Hostesses can do math, too!

I was never great at math in high school. I kind of floated along by sitting next to or behind the class valedictorian, or dumb luck, and survived through pre-calculus and trigonometry and called it a high school career. I took statistics in college, but that doesn’t really count as math – especially when it’s taught by a Pakistani grad student who was so easily manipulated that our class convinced him to give us St. Patrick’s Day off because it was a Catholic holiday. I got an A and I think I showed up to class less than half a dozen times.

But I know basic math. I know adding, subtracting, multiplication, and some division. I can count on my fingers. And I know that I don’t like a particular hostess I work with, because of my mathematical deductions.

Let me explain.

In the multiple shifts I have worked with this hostess, I have noticed (as have others) that she frequently disappears from the host stand to go to the kitchen and eat bread and drink soda. This isn’t really a huge deal if we’re slow. The bread’s yummy and sometimes ya just need a carb-loaded pick-me-up. I’m pregnant. I can dig, I can jive, I’m hip and with it.

But no, she disappears when we’re at our busiest point in the shift, when I need her at the host stand to do things like, um, seat people. Being a hostess really isn’t a hard job. All it really requires is that you stay at the host stand and do what the upper-handed hostess (me) tells you to do. Take these people to table X. Could you tell me what tables are open? I need X-tables set up for X amount of people. It’s seriously not a hard job. I get paid way too much for a job that’s way too easy.

But I digress. I live in a sea of digression. Sorry. Today we were especially slow, and I was feeling especially snarky and cynical (when you’re 8.5 months pregnant, you really don’t care about decorum anymore). So I kept a tally of how many times she disappeared, for God-knows-what reasons. But from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., she had SIX bread/beverage breaks, and FOUR bathroom breaks.

Each bread break generally takes her five minutes. Some are longer, some are shorter, but five minutes is a safe and fair estimate. Her bathroom breaks today were, on average, about 10 minutes apiece. I don’t know what the fuck homegirl was doing in there. Maybe she was hungover (a definite possibility). Maybe she was sleeping (another possibility). Maybe she was taking a monster dookie (maybe, don’t care to think about it). But still. That’s a long ass time in the bathroom.

So we have:
6 bread breaks x 5 min. = 30 minutes of stuffing her face with bread
4 bathroom breaks x 10 min. = 40 minutes of who-knows-what

So that’s 70 minutes that she was not doing hostess jobs. And considering her work day today was from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., that’s three hours at work… over a third of which was wasted. I’m not a business genius by any means, and I’m not about to tell Big Fancy Restaurant At Which I Work how to run its business. But seriously? That’s ridiculous, and even more unfortunate, is the fact that this is how most shifts with her are. I mean, hell, just get rid of the chick and give me a raise with the money saved from wasted labor costs. Baby needs another pair of Ugg boots.

Actually, no, because A lectured me for buying her the last pair. But seriously… she could use a pink pair to go with the tan pair she already has. I’m just saying.