Hanging with the Girls

Friday was my day off so I decided to go there to hang out and have some drinks.  Theresa always made such a big deal about how we should hang out there and bring all of our friends.  I met up with Tara and Lindsey but it turned into a lot of people because as girls got off they’d join us.  I had a lot of fun sitting there; one really gets to see the restaurant from a different perspective. Alex was our server and hung out with us for most of the night.  I think Alex is so cool and lively.  She is one of those girls you’d want in the station next to you so because you knew you’d both have a lot of fun together.  On the other hand, Alex isn’t the best server and you’d be doing twice as much work with her tables asking you for ketchup, refills, the check, etc.  One of the reasons is that she sits down with her tables too often and for longer periods of time than she should.  I get that’s that is part of our service but already she’s gotten some complaints for getting orders wrong and failing to really fix the situation with the guests because she was too busy chatting away with other tables.

Even while we were there a trainer checked on one of her tables and she had served the table clams instead of squid.  She was like, “oh I don’t eat fish so I’m not too familiar with the difference with all of our fish yet.”  Despite the fact that the Kilt Girls are in cute revealing outfits people still want their order right.  During the training the focus was solely on how we were very important and special.  It was emphasized over and over that people came to that restaurant just to see us.  It doesn’t surprise me that some girls are forgetting that at the end of the day even though we are called ‘entertainers’ we are still essentially waitresses.  Our job requires us to take correct orders and serve food as well. 

I ordered the Shepherd’s Pie and the Irish nachos.  I want to try a different menu item each time I work so I can become really familiar with the menu.  The Shepherd’s pie was okay, I love Shepherd’s pie but here it’s a bit more salty than normal.  The Irish nachos I wasn’t too impressed with.  They seemed so cheap and a small step up from something you’d get at a baseball game or a movie theater.  I know it’s pub food but I’m pretty sure the cheese was that shitty Velveeta stuff. 

 

I like everyone I work with but you could already see cliques forming.  Even Tara and Lindsey who were pretty chill and low drama were talking about people.  Apparently Tara didn’t like Katie because they had worked somewhere before and she thought Katie was a snob.  I thought Katie was cool but I wasn’t going to tell her that.  Alex pointed out a girl Babette a few tables over sitting and talking with an old man.  She sat extremely close to him where she was practically on his lap and was there a long time.  Alex said it was really creepy and she looked like a prostitute.  I thought that was kind of mean to say but rather hilarious because it did sort of look like that.

Shelia came and sat with us for awhile.  She was one of those girls that lived an hour away.  She had driven there to smooth things over with Theresa because Theresa said she didn’t show up for a shift.  Shelia had worked the same day as me when the schedule wasn’t up. I think it was a Wednesday. Someone had told her it was the exact same as last week but she called Theresa to make sure.  Theresa never called her back but Shelia normally had Thursdays and Fridays off anyway so she wasn’t too worried about it until she called Thursday night and Theresa said she didn’t show up that day for a scheduled shift.  Shelia was freaking out that she had gotten fired and drove an hour just to talk to Theresa who said it was okay but to never have it happen again.  Shelia went to the dressing room to write down the schedule and found out that she wasn’t even scheduled Thursday the day Theresa claimed she didn’t show up for.  She drove an hour for nothing!  Shelia was fuming mad and said  it was taking everything in her not to go off on Theresa.  She said she needed this job too much but she wanted to because Theresa was a complete idiot.  We all talked her out of it and bought her a shot but I could not believe that had happened.

I kinda looked at Theresa and I wondered what her previous experience was.   I know she had been a

makeup artist but I just couldn’t figure out how she landed the General Manager job at the Tilted Kilt. From my experience working in some high volume restaurants I would say her personality type was not what I was used to seeing for a management role.  She seemed too disorganized and all over the place.  She didn’t always seem to act professional or appear comfortable like she had done this before.  In fact she comes off as really inexperienced.  I don’t want to say she’s not smart but she’s one of those people that would write 'your' in a context when you were supposed to use 'you’re'.  I had already seen her do it on the Facebook page several times as well as fuck up 'to', 'two', 'too'.

Usually if you look at Craigslist ads for a manager of a restaurant like the Tilted Kilt they require around 3-5 years of experience in a similar high volume setting.  Had Theresa even been a manager before?  I wouldn’t be surprised if she had been a bartender or server but I can hardly see how she would have been a restaurant manager anywhere especially not at at a restaurant this big  Possibly she could have been a manager somewhere like a tiny café or dive bar.  She actually reminded me a ton of the manager Lil on Coyote Ugly, pretty much the same exact person but with different hair. I still saw her more of a makeup artist than a manager because she only focused on the look of the girls instead of logistics of the restaurant where structure, budget, and deadlines were important.  If you forget to order beer and have too many people on the floor when the restaurant is slow you are going to ultimately lose money for the restaurant.

I’m beginning to think that this particular Tilted Kilt was franchised by some guys who have no restaurant experience at all and think, ‘hey this is a cool chain, and it will probably make money because everyone likes pub food and scantily clad hot girls right? We’ll just open up and give Hooters a run for its money! We’ll hire a manager that’s a hot girl so she can relate better to the Kilt girls and it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t have any restaurant experience because she’s hot and used to be a makeup artist so she can help all the girls with their makeup. We’ll of course make money because we are in a good location and since it’s a big city the girls will be hotter here than a small town.’ I could be totally wrong but that’s just the vibe I got.