Day five.

Sunday night and again tonight I am not serving but rather working in the kitchen as an expediter or an expo. An expo is basically the person who makes sure there is a lemon wedge on your fish or a sprinkle of cilantro on your salad. He or she is the go-between of the kitchen and the front of house. Sure, not all restaurants have an expo but for the ones that do the job is all the same. Get the right right food out to the right tables so that it looks good and it's hot. 

Sunday night I somehow defied the laws of physics when I was wiping off a plate to be sent out. The plate broke I saved the steak but when anything glass breaks around food it means the grub must be chucked. No one wants to run the risk of a bloody massacre. Picture a tiny bit of broken glass stuck in the food then tearing apart the diner's esophagus to that of ground beef. A highly unlikely scenario but you never know. In a circumstance like this, dropping food on the ground or breaking a plate, the kitchen has to remake the dish and sometimes the whole table. Almost always the server whose table has now been delayed gets pissed off and that generally effects how much I get tipped out at the end of the night. She was okay with the remake since her table really appreciated us not sending out a glass shard steak. 

I think that it was later on I told her to "shut up and get out of the kitchen if all you're gonna do is stand there and get in my way" that, let's call her Dumb-dumb, decided not to tip me out. Dumb-dumb is a prime example of what not to do as a server. I will get to some of her greater performances one of these days. 

I don't mind working expo as a favour every now and then but the problem is that in doing so, I am losing money. A night working in the kitchen means I don't make any tips other that when I get tipped out by the servers at the end of the night and those tips are definitely lacking. Between the nine servers working that night I made $8 as opposed to the $40 or so I would have made on a slow Sunday night. 

I don't mind working the occasional expo shift since it is a welcome break from being out front. I get to wear jeans and a hat, joke around with the line cooks and yell at people. I think I should be making more money an hour if I work an expo shift to compensate for what I'm not making out front.  

So in the interest of keeping track of my tips here are Sunday night and yesterday's stats:


(Sunday)

• hours worked 3.38   
• tips earnerd $8.10

(Monday)

• total sales $147
• tips earned $21.50
• hours worked 1.98
• tip out $4.41

We'll see how I do today.