Keep your orders in order

 I never worked in a restaurant in my life (and at this point, it would seem doubtful that I ever will) but I love restaurant stories, not so much about the food - I can cook my OWN food - but the tales of crabby customers and stingy tips, and the opposites too. 

I know the tips can be good for a server who is willing to go the extra mile. They often find that customers will go the extra twenty bucks with their tip in response. It really takes just a little bit of friendliness in the greeting, a little hustle on the service, and looking out for the little things like topping off water, bringing extra napkins, and so forth. Still, I know it's tough, because when you are greeted by your server, he or she may be a person who was just treated rudely by some lout. It's all part of the wonderful game we call "leaving the house."

And, from what I glean from following the Facebook page "Restaurant workers Be Like," it's not just churlish patrons who give the staff a hard way to go. Owners and managers can be pretty tough to work for as well, how about that? Check this out:

It brings back to my mind the advice I have given a lot of young people who were not smart enough to get away from what I was droning on about, but anyway, one more time: When you have a job, you are hired to perform a service, be it slinging food in a diner, sawing wood at a lumberyard, changing oil in auto engines, whatever. You are paid for that work and that's the deal. So many people think that if they work an extra 30 hours a week, someone will notice this and reward them with a new company car and a trip to the south of France before they move you into the corner office with your name on the door and a carpet as thick as a 30-dollar tenderloin. It just doesn't happen, at least not often enough to make it a good investment of your time.

What's more likely is that you will suffer the fate of poor Frank, above, working hard and doing a great job, and then crossing the Jordan one sad day, and your boss, Chris, is so suffused with sadness over it all that he gives you a standard two-line goodbye before turning your eulogy into a help-wanted ad to bring in the next beloved line cook.

Do your job and then go home and live your life. Don't combine the two. The boss does not care.