New York restaurant through the eyes of a waitress from Russia

My interlocutor, a pretty young blonde named Maria, came to New York from Moscow several years ago, when she was only 22 years old. In the capital of Russia, she moved, one might say, in a bohemian environment - she worked in the theater as a prop artist and studied. They say about such people - a well-bred girl from a decent family. Maria ended up in the USA not entirely of her own free will - her relatives persuaded her. I rushed between the two countries for a long time, but eventually settled in New York. And she got a job in one of the restaurants in Manhattan as a waitress. She had no experience of such work, except for two months of internship in one of the Moscow bars a long time ago. I had to learn everything in the shortest possible time. There was no money to live on; by that time she had no contact with her family. Maria quickly joined the team, began earning money, and also noticing everything that she had no idea about before.

Фото: Depositphotos

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” - 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, it is. This will help toto avoid unpleasant moments for someone - I mean both visitors and potential waiters. Here we are, the staff, smiling at you in the restaurant, but, of course, we don’t even want to do this, we’re just all trained. With a smile on your face, they will seat you at a table by the window, from which the air will blow into your face or back as if from an abyss, or by the kitchen, where all the waiters running out and running in will trip over your legs and jackets, and you will hear all the swearing at everyone languages ​​of the world, coming from this very kitchen. But I guarantee that if you ask to be seated, they will either refuse you with the same sweet smile, citing the reservation of tables, or, if they seat you, they will curse you to the seventh generation. And the waiter assigned to you, most likely, already expects that you, excuse me, are a bitch and that dealing with you will not be easy.

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.

This is what I do not advise you to take especially, so these are special fish dishes or filet mignon. And at all I do not advise taking anything that the waiter recommends especially. Because, most likely, this good dofiga lies in the kitchen, and the cook said to the waiters to sell it at any cost. And whoever sells more, he will receive a bottle of beer or inexpensive wine from a nervous manager, who finally managed to shove a stale batch of bronzini.

Фото: Depositphotos

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 the food, wipe all appliances with wipes. And God forbid you to do it with fabric! Only disposable paper! And wipe the plates too. Because both the instruments and the plates are washed in this way, and one hundred fifty times they fall on the way to the table, they rise from the floor and are placed 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 staff, but laundry workers, where they are washed), and when they are delivered from washing, they are first thrown where they are, then they put it in the original form and put it where the dust was last wiped when they opened the restaurant ...

The moment has come when your drinks are brought to you. I'm talking about alcohol. 90% of the glass is ice (read: bartender's money). Alcohol there is the cheapest, of unknown origin, purchased in boxes, and it is impossible to drink it in its pure form, so if you want to try what they brought you, 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’ll have rum together.”Zacappa”They don’t pour out of a bottle with a blue label and palm trees on it. And in any case, do not squeeze and do not put a lemon, 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 is our health department looking?) straws can not stand without packaging on the bar, because so, they collect dust, and even touch them with dirty hands.

Or a salad. Oh... I myself haven’t 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 to the kitchen are unloaded in boxes and immediately cut into cooking or that same salad. They don't wash them! At most, the labels are removed from them. Well, why... Because there is no time to really do this. By the way, if there are a lot of different greens in a salad, then it’s not a salad at all, but rather an imitation of the fact that there is a lot of something there. In fact, you will spend half an hour looking there for pieces of cucumbers and tomatoes, which are unlikely to be there. And yes, check these 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 lies on its beautiful side. And you turn over a piece of meat/cutlet/whatever and you will probably see either burnt or a cut to check readiness. And if it’s generously poured with sauce and sprinkled with herbs, then for sure they’ve disguised something. It either has already fallen, or has burned, or has been poked with knives and forks, or the piece does 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 are taking food home, do not ask to pack, ask to bring you containers and shift the food in them. Because your food will be scraped into a container haphazardly, maybe with your hands, maybe with a fork from another plate, in short, a pleasant little. Well, the waiters do not have the time or desire to stand on ceremony with you.

When you asked for the bill, pay as quickly as possible, and leave as quickly as possible. The staff waits so as not to return to your table and generally finish with you. And yes, tip 18-20% or you'll be damned again. In most restaurants, waiters work for tips, it's their money. If you feel like you've already paid a lot, think about what you paid the owner, and tips are the waiters' bread and butter. The waiters divide the tips among themselves. Don't be mean. Leave them cash so they get more, because the cash is tax-free.

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 will do everything possible to make you like it: one negative review on the same Yelp - and the establishment’s rating will go down. And Americans love to write reviews.

Фото: Depositphotos

In general, we deserve each other. I had one client who came every day and every day ordered the food she wanted, and not what was on the menu: “Please, I’ll have this salad, but without tomatoes, onions, peppers, salt, oil, vinegar, and chicken. Let there be greens, cucumbers and add salmon! ... How can they not do this? They always do it to me! Tell them! How is the kitchen busy with orders? I want like this!". She ate, complained about everything in the world, and this wasn’t right for her, and this isn’t right, and yesterday it was better: “And why wasn’t this served? And I'm allergic to this! And take this away! Do you have brown bread with cereals? Why not? I won't eat like that! Bring me some jam! Why not?” And then she enjoyed free coffee and desserts at the house's expense. How why? The manager approached her: “We apologize for what you didn’t like!” She smiled, seeing that they removed from the bill something that she had already eaten, but hated, and then left, only to return again the next day. One day, when I was feeling particularly tense and I knew that I would quit today anyway, I went up to her to take an order and said something like this: “Ma’am! You come every day, you are always unhappy with everything, you always ask to change everything. Ma'am, go to the store, buy the ingredients and make the salad at home that you like, and we serve what is on our menu and are not going to prepare it especially for you! And there's a McDonald's on the corner, so why don't you fucking go there and eat there? And if you are not satisfied with something in your salad, then do not come to us! And if you come, then shut your fucking mouth and eat in silence!” She was taken aback, but fell silent, and I left.

Simply, there is a huge category of people who go to eat and fight at the same time to eat for free. They know that managers, valuing their reputation, will remove everything from the account, even if this client, for example, ate the entire batch and “sweat it,” she noted that it wasn’t what she ordered, or that she had cucumbers for which she was allergic. ” The restaurant will do everything to avoid problems with the restaurant, they will even fire the waiter, so that the guest is happy and does 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 personnel (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 customers 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, they make tantrums, “find” hair in a plate or eat everything and say it was terrible. or that they ordered something else, and therefore they will not pay for it. It comes from them and to those who speak with an accent: “Where do 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.

Фото: Depositphotos

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 am incredibly lucky with my job, I am very happy. Although my entire salary there is $1400 a month! I'm also studying at one of the colleges to become a graphic designer. Although, I think the restaurant did not disappear from my life for a long time. Because I only work three days a week and really don’t have enough “restaurant” money. And it’s not possible 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 can’t 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!

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