Zach's Top 10 for the Day.

I like my job. I really do. Elderly people are generally nice people and they have great stories, and contrary to popular belief, are with it more than we think.

But, when your job in the morning is to pour tea and coffee for more than a hundred sleepy, grumpy, sometimes dentureless residents, things start to tick you off.

Without further ado,

The top 10 things that piss Zach off when he is pouring tea and coffee:

10. Questioning what kind of coffee I am pouring for them.
- I know what kind of coffee you drink, I pour it for you every single day. You don't need to tell me you drink decaf, and you don't need to stop me mid-pour to ensure that I am pouring decaf coffee. I know.

9. Ordering food from me when it is quite obvious I am not your server.
- When I first switched over from serving breakfast to pouring coffee, there was one troublemaker who didn't seem to get the concept that I would not be serving her breakfast anymore. She would return meal after meal, and would call me over and ask me to make the egg for her. First of all, I am not the chef, I do not make the egg (although I make a mean over-easy, I'll make one for you sometime). I told her this. Secondly, the egg was exactly the same as when I was serving it. It got to the point where I could take the egg she returned, walk around the kitchen with it for a minute or so, bring it back out with the egg shifted slightly, and all of the sudden, all-star breakfast server Zach had come to the rescue.

When I ask you if you would like tea or coffee, an appropriate response is NOT "I'll have two fried eggs and a piece of brown toast."

8. Getting my attention rudely.
- There are many ways to get my attention. Call my name if I am within appropriate distance (I am walking all over the dining room all the time, so this isn't a challenge), wave at me if I am looking at you (I constantly look around the dining room for this reason). Do not snap your fingers at me. Do not yell my name from across the dining room. It is rude. Do not stick your index finger in the air and "summon" me to your table. And finally, saying "thank you" in a non-thanking way as I walk by is not an appropriate way to get me to stop and top off your tea.

7. Asking for coffee before you are sitting down.
- As you are walking to the dining room, there are sometime dozens of people who have been waiting for coffee patiently. I am going to serve them first. Don't try to get me to pour your coffee for you when you are fifteen feet away from the table. You can't drink it from there.

6. Asking for "Hot" Coffee.
- Yes, the coffee is hot. I'm not working out of the back of a Starbucks truck. We don't serve that iced stuff. I know that the coffee should be hot. I'm smart like that.

5. Getting mad when you are not served within thirty seconds of sitting down.
- There are more than one hundred people in the dining room, all arriving within a thirty-minute period. Do the math. I'm not Spiderman. I can't shoot coffee out of my fingers into your cup four tables away. If I could, I'd pull a Dane Cook, and I'd say "Here's your coffee, you're very rude."

4. Telling me to come back later then asking for it almost immediately.
- My time isn't valuable at all in the morning. I got plenty to throw around.

False.

I do my best to time it so that if you are one of the people who has to have their coffee at a very exact part of the meal, I will try to time it so that your needs will be fulfilled. However, if you like your coffee when you are done your cereal, and I come over and there is three cheerios left floating in your bowl, for pete's sake, take the coffee. Please do not say "come back later" and then call me back just as I am returning the coffee. It wouldn't kill you to have just a little consideration for others.

3. Asking for the other size of cup.
- Way back when, we had two types of cups. Dining room cups, for the dining room, and cafe mugs, for the cafe. Since then, dishes have been broken or gone missing, and we are now forced to put half and half in the dining room. If you got a small cup and you wanted a mug, deal with it. I'll make two trips to your table if I know you need more coffee. Or, if you are that desperate to get a bigger or smaller cup, go trade with someone else. I don't have time for this.

2. Calling me over for an inch of coffee.
- Science. It's a beautiful thing. Let me explain something that should seem obvious to a common person but doesn't seem to make sense to the elderly. Adding one inch of coffee to an almost full cup of cold coffee will NOT make your coffee boiling hot. I'm sorry, that's the way things are. It's science. Don't get upset when it is still cold after me pouring that inch, because then I get even angrier than I was for having to walk across the whole dining room to pour a single inch of coffee in the first place.

The long-awaited number one.

1. Don't tell me it's cold.
- Because it wasn't when I poured it. Let me tell you a little something about our machines. The receptacles where the hot water comes out heats the water to 190 degrees Fahrenheit - a measly ten degree below actual boiling water. Believe me, I've burned myself quite a few times. It's hot. If you decided to eat your whole meal and then drink your coffee, yes it is going to be cold. Don't be freaked out by this - it's natural. And again, it's science. Don't ask me to bring you a new cup because it's cold. It's cold because you didn't drink it. It's cold because the only way to keep the water at that temperature is to have the room maintain that temperature, and that would be more than a little painful.



There you have it. I hope you enjoyed my sarcastic rant.