# Ticket machine nightmares?



## M1k3

Anyone else used to have the ticket machine nightmares? Being in the weeds? And they went away along with remembering any other dreams?


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## Corradobrit1




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## daveb

I came into pro cooking late in life - was in my fifties. When I was new enough to be an idealist I would hear the ticket machine and think - Kewl! The restaurant's making money, I'm making money, another chance to excel! LOVE that sound. Well that lasted maybe a week.

It quickly went to annoying, to exasperating, to tormenting. It's an audio plague. I moved from restaurants to catering to feeding old folks in part to get away from that machine. I can hear it when I'm dining in a restaurant and will want to leave. I can hear it in my sleep. I can imagine hell being eternity on the line with 6 feet of tickets in front of me. As I type I hear it singing it's loathsome sound. 

Let's never speak of this again.


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## M1k3

Corradobrit1 said:


>


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## M1k3

daveb said:


> I came into pro cooking late in life - was in my fifties. When I was new enough to be an idealist I would hear the ticket machine and think - Kewl! The restaurant's making money, I'm making money, another chance to excel! LOVE that sound. Well that lasted maybe a week.
> 
> It quickly went to annoying, to exasperating, to tormenting. It's an audio plague. I moved from restaurants to catering to feeding old folks in part to get away from that machine. I can hear it when I'm dining in a restaurant and will want to leave. I can hear it in my sleep. I can imagine hell being eternity on the line with 6 feet of tickets in front of me. As I type I hear it singing it's loathsome sound.
> 
> Let's never speak of this again.


But you still have and remember dreams?


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## Byphy

I still get mad thinking about FOH all punching in their last orders at the same time then coming into the kitchen like "What's for fam meal tonight?"..


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## daveb

M1k3 said:


> But you still have and remember dreams?



Just catered a small wedding. Menu included SV swordfish w chimichuri sauce or hangers w bearnaise.

Kids menu was chicken fingers, tater tots and ketchup.

One of the "grownups" was upset because we didn't have enough chicken fingers for him to have them.

I still love mankind. It's just people I can't stand.....


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## GorillaGrunt

Especially right after wrapping up a shift I hear phantom tickets, random noises that trip that mental alarm. Also when out at a coffee shop or restaurant and I hear a printer go off.


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## panda

I sometimes hear it going off in my head while taking a sh!t


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## M1k3

panda said:


> I sometimes hear it going off in my head while taking a sh!t


Do you dream about it?


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## soigne_west

Let’s not forget the other end of the cord. Dealing with the POS system itself can be a complete nightmare.


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## daveb

It's not lost on me that the acronym POS has two different (but in this context related) meanings.


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## Ben.G.

I’ve had a few kitchen nightmares where I woke up and realized I was dreaming, then went back into the dream partially lucid. I told myself, “this isn’t even real, I don’t have to deal with this **** right now,” and started tossing everything on the floor. Very satisfying.


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## Gyoated

I could hear this Thread title.


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## NO ChoP!

We moved to touch screens this year, so no more printers. 

As far as dreaming, I am a very light sleeper and have very lucid dreams that I am aware of, and can control.


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## M1k3

NO ChoP! said:


> We moved to touch screens this year, so no more printers.
> 
> As far as dreaming, I am a very light sleeper and have very lucid dreams that I am aware of, and can control.


Nice. I just started catering. Maybe one day I'll be able to have dreams again. Or able to remember them.


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## Chefget

For me, ticket machines started around '96

Hmmmm...the nightmare of hastily scribbled hand-scrawled tickets, every FOH scratching a different hieroglyph for the same dam dish; or the ticket machine one, with silence...silence...silence then the noisy cascading avalanche of semi-separated chits; the board filled and a stack of tickets waiting to hang.................


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## BillHanna

The daisy chain of tickets on the rail, then hanging low like granny's tits, then back up to the printer that doesn't know the meaning of the word quit.


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## M1k3

I don't miss having a busboy or waiter throw out my tickets because I'm just going off what expo is calling out. "HEARD! ****TON OF EVERYTHING ON MY STATION ALL DAY!!"


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## Dendrobatez

My dream used to go like this: hear the printer go off and the chef yell it out, turn around and cook the order quick, when I turn back around to plate the printer has twice as many tickets, I go back to cooking and hear it going off non stop, theres no way to keep up and by the end all I hear is a loud micros printer and I see a massive line of tickets piling up. Thats when I wake up with my heart racing. I dont remember too many of my dreams anymore.


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## Illyria

I was at a restaurant a few months back eating at a restaurant with an open kitchen and heard their ticket machine go crazy. 

Got distracted and completely missed what the waiter explained about the dish.


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## YumYumSauce

Something similar. Used to work the breakfast/lunch shift. 700 covers easy. Id start at 5 am but Id wake up at 3:30 am to have a coffee, do my business and shower. Id have nightmares of sleeping in and being late. Big name chef, not a place you want to mess around. Hardest part for me wasnt getting up, it was going to sleep at the right time. Never was able to fix my sleep while I worked there.

I've also drowned in tickets a few times when I was new. Had anxiety when the machine would go off for a bit.


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## GorillaGrunt

Brunch


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## daveb

Like. I've never worked a place that dod Sunday brunch. Have drunk my way thru more than a few....


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## Kippington

As someone with terrible hearing, my nightmare was walking back to the station during quiet times and finding a ticket in the machine. There's always a mild panic that it has been sitting there for ages.

Kitchens are loud. If you ask for a vongole a might give you a creme brulee. If you ask for venison, I might wonder what medicine you are talking about.


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## M1k3

Kippington said:


> As someone with terrible hearing, my nightmare was walking back to the station during quiet times and finding a ticket in the machine. There's always a mild panic that it has been sitting there for ages.
> 
> Kitchens are loud. If you ask for a vongole a might give you a creme brulee. If you ask for venison, I might wonder what medicine you are talking about.


The hood vents!  

The loud concerts when I was young doesn't help.


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## GorillaGrunt

M1k3 said:


> The hood vents!
> 
> The loud concerts when I was young doesn't help.






Kippington said:


> As someone with terrible hearing, my nightmare was walking back to the station during quiet times and finding a ticket in the machine. There's always a mild panic that it has been sitting there for ages.
> 
> Kitchens are loud. If you ask for a vongole a might give you a creme brulee. If you ask for venison, I might wonder what medicine you are talking about.



me too. I worked at a place that had numerous seating areas and they decided to code them with letters that rhymed: G, D, B,T, P, TD. In a tiny kitchen with no fewer than 8 BOH people in it. Got better about getting the plates to the right tables when I got them to start using NATO alphabet, plus I got to yell Tango Delta One Niner and so on.


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## lumo

I remember one dream where my bed was part of my work station because it was too busy not to work 24/7. I was 17 years old at the pizza shop across the street from the Boston Garden. 

The other one I remember was my first job out of school, dreamt that I was asking my coworker for help since I was drowning and she wasn't. I was calling out her name, Lynn, Lynn, Lynn, next thing I know I wake up, open my eyes and my girlfriend was staring at me furious like ***, my name is Lisa a--hole, isn't Lynn that tall, blonde, Southern girl from work?!


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## YumYumSauce

daveb said:


> Like. I've never worked a place that dod Sunday brunch. Have drunk my way thru more than a few....


 
We did brunch everyday. Was nice being off around 3 but I hope to never work it again. Have enjoyed a handful of them on the other side as well


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## M1k3

YumYumSauce said:


> Have enjoyed a handful of them on the other side as well


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## YumYumSauce

M1k3 said:


>



Sounds kinda hypocritical lol. But as long as Im not coming in right before closing or being an ass its fine ha. Plenty of places to support that specialize in brunch.


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## M1k3

YumYumSauce said:


> Sounds kinda hypocritical lol. But as long as Im not coming in right before closing or being an ass its fine ha. Plenty of places to support that specialize in brunch.


I was kidding. I hated brunch. But probably because I had to close the night before


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## GorillaGrunt

We had a saying, especially for the unlucky clopeners, went like this:

buck frunch

eta: and in Spanish, always pinche brunch, never said without the pinche


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## M1k3

GorillaGrunt said:


> We had a saying, especially for the unlucky clopeners, went like this:
> 
> buck frunch
> 
> eta: and in Spanish, always pinche brunch, never said without the pinche


Aye huey usually made an appearance also.


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## YumYumSauce

M1k3 said:


> I was kidding. I hated brunch. But probably because I had to close the night before



That happened to me about every 3 weeks when I did a summer internship out in Phoenix.


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## GorillaGrunt

M1k3 said:


> Aye huey usually made an appearance also.



necesito dos mas huevos

yo tengo dos huevos para ti aqui


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## Tnaquin35

M1k3 said:


> Anyone else used to have the ticket machine nightmares? Being in the weeds? And they went away along with remembering any other dreams?


My worst nightmares came true a few months ago. We had just opened up the restaurant not even a month before, a small upscale wine bar/bistro, serving Italian-cajun fusion. The place was PACKED!! We literally had customers sitting in the park across the street to eat because there was no room left in the restaurant. Ticket printer is going off constantly of course. I go to grab the tickets, and there's 20 tickets all from one server in a row within a 2 minute time frame. I was PISSED!!! Then he has the nerve to come on the line and tell me that he forgot to put the type prep on half of his tickets  i was not happy at all! 

Another time, pretty similar to this one but a different server, kept ringing in appetizers AFTER she rang up the entrées for several tables. She would ring in the apps up to 10 minutes after ringing in the entrées. Needless to say, the customers got their meals backwards that night. And apparently we don't have the capability to split checks after they order, so all of our big tables with separate checks get rang in at different times, which OBVIOUSLY is a problem!!


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## M1k3




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## BillHanna

At least it’s only one check.


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## M1k3

BillHanna said:


> At least it’s only one check.


Put it on repeat


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## M1k3




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## daveb

x ketsup?


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## M1k3

daveb said:


> x ketsup?


Probably those little bottles that they insist be opened in front of them so they can hear the seal 'POP'.


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## BillHanna

Shoulda thrown it in the fryer


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## Luftmensch

Have any of you read Bourdain's kitchen confidential? He narrates the audio book - it was an entertaining listen. I have been curious for a long while now... 

How much of the book is 'true' or a shared view. I wonder if it is of a time and of a place (New York in the 80's/90's). He derides brunch... Excerpt from the New Yorker:



> Then there are the People Who Brunch. The “B” word is dreaded by all dedicated cooks. We hate the smell and spatter of omelettes. We despise hollandaise, home fries, those pathetic fruit garnishes, and all the other cliché accompaniments designed to induce a credulous public into paying $12.95 for two eggs. Nothing demoralizes an aspiring Escoffier faster than requiring him to cook egg-white omelettes or eggs over easy with bacon. You can dress brunch up with all the focaccia, smoked salmon, and caviar in the world, but it’s still breakfast.



In fairness, the modern brunch was driven by millennials. In the 80's/90's it was probably a less developed concept. It might not be the height of the culinary arts (if that is your aspiration) but it is _big_ business on the weekend in Australia. A pretty solid institution. The market is split though... we have a strong ecosystem of cafes that do good breakfast/brunch/lunch and restaurants that do lunch/dinner. It is rare to find business that do breakfast/brunch/lunch/dinner well. 

Do cooks hate brunch?




M1k3 said:


> View attachment 114997



Reminded me of Bourdains's rant about well done steaks. Again; excerpt from the New Yorker:



> People who order their meat well-done perform a valuable service for those of us in the business who are cost-conscious: they pay for the privilege of eating our garbage. In many kitchens, there’s a time-honored practice called “save for well-done.” When one of the cooks finds a particularly unlovely piece of steak—tough, riddled with nerve and connective tissue, off the hip end of the loin, and maybe a little stinky from age—he’ll dangle it in the air and say, “Hey, Chef, whaddya want me to do with _this_?” Now, the chef has three options. He can tell the cook to throw the offending item into the trash, but that means a total loss, and in the restaurant business every item of cut, fabricated, or prepared food should earn at least three times the amount it originally cost if the chef is to make his correct food-cost percentage. Or he can decide to serve that steak to “the family”—that is, the floor staff—though that, economically, is the same as throwing it out. But no. What he’s going to do is repeat the mantra of cost-conscious chefs everywhere: “Save for well-done.” The way he figures it, the philistine who orders his food well-done is not likely to notice the difference between food and flotsam.



Hehe... again... I am curious? Is this view shared?


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## big_adventure

Luftmensch said:


> Hehe... again... I am curious? Is this view shared?



From my experience working the line nearly 30 years ago...

...yes. Not quite as dramatically as that, no, just because you didn't even have to ask. Looking at 4 rib eyes sitting there, I would automatically give the best-looking and -feeling cut to the rarest order. And the worst to anyone ordering it hockey-pucked. They simply will never notice, and it's not dangerous once you transform all of that delicious meat into carbonized smudge.

For the thread - well, it's been a long, long time, but when I worked a kitchen I ABSOLUTELY had dreams/nightmares with the rail loaded with tickets and the machine spitting and spitting and spitting and beeping and beeping and beeping. 

Or that moment when you have a lull or it's late in the shift, you head to the walk in to grab something, you stop to chat with someone a minute, you walk back to the line and see a ticket sitting there. Panic ensues as you sprint to the machine and simultaneously check the clock and the time on the order. 17 minutes ago? WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF...


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## 9fingeredknife

Maybe I need help, but I think I'm actually starting to miss that sound after almost a year of 25% capacity...


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## M1k3

Yes, we hate brunch. Especially when we closed the day before.


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## daveb

I've catered "brunch". It's not as bad when going in you know how many covers you'll have and what you're serving beforehand. Unless of course an omelet station is part of the program. That be suck and you have to act like you like it.


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## GorillaGrunt

Brunch sucks. It’s a logistical/process engineering thing which is why brunch places have the best brunch and cooks at dinner places hate it.

I‘ve not yet been at a place with enough well done steaks ordered to make saving for well done a thing, but definitely the rarer it’s ordered the choosier I’ll be about which piece to give them. Well done steaks are fit only for a motley rabble of outlandish Jack Tarrs.


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## Alder26

I used to have many kitchen nightmares but by far the most original was when I was a brunch cook (I'll die before I go back to brunch).

The nightmare was before Memorial Day brunch service. In the dream, I walked into work and my chef said "I'm going out of town today, but I wanted to show you how to make the crepe special were doing for Memorial Day". I replied "I've never made crepes before". He shows me how to make it one time and then leaves. The rest of the dream was just ripping crepe after crepe while the printer stacked up tickets.

The actual Memorial Day brunch service was not less stressfu. I had to cook 3k in eggs and French toast by myself and only had an expo to help call tickets and sell food. It sucked ass


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## Luftmensch

Thanks for the replies! Cool to get some broader insight. Pity... i love a weekend brunch!



M1k3 said:


> Especially when we closed the day before.



A late shift followed by an early one is tough... cruel even! I definitely understand that.




GorillaGrunt said:


> Brunch sucks. It’s a logistical/process engineering thing which is why brunch places have the best brunch and cooks at dinner places hate it.





Like I said earlier... Australia has a huge cafe culture. Many of them specialise in only breakfast/brunch/lunch (no dinner)... and if theyre good, they can do a roaring trade. They are reasonably intimate as well. Maybe 50 seats on average? There is a lot of competition so many places have creative menus. I'd hope that makes it more interesting for the kitchen? Rather than just churning out plate after plate of eggs! 

If the market is more split, it might also give cooks more choice. Specialise in day shifts/meals, if that is what you like. Or dinners if you prefer? 


Not quite the same... baristas dont have a ticket machine... After speaking to some of them, I believe their nightmare is the weekend cycling crowd. You are doing a breakfast shift at a nice pace and then 20 people in fluro lycra with clippy-cloppy shoes descend on the venue to get their post-cycle coffee.


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## parbaked

Luftmensch said:


> Australia has a huge cafe culture. Many of them specialise in only breakfast/brunch/lunch (no dinner)... and if theyre good, they can do a roaring trade.


Cafes that specialize in brunch aren't the problem.
The problem is when a restaurant, that does a roaring dinner trade, decides to ad weekend brunch.
It can feel as if the owners are maximizing revenue without considering the stress it can put on their staff...


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## GorillaGrunt

parbaked said:


> Cafes that specialize in brunch aren't the problem.
> The problem is when a restaurant, that does a roaring dinner trade, decides to ad weekend brunch.
> It can feel as if the owners are maximizing revenue without considering the stress it can put on their staff...



exactly. To expand on my remark:
A well designed restaurant and menu considers the interplay of the equipment, workflow on stations, physical movement during service, delivery of food to the tables, and all these elements of the process as a system. If you have a limited number of burners, for example, it will cause a bottleneck on anything sautéed. If you rely too heavily on the deep fryer without enough capacity, the baskets will fill, the oil temp will drop, and it will cause another bottleneck, desynchronizing with other stations. And so on.

So a good brunch place has a menu and kitchen that make sense, whereas a good dinner restaurant that shoehorns in brunch almost necessarily introduces process inefficiencies compared to dinner: “what brunch food can we squeeze out of this kitchen oriented towards cooking steaks, pasta, &c.?” Prep is also squeezed: you can’t start too far ahead, so during the busiest days of dinner service you also have to prep brunch with different ingredients from the dinner ones.

Furthermore, there will almost certainly be at least a couple cooks and servers who have to close and then open, maybe work a double shift. So you get people who are tired and cranky. And the business can make just as much money at brunch as at dinner — but you have to work twice as hard for it.

at a brunch place, however, their supplies and equipment are oriented around the brunch menu rather than an adjunct. Their staff doesn‘t work nights there so more of them may be well rested. The business model incorporates the brunch food as the primary revenue source so decisions on pricing, staffing, ordering, etc. are made accordingly rather than trying to make as much money slinging eggs and bagels at a place where everything is built around selling $50 steaks.

So it’s a question of optimization: a brunch place is optimized for brunch whereas a place with 6 dinners and 2 brunches is going to be forced to bulldoze through suboptimal constraints and loads every week.

In conclusion, buck frunch. Buck it, I say!


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## Luftmensch

@GorillaGrunt,

Awesome answer. Thanks for taking the time to write it - nice to get 'behind the scenes' insights.


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## Penngu1

My last restaurant had screens which gave a nice polite little "Beep Boop". I haven't heard a ticket machine at work for years. 

I DO, however have that sound as my alarm clock ring tone on my mobile. That will wake me right the heck up, heart pounding, hyperventilating, and no need for coffee before getting ready for work.


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## daveb

That's sick, deranged and evil!

Pls post .wve file.


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## ragz

I've never had ticket machine nightmares, but I've had many many nightmares of vendors sending me the wrong things, items that are inadequate, or just ****ing up my order in general. I blame one particular one fish vendor who mainly dealt with fish coming from tsukiji fish market (before it moved) who would regularly **** me over. I had an alarm set to 6am just to communicate with him to make sure everything was ok, and make any necessary changes. I would then proceed to fall back asleep for a few more hours. Work with him to this day. He DEFINATELY haunts my dreams.


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## benito

I had a dream.

im walking into the kitchen as brunch is just starting to get crackin... 

tension in the air, the line is just chilling, ticket machine starts to spit. 

I dip downstairs to check in with prep, and then run back upstairs to start expo: 

and the line is (MF STILL?) casually prepping while I got dupes in a pile on the floor and no food being made.

I LOSE MY ****. 

OUT LOUD.

my rage wakes me up at this point.


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## MattPike4President

One of the places I work at now has more or less silent laser printers for the tickets. Sometimes I still hear phantom prints while prepping in the back. I don't think it's likely to stop anytime soon.


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## Eziemniak

Waking up at 5am not entirely sure if you pressed send button on your last order before long weekend.
It is a reoccurring theme with me


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## M1k3

Eziemniak said:


> Waking up at 5am not entirely sure if you pressed send button on your last order before long weekend.
> It is a reoccurring theme with me


I see you at the computer, typing, then walking away without any tickets printing. Please tell me you told your table "You sincerely apologize for the mistake by the kitchen"?


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