Easter Bonnets

I have been gone from this blog for a week and some because I upgraded my computer and the ensuing problems arising from getting all of the software up and running with my customary settings and tool bars has take my customary blog time. Today was Easter. 15 waitresses, more bus boys, a gaggle of dishwashers, cooks, pie cutters, bakers, coffee makers, water pourers put in long hours of exceptional work. I poured water and coffee from 10:30 a.m. until after 4:00 p.m. Others are still going as I write. It was the perfect Easter from our restaurant's viewpoint. Not nice enough to stay home and have a picnic and not inclemet enough to keep families away. It was good to see so many large family tables, I'm talking a dozen to two dozen per table. After almost forty years of serving Easter dinner, I observed that the Easter bonnet has become a rarity. I gave a young lady her choice of a dozen cookies for having the nicest one today. On the other hand this generation of employees works just as hard and wishes to satisfy their guest as much as the first day we opened. Then we had 100 people to make happy at any one time, now it is four hundred. One family said, “We have been coming every year since 1974 and today we have a one week old baby with us.” One young lady asked me if the restaurant had really been a barn before. I said, “No this was a Wal-Mart, but now looks like an animal and hay barn. On grandmother couldn't find her family's table after returning from the restroom. We checked every corner before finding them in the Blue Room. She had not yet been missed, but they were eating pie. You learn more by pouring coffee than drinking it.