when they opened the restaurant ...
The moment has come when they bring you drinks. I'm about alcohol. 90% of glass is ice (read, bartender's money). Alcohol is the cheapest, unknown product, it is bought in boxes, and it is impossible to drink it in its pure form, so if you want to try out what you brought, ask for ice separately. And if you want good alcohol, then ask for "top-shelf", that is, well-known brands, although it’s not a fact that you don’t get any Zacappa rum together from a bottle with a blue label and palm trees on it. And in any case, do not squeeze and do not put a lemon, an orange, or what you have there on a glass wearing in the drink itself! Fruit bartenders, before they are cut into slices, do not wash! And why should they do extra work? And yes, if you brought a straw without a paper wrapper on top, then throw it away right there. By the way, according to the law (and where does our health department look?) Straws cannot stand without packing at the bar counter, because they collect dust and touch them with dirty hands.
Or a salad. Oh ... I myself have not eaten salads in restaurants for a long time. With rare exceptions - if I myself was in the kitchen of this restaurant. Why? Because usually vegetables that are brought into the kitchen are unloaded in boxes and immediately cut into cooking or that same salad. They do not wash! The maximum strips of labels from them. Well, why ... Because there is no time to do this much. By the way, if the salad is full of different greens, then this is not a salad, but rather an imitation of the fact that there are a lot of things. In fact, you will be looking for half an hour there slices of cucumbers and tomatoes, which are hardly there. And yes, check this very greens for freshness ...
An interesting moment is the serving of the dish. Do you know why the food on a plate looks like it was very carefully put on it, and at the same time not a bit sprinkled around the edges? Yes, because when the ingredients are already on the plate, they wipe its edges with their hands, if there is soup, then rags that immediately rush to the tabletop, or hang themselves on the belt of a dirty apron, or wipe with a dirty apron.
Do you know how to test the readiness of meat? Yes, yes, the one you ordered the midium reair? The cook pokes his finger. Yes, without gloves. Then he licks them or wipes them on himself, and shouts: the next plate to check! Exactly and not otherwise. Everything on your plate is exactly the beautiful side. And you turn a piece of meat / meatballs / something else there and you will surely see there either a burn or a cut on the readiness check. And already if generously watered with sauce and sprinkled with greens, then for sure - something was disguised. It either fell, or burned, or poked with knives, forks, or the piece did not reach the standard weight and shape.
Dessert. Who does not like desserts? In the forehead ask the waiter - which one is fresh, and which one is already in the fridge behind the glass for three days. Ask what's his favorite. Check how this dessert is served. Ask a question about whether it is home-made or purchased somewhere. And, most importantly, ask for nothing to sprinkle your dessert and decorate. Know if you brought a dessert, dusted with powdered sugar, doused with sauces, decorated with a scattering of berries and mint leaves, it means it has either fallen, or has been standing for a long time and has already lost appearance, or something else unpleasant happened to him that they tried to disguise.
If you take food home, do not ask to pack, ask to bring containers to you and transfer the food to them yourself. Because your food will be scooped up in a container anyhow, maybe with your hands, maybe with a fork from another plate, in short, there is not much pleasant. Well, the waiters have neither the time nor the desire to stand on ceremony with you.
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When you ask for an account, you will pay as quickly as possible, and leave as soon as possible. The staff is waiting to no longer return to your table and generally finish with you. And yes, leave a tip to 18-20%, otherwise you will be damned again. In most restaurants, waiters work for tips, this is their money. If it seems to you that you already paid with interest, think about what you paid to the owner, and tips are the bread of the waiters. Tipping waiters are divided among themselves. Do not go hungry. Leave them in cash, so they will receive more, because this cash is not taxed.
And the most important thing. What is highlighted above: never, hear, NEVER return the dishes back to the kitchen and say that you have hair there, blood from the meat flows, that there is a dead opossum in mashed potatoes or on this tomato it says on the sticker “you went ... ”, and you would like a tomato without a sticker. You may not spit in the food, but what the chef and his team will do in the kitchen with him (not the waiter, no), you better not know. I'm serious. The kitchen hates more than anything when they return food.
And this is called “customer god and luminary”?
Well, what to do, customers do not like a priori, but they will do everything possible to make you like: one negative review on the same Yelp - and the institution's rating will go down. And Americans like to write reviews.
In general, we stand each other. Here I had one client who came every day and ordered food every day, what she wanted, and not what was on the menu: “Please, I have this salad here, but without tomatoes, onions, peppers, salt, butter, vinegar, and chicken. Let there be greens, cucumbers and well add salmon! ... How can they not do this? They always do to me! Tell them! How is this kitchen busy with orders? I want like this!". She ate, cherished everything in the world, and then she was not so, and this is not so, and yesterday it was better: “And why didn’t they serve it? And I'm allergic to this! Take it away! Do you have gray bread with cereals? How not? I won’t eat that! Bring me the jam! How not? ”
And then she enjoyed free coffee and desserts at the expense of the establishment. How why? The manager approached her: “We apologize for what you did not like!”. She smiled, seeing that they had removed from the account what she had already eaten, but had charmed, and then left to return the next day. One day, when I was especially boiling, and I knew that in any case I would quit today, I went to her place to take an order and said something like this: “Ma'am! You come every day, you are always dissatisfied with everything, you always ask to redo everything. Ma'am, go to the store, buy the ingredients and make at home a salad that you like, and we serve what we have on the menu and are not going to cook specifically for you! And there is McDonald’s on the corner, so why don’t you go there and eat there? And if something does not suit you in your salad, then do not go to us! And if you come, then close your mouth and eat in silence! ”- she was taken aback, but became silent, and I left.
There is simply a huge category of people who go to eat and at the same time have a mess to eat for free. They know that managers, valuing their reputation, will remove everything from the account, even if this client, for example, has eaten the whole portion and “potooooom noticed that this is not what she ordered, or that there are cucumbers that she is allergic to.” The restaurant will do everything so that there is no problem at the establishment, even fire the waiter, if only the guest was happy and did not leave a bad review.
And how does the average New York waiter earn? And is it possible to fix something in your opinion in this system to make it better? Because what you are telling is terrible.
Yes, probably, the salary increase and the human attitude towards the staff (for now, bestial) would change the situation. At a minimum, there would be no such turnover among the staff, which is bad for an institution. It is impossible to put clients in the first place like this because it hits the restaurant workers from basboi to managers. Customers shamelessly use it. They come to eat and drink for free, make tantrums, “find” hair in a plate or eat everything and say that it was terrible or that they ordered something else, and therefore they will not pay for it. It comes from them to those who speak with an accent: “Where did you come from? English would have learned first! You serve me here! ”.
And our salary is very unstable. There is she, and tip. It usually starts with 7,5-8 per hour plus what the client leaves. In general, the money is simple - there will be no tip, there will be no money. Although there are institutions that do not tip and put people on a rate like 10-12 $ per hour and that's it. And do not care. Some do not pay at all, only tips. But in good restaurants and on good days you can earn a lot. In 2013-14, for example, I chipped. Checks were from 800 / week to 1500. Although we must remember that there are dead periods when people are reduced in the schedule, everyone hangs around, without money, in a circle, rub glasses and fight for 10 $. There were days in February 2014, when I went to work stupidly for food, and watching with a couple of daily guests of the Olympic Games. In reality, it was only possible to save money on the metro card. And sometimes for a banquet you could carry 300-400 right away per day.
In general, it sounds good ... Why did you leave? Tired of it?
Now I work as a designer in the workshop of the famous Italian designer and architect Gaetano Pesce. I'm very lucky with the work, I am very happy. Although my entire salary there is 1400 dollars a month! I also study in one of the colleges for a graphic designer. Although, I think, the restaurant did not disappear from my life for a long time. Because I work only three days a week and I really do not have enough “restaurant” money. And it’s impossible to go to a restaurant for two more, because the management of these establishments prefers people who are free at any time, and not those who set conditions from the series: “I cannot on Thursday and Saturday after 12”.
But, most importantly, I hope you understand - my dear, prepare yourself, eat at home, and do not show off in restaurants!
