Ice Cold Food

©2000 by Todd Lejnieks

Tosca came storming back from a table with a nearly-full plate of food in her right hand, pursed lips and "ready-to-roll" eyeballs punctuating her fierce pace. I had been managing the restaurant for 8 months now, long enough to know that Tosca was headed for me, and I had certainly been working in the food & beverage industry long enough to know that a full plate of food going in any direction but out towards a table meant trouble.

"That bitch on twenty-three says her vegetables are ‘ice cold’," she snaps, shoving the plate in front of my face. Tosca was an OK waitress but any more than five tables at a time stressed her to the breaking point and her way of handling customer complaints was to immediately turn around and dump it on management’s lap.

So be it.

I snatched the plate with my left hand and grabbed some ice out of the soda fountain bin with my right.

"I’ll take care of it," I said, as I strode to table 23. I bent slightly as I approached, my hand already aching from the dripping cubes of ice.

"Ladies…" I began, smiling my best restaurant manager smile. "How are we this evening? I understand that there is a little problem."

"Little?" said the well-dressed, blue-haired woman, smirking at her daugther-aged lunch guest, as if to say, "watch this!"

"I wouldn’t categorize ice-cold food as a little problem, would you?"

"Well, no ma’am, I most certainly would not." I paused, gathering my ranting thoughts. "But, then again, I don’t think I would categorize this…" I said, putting the plate under her chin, "as ‘ice cold’. In fact, let me explain something to you."

The patrons from the adjacent booths were starting to turn their heads. My staff of servers and bussers were beginning to gather in the side station to watch.

"See this ice?" I held it up over the plate of food. Little drops of water fell onto the broccoli and some onto her mauve Chanel suit. "This is ice cold!  See these vegetables?" I picked up a slice of carrot and pressed it up against her cheek. "These vegetables are lukewarm. ‘Ice cold’ is what you get when vegetables have been in the freezer for an hour. ‘Lukewarm’ is what happens when you let your plate sit in front of you for twenty minutes while you sit here and complain about your miserable life, instead of eat your goddamn chicken-fried steak and vegetables when they are delivered to your table."  

My staff gives me an ovation, as the lady's jaw drops to the floor, still wet from the examples of temperatures I have pressed against it.

This is what I am dreaming before I wake up to my classic management nightmare...