I agree with meg, with whom I worked briefly during the week that our month-long employment overlapped. The owners Chuck and Pam Graybill go through waitresses faster than fingernails through nylons.
Chuck *is* the primary bad guy: tall, bald & malevolent, you can find him most mornings skulking about the restaurant wearing his trademark patterned pajama pants & ever-present scowl. The way he berates his wife is bad & embarrassing to witness - I can't imagine what originally enamored her of him.
Perhaps it's their mutual thriftiness, because they are VERY cheap and tacky. The menu pre-dates their ownership & is somewhat extensive; over time some things have changed, & so the laminated pages are edited with white-out. If a customer is handed a menu where the white-out has worn away, the waitress has to go back to the customer, apologizing that the menu item they selected from the menu is no longer on the menu.
Want lemon with your iced tea or water? That'll be .10 per lemon wedge. Want to bring home your uneaten portion? That'll be .25 per styrofoam takeout box. Extra salad dressing in a cup on the side - extra money. And so forth. I'd not be surprised to learn they're charging for glasses of water & extra napkins. And don't dare throw away any leftover meats from customer plates; put any & all such scraps in the takeout box labeled ""foxes""...for the two foxes that roam the Graybill's wooded property (i.e., their dogs).
The owners employ workers with less-than-perfect backgrounds - not out of compassion, but for the tax break they get for hiring felons. As a result, their staff consists of two types: green & inexperienced OR jaded & *very* experienced. Those in the former category are like little lambs being led to the slaughter, unlikely to last a whole month before getting axed. Those in the latter category are often Com-cor residents *required* to hold down a job for the duration of their stay...and as such, desperate to keep to their job at all costs. The result is an abused & fearful staff always on the verge of panic.
I swear Chuck enjoys making waitresses cry, telling them to wipe the stupid looks off their faces after comparing them to his dogs. The menu can't be memorized quickly enough & unless written just so, your food won't get cooked. If a customer wants a Denver omelet without tomatoes...WATCH OUT; don't write ""Denver omelet, hold the tomatoes"" - you must ""build"" the omelet ingredient by ingredient...but you're to call out, ""Denver omelet, hold the tomatoes!"" as you hang the ticket. Chuck will not tell *how* you erred; the harried, unfamiliar waitress must figure it out on her own.
If a waitress still makes a mistake, the punishment is a week off of the schedule - which happened to me after my 1st week. Then on a week, then off again 2 weeks, on again for a week. Yet Chuck was astonished at how slow I was to learn...and fired me for not pre-buttering the bread for a grilled cheese sandwich. It's hard to memorize things under such conditions, hard to keep going with a big ugly scarecrow looking over your shoulder, dissecting your every move.
The regulars are sweet and often tip well...but the owners will smile to their regular customers' faces, then quietly malign them behind their backs.
Surely, the best thing about the restaurant is Macario the excellent cook, who is so sweet, funny and charming to the waitresses...always with a smile and a cheery word to bandage their bruised and crushed spirits. One day, if the restaurant name ever changes from ""Maggie Mae's"" to ""Macario's"" that establishment will be the hometown hangout that it once was before Mr. & Mrs. Mean Tightwad took over the joint.
Wow, that was cathartic - thanks.
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