Wedding Headache

Having three parties going on at once on a Saturday night is just a recipe for disaster.

I worked a wedding for 200 people. I've worked bigger parties with less staff then we had, so I figured it would be an easy night.

After all the tables were set and guests were lining up out in the lobby, we realized some of the tables had the wrong chair counts. This created absolute chaos.

My boss was freaking out asking everyone on staff how this could have happened, and started playing the blame game with the employees, causing some to end up in the bathroom with tears in their eyes.

In all honesty, no one knows who messed up the tables. Myself and two other waitresses put table clothes on all the tables and might have accidentally switched some table numbers while we were doing it. Another waitress counted the seats and might have miscounted. Either way, it shouldn't have mattered whose fault it was. Once we realized there was a mistake, we should have just accepted it and fixed it right away. But with the blame game going around, everything took longer than it should have.

We ended up setting some tables while the guests started filtering in. They bombarded the appetizer table, and with our staff preoccupied with the missing place settings, no one realized just how low the table was getting....until my boss brought it to our attention.

"WE NEED MEATBALLS, CHEESE, CRACKERS, PLATES, AND NAPKINS NOW!"

My boss has very good intentions and she really works hard to run the business, but sometimes I think she doesn't realize the stress the can mount on the employees. So in the middle of doing something she mad eall the staff for the wedding work on, she made me leave in the middle of it to go to something else. I am only one person, you know.

Some I was the one who ran back to the kitchen to try and replenish the appetizer table. I grabbed some more crackers and napkins. We currently didn't have any more small plates because two other parties were going on, so I had to ask the dish room to wash them and get them to me as soon as possible. There was no more pre-cut cheese for the table, so I had to ask one of the cooks to cut some more for me.

All of this maybe took five minutes, but my boss wanted it immediately and refused anything else and started stressing and putting stress of myself in return.

The chaos continued into the next hour and no one knew it was time to serve soup except me and the head waitress. Everyone was lost and confused and no one wanted to be there.

After soup and salad was served, the evening started to go smoothly, thank goodness.

You can never tell if weddings are going to go smoothly or not. This one was complete chaos that could have been avoided if added stress that was unnecessary just stayed away.