Today has not been so great. I wish I could say this is because the forces of the universe have decided to conspire against me yada yada yada, but it's actually due entirely to my own stupidity. Gah.
When I got to work at the restaurant today, I immediately headed to the kitchen area, as I always do. I tend to the coffee, ketchup, iced tea, and roll-ups first; once I finish all of that jazz, I head back out to the front and help Fio the bartender set up the outdoor cafe tables (those damn things again, yes) and the dining room. This is my routine. It works rather well. Unfortunately, we sometimes get deliveries of liquor or beer or wine at the restaurant in the mornings, before Fio gets there. (I go in at 10 am, and he gets an extra half hour of whatnot before he has to show up. Lame.) I say "unfortunately" because Fio is a very particular person and bartender with very particular ways of handling deliveries, and I usually fail when attempting to deal with a delivery in the same method. This morning was a perfect example of such a situation.
As I was creating the ramekins of ketchup, I heard someone hollering "Hello?" up front in the dining room. Abandoning my ketchup-making, I headed to the dining room to see a delivery man looking for someone to sign his invoice. He'd already stacked up boxes and boxes of what appeared to be port and some other wines in the dining room, right next to the bar. (This was no-no numero uno: Fio hates to have all of the wine delivered upstairs. He likes to meet the delivery men outside, in front of the restaurant, and request that they only bring in a box or two or whatever he needs immediately behind the bar; he has them bring the rest of the delivery downstairs, where the alcohol is stored. This way, he has less to carry up and down the basement stairs. This makes perfect sense, but if I don't get to the delivery man before he enters the restaurant, Fio's First Rule is already broken.) (So yeah. I'd already messed up.)
This delivery man also seemed to be in somewhat of a hurry. He thrust the invoice that I needed to sign in my face, already rattling off the number of boxes that he'd placed in the center of the kitchen and what kinds of alcohol each box was. Completely flustered, I took the invoice from him and attempted to quickly match up what had been ordered with what was being delivered. (This is Fio's Second Rule: always make sure that what was ordered is what's being delivered. Don't let them deliver too little or too much. Once you sign that invoice, you're agreeing that the delivery was, indeed, correct. And if you sign off on the delivery and it's NOT correct, Fio will get very angry with you. This has happened to me before.)
I didn't have a pen on me to sign, so I asked Delivery Dude if he had one. Nope. He didn't. He made a half-move, as if to go to his truck to get one, but it was one of those half-moves where you can tell it's purely out of politeness and that the person has absolutely no real intention of performing the requested task. Seeing this, I began turning around in place, as if a Pen God would soon descend from the ceiling and drop a writing utensil in my open palm. (This, sadly, did not happen. Delivery Dude started combing the bar and found one of Fio's pens for me to use.) (Side note number four hundred twenty-seven: do not steal Fio's pens. This also angers him greatly.)
I quickly scribbled my name on the invoice, sensing Delivery Dude's impatience. ("We gotta lot of deliveries to make this morning. We in a rush.") (Sure, no pressure. Thanks, Delivery Dude. I've only got The Wrath of Fio on the line here, man.) He swiftly rushed out, and I was left with some twenty-odd cases of wine. I'd already noticed that several of them were cases of port, which seemed dimly unusual, but I chalked up this oddity to the fact that just last week we'd run out of our last bottle of port. (Here's where bells should've been clanging crazily in my pea-brain: we hadn't ordered any port in a reeeeeeally long time. Like, maybe since last winter, Fio said. And yet I was okay with us apparently ordering ten CASES of port. I remember thinking that the port remnants Fio had allowed me to sample last week were quite tasty, and that it must be quite a popular winter drink, indeed, since we needed to order so much of it.) (Insert international soundbite for stupidity--something along the lines of "uhh-duuuh," in a dumb-sounding male voice.)
Cut to twenty minutes later, when Fio arrives. As I'm exiting the kitchen, heading to the dining room, I see him standing amongst the cases, with his jacket still on and the invoice in hand. I immediately prepare to apologize for not getting to the delivery man fast enough, so that the wine could be stored downstairs, but all I could get out was something along the lines of "Yeah, I kn--" before Fio cut me off.
"Who signed for this?" he demands.
I am scared to answer. His face is comprised of disgust, anger, and complete unbelievability. I stammer.
"I--I did."
Wordlessly, he hands me the invoice, with his finger pointing to the company name and address at the top of the page. Rather than reading our restaurant's name, it has the name of the liquor store down the block. Yep. I'm a moron. I allowed a liquor store's delivery to be dropped off here. I completely forgot to check the invoice's address. I am a very dumb person. (You are really dumb. Fo' real.) I cringe visibly and brave a look at Fio's face.
Nope. Not a good idea. In this brief moment of time, it is unquestionably clear to me that Fio actually wants to kill me. Possibly with one of these many cases of port. For a few seconds, neither of us says anything. Then, slowly and carefully:
"So you actually thought we ordered ten cases of port?"
I nod, timid and still fearful for my life.
Huge, exasperated sigh. Fio's brow is suddenly lined with sweat. (Which probably formed as a result of his trying to quash his currently homicidal rage.) I begin taking small backwards steps toward the kitchen, as if I were leaving the company of royalty. I am terrified that if I turn around, Fio will throw a small knife into my back. (Or perhaps a large one, to ensure no chance of survival.)
For the rest of my setup time, I skulk around in the kitchen area, desperately trying to avoid Fio until the situation has been resolved. I later learn that he called the delivery company and had them come back to remove the offensive cases of port and wine, to re-deliver them to the wine store. Naturally, he will never let me live this down. Never. By the time my shift is over, he's already told the regulars who come to the bar of my complete idiocy and threatened to tell my manager, as well as the owner of the restaurant. I am, of course, mortified. I feel like a waitress rookie all over again. (Definitely not a feeling I like to relive. You know.)
I have no happy anecdote to end this blog post. I still feel dumb. And stupid. And incompetent. Bah. My tummy hurts.
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