Kids Says the Darnest Things

First Blog:


Number of People In Party: 7
Number of People in the party under age of 7 years old: 6

Hello blogging world. My name is Stefan Hicks, I am currently a server at Mellow Mushroom, in Tampa Fl. I’ve been at this place for a little over a year, I work at least forty hours a week, this place is my home, I love my job, and I’m good at it (all “serving ego” aside). Enough background…


Saturday mornings are either hit or miss. Either every family decided to go to some sporting event, or they come to Mellow Mushroom, so you never know. This particular Saturday, was painfully slow, like so slow I maybe had a new table every hour, if that. So in walks a “mom”, slash supermodel that looked like she literally just stepped off the runway and decided the one thing she was going to eat this week was mellow mushroom pizza. I was happy, moms love me, mostly just my hair but we always get along. But before I could get the host stand to greet her, the door opened again, and in walked six loud, messy, screaming children that looked like they wanted to eat me. I looked at the server rotation to see what server was getting the next table and of course my name was next. (disclaimer: I am highly allergic to children). Joy. I lead them to the booth, and give them a few minutes to get situated and plan on how I’m going to deal with this surprise kid attack. Thankfully some genius created oversized coloring sheets for children that have this innate ability to make them shut their mouth s and color. But no, not these kids, no amount of coloring was going to deter them from the fact that they were starving. It was like the mother hasn’t fed them for days they were complaining so much. So as I brought them back their drinks and got the awkward “hey, how are you doing today” ice breaker out of the way the one word she gave back was “hungry”. She insisted in putting the order in immediately, but unbeknownst to her every child wanted something completely different from the other. So like a typical caring mother she made sure I had her order first, and that I had correctly written down the way she wanted her gin martini, and then said “tell the man what you want”, thanks for feeding me to the lions you freaking Judas. To best describe the ten minutes I took listening to these six children scream to me their order, it was probably most similar to what Wall street looks like with the bell, and all the screaming of men in suits and what not. It was gruesome. To give just one example of what I dealt with, a 5 to 6 year old little girl TOLD me she wanted a cheese pizza, but not told, yelled, and then through the menu at my feet, right before she threw the crayons across the table because pink was not part of the children’s sets of crayons we hand out.
As I emotionally stumbled back to the computer to ring in their order I looked at my server pad only to find a thousand scribbled words written all over each other. It was a mess, but I somehow deciphered through all the chicken scratch just to put some sort of food through. Even if only eighty percent of it was right, at least it was something. Naturally I walked back to the table to tell her the amount of time they were going to wait for their food, because unfortunately at my restaurant, pizza times can reach up to an hour if we have a full store. The time was only twenty five minutes just because of the amount of pizzas they had, but that was about twenty four minutes to long in the mothers eyes. Regardless, she didn’t have a choice, so she sipped her martini, and flicked her wrist to me signaling me to go away, pleasant as a peach right? The rest of the meal went relatively ok, they got the food, the children in haled it like feeding time at the zoo, and all was well, until the bill. Most restaurants have a gratuity system put forth so that in the case a server receives a larger party they can ensure that they will at least get a somewhat acceptable tip considering there are probably going to busy. We apply the gratuity at six people or more, at our digression of course, but six is the minimum. I had already decided I was going to apply it, these small children made me sweat, and I only had one table, eighteen percent for me, period. The mother for whatever reason felt like her, included with the six children did not need this guaranteed tip applied because they were “children”. Long and the short, the gratuity stayed on the bill, she crossed it out and wrote in her own tip that only amounted to ten percent of the total bill, and I still got my guaranteed tip. It’s in the menu sweet heart, learn to read the fine print. Children are hard to control, I understand; unfortunately, this is a place a
business not a play ground. Be a parent and take the time to care and teach your
child some sort of etiquette of just when in the presence of other humans much
less anywhere else. Clark Wolf, a well known restauranter gives a tip on how to
achieve better service from your waiter: "Nice them into submission." If only
the mother would have offered a little bit of help with the children she would
have probably gotten a bigger smile for me and coloring sheets for her kids.
With that they ordered food, I did more serving to the children than the mother,
and they demanded more than the Botox beauty queen, OF course I’m going to add
gratuity to the bill. Your children count as people, and I’m a server, I work
for the money not the children, that’s what your nanny is for.