Yes, Springs1 is wrong as the days are long

Springs1 likes to rant a lot about how all the STUPID servers are LAZY because they forget items, overcharge, refill her drink without asking and pre-buss her tables. She even throws in tasty bits about how she worked at a donut shop. Once again, I take her comments at face value, because if she were to ever worked behind the scenes of any eatery, she would know there was much more to serving than, well, the serving part. I guess she doesn't know that servers are pretty much responsible for everything but cooking the food. That includes folding silverware, cleaning sections, getting behind the bar when things are backed up, filling the ice bin, keeping the salad bar stocked, running food, sorting silverware, prepping food and my personal favorite, changing the syrup when the line runs out. You know, when you have to lift a heavy box, remove the nozzle from the old box and then hook it up. For a grown man, that's probably pretty easy, but short women such as Springs1 and I would struggle doing this.

Or how about when you've managed to get out of the weeds when the kitchen cranks out about 30 plates of food at once. Your manager literally throws a tray on your shoulder and you're off to the other side of the restaurant. What, is it someone's birthday? You've gotta wait as someone tries to get a working lighter so you can sing some guy happy birthday. You go back to the kitchen to get your order, and guess what -- it's already on the way to the table. Mind you, there were special instructions that only you could fulfill. Any good server would be annoyed, pissed and honestly upset for the customer. Of course most servers want to provide a good dining experience. The point is, Springy, that if a server were to tell their manager, "I'd really like to run this food but I have an order coming up in two minutes with special instructions," one of two things would happen; the manager would say they would handle it, or you'd be told to pack your stuff and go home. See, insubordination is one big aspect that you refuse to acknowledge. Why should a manager be subjected to insubordinate employees when all they're trying to do is keep the restaurant running smoothly? How would you, in all your great restaurant knowledge suggest that a server handle this situation so that the customer gets their food delivered perfectly by their server while the server meets the demands of their managers? If you have a solution to this, honestly, I will gladly invest all future excess income into a restaurant run under your guidance. I'll name you as a silent partner and give you 25% of the net profits.

All of these things are reasons why we don't do all the things you think that only lazy servers don't do. When I was working at a restaurant, menus were only allowed in the back of the house for two reasons; someone was training or someone was ordering a meal for themselves. If I were to stand at a terminal with a menu in hand while price checking each portion of an order, that menu would have gone flying across the room. I'm quite sure my manager would have asked me what was wrong with me. If I would have price checked every single meal, I would have had walkouts, angry customers and angry managers to boot.

If you worked in a sizable eating establishment you would already know this. Serving isn't just serving. It isn't just taking order, putting in tickets and then cranking out tickets. Thank God, I was only a server for less than a year. In hindsight, that was the most physically and mentally demanding job I've ever had in my life. Blisters on my feet, burns on my hands, throbbing headaches. I had shifts that I ended up spending more getting to work than I made. I sucked it up and did the job again the next day without taking it out on the customers.

Just a troll, or does she really think she's manning the bridge?

Once again, I haven't come to a complete conclusion on this yet. Springs1 has gone to forums for expectant mothers and gotten into cursing matches with moms to be. She even tried taking up ranting about rude drivers early in her inception (something tells me that she was trying to figure out what ticked her off the most). While she tries fairly hard to come up with new ways to be inflammatory, (under the guise of just expressing her opinion) her delivery is pretty much the same and she doesn't exactly try to hide who she is. Sounds to me that she is using the internet to vent and claims that she doesn't care what people think about her. Her opinions are just so important that they have to be hard at ANY means necessary.

Where she fails miserably is in the fact that she argues about opinions. Springs1 thinks most -- no, all servers have easy jobs and they suck at them. Okay, that's nice. Someone disagrees with her and the gloves really come off. Even the most heated political debates aren't that one sided. I mean, seriously. Regular people know that they may have unpopular opinions and that everyone may not agree with them, but who argues about them in that manner. It's a fact that most people don't mind the whole refill without asking think, which Springy finds abhorrent. So not only is the server wrong for assuming that she wants a refill, other diners are wrong when they say they don't mind. Hmm. So, who's right? Can anyone be right? I thought opinions were personal. They're meant to be shared, but ultimately, they are still possessed and controlled solely by their creators. Guess she missed that memo.

Another reason that the Springster comes off as a troll is the fact that most of her stories are pretty much cut and paste jobs. If I were to go out and eat as much as she did and had such a high level of terrible service, why aren't their any new stories of horror? In fact, most of the stuff she posts about now happened over five years ago. What gives? If she goes out to eat eight times a month, she should have well over 200 more tales of crappy services with detailed breakdowns of scenarios and blow by blow accounts of the transgressions?

I still think she's got psychological problems, I just think that she is under the impression that she's perfectly fine doing what she does. She's said herself that she wants to remain anonymous on the net because she doesn't need any retaliation from waitstaff, (huh?) but she's given out so many clues that she would have been spotted by now. I mean, even in Louisiana, a 90 pound woman who orders 4 orders of ranch with every meal, filet mignon (they serve that at Chilis?) coke and water has got to stand out. So, yes, I think Springs1 is partially a figment of her own fantasies. I just can't believe that in all these years no one has spotted her and reported back with the juicy details. I also happen to think that she's very passive aggressive, doesn't speak up for herself and nags her husband incessantly about the service. All the while, she probably puts that fake smile back on her face at her server comes over to see if everything is okay with the service.

Is Springs1 overweight, underweight or suffering from an eating disorder?

Although Springs1 describes herself at 5 feet tall and weighing less than 100 pounds, from the amount of fatty condiments and drinks she regularly gorges herself with on the weekend it is hard to believe that she doesn't have some type of eating disorder. While she says that she carefully watches what she eats, if we are to believe her, she is clearly underweight and is suffering from the signs of a new, crazy eating disorder. Anorexia is defined as someone who starves themselves, eating less than 500 calories a day. Well, good old Springs1 claims to eat between 500 - 600 calories a day, 5 days a week. At that rate of caloric intake, it's safe to assume that she would be continually losing weight. I mean, she'd have to eat around 3,000 calories a day the other two days of the week just to compensate for the other days. A person who is in a near constant state of starving can't be expected to behave rationally.

Think about it. If you eat only spinach, roots and berries five days a week when you knew that you would be able to eat the most delicious, fatty, high calorie meal on Friday night, wouldn't you be more than a bit anxious? Most of us could care less if we got four sides of Ranch or two because we'd be overjoyed by the sight of a substantial meal. Then again, most of us don't make a habit out of this either. By the third week, you might start to get a little more picky. After a few months of stalking your server go in and out of the kitchen, you might be able to time exactly how long it takes for your appetizer to get to your table. And you'd probably be pissed if it took an extra two minutes.

Mind you, I'm taking Springs1 claims at face value. There's also a photo album with the same name as her infamous moniker that has a buttload of pictures that are supposed to be her. This person looks happy enough, but is definitely more than 90 pounds. What is leading me to believe that Springy-chicky-baby is more than 90 and could possibly be the mystery woman is because she's frequented boards geared towards moms. As a supposedly married woman with no children who is obsessed with keeping her weight down, she should be allergic to children. Sure, she goes to some pretty random places to post her rants, but she has made a beeline straight for online Mommy hubs to make up completely new posts with her 'Rules for Servers' crap. What would make a childless woman do that? The only thing I can come up is that she's become barren due to her unhealthy eating practices and decided to target a new type of victim. Granted, she's also posted at shaving forums as well. She's really, really random.

Her having a few rugrats running rampant along with a few extra pounds of padding would give at least a plausible reason as to why she's trying so hard to control her life via the internet. I'm about 60/40, but a strong argument might sway me.
Honestly, I'm not sure what to think.

What's Eating Springs1?

If you're familiar with the ranting anonymous coward that is Springs1, boy are you in luck. This will be an ongoing project until we can finally get to the bottom of her plethora of issues. I first stumbled upon her Rainman styled mini essays almost three years ago. At first, I thought that maybe she was just really passionate about her feelings. Maybe her city really is home to the biggest concentration of the worst servers in the world. Then I noticed a pattern.

1. Make long rant about specific situations that servers have made, in her mind, unforgivable errors.
2. Make sure at LEAST 20% of her total posting is written in capital letters.
3. Rebut anyone who disagrees. Make sure to insult all who dare respond to her with low blows, all the while denying that she's fat, unhappy, crazy, mentally challenged or sexually frustrated.
4. While rebutting, goes off on side tangents which have nothing to do with said response.
5. If she's rebutting a response on one of her own blogs, she either deletes the original comment or picks which parts of the response she seems fit to have an answer.
6. Rinse and repeat.

Anyone will be able to see that Springs1 doesn't really care about her lack of quality food service. Oh, she may think that is the root of all her significant troubles and emphatically deny that she's really giving a desperate cry for help, but that simply isn't the case. Springs1 doesn't have any real control over her life. I dare you to read one, just one rant in its entirety to see what I'm talking about. It's not the detailed synopsizes of her dining experiences or her strange way of slanting all situations, ethically or unethically, to have to fall into her self constructed world of justice. It's not the fact that she will go to any forum, blog or website to say the same thing over again, making sure that she reiterates all of her points in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS. All of these things combined paints a portrait of a frustrated, angry woman who is using the only outlet that she has available. Whether the details are made up or not, she definitely would not have the time to devote to demeaning anyone else, namely an entire profession if she were fulfilled. Springs1 is completely and utterly miserable in her life because she is a self defined failure.

Now, before Springs1 makes her appearance (which I'm sure she will very, very soon) let me explain this deduction. Just using an example, I'd never want to be a garbage man. While they have a stinky job that doesn't have any education requirements, (at least for entry level positions) I would never put them down. Why? Well, because I have other options. On the other hand, someone has to do it and I completely respect all of the garbage men in the world for providing an invaluable service. Without them, the streets would be overflowing in trash. Now, I have taken out my trash before, in fact, I can tie the garbage bag shut with my eyes closed. Does that make me an expert? Of course not. Have I had garbage men that don't care about their jobs, flinging loose debris all around the neighborhood. Yup, I sure have. I shrugged it off to an off day, a bad hangover or someone who knows they're getting the boot soon anyways. And after they've done it a couple of times, I know exactly where I need to voice my complaint. Functional people have the wherewithal to know that just because something looks simple, that doesn't mean that it is. Besides, what kind of jerk would it make me to snicker, jeer and point my nose down on an entire industry?

Springs1 has used her severely limited knowledge of the service industry and taken it upon herself to tell servers what their jobs are. She really thinks that she has deconstructed their job to the point of trying to make their entire professional painfully easy. Even when she acknowledges that, gasp, the servers who are just so dumb, lazy and uneducated actually are busy, there's still no excuse as to why they can't perform perfectly. In fact, she thinks that 'the majority of servers suck'. Interesting. She admits that she pretty much only goes to franchise, chain styled restaurants in her particular area, yet she knows that most servers suck. If that isn't elevating one's status to an inflated level, then I don't know what is.

In the year 2010, everyone knows that writing in all caps is considered yelling, comes across as rude and generally gives the impression that the writer is either uneducated or just plain belligerent. Although most people's eyes glaze over when they see long diatribes punctuated with capital letter, she really thinks she's getting her point across. Her only weapon is the mighty word, and Springs1 likes to wield her sword while it's lit on fire. So, why does Springs1 continuously do it then? Simply because she can. See, when you have limited options in life, you either do two things; you act properly to provide yourself new opportunities or you abuse the ones that you have. It's actually part of her whole act. Everyone has access to the internet to say whatever they feel anonymously, therefore she feels she is not only entitled to her opinion, she is also entitled to whatever she marks as her territory. For her, an insult only matters if it is hurled her way. The same goes with her dining experiences. For her, it's all about power, something she has very little of in real life.

So in short, I think that Springs1 has some sort of underlying anger and resentment issue, probably because she is not of a higher social class, financial bracket or educational level. I think that she picks on servers because it's easy. After all, she's an expert coffee pourer and donut slinger. How hard could it be to wait tables? Maybe she really did have awful service one night, saw her server counting up a major bankroll at the end of the night and became furious.

While I have had the satisfaction of making my first posting almost as long as Springs1's rants, I'm not going to make a habit out of it. I promise.