Please be advised, your chef is annoyed

Let's clear some stuff up.  Eva has been kind enough to bestow upon you lovely readers some quirks that irritate the shit out of servers. I can now officially say that I have cooked in the states, Europe and the Bahamas and turns out, the same shit irritates restaurant workers around the globe. Let's discuss these for a minute.  And I hope, if any of these actually apply to you that you will take a second to recognize that you are that quintessential asshole customer and change your behavior accordingly. If these don't apply to you then please join me in mocking these people openly.

You send back your food to get remade because:

1. Your steak is not cooked to the correct temperature when in fact it is perfectly cooked, exactly as you requested, you just don't know what the difference is between medium and medium rare and you refuse to ask. Oh, and no, "medium rare - medium" is not an actual temperature. Pick one.

2. You modify your meal when placing your order (no salt) and then send it back for a related reason (bland). You chose it, eat it.

3. You make up a fucking allergy that doesn't even exist just because you don't like an ingredient. 
No, lady, I'm sorry but you cannot be allergic to spinach. Just ask for no spinach. If we can do it, we will. 

4. You have an allergy but neglected to tell anyone when you made your reservation, again when you were seated or any of the ten separate times your server came to your table prior to us making your meal. 

5. You make up something that's not even remotely close to being on the menu and then decide you don't like it. Well that's why your little creation wasn't put on the menu, boy genius. 

And to go a step further and preemtively answer the next question that always surfaces after this conversation. No - no one in the kitchen does terrible things to your food when you send it back.  No matter how irritating you are. Do we mock you and call you horrible names? Yup. Sure do. In fact, chances are you have become the running joke of the kitchen for the rest of the night.  But in the 16 years I have been in the restaurant industry I have never witnessed another cook spit in - or do anything malicious - to a customer's food. 

The truth of the matter is that we're generally too busy to care THAT much about you. Sure, your an asshole for ordering your filet well done and you will absolutely get the worst possible cut we can find in the cooler but the reality is that we just want to get your food out the door as quickly as possible so we can get the ticket off the board. 

And that's the key to this whole situation.  The guys in the kitchen are busy. We've been prepping all day, trying to beat the clock so we can be open for service which is always a hustle, looking over our station as we go to make sure we will be set up and not have to step off line more often than necessary and thinking about the massive cleaning list we have lying ahead of us after we close. Then, inevitably, Pablo on sauté calls out sick - although thats code for, "I got shitty at that wedding I told everyone I was going to last night and can't come in now" - so now the whole line gets restructured and the chef has to get pulled off of expo and onto sauté which just stresses the shit out of the rest of the line because now he's watching every little step you make and tasting your food and slowing you down. 

And of course it's a Friday night and you're going to get crushed. Non-stop action, million miles per hour, tickets flying off the printer and you're thinking the whole time that you're going to lose your shit mentally and just snap and they'll probably find you in six hours naked in the woods talking to squirrels - but you keep your head down and just complete one motion after another, as fast as you can while trying super hard to not get yelled at by the chef.  

This entire time the chef is calling tickets from inside the line tonight as he's working sauté so he's calling them even faster than normal because he's slammed too.  Last you checked you were supposed to be working six chickens, two calamari appetizers, three burratas, an eggplant parmesan, four meatball apps, six spinach's for the grill station, toast for the sauté station...and the chef is still calling tickets - fast.  "Add one chicken to that " so that's seven chicken's all day and another spinach for grill. Shit, I'm out of dressing and cold plates. 

Ok, stop! 

So at this exact moment in time (and this is no exaggeration) I -as one guy- am supposed to be doing the following all at the exact same time: roast seven chickens and sauté seven spinach's (to go with that chicken) and then slide them all down to the grill station for plating, pull one calamari out of the fryer, season and plate it, dredge another order of calamari and get that in the fryer as soon as the first one comes out, plate three burratas - but they're supposed to be on cold plates and I'm currently out of cold plates so I have to go find some at the dessert station, get one eggplant parmesan in the oven, pan up three meatball appetizers plus get toast into the oven to go with them - I can't forget the extra toast for the sauté station or the chef will kill me, and make a side salad for the eggplant parmesan but I'm out of dressing so I have to run downstairs to the walk-in to refill my squeeze bottle. 

Now as I'm about to run off the line to get the dressing I hear a server come back in and make the following statement, "52 claims she's allergic to spinach. Can you re-fire this Roasted Chicken Dinner please?".  Can you see our frustration? If its a legit concern or valid reason, ok. But otherwise, there's just no excuse. 

So yes, if I thought spitting in your food would help eliminate this kind of scenario I would purchase a camel and keep it out back - but truth be told, it's not going to solve anything.  It's just going to slow me down on the line and I'm going to get so much more pleasure out of making fun of you for the rest of the night. "Hey, chef, can you grab me a water please...but with no ice? Yeah, allergy".

So please, try to keep this in mind when you're out at a restaurant. We're all at work, doing our best to make your downtime enjoyable. That's our job. You have your job during the day and I have no doubt that all you can think about while you're at work is getting out at 5:00 and the plans you have with Gary later that night. Well it's our job to make your night with Gary special and fun and awesome and something you get to brag to your co-workers about at the water cooler on Monday. But while you're having this wonderfully great time, please try really hard to apply some basic etiquette to your dining experience and not be a douche bag. It's really appreciated more than you could ever imagine.