The monthly burger night again last night.

The novelty of this is apparently starting to wear off. Rather than an abundance of volunteers willing to take orders and deliver meals, in exchange for a free burger, fries and a soft drink from a bona fide bar, we were now down to just four servers. And my wife to take the money, and me to run herd on the servers.

Works best with at least six servers, and three adults. Worked okay last night, though. Lead cook (cooks are also 'volunteers', with staff changing every month) reported we only sold 90+ burgers, with the assorted hot dogs. Busy nights have been over 120 burgers.

Didn't have the usual rush, either. We again started taking orders and serving about 15 minutes before we were supposed to, which thins out the beginning rush.

Still some complaints from the bar, though. These folks like to sit around and visit, sipping their drinks, until they're hungry. Only then do they order.

Number one, by this point most of the dining room has ordered, so the barflies' meal tickets will be well at the end of the line, behind tables with families of six to nine, or more. Might be a 20-30 minute wait, whereas if they ordered early, maybe only 5 minutes.

And number two, we only assign the oldest boy to cover the bar. Which has folks coming and going all the time. Rather than having him pester the entire length of the bar every two or three minutes, asking if they want to order a meal, the wife just lets us know when there is a new arrival.

So if these folks just sit there after saying 'no' once, I don't have a lot of sympathy if nobody comes by later to take their order. As one gentleman from the Sheriff's office did last night. I wouldn't say he was pissed, but he grumbled quite a bit for what I usually hear from him. To shorten his wait, at the wife's suggestion, I had my cheeseburger delivered to him. Don't think the speedy delivery appeased him much.

Told the lad who was taking those orders he'd best not speed, or cruise through any stop signs... the law was mad at him, now.

A friend of a couple of our members was there, with his mom and sister, and wanted to join in the fun. (Sounds like a Huck Finn tale, doesn't it?) I allowed him to help deliver the two-tray meals to the larger tables. As he was trying to persuade me of his customer service skills, so he could take orders, one of our young members came up and said "But you're not a Scout." Cool. Exactly right. You want to have the fun? Join up.

Had the usual mob of unattended offspring running loose in the building, again. Mostly females this time, so everyone should have known they weren't our responsibility. But you can bet, if anything got broken, our youth will be blamed.

Made $27.50 in tips for the youth group, which was about par for a slow night. Wife pointed out more than half of that came from just three donors. Which is normal for this crowd.

One of the organizers of this Family Night from the fraternal group called the day before, and asked if we and the boys might be interested in also taking on the job of cleaning the kitchen and the pots and pans afterwards. For a $20-25 donation.

Sounds like the cooking crews just want to have fun, and not volunteer for any of the unpleasant work. I knew I didn't want to "volunteer" for more work, but left it to the wife to ask the group as a whole (I had to go to the CWD meeting, instead).

They said 'no.'

For the same reasons as me, but also because some parents were already complaining about us taking the boys for two hours on a school night (used to be an hour and a half), and now they wanted more?

Noticed the cooking crew bailed on their boss, leaving her with the entire clean-up job. Bet they ask us again.

Tried to keep track of how many trips I made up the stairs from the kitchen to the bar, relaying condiments, meals, or fetching boys. Best estimate was at least 28 round trips. Almost all at a trot.

If we did this every week, I might actually get in shape.

Now, off to another hunter safety class...