One last night at the Firehouse, and thanks for all the fun

By Jennifer A. Reese

May 18, 2005 | On a Friday night in April, Tara Turley called her friends and invited them to meet her at Firehouse Pizzeria.

It was Turley's last time going into the restaurant -- not as a customer, but as an employee.

Turley was one of more than 50 employees at Firehouse Pizzeria and has been serving customers for three years. A typical shift of a server at Firehouse is "a mad rush," she said.

"I probably burn more calories running around at Firehouse some nights than I do going to the gym," Turley said.

Turley said she is literally running from one table to another taking orders, bringing food to other tables, making sure all her customers are satisfied with the service.

Nicole Meeks, another server who has been working at Firehouse for eight months, works during the day and said it is constantly a "mad lunch rush." She waits between 12 and 15 tables within an hour and a half every day.

"It's just like a mad rush. Everyone comes in between noon and 1:30. Every table is full. It's always really busy. I love it busy because once you get going it's easier to keep going instead of taking little breaks. The busier it is, the more you get done. You get stressed, but not to the point of crying, it's a good stress," Meeks said.

Working at a high-stress and fast-paced restaurant can be good at times for the employees, it can also be a difficult situation with some customers who are picky enough to double-check their order, and the orders are pretty confusing to begin with.

The Firehouse Pizzeria menu has orders which say, "Mouthwatering roasted chicken, fresh Roma tomatoes, thick cut mushrooms, green onions, and a generous helping of cheese on our creamy Alfredo sauce" for the Oven Roasted Chicken pizza, or "Our fresh mix of garden greens topped with mozzarella cheese, three varieties of pepperoni, fresh mushrooms, fresh tomatoes and olives, with your choice of dressing on the side" for the Italian salad.

And when the people ask what the Foccaccia breadsticks are, the servers describe them as "an Italian flat bread we bake in the oven. We sprinkle it with Italian spices. We slice it in the middle and spread garlic butter on it. We sprinkle a blend of mozzarella and provolone cheese on it, then stick it back in the oven to melt the cheese. Then we take it out and slice it. A full loaf has eight slices, and you can choose from our signature sauce or a roasted garlic marinara sauce."

Then there is the house favorite, pizzookie.

Meeks said, "It's a pizza dish 6 inches across. We cook the cookie dough and put three scoops of ice cream on top, then top that with caramel and chocolate syrup. It's scrumptious and delightful."

When the servers have to remember what first comes on the order and then remember what the customer wants off the pizza, it can get confusing. "Some people are really nice and some people are the biggest jerks. They'll pick their food apart and find something wrong with it," Meeks said.

Turley also said that sometimes the customers can be just plain mean. She said that a woman came in to order dinner and was incredibly picky about her order.

"She wanted a large roasted chicken salad with no bacon, no cheese, no tomatoes, but sun-dried tomatoes on the top and basil dressing on the side," Turley said.

"The people are the most frustrating. Some will pick wherever they want to sit and want us to put in special effort because they come in regularly."

Turley said being a server can be "high stress and low gratification" sometimes when people are impolite. She said they let her down when they don't say thank you, or don't ask kindly for their orders. She said that it doesn't matter if a customer leaves a $1 tip if they were nice and polite because they made up for it in the way the treated her.

Not only do some of the customers treat the server well, but also some of the customers leave a good impression on the servers and they are able to form friendships. Some of Turley's customers have been coming back for three years and she's been able to become friends with them.

"I've seen the same tables come in for three years. I've watched their children grow up. Some tables will bring me Christmas presents. They are excited about what I want to accomplish in life," she said.

Turley said she had one customer come in who was a painter, and he gave her a painting for Christmas that was worth $700.

Serving at Firehouse Pizzeria is not all about the customers. The servers get to have a little bit of fun too. During the slow hours and when they are eating or taking breaks, they are able to get to know one another.

"It's social. We're all in the same boat, we hang out and talk to each other while we're rolling silverware in the back or eating," Meeks said.

"We might not be the nicest girls because we're always busy, but if a girl comes in, we'll really listen. When it's slow, that's when we get to know the new people, eating teddy grahams," Turley said.

Getting to know to employees at Firehouse can be difficult because they are already close to one another and have little cliques or clubs.

Turley said that when she began working there, there were about 20 employees. On some nights now, Turley said, there can be up to 20 people working one shift because it's so busy. Because the number of employees has gone up, so has the number of people to deal with, and that has led to cliques forming within the company, clubs and dating within the workforce. Turley said that the managers had to set a policy about dating each other because everyone was doing it.

"A lot of our personalities are the same so we have clubs like book club or TV club, but there is one clique that won't talk to anybody and won't let anybody in. There's a lot of backbiting and rumors that fly too," Turley said.

So, when the servers aren't working in the back on their friendships, they are working with their customers. And when serving people, the spills and mistakes are bound to come. Meeks has had a few occasions where she has had a plate plummet to the ground, a guy attempts to get her number or a sandwich slides across the floor.

"The funniest was when some kid tried to get my number then saw that I was engaged. I had never seen someone so bright red in my life. He was the deepest shade of red. Another time I dropped a sandwich and it slid across the floor. I felt like a retard. I had to have them make another and the guy had to wait and extra ten minutes for his food."

She said she saw one of the servers spill a Coke down the back of a woman's shirt and another server dropped a plate of eaten pizzookie that splashed all over a customer's face.

The servers begin getting paid $2.13 an hour, and then come tips. Turley said the average weeknight will bring in over $50, and the weekends are an easy $100. Turley said it is one of the best jobs she has ever had.

"A server's salary is the best way to get through college. It got me through college. I've been able to do things that normal college students can't do. I've been able to pay for my food, apartment, car and trips. It allows you to be flexible with your money. I wouldn't have worked anywhere else during college. I'd do it 100 times again. It's branched me out to experiences in my life I wouldn't have had," Turley said.

And Turley said it's not only the money that makes working there worth it. She said it's the people and the friends she made.

Turley said, "Some of my best friends have come from Firehouse. We're rooting for each other. We actually do stuff. We'll go do something after we close up for the night."

Turley's last day was April 29. She was the last one leaving the restaurant because she was closing up. She compared it to the last episode of Friends when everyone leaves their keys behind, turns out the lights, shuts the door and takes one last look, and then everyone walks away.

MS
MS