Bored?

With summer approaching, so does the slow months in this business, unless you work at a waterfront or tourist establishment.

So what to do with all the extra time while we're supposed to be polishing, cleaning and keeping busy?

Most restaurant staff is ordinarily comprised of kids in their early 20's and, let's face it, not always the most mature of people. So during boring summer shifts practical jokes abound.

Last summer I worked with two brothers, Johnny and Jeff, natural born pranksters. Employees were asked to drink out of small paper cone cups because glassware was always scarce. They would bite tiny holes in the bottoms of the cups so when people filled them it would leak out the bottom and all over them without them realizing.

Before they would bring out the racks of glasses they would saran wrap all the glasses together so they'd be impossible to get out.

We switch our names around, adopt accents (southern and British tend to be common favorites), and compete to see how many times we can say words like pleasurable, hot or sticky at a table.

Ice is a common instrument, slid into the apron or shirt pockets unbeknown to the wearer until it melts and your breast pocket is soaked through.

If you know how to work the computer system your restaurant runs on you can get out of the ordering screen and mess a whole bunch of things up that way...not that I've ever done that (in case of prodding eyes). Be careful of this one though...I know people being sued because of their misuse of computer tricks.

Let's face it, we're not making any money anyway so we might as well have some fun.