Do You Want Soup With That?

To say I've been stewing over this is not only a pun but also an understatement.

I am enraged. Outraged. Upset. Fit to be tied.

I've been a waitress for two years, in food service since I was fourteen. I've worked at multiple restaurants, delights, ice cream shops. I know my profession and while I recognize that this isn't the final stop for me in the working world, I know that it makes me want to be at the final stop.

I work for a corporate restaurant that by legal constraints I am not allowed to name or deface, here or places otherwise on the interwebs. Isn't that a cookie?

Obviously, corporate restaurants are only looking at one thing. The money. The sales. How much did our hard work earn the greedy asshats at the top?

I have been told more than once that I'm the perfect sales girl. I'm bubbly and cheery. I constantly push to make good sales during my shifts.

It's not easy either. I'm a weekend waitress and right now we're pushing soup to-go. Soup doesn't keep very well in a car. Most of my customers, I'm sorry, guests are traveling. They can't take soup. Yet, I constantly make good sales in soup. Because I push it.

Yesterday was one of the slowest days I've worked. Most people are under the assumption that when you wait tables you often get sent home early and have short shifts.

This is a common misconception.

It is only very rarely that anyone waiting tables gets an early day. More often, we spend 10+ hours on our feet at the whim of the general public.

Back to the situation at hand. Yesterday was suuuuuuuper slow. Yet, I managed to sell 8 quarts of soup. That folks is roughly $42 in soup. It is a feat on a busy day to sell that much. Not only that, but my sales per guest was over $11.00.

Bet you didn't realize that we keep track of these things? We servers do. There's ton of corporate pressure to increase these numbers.

The sales mentioned above are great for a busy day and outstanding for a dead day. I worked my ass off to get them.

So, I bet you're wondering exactly what I earned for all of my hard work.

I earned a $5 coupon, not valid with any discount for all of my hard work. As in, I earned a voucher to purchase food at full price from the company that I work for. Anyone in the service industry will know right away that this is not a reward. This is a slap in that face.

One of our mottoes is 'Increase Returns On Invested Capital'. Thank you, unmentioned company that I work for, but that is not how you achieve that goal. You want me, the person you depend on, to make sales. All I want after a day that I have done just that is not to have to pay for my meal. I want my outstanding sales to be rewarded by you paying for the $5.82 that it cost to feed me.

That's still $36 in sales if you subtract the money for my meal. Oh, and to the corporate assholes who decided that we weren't allowed to "Best" (what we call when the company buys our meals because of excellence in sales) meals anymore, why do you go find another server who can tell you our Mission Objectives.

It sickens me that things are so much about money that you can't even reward someone's hard work. One of my coworkers who has been there a lot longer than me told me that they do this every so often. In a few months policies will grow lax again and they'll start "besting" meals again.

In the mean time, I'm gonna try and sell you a quart of soup because if I don't sell enough my managers have to cut down my section.

You may not know what that means, so let me level with you. It means they limit the amount of tables I have and limit the amount of money I can make.

So, the next time your server asks you if you want a soup or any kind of add on, maybe you'll think twice about saying no. I hope you'll be understanding that we servers are under more pressure than you know.

So, don't cut us off when we're offering you something. It's what we're trained to do. Every word spoken to you between the time you are greeted and when the check is dropped off has been scripted and taught to each of us. Remember that our jobs, the money that pays our bills, is dependent on the whim of people who aren't as forgiving as the jobs of those who work a normal 9-5 job.