Just had a breakfast shift turn into a dumpster fire at the Waldorf in Chicago

The expo station printer jammed during a 40-cover rush and I spent 10 minutes pulling ticket tape out of the gears while servers screamed at me. Anyone else deal with a printer dying at the worst possible moment?

2 comments

2 Comments

fisher.taylor16d ago

Did you catch that viral post from a while back where a kitchen manager in NYC talked about how they keep a backup thermal printer in a drawer for exactly this reason? I read that and thought it was overkill until my own ticket machine ate an entire brunch order. Now I swear by keeping a spare printer handy, even if it's just a cheap one from Amazon.

andrew_nguyen6416d ago

Yeah I totally agree with that "backup printer in the drawer" thing. I had the same thought at first, like who really needs a spare printer sitting around? But after one Sunday brunch rush where our main printer just died mid-order, I learned the hard way. We had to manually write down tickets for like 20 minutes while the manager ran to grab a replacement from the supply closet. It was chaos. Now I keep a backup printer tucked away in the dry storage area, right next to the spare rolls of receipt paper. It's one of those things that seems dumb until you're in the weeds and it saves your whole shift.