Posh Bistro with Ugly Underbelly
Establishment: Morels French Bistro and Steakhouse
Location: The Grove (3rd/Fairfax)
Horrible management.
1) Overstaffed ALL the time. Every shift I would arrive to find myself assigned to a section with 3 or 4 empty tables. So I\’d do all my side work…and when you run out of things to do, the GM either starts barking at you or making passive aggressive comments.
2) Huge tip outs. Even on busy shifts, (the kind where you\’re running so fast you almost become a machine: \’super-efficient-friendly-waitress-bot\’), I would work so hard and still couldn\’t make over $100 b/c I tipped out a percentage of my SALES, not tips…which ended up taking about 30% of my money each night. I had to tip the bartender, host, busser, runner, porter, and cheese-plate-girl. AND pay for parking in the Grove lot–$7/day for grove employees—a final slap on the face at the end of the day.
3) The GM. Now, I don\’t want to sound entitled, but I\’ve worked many places where there was mutual respect between the employer and employee, as respect that makes everyone do their job better. The GM at Morels is so blatantly elitist and mean…If you\’re doing something wrong he will take you by the elbow, EVEN if you\’re with a table!, and reprimand you in front of the whole restaurant! As if he thinks this makes him, what?, likable?
4) The other managers. Yes, there are 3 micro-managers underneath the GM, who are really really loving the little bit of power that \’managing\’ gives them. They don\’t really have all that much to do, so they seize any opportunity to flex their little manager muscles. Example: On a crazy night, a patron orders soup, and I forget to set a soup spoon (granted, a mistake on my part). My conversation with a manager (who\’s younger and smaller than me, I might add) literally goes:
M:\"I just ran your soup and there was no soup spoon. What the fuck?\"
\"Oh! Crap! Sorry! My mistake, I\’m slammed..\"
M: \"No, (insert my name), REALLY: WHAT. THE. FUCK. is your PROBLEM?\"
5) The food is AMAING and BEAUTIFUL. Too bad you can\’t eat any of it. You\’re given an option to eat a meal off a special $2 employee menu, but you can\’t take it home, or even eat it in the restaurant…you have to take it up to the \"Employee Break Room\", a dank, vile-smelling, wooden broom closet filled with upside-down chairs and last night\’s trash bins. The irony of trying to eat a 5 star gourmet meal in this space that smells like the inside of a urine-soaked cigarette is beyond me.
6) The customers included a LOT of tourists, too, who either tip 8% or not at all.
SUM UP: Even if you think, \"Hey, I\’m a damn good server, I\’m a professional, I can handle anything!\" …..don\’t work here….Because they will never treat you like anything but a migrant worker.
The Farm of Beverly Hills operates EXACTLY like this, and it’s in the Grove as well.