The restaurant had seen a significant increase in debauchery and a general lack of order since the new GM took over. It was just icing on the cake when we were all siting down to employee meal one evening and were greeted with the following statement from said GM, " Maggie (our hostess) is no longer with us (she had been fired 20 minutes earlier) but she will be joining us for dinner this evening." Nice. While the reasoning for her termination was never "officially" announced, she had been out of control for awhile; she had made out with a VIP in a booth and the coat room, demanded that our bartender serve her a cocktail while on shift one night after a guest offered to buy her a drink, shown up late to shifts, and generally speaking been much too friendly to the guests who were constantly hitting on her. It was pretty much understood among all of us that the final straw was the culmination of all of these missteps after she was finally caught drinking on the job. She had gotten canned as soon as she came in to work that evening and parlayed it into her final hurrah. She invited 6 of her friends (including her current boyfriend who was a regular) to share in her misfortune by getting trashed at her former place of business. Very nice. I was her lucky server.
Not surprisingly she got very drunk very fast. She got angry at her boyfriend and at one point loudly whispered in my ear for me to "run up the check" and to start adding lots of after dinner drinks and other pricey items that were not ordered, to get back at him for something. I felt bad for the guy. He heard her and just looked at me and smiled. He seemed like a sweet guy that frankly got taken for a ride. She ended up getting so drunk that she passed out at the table. Her hair was in the the bowl of sabayon I had been plating with the souffles that no one was eating. I had another table, an elderly couple sitting at a booth with a prime view of Maggie's disastrous table. They kept asking me if she was alright (and were particularly concerned when she planted her face on the table), and wondered how I knew her. (She kept screaming my name and telling me she loved me across the restaurant- classy huh?). Before she passed out she tried to kiss me, and pinched two other servers passing by (male and female). Our general manger finally had to physically pick her up and walk her to the front of the restaurant. It's par for the course that you have intoxicated guests who occasionally cross the line and make a scene. It's just exceptionally classy when it's a freshly fired employee, especially one who a large number of restaurant guests know. I guess that's what happens when you fire an employee for bad behavior stemming from being intoxicated on the job, then invite them to dinner and provide them with discounted alcohol.
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