The Joys of Serving on Christmas Day

For restaurants right outside of Disney World, Christmas is the busiest day of the year. I have had to work many holidays before back in the Midwest, but no one up there leaves their houses to go eat at a restaurant on Christmas Day. Many restaurants up there close for the holiday. Not down here. Everything is open until 2am, and people have to work.

I walked in the restaurant at 4pm to complete chaos. Every table was full. The kitchen was a disaster. I don't know how any restaurant could possibly have an open kitchen. Ours has always been where we go to vent, talk crap about our guests, and it's where we can make a mess and leave it for later. People are yelling and dropping F bombs, demanding for a pasta here and a burger there. The dishes are stacked so high that they are tipping over and breaking on the floor. A disgusting mixture of water, soda, and food is pooling on the floor. It is really quite scary so I stay in the dining room as much as I can. 

Anyways, it's Christmas and all of our guests are on vacation at the happiest place in the world. It's assumed that they're going to be in the giving spirit when it comes to tipping, and have pity for us since we're working on Christmas, so we're expecting to make lots of money. 

Many of us can say that we got the worst tips of our serving "careers" that day. I got stiffed by a table for the first time. No tip at all. That's the problem with having so many foreigners coming to our restaurant; they don't understand that you tip your servers. Many of my checks were over $75, and yet many of my tips were about $5. I had no complaints or mess-ups and I'm as bubbly as can be, but people just weren't tipping. It's part of going out to eat. Servers work for tips because we get paid $4 an hour! It is so aggravating to go above and beyond for a table and not receive at least an 18% tip. 

Even on Christmas there were guests who just wanted to complain. One man stopped me from serving my other tables to tell me that his kid's pasta was frozen. Frozen! The kid is sitting there eating it happily, turns to his dad and says, "No it's not." Really, dude? I take a deep breath and repeat what he has said. "That pasta he is eating is frozen? Can I get him something else?" The man's reply: "No, can we just get it for free?" I didn't dignify this with a response, just turned away and told my manager, who also wanted to smack the guy. He got his stupid $5 pasta for free and left me $6 on an $80 tab. 

You can only pretend to be nice for so long. After eight hours of serving people who hardly treat you with respect, it's hard to be nice when people are just ripping you off.

I didn't get out until 3am that night, and half the staff was still there closing. That was our Christmas, but we stuck through it together. I would much rather like to be the person on vacation getting waited on than the person doing the waiting.