Feeding Graduates and Lots of Other Folks!

One of our craziest days of the year is the SUU Graduation.  We get bombarded and it gets to be quite crazy at the Brick House.  Today was no exception.  In a very short span of time we had the entire restaurant filled with people.  There were some large groups and then some medium sized tables.  It got a bit hectic as the kitchen got his with a ton of food all at once.  Then it got somewhat unpleasant as there were some who needed to leave for graduation and were upset because food was taking quite some time.  I was up front with my people waiting tables, busing tables, doing the front end stuff and then I handed off my tables and went back to help the cooks who were overwhelmed.  When I say overwhelmed I don't mean they couldn't handle cooking, they could certainly do that.  I mean, it was Dave back there leading the charge and he can hold his own.  The challenge was the overwhelming amount of food that was on the board pretty much at one time and just trying to work through it.  We cook everything to order and put out a very fresh product.  Unfortunately that means people have to wait. Sometimes people don't do a very good job waiting and can get a bit hangry.  I realize that hangry is not an actual word but really it is.  I believe the first I heard of it was 5 years ago when I first came to Cedar and joined Jay in doing a diet.  It involved very little food intake and could make one a little angry and a little hungry which in turn is being hangry.  I get hangry just thinking about that diet.  Well anyway, folks get a little hangry and that isn't fun especially when we are doing everything we can do to try and get food out.  Well, we survived.  We ticked off a few people.  We fed a lot of people.  We gave it all we had. 

Let me say one other thing here.  Sometimes people drive me crazy.  We are getting slammed.  There isn't a seat in the house and a group of 20 walk in.  They decide themselves that they are just going to sit upstairs and we can serve them there.  My wonderful waitress told them no.  They were mad.  I don't care.  We were not set up upstairs for that nor were we staffed to handle a group of 20.  If you are bringing that size of a group make arrangements before hand.  If you want to be seated somewhere special, make arrangements way before hand so the people who are trying to provide a service to more than just you can prepare themselves and their staff to be able to do so. 

Grateful for a good group of employees.  We got hit pretty heavy today and they held their own.  It was a good day.  Unfortunately it kept me at work all day and so the kids and I didn't get much time to hang out.  Maybe tomorrow will provide some relief and I will be able to break away and we can go do something fun.  Time to get some hiking in.