People taking advantage of volunteers

[Rine]

So, on Friday nights, I work at a club that runs a steak dinner. The entire staff - bartenders, cooks, and waitresses are volunteers. (I am the only one that makes money because they can't find a volunteer willing to do the dishes, haha.)

The place does not make money off of it. We are lucky if we break even. We don't do this for the money but for the community atmosphere and the like.

But the past year, it's gone from a fun atmosphere to people treating us like a full service, real restaurant. When we aren't. We are back in the kitchen, cooking steaks and drinking the entire time.

The past two weeks, I have seen/heard:

- four adults come in ten minutes to five (we don't open until 5:30) and then proceed to watch everyone as they get the place ready. As soon as the salad bar went out, they got up there and started pigging out. So now we are locking all doors to the dining hall.

- these same adults left a huge, disgusting mess on their table. I have never seen four ADULTS make such a mess. It was seriously gross

- one person waited until the bar was busy, went up to pay, and then told the bartender (an elderly nice lady that can't say no) that they weren't paying for one steak because it was 'burnt.' Yet, I bussed all tables and did not throw away any steak at all. So they still ate that. If you eat it, you pay for it.

- People who waste butter, sour cream, etc. It's disgusting. They fill up their bowls with this stuff and end up not using most of it. I throw away a lot of $$ because of wasteful humans.

- People who argue with the cook who has been cooking steaks for 30 years plus about how the stupid thing is cooked. Granted, he might make a mistake every once and a while, but people are sending back more and more "bad" steaks because they don't know how to order. Most of the time, it's the people that order 'medium' steaks and they actually want 'medium well' steaks and then accuse the cook of screwing up their order. Learn how to order your stupid steaks, people.

- Or like the woman that always orders her steak burnt but then sends it back because it is too burnt.

- Or the guy that orders it as "rare as we got" but sends it back because it's too rare

- The place was out of power because of a storm and they acted like it was our fault. Yeah, like we really want all this food to go to waste.

- The folks that wait until we are super busy so we can't police the salad bar. It's not free refills on the salad bar.

- There was a couple yesterday that I heard order. The woman ordered a oyster dinner and when it was brought out to her, she claimed that she ordered a shrimp dinner. Even when I said that, no - I hear you order and you said oyster, she didn't budge. She ended up complaining more so she got a free shrimp dinner and the oysters went to waste.

- We sometimes put out desserts. When it is 'donation only' all of the desserts are eaten but we hardly get any money for it. When it is a dollar per slice, we get maybe a few dollars and a bunch of leftover desserts.




It's just the amount of entitlement from people as of late. The entire staff agrees - this isn't fun anymore. They are all volunteers. We don't OWE the customers anything. They think the place is making all this money off the food but we only raise prices when the food price goes up so we don't lose money. I've done this for nearly fourteen years and it's never been this bad. People suck.

[emax4]

If the place ever goes out of business, that's the time to put up a list of complaints about the SCs. Have it taped to the window facing the customers outside so they can read about themselves and realize they were the source of the closing.

[Captain Trips]

If, as you say, it isn't fun any more, then my suggestion is to stop doing it. Sounds like you did it to encourage a positive feeling in the community, but it seems to have brought out some of the worst instead of the best.

Maybe have one big blowout, advertising heavily why it's your last time doing it.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Maybe close the place to the entitled bitches who are making it not fun, but instead, throw a little party for disabled people, the elderly, or other people who might not get such a treat very often? Use the money got from the last blow out to fund this. XD

[XCashier]

It's nice that someone is trying to make the community a happier place. Pity there's always some self-centered jerk (or twenty) who has to ruin everything.

Captain Trips is right; it might be time to call it a day. It used to be enjoyable but it's now a frustrating chore. It's just not worth the aggravation.

[earl colby pottinger]

Who has the real power here

I agree with the two above suggestions, if you are not being paid to do this job either:

1) Choose who can come in, and refuse service to the rest. Take notes on the ones you serve in case you want to ban them later.

2) Quit.

I would first go with number one, and just laugh at the SCs. What is the worse they can do? Called management and have you fired? Does management even exist? And if they do what power do they have over you if you are not even paid? Answer: NONE.

[Silent-Hunter]

I agree with this! ^

[Sapphire Silk]

Maybe close the place to the entitled bitches who are making it not fun, but instead, throw a little party for disabled people, the elderly, or other people who might not get such a treat very often? Use the money got from the last blow out to fund this. XD

Definately a great idea if you're going to wrap things up

I agree with the two above suggestions, if you are not being paid to do this job either:

1) Choose who can come in, and refuse service to the rest. Take notes on the ones you serve in case you want to ban them later.

Honestly I don't see why you haven't done this already.