spared rod soup.

Some more waitress stories today.

Don't change in your car, or someone might get hurt.
The employee parking lot at Vintner's was behind the building, and the kitchen had two windows overlooking the gravel lot. One mid-morning, a waitress was coming in to work. She changed into her work clothes in the car right underneath one of the kitchen windows. On the other side of that window was one of the lunch cooks, cutting vegetables to prep for lunch. He became so distracted by the sight of that waitress changing that he cut his finger and had to be taken to the hospital for stitches. I don't know that the girl ever knew.

Something to cover up the soup spoons
My boss, Joe, was in constant fear of waste and/or theft. He would lock up the supply cabinet of various items that he felt were being used wastefully so that when we needed more, we would have to ask him personally. The list of items that were locked up grew as time went on and included: soup spoons, lemons, ketchup bottles, dessert syrups. The soup spoons were a particular peeve of his, since he was convinced the wait staff was stealing his silver. At one point, I used the last of a dessert syrup bottle, so I had to go ask Joe for another. He began griping and fussing as usual about how we and all of our generation were wasteful and how we were driving him out of business. He said he bet that I had two or three bottles of the syrup in my car. I smiled and said, "Well, yes, but I have to have something to cover up all the soup spoons." It's a good thing he liked me.

Spared Rod Soup
Everybody hated waiting on kids. One guy got fired for full-out refusing to wait on families with children. There were exceptions, but by and large, rich, snobby people who vacationed in Blowing Rock did not have the most well-behaved children. Plus, kids make a mess, they're loud, and they often have special requests. I had this table of a family of four once around the holidays. Two parents with two little boys around the age of seven and nine, i.e. old enough to know better. They were the first table of the day and they were sitting in the sunroom, where our Christmas tree was. The kids were running around the sunroom, pulling ornaments off the tree (I swear, I heard one of them ask their mother if they could take the ornaments with them). At one point, the kids went to the bathroom, taking unattended detours all over the restaurant. The parents had a marvelous time, sitting and drinking alcoholic coffee drinks and blithely ignoring their children. I suggested to my friend that he should go into the sunroom and say aloud "Spare the rod and spoil the child" and then just walk out. Then, my friend dared me to tell them that the soup du jour was "Spared Rod Soup." The thought of that was enough to get me through the rest of the day.