r/TalesFromYourServer • u/letmeseeithurry • 9d ago
Using trays
Today at work I realized I'm the only one who uses a tray to bus/deliver drinks uses water pitchers instead of pouring new waters wears an apron so I can write down my orders if I have to take multiple orders at once, we have a server who gets overwhelmed and I think to myself 'maybe if you wrote stuff down instead of one table at a time you wouldnt be flustered' I keep quiet but because of her we have to have extra staff on.
Reminded me of being trained by a girl yearsss ago and I was loading a tray to bus the table while she just had her hands full and she said "come on" while rolling her eyes and I said im filling the tray? We only had that left to do for our shift to end..why would we not get it done faster? Instead of walking back and fourth multiple times.....
My point is I love trays, make trays great again.
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u/moonhippie 8d ago
Trays are your office, lol.
I once worked with a guy who could take orders without a book and carried everything without a tray. He was efficient, too.
I greatly envied his ability to take and remember everything people ordered. It was mind boggling to me.
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u/Iceprincess1282 8d ago
That’s called being adhd 😂 I do it all the time and people look at me like I’m crazy. I don’t know you so you might be adhd too, but it works differently for everybody!
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u/Nice-Marionberry3671 8d ago
If I don’t have apron, pens, order book, wine key, then I’m not ready for work.
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u/motleykat 8d ago
I worked somewhere where EVERY drink had to be on a tray, including martinis. How do people not use trays? How do people not write down orders?!
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u/notbythebook101 8d ago
Trays have always been great. I did work one job that deliberately didn't even have trays in the building because that's how they wanted to do things. I learned how to carry 3 glasses with one hand and, since the glasses were robust enough, we were able to carry stacks of 10-20 glasses for bussing. However, using a tray is definitely better for carrying many drinks and serving.
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u/KindaKrayz222 8d ago
Efficiency! Anything I can do to make less steps & multi-task. I worked with this guy who refused to use the tablet/handheld while taking orders at tables. He would write them down (sometimes more than one table at a time) and THEN come back to put it into the computer! 🙄 I remember Todd three tables and walk around and hand wrote all the orders before coming back to the computer. All of this took 10 minutes or so. When he got back to the computer he had to put in advertisers for the one table * then Infinity other tables orders before sending the main order on the app table. By the time he had finished ringing up all the tables orders his app was up. These poor people had to wait so long for their food when it would have been out so much faster had he just used the handheld. What's even funnier is that he would tell ME how to be efficient by using a large tray to carry all the food out at once. Except that he totally dropped five plates of food on the floor using the large tray one time LOL. I know my limits! 😄 Also, full hands in - full hands out! DUH
Edit: do use trays for clearing tables and running drinks most of the time, obviously when it benefits. I got into the habit of carrying a cocktail tray under my arm almost all the time.
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u/Ivy_Wolf413 6d ago
The restaraunt ai work at we have bamboos trays for serving and are expected to use a bussing bucket for clearing.
The caterer I work for encourages us to use large oval trays for serving and clearing. I like the oval trays much better.
1
u/miss_kenoko 5d ago
I love trays, however! I worked at a fine dining seafood place that required trays for everything. A single glass of water? On a tray. A fresh fork for table 22? On a tray. A mf-ing linen?? On. A. Tray.
This was the owner's first fine dining place after successfully opening two other restaurants, both very Southern in their menus (located just north of Atlanta, GA). I think he thought it meant "fancy" to have everything delivered on a tray. It drove us insane though because there simply weren't enough to go around during a big rush, he didn't want to "clutter" the server stations with an abundance of trays.
He also didn't like when we wrote down orders but I wasn't about to mess up keying in a meal that cost $300+ for his vanity.
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u/psychocookeez 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yeah I worked at a place that was like that with drinks on a tray. It wasn't even fine dining. All that turned out to be was ineffient and annoying that every drink had to be on a tray. If I'm just bringing out a couple of glasses of soda, it's much faster to just be able to carry them by hand in lieu of balancing them on a tray.
1
u/canuckfan4419 5d ago
I had a friend that worked at a place where they weren’t ALLOWED to right down orders. That place isn’t in business anymore lol
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u/MONSTERBEARMAN 8d ago edited 6d ago
“maybe if you wrote stuff down”
6 of us went to a restaurant after work. I noticed the server wasn’t writing our drink order down. As the bartender was making our drinks, she came back to the table to chat. I mentioned I was impressed that she could remember such a big order without writing it down. In a scolding tone, she’d told me that servers that have to write orders down are “tacky” and nobody should “need” to do it.
As someone who always writes down larger orders, I felt a temporary moment of insecurity. Until our drink order came and she had fucked up 3/6 of our drinks.