Manager T is the Bane of my Existance!

Remember the manager that didn't care when I fell at work? The manager that believed drunken customers that I was rude over his own experience with my professionalism (see January)? Here we go again...

It was a slow Friday night at The Bar. I have one table on the patio, a strange man that comes in several times a week and his date whom I've never seen before. As I wander in after checking on them, I see the boys filing in one by one. "The boys" are a softball team, only one of which is old enough to drink. Not all of them order food, and they will drink about 7 pitchers of water while they are here. Tonight there are 12 of them. They begin to seat themselves, walking right past the "Please Wait to be Seated" sign and me as I say "How many tonight?" I shrug and continue to the bar for the beer my patio table needed as my boss, T, goes to see the new table.
When I return inside I see T getting several pitchers of water so I ask him what else is needed and get it. While dropping off the table's drinks they ask T if they canhave separate checks. I am standing right there, server book in hand, pen poised to take their order. Are they unsure I can answer such a complex question? Maybe they have forgotten that for the previous two weeks I have complied with this same request?
"For all of you?" T asks.
"Yeah." one of the boys says.
"Uh, no, we can't do that. We can give you two checks, but not twelve. We have an ATM in the front you can use." T says with authority and walks away, leaving me standing there smirking on the inside. Serves you right for ignoring me and asking T. I would have said yes.
I give the boy an innocent look as he says, "But you did it for us last week."
"Yes, I did, but now my boss said no and I have to go by his decision. Sorry. I would have done it for you."
I take their order, which ends up being 2 appetizers and 4 sandwiches. I refill their water 3 times before their food comes out.
Shortly after delivering the boys their food, 3 people walk in and begin sliding tables together that run the length of that section of the dining room. Not only does this set up block my path to the patio door, it also sits close to 4 other tables rendering them "unseatable." Within minutes, the whole group has arrived, 35 in all. I am familiar with this group as well; separate checks by family (there are more kids than adults). Thankfully they are ready to order their food as well as their drinks, so after checking on my other tables (the boys and 2 others on the patio), I begin.
As I open my mouth to ask who is starting, a woman from this group turns to T, who has walked up beside me, and asks for separate checks. I am dumbfounded. Seriously, what is going on?
He begins to ask how many, but I interrupt him, as politely as possible, and say "I know how they want this split. It's OK."
After taking their food and drink order, I ask T to help me fill several pitchers of water while I put the order in the POS. He does, and I get the remaining drinks when I have finished. Have I mentioned that I pour my own drinks from the bar?
As we are waiting for the order to come up, I get sat again, and then again. Both are two-tops. I cheerfully deliver their drinks, gather their orders, and enter them in the POS.
Here's where things get messy. One after the other, 2 four-tops come in. After I get their drinks delivered, one is ready to order. They want dinners that come with salads I have to make myself. I make the salads quickly and deliver them, get refills for the boys on their water, the large party on their water and sodas, as well as another bucket of beer and cocktails (all while searching for the right check to enter these on). After delivering the drinks, I take the orders for the other four-top and am entering it in the POS when T comes up behind me.
"We still need an order for those people and the other table right." This is not a question.
"Nope. All the order are in. Just help me run food when it comes up and I'll be fine." I reply.
"Really? Oh, OK." T says with a surprised look on his face.
When the food begins to come up my bartender and busboy (who has been helping the cook) help me run the order to the large party out. T takes a round of plates (i.e. two) out to the table and then disappears. After all the food is out I make sure it is satisfactory and refill drinks yet again. I run food to the other tables, refill their drinks as well, and wait for my turn at the POS as T cashes out the boys. Several minutes later T tells me the table on the patio wants to order. I get their order immediately and apologize that they had to alert my manager.
"It's OK. We only told him because he was out here. We could have waited just the same. We aren't in any hurry at all." I thank them and scoot inside to enter their order.

All in all, the night went off well. I was able to handle all the chaos without issue and was compensated with good tips for the night. The major accomplishment was the large party's 8 separate checks were all correct despite that they were spread all over the table and were not sitting together. I felt good. I did well and I knew it. No complaints, no mistakes, no unhappy customers.

The next night, T told Laura that he wants another server on Friday nights because he has to help me run food and asks her to work. She can't that Friday and it's two weeks before I find out about the request.

Holidays are Hell at a Bar

Another party on a Friday. This one was booked for 20 people so we set up the back of the dining room for 25. The host arrived on time and the rest trickled in over the next hour. While they were arriving I was caring for a party on the other side; a group of 14 after work impromptu drinkers. As with all big groups, none of them could get it together and after returning with the drinks that two of them had ordered, another had decided she needed a drink. Upon returning with that, two more needed drinks. Gotta love running the server.
I was not instructed on how the party in the dining room would be handling the tab, so I asked the host. He got surprisingly agitated and informed me that he would not be paying for everyone to drink. Only what he ordered was to go on his tab. I ended up with 15 separate tabs for the 30 people that showed up. Several people were paying cash. The whole thing was almost more frustrating than the previous party of 80.
At first they stayed at their tables. We added a two more tables when the party reached over 25 people. I had a table of three in another part of the “L” shaped dining room eating dinner and enjoying a few drinks. After a few rounds the members of the party lost all inhibitions and began migrating towards the diners. The whole thing was like a storm. They began in the back and, one that table was messy with plates and empty cups and bottles, they moved to a clean table. The group was so dense that I gave up trying to buss the dirty tables. I could not get through the group without being asked for a drink. When I wasn’t bringing drinks to them, they ignored my presence and refused to budge their fat drunk asses from my path so I could clean the tables.
Eventually, my diners left due to being surrounded by a large group of loud drunks. My party on the bar side evidentially forgot they had a tab with me and began paying cash at the bar. I closed out their tab before they could decide to leave. The tip was minimal but the lessening of my frustration made the trade worth it.
Finally, after several hours of drinking, some of the tabs began to close out. I was left with three hours to go and a group of the most unruly of the party-goers. During the remainder of their time there several friends of the group arrived and sat at a table, shielded by their friends who were standing around the last of the clean tables in the dining room. I brought them their first round which they sucked down like it had been months since they tasted alcohol. As I attempted to get back to them to take an order for a second round, less than 10 minutes after the first, I was blocked by their thirsty friends demanding drinks. My thought process with this was if I could get their drinks quickly, they would let me through to the new comers. When I made it to them they looked at me like it had been an hour since they had seen me.
“We thought you forgot ‘bout us.” Said one woman with a particularly unattractive pout.
“No. I’m sorry. I was getting a round for your friends.”
“Well we’ve needed a round for a long time now. Go get it. Same as before.”
“Ok. I will be right back.”
As I turned to retrieve drinks, they stopped me and changed their order three times. When I finally got to the bar with their order a man from the larger crowd came up to me to order food for the grumpies. This provoked the rest of the large group to order food including my least favorite thing to serve to a group of drunken people, saganaki. After they had all been fed, they closed out and left. I was beyond relief. While cleaning the mess they had left in the dining room I discovered that no tip had been left by anyone paying cash. Should I have been surprised?

No Waitress Necessary

Friday was fairly slow at Sports Bar. The economy is killing business and good tips. A new trend I have noticed is business guys tipping less than 10%. This happened with several tables this week. I could spot them when they sat because they made jokes about the stock market crash asking what our "crash specials" were and then ordering the cheapest thing they could from the bar and the most expensive menu items.
Being as slow as it was, by 8 pm I was starting to get tired. Knowing I had 6 hours left I made some coffee and drank a few cups quickly to get a quick energy boost. Then it happened; something that I would try to keep from bothering me for the rest of the night, but would still sting when I woke up in the morning.

I look at the clock with dread. It's only 8:30 and Sports Bar is dead. So much for Friday night.
"This is one sucky Friday night." I say to my bartender. She looks up from her cell phone and laughs.
"Yeah,so much for making good money tonight."
She turns away to help some thirsty customers and Red Shirt Guy walks up behind me. Red Shirt Guy is friends with one of our beloved regulars. A sweet guy who stays for many hours on Fridays, I have often given TJ a ride home from the bar so he can leave his car. We always go through a drive through and he buys me dinner before I drop him off. He is one of the few bar regulars that, when sitting at a table, allows me to serve him, waits for me rather than going directly to the bar, and tips me the same as the bartenders. Tonight TJ and Red Shirt Guy are sitting at a small table right next to the bar and are going to the bartender for service. This doesn't bother me since it is a table the bar regulars usually spill over to and I rarely serve anyone that sits there. Their choice, not mine, but I have accepted it.
"Tell Stacy there are no paper towels in the men's room." Red Shirt says.
"Why tell Stacy?" I turn to him confused. She can't change the towels in the men's room.
"Because I don't know who else to tell."
"Oh. Well you just told me." I replied amused by the guy.
"Well tell her for me so she can take care of it. She's the bartender."
"She can't take care of that, but I'll tell someone." I'm less amused.
"Just tell her. She's the bartender. She's the most important person here. F**k the cooks and the managers. They don't do anything." Red Shirt says with the tone of an ass.
"What about the server?" I ask with a little smile, hoping to turn the conversation around.
Red Shirt looks at me with something resembling agitation. "People can serve themselves. You don't need a server."
"OK. Well that's nice." I say as I turn to find my SA to refill the paper towels in the men's room.
About an hour later I am talking to the bartender and standing in my usual spot next to the opening for the bar. Red Shirt walks up and pushes past me to get behind the bar. He stands next to Stacy with a menu in his hand.
"I wanted to order food but I guess I have to talk to the waitress." He says with not so much as a glance my direction.
I am amazed at this guy. What the hell is his problem? He places his order with the bar and goes back to the table. I want to tell TJ what an ass his friend is, that he's being rude...but I don't. It eats at me for the rest of the night. My manager asks me what's wrong at one point. When I tell him his only response is not to let jerks like that get to me. I know this. I know it's silly, but there are so many reasons why it does bother me.
The economy stinks right now. Tips are down in general, customers are coming in less. My wallet is taking a hard hit. It's more than that though. There is a bar nearby that cut all their servers. They only run bartenders and let the customers go to the bar to get their own drinks and order food. This scares me. What if Sports Bar does the same thing or decides that they don't need a server on the slower lunch shifts? Good for my bartenders, terrible for me.
Another reason Red Shirt's comments bothered me so much is because of the dynamic of the bar. The bartenders serve the same amount to half the customers a server does. They make two to three times the money. The bartenders at Sports Bar have little to no "sidework" at the end of the night. The put the fruit back in the cooler and the spill mats by the sink for the barback to clean. A server is in charge of the silverware, replacing the specials in the menu, the specials board at the door, the salad station, setting the tables, and refilling condiments among other things.
To hear from someone, even a complete ass, that my job is unnecessary is hurtful. I already get the short end of the stick and to hear someone say what I already know so many bar patrons think sucks. It just sucks.