Saturday Night Madness

I had forgotten the madness of Saturday night in food service. Saturdays are generally the busiest days of the week and almost always busier than anyone can handle. Last was all hands on deck, as would be expected. I knew that it would be busy going in, I new it would be hard and that things would be crazy. What I left out was the human element of crazy.
There comes a certain point in the evening where a server takes food to the wrong table, or a cook forgets to make something. Usually it is as things are starting to really pick up. This is the timeline for the madness…

5:00-all staff are trying to ignore that tonight is not like the rest of the week and we will be over our heads in hours.
5:30-things are picking up and the managers start telling the hostesses to stop talking and get to work.
6:00-things are flowing well and most of the servers have almost full sections
6:40-a server rings in an order incorrectly or a cook forgets to make something. This is where things start to go downhill.
6:50-the restaurant fills up and the kitchen is slammed.
6:55-the cooks start yelling at the servers.
7:10-the servers are yelling at the specialists to take their food to the correct table.
7:30-three 7 person tables come in…the servers are freaking out.
7:45-Everyone else has just been given seats at the bar because all the other tables are full. The bar tender is yelling at the hostess to stop giving her so many tables.
7:50-9:30-general yelling and error making throughout the restaurant.
9:30-at least one waitress is on the verge of tears.
10:00-things are finally slowing down, but no staff speak to each other as bitterness has build up over the last few ours.
11:30-a group of 17 people come in to eat even though the restaurant is totally empty and should close in 30 min.
1:45am-the final staff leave the restaurant.

This chain of events is just a fact of life. It makes me laugh because next week everyone will all have forgotten what this was like and repeat the same thing all over again.