#I never thought I'd get along better with boomers than with a millennial but here we are

[sun-daisies]

yesterday I got asked to cover about three waitressing shifts this month in the span of one hour - yes I did take all of them. one of them was today and I walk in and start doing pre-opening stuff and im told by the cooks that there's a party of 50 coming in today. first of all thanks for the heads up boss I wish you'd said something when you asked me to work but whatever its fine

BUT. the bartender I worked with tonight. oh my god.

listen I consider myself a pretty easygoing person, it takes a LOT for me to get angry. I can be frustrated and annoyed pretty easily, but not a lot makes my blood boil outside of like politics and human rights, you know stuff you should care about. I also don't want to flex or anything but I KNOW im a hard worker, I hold my own no matter where I am or what's thrown at me. literally a majority of the people I've worked with ever have only nice things to say about me - and they DO, to my face.

this bartender

oh my goodness

I can't remember the last time someone made me SO angry like that

I've only worked with her once before and she was pretty cool, we actually got along pretty well and so I was feeling pretty okay about today's shift because I was like oh it's her on today it'll be a good day. right off the bat she's being incredibly patronizing to me. literally within the first five minutes. I dont remember how we got there - it might have been because she was complaining about how people don't wipe the ketchup bottles before putting them away - but she started talking about the floor and how she wishes it had those like ergonomic mats and I mentioned how "oh, but at least there's some hardwood floor down now, we didn't have that a while back" and she claps back with "oh trust me sweetie I know, I've been coming here since you were in the fifth grade."

I brush it off because whatever, she can have her weird age superiority complex just because she's got maybe a decade on me, tops. she's also been a bartender like her entire working career, but I've worked at this particular restaurant for three years longer than her, so I'm not exactly clueless. I had worked at the coffeeshop this morning and hadn't eaten yet so I ask the cook to make me a lil sandwich so I can at least have enough energy to carry me through the shift considering I'm apparently serving a party of 50 tonight. I get it, I take a few bites, and almost immediately the bartender goes "can you do the ketchup and the parmesan" - HER job, btw, but I figure she's got a few people at the bar already so I go help her. she tells me "I started wiping them off but didn't get far, I also need you to marry them."

"to- to what"

"marry them"

"and refill them?"

"so you'll see I wiped this one off but obviously you still need to do the rest of them- you know especially since we've got a whole party coming in later we'll need some full ketchups. you've done this before right?"

"I've done what before? served a party?"

"no married the ketchups."

"what do you even mean by that"

"like combine the old ones"

"you're asking me if I've ever poured ketchup from one bottle into a different bottle...?"

there's this elderly couple sitting there witnessing this whole thing and they sort of laugh at that, the bartender makes some comment about how "oh I just call it that because I'm old and that's what we say in the industry" and the couple was like "we had NO idea what you were trying to say either." so they were basically my best friends now. when the bartender finally walks away we start making all these jokes about matrimony, they keep going "you're doing FANTASTIC, I've never seen anyone do a better job" and I'm absolutely playing into it because I literally could not believe this bartender was being serious.

anyway, the party starts coming in, I'm running around, the bartender is making drinks - not the ones I ring in, because apparently those aren't important, but making drinks nonetheless - and we're in the thick of it and she stops me while I'm grabbing some fountain drinks and goes "so are we pooling tips tonight or...?"

"I mean... idk, I don't really care what we do"

"well usually when we serve parties like this we pool tips"

I'm trying to run stuff out to my table so I'm kind of like "I mean whatever you wanna do I literally don't care" and she shoots back with "well just so you know in the future I prefer to communicate about this beforehand" so of course I snap back with "great, well I didn't know we were serving a party of 50 until about an hour ago. but I'll keep that in mind, thanks a lot." (please read that with nine miles of snark).

anyway apparently that pissed her off bc she went back to the cook - MY cook, the one who's literally like a mom to me - and starts bitching about how she "can't work with young people" and how much she can't stand me :p

and THAT made me so angry that I needed to step outside and take a breather.

anyway we did not pool tips, I did my cash out, tipped out the bartender, took my tips and walked out. she can keep those stupid party tips as my sincere apology for her having the burden of working with someone a little younger than her.

oh and my sandwich sat in the corner for the next four hours because I didn't get a chance to eat the rest of it after the ketchup wedding thank you so much for that one bestie