Stupid Captains

There are some things that go on in hotels that are unimaginable to the guests that come to there. It may be all nice and shiny, look clean and upscale, but just below the surface there is some crazy shit going on.

Tonight was a pretty slow night. I work the dinner to close shift on the hot line. I usually start around four in the afternoon and I'm required to stay hot until one o'clock in the morning. After nine o'clock, it is usually just me and my pantry guy, Humberto. He's a good guy, and my drinking buddy at work, but more on that later.

Tonight, Mindy was the captain. The captain basically sits on her ass, answers the phone when it rings, takes the order and yells at the waiters. Yelling at the waiters is also one of my jobs. Nobody really likes Mindy because she isn't very bright, can't spell, and eats just about everything in sight. She'll also tell the guest we can make anything they want which has led to some pretty unusual orders on her part. The first order to come up for me was, as usual with Mindy, one that required "Special Attention". With Mindy, no guest can have just what it says on the menu... they somehow always seem to have special requests. The ticket read:

1 CHICKEN QUESADILLA

SPECIAL ATTENTION

NO SHRIMP

As a cook, I've learned that with Mindy this can mean one of two things. A) The guest is allergic to shrimp and wants to make sure that nothing shrimpy has touched anything the quesadilla does. OR B) She still doesn't know how the Micros system where she punches in the orders works.

Dammit, now I have to go talk to her. She's eating something as I walk over to her. It looks like a blueberry muffin from the breakfast service slathered in butter.

"Mindy! What does this ticket mean?" I asked annoyed and shoving the ticket in her face.

"Oh, it's a mistake, you don't need to make it." she replies.

"Were you going to tell me?" I ask getting more agitated.

"I thought the waiter told you." She says stuffing more muffin in her gaping mouth.

This shit happens a lot with her. She can't void items with impunity so what she does is makes a messed up ticket, hope we make the food without talking to her first, then no matter what we make it's wrong. She then tries to take the "incorrect" order and shove it down her throat.

A little while later one of the waiters spilled hot onion soup all over himself. That was probably the highlight of my day. He is this really clumsy asian guy. I'm not sure what country he is from. His name is Tong. He has this really annoying habit of asking you bizarre questions or strange "facts" while you are in the middle of something. Tonight he said, "Don't you think it's strange how guns kill people?"

I didn't know how to respond so I slammed a frying pan I was holding on the stove and pretended not to hear him. A few minutes later, he was trying to put the cover on the plate holding the soup but didn't get it on just right. When he went to put the soup on the table the cover fell, broke a wine glass on the table, and obviously scared him because he dropped the soup. The soup hit the floor and he had melted cheese and carmelized onions all over his pants.

It took me a while to stop laughing.