30th
Greed.
Last Saturday I worked from 10.30am until 3am. I worked 16.5 hours. Straight. With no real break. I didn’t get to sit down once and ate scraps of food from the kitchen when I could. I work in a restaurant on the bar. Making drinks and cocktails for the restaurant guests as well as the guests at the bar.
There were about 200 eating on saturday, something which would on average require 5 barstaff. There were also 400+ on the deck for a soul night. The bar on the deck is designed for one barman. To serve 400 people just drinking I would say you would need 8 barstaff in. We had eight staff in. For the whole shebang. Obvioulsy we would need more glasses for these 600+ people. Yes. Did we get them? No. Me and Dave were assigned to ‘hold the fort’ inside the restaurant whilst the other 6 shuffled glumly out to attend to the 400+ wasted, rich and impatiant guests outside.
What did I see on everyone’s faces all night? Greed. The organisers saw the money rolling in as we overcharged everyone for their already expensive drinks. The guests were only interested in one thing, getting more drinks quicker. After waiting for possibly 15 minutes to get served at the extremely understaffed bar, I had to deal with orders of 3 different types of cocktail, which obviously would take a while (especially without enough glasses). The groans from the surrounding customers were audible even over the loud P.A. when they realised i’d be out of the game for 20minutes making these cocktails. Once I was finished I would move onto the next customer who would order yet more cocktails. Everyone was just fucking over everyone else.
I felt sorry for the customers waiting patiently at the bar. I really did. I tried to serve them first. But that was only around 10% of the customers. I felt more sorry for the customers waving a £50 note in my face shouting ‘Me Next!’. There was greed on almost every guests face.
At the end of the night I got £82 in tips and £94 in wages. Not bad huh? All the staff got the same. Everyone complained it wasn’t enough. Everyone complained that they deserved more. Greed. Greed. Greed. Even I joined in.
