There's bacon grease in the cornbread?

So I moonlight at a well-known Southern-cooking restaurant. Sometimes I serve, but yesterday I was an Expediter - one who puts the orders together as the grill line places them in the window, adds condiments, make sure the dishes have the proper plate presentation, etc... Yesterday I pulled a 13.5 hour shift and spent the day observing my fellow workers lose their minds one by one. It's amazing how ballistic people will go when they can't have their cigarette. It's funny - most of the people who have reservations about working in a restaurant have a fear of rude customers. It's been my experience that your co-workers will make you faaaar more angry faaaar more often than the relatively few uncouth customers one comes into contact with. It's also been my experience that if the table ever tells you, "You're the best server we've ever had!", you can count on a crapola tip.

We also had a customer who had to be physically restrained at his table from beating his female companion. I think the managers asked them to leave after the near altercation, but as I was working in the kitchen I didn't see the brouhaha myself. Apparently the other gentlemen at the table weren't doing much to ameliorate the situation, and it was sad that the other tables in the section had to get the management instead of homeboy's "friends" policing the situation.

We had a fifteen-top come in about 20 minutes before close and they ordered a variety of items. Typically on Sunday nights we start to run out of things because we stay busy pretty much the entire day. Last night was no different - we ran out of dumplings once, meatloaf once, and baked potatoes. Of course the last party ordered copious amounts of the things we were out of. Since they were being served by a new employee, there was some delay in finding out which items they wanted to replace the ones they couldn't have. Unfortunately, the grill line was in such a hurry to get out of there that they sent all the food to the dishroom as soon as they placed the order in the window. Needless to say, neither the customers, the server, or the manager on duty were particularly pleased to find out they couldn't get replacement items, nor any more bread. The cooks even told me about an hour before closing time that we were out of fries so that they wouldn't have to cook anymore. Turns out that they didn't inform the entire grill line of this, as one cook continued to drop fries for the orders he fixed - after I'd sent our several tables' food without fries. Now I look like I'm a slacker because I believed the grill cooks. I'm not in love with my job, but I try not to be a slacker because it would make things harder on my co-workers if I do shoddy work. I wish everyone thought that way.