ship life

So back to the story. I had come to Hawaii to get away from my old life, and had lots of hopes and dreams about what was going to happen. I hoped to learn a new aspect of restaurant work. I wanted to become a better waiter, and use the experience as a springboard for better opportunities back on the mainland. As we all know, life never goes as we hope. I think I may be getting there now, but as you will see, it took a while to get there.

It is my first week of real work and I am not all too happy with my job. Aloha café is 3 hours of daily misery, but then comes my evening main dining shift. We have different uniforms depending on where and when we work. In the daytime we wear aloha uniform. Black pants and a red Hawaiian shirt. But in the evening it is monkey suit time. Tuxedo shirt, black tie, and blue vest. Really rather silly for the type of place the main dining room is, which you will see. So, my first few shifts in the main dining room I am put on reset team. This means that after I put on my monkey suit, I sit in the galley, next to the dishwasher, get the clean silverware, make the resets, run them out to the dining room, and help set up tables. Again, not exactly what I thought I was signing up for. It is hot in the galley, and the steam from the dish machine has me soaked through in minutes. So I run out to the dining room carrying trays of resets dripping sweat. Then I dry off and the process starts all over again. Seems to me pretty stupid to get dressed up just to sweat back in the galley. But this is just the beginning. After a week of running resets and walking circles in the café, I finally get out on the floor. This is where I meet Santo. Before I rant a while about Santo, let me say this. I really like the guy. To this day he is still one of my friends. He is someone I go to for advice. We talk almost daily. He is a really good guy, and a terrific waiter. But…..working with him as his back had me ready to jump ship. As a back waiter, it is my job to see to it that the waiter never has to leave the floor. It is his job to stay in the section, make sure everything is set for the courses, and of course schmoozing the table. This last part is where Santo excels. He is a world class schmoozer. He is a swarthy Brazilian that all the women swoon over. He really oozes class. The classic tall, dark and handsome. The problem with him is that he would spend all his time chatting up his tables when I was running my ass off maintaining all the tables.

What the main dining room wants to be and what it really is are two entirely different things. To those of us who work there, it is a turn and burn cafeteria. The food is mediocre at best. Nothing against the cooks, who all work very hard, but it is very difficult to have really high quality dishes when you are pumping out 1200 meals during dinner service. Another ship geography lesson. Skyline is on deck 5 aft. One deck up is Liberty. Skyline is made up like 1920’s New York art deco. Framed pictures of New York circle the dining room. It seats around 450 people. Liberty is classic Americana. Pictures of American historical moments. Busts of founding fathers and statues of George Washington and Abe Lincoln. It seats about 250. An average night in Skyline the place will turn over twice. Liberty once. Both dining rooms are served by the same galley on deck 5. There is an escalator that runs from deck 5 to 6. The menu is the same in Skyline and Liberty. The only difference is during the week there is a dress code in Liberty. Skyline is come as you are. People come into Skyline wearing swimsuits and flip flops. Liberty is slower, quieter, and more relaxed. It is possible to give much better service in Liberty. It is still not ideal, but better than Skyline.

Ok, so Skyline is crazy most nights. They try to cram too many tables into the open space. Most sections are six tables. Usually two two tops, two four tops, and two sixes. The section I work now is two sixes, 3 fours and a deuce. And the hosts usually have no rotation working. They always over seat sections to where your whole 6 table section, with as many as 30 guests, gets sat all at once. There is one manager here now who always refers to Skyline as “fine dining”. In my mind, the terms “fine dining” and “turn and burn” don’t belong in the same concept. I really don’t think you can be both. It is pretty difficult to maintain fine dining standards, while trying to turn a six table section in an hour and a half. I have learned a pretty fair facsimile of fine dining standards while trying to turn tables. But to say it was an adjustment is an understatement. So back to Santo. Working as a team is important. While the back is in the galley getting courses the front needs to be prepping the tables. What was happening to me was when I brought courses out, he would have done nothing. So while food was sitting in a side stand getting cold, I would be clearing and staging tables. So with a six table section, he would actually serve maybe two or three of the tables, while I single served the rest. It was exhausting, frustrating, and most of all, made me miserable. Like I said before though, Santo is a good waiter, he just belongs in a specialty outlet. Where it is slower and he can spend the time with the tables schmoozing. The real key to survival in main dining is identifying the tables that want high standards. Most in main dining do not. They come in, in swimwear, and just want food in their mouths. The ones who really want service go to the other outlets. So he would be putting his moves on the ones who were spending money, and leaving the cheeps to me. I had co-workers telling me every week about return guests who would leave envelopes with cash at the end of the cruise. In two months of working with Santo, I never made an extra buck. We never had request tables. I was very unhappy. The thought of jumping ship went through my mind constantly. I kept telling myself that I was no quitter and I could make it though one five month contract. Besides, I told myself, the other options was to crawl back to Omaha, defeated. That wasn’t going to happen. So I kept going.

Then one day, after a particularly bad night in Skyline, I was ranting about my misery. I was bitching up a storm about how much I hated working with Santo. Someone told me to go to the manager and request a change. The manager at Skyline at this time was a total douche, Kumar. This guy was really the epitome of what is wrong with this place. I am totally convinced he could never have waited tables before in his life. There was no way that a person with real experience with waiting tables could ever have said the things he did. His only mission was to make sure there was never a line at the door. His philosophy was that it was better to have people waiting while sitting, than to have them waiting at the door. Hence the over seating. I don’t blame the hosts, they are just doing what they are told. This guy would rather have someone getting bad service and try to recover it on a different day, than to just make it possible to give the guest a good experience to begin with. Kumar is gone now, but the philosophy remains, to an extent. I have learned how to manage it a lot better now. But at the time, I didn’t think that Kumar would ever assign me a different front. He was too much of an ass. Turns out, it wasn’t up to him. The one thing that a back waiter has is that if you are unhappy with your front and ask to be changed, the manager HAS to do it. No questions asked. They cant even ask for a reason. They have to reassign you. Or face discipline. You can even request a front. I had no idea. I had spent the last two months miserable and all I needed to do was ask for a new front. So I did.

And it was about this time that I found my place in the Aloha café, and things began to turn around for me.