Day one hundred and twenty five: checking out the goods

Tonight one of the other servers at (insert real name here) walked into the kitchen and said to me "Hey (insert my real name here) go check out table 36, he's a dreamboat." 

So I did just that. No such dreamboat existed. 

I said back to her "really? I'm gonna have to disagree on that call." 

Being in front-of-house lets you do stuff that the back-of-house staff can't do, namely, scope out the goods. I challenge you to find a restaurant whose staff doesn't check out their customers and talk about them in the kitchen, as long as said customers are worth talking about. 

There are times when servers will take a lap around the restaurant just to catch a glimpse of a supposed "dreamboat" then turn around and do it again if the initial sighting wasn't good enough. If you're foxy, we're going to talk about you. 

Last year a Winnipeg writer by the name of Rheanne Marcoux put out a book called "The Last Crumb". It's a compilation of recipes and interviews of Winnipeg chefs and a damn good read whether you're part of the restaurant industry or not. 

One of the chefs interviewed, Scott Bagshaw, shared a story about time he spent working at a restaurant in Australia: 

"Being in an open kitchen does have its perks. 'We play the "would you" game,' laughs [Bagshaw], who spends most of his 14-hour shifts rubbing elbows with his sous-chef Matt. 'You know, "would you sleep with her?" type of thing. We have our inside jokes, it makes you forget you’ve been working 14 hours.'"

At the time book came out, Bagshaw was working as the head chef of a Winnipeg restaurant called Pizzaria Gusto but shortly after he was fired for the comments that had made it into Marcoux's book. 

What a load of shit. 

From what I understand the "would you" comment was the straw that broke the camel's back but to think that apotential customer would forego eating at your restaurant because the chef was vocal with his sous-chef on who he'd hit the sack with is just plain ridiculous. 

If every restaurant employee got canned when he or she scoped out a customer and proclaimed whether or not they'd, to put it gently, bone that customer, then there would be no such thing as restaurant staff. 

We all do it. Hell I did it today, at both restaurants.