"We'll soon be opening the doors to begin dinner service," Ronda said to the camera as she walked into the restaurant. To her surprise, approximately two thirds of the tables had already been set, ready for customers to arrive.
"Look at this," she said as the camerawoman panned a shot around the large room. "Something has actually been organised efficiently at Brianna's. Who would have thought that was possible?"
Two young waitresses were working on setting the tables, one with blonde hair and another whose hair was coloured bright orange.
"There's no danger of missing her, is there?" Ronda grinned at the camera when it was focused back on her. She walked over to the two waitresses, who stopped what they were doing when they realised she was going to talk to them.
"Hi. You're the hotel inspector?" Orange hair asked in an Irish accent.
"That's right," Ronda nodded. "My name's Ronda. And you are?"
"Becky," the Irish woman replied pleasantly.
"I'm Emma, nice to meet you," the blonde said in an Australian accent.
"Nice to meet you both. Where's Stephanie?" Ronda asked. She had expected the Head Waitress to be there, supervising her team.
"In the kitchen," Emma said, pointing towards the closed door in case Ronda was unsure where the kitchen was.
"Not out here, helping you?" Ronda asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Helping us?" Becky asked, then both waitresses looked at each other and laughed, as if the suggestion was ridiculous.
"I get the picture," Ronda said, marching off towards the kitchen with the camerawoman trailing along behind her.
Pushing the kitchen door open, Ronda found Stephanie sitting on one of the work surfaces, talking to her husband while he worked on some of the food preparation tasks that were essential before service could commence. Bayley was also doing prep work at the other end of the kitchen. All three of them turned to see who had entered the kitchen when they heard the door open.
"When you're ready, Stephanie," Ronda said sharply. "There are tables that need setting out here."
"The tables are being set already," Stephanie said dismissively.
"And they'll be set a lot faster when you're helping, won't they?" Ronda asked, an edge to her voice. "Why are there only two waitresses, anyway? The place is going to be full tonight."
"There's not two waitresses, there's three including me," Stephanie snarked. "And there would have been four if some genius hadn't talked Daniel and Brie into firing Kane and putting Bayley in the kitchen. Now, I wonder who that might have been?"
Ronda walked over and stood right in front of Stephanie, an irritated expression on her face. "That's a real bad attitude problem you've got there, Stephanie, you know that? Maybe you should follow Kane out of the door?"
Stephanie rolled her eyes and sighed as she got down from the work surface. "Fine, I'll go and help them," she said, making it sound like the biggest sacrifice in the history of mankind.
"You need to get off my wife's back," Hunter said grumpily, stopping his work to glare at Ronda.
"And you need to worry about doing your own job," Ronda fired back. "If the fucking disaster at lunch time is anything to go by, you're not exactly that great at it."
"I'm an award-winning chef," Hunter reminded her.
"So I've heard, about ten thousand times already," Ronda said dryly. "We'll see about that at the end of the night." With that, she turned and walked out of the kitchen, finding Stephanie helping the two younger waitresses to set the tables, albeit with a sulky expression on her face.
"Hey, Rousey," Stephanie called out when she noticed her. "Since you cost me a waitress, how about you get your own hands dirty for once instead of bossing other people around?"
Ronda glanced at the camera with a quizzical expression on her face. "Did I just hear that right?" she asked the audience. "I'm the one not getting my hands dirty and bossing people around? Coming from Stephanie? That's amazing," she chuckled. Then she turned to Stephanie and said, "If you want another waitress, I'll get you one right now."
Without waiting for a response, Ronda walked across the restaurant towards the entrance, which lead through to the reception area. Standing in the doorway, she yelled at the top of her voice, "Brie!"
It took almost a minute for the owner to come jogging around the corner. "Ronda? What is it?" she asked breathlessly.
"What have you been doing?" Ronda asked, noting the scruffy way Brie was dressed.
"Supervising the housekeeping team," Brie said, more defensively than was necessary.
"What about Daniel?" Ronda asked.
"I think he's working on paperwork in the office."
"Not anymore," Ronda said firmly. "Go and tell him to get changed. Tonight, he's a waiter."
"A waiter?" Brie asked, surprised by the idea.
"Yes," Ronda said patiently. "Let me remind you, you're expecting the restaurant to be full tonight. You've only brought two waitresses in, plus Stephanie, who's about as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike. We're going to need another pair of hands. Now, go tell Daniel to chance, and tell him to hurry up about it. Honestly, you should be in here doing these organisational tasks for yourself, Brie. You're the owner here, not me. I'm running the fucking place for you."
"I was upstairs, working," Brie protested. "I can't be everywhere."
"True," Ronda admitted. "But your husband is hiding away in the office, again. Is he going to grow a pair and start pulling his weight around here or not?"
"I'll go and get him now," Brie said, blushing at the way her husband was being spoken about.
"Table eight want to know where their appetisers are," Becky said, rushing into the kitchen.
"I'm still waiting on a lasagna for twelve," Emma said, standing next to the hot plate.
Daniel came through the door carrying a plate with a steak on it. "Table two are saying this isn't cooked medium-well," he reported.
"For fuck's sake!" Hunter screamed in frustration as the situation in the kitchen spiraled even further out of control.
Bayley stood out of the way, working on cooking a steak, seemingly trying to make herself look invisible. The chaos and Hunter's anger were clearly too much for the timid young woman to cope with.
The camera focused on Ronda, who was standing in the corner of the room. She shook her head in disbelief. "What a fucking mess," she said for the benefit of the audience as she watched Hunter failing to address any of the complaints that were coming his way, or to supervise Bayley, who was supposed to be his sous chef.
Deciding to take matters into her own hands, Ronda walked over to stand beside Hunter. The steak that Daniel had returned was the first thing she decided to address. "Daniel, what's supposed to be wrong with this? It looks good to me."
"They said it's not medium-well," Daniel said.
Ronda picked up a knife and fork and cut off a small piece of the meat. Holding it up to Hunter on the fork, she asked, "What does that look like to you?"
"Medium-well," Hunter said defensively, seeing that there was no pink in the meat.
"That's because it is medium-well," Ronda said. She picked the plate up and held it out to Daniel, ordering, "Stop wasting our fucking time. You can see that's medium-well as well as I can. What's wrong with you?"
"But they said..." Daniel tried to protest.
"Then tell them to fuck off!" Ronda yelled, cutting him off. "Valid complaints we'll deal with, not people who want to be fucking stupid. Take that back out there."
Daniel took the plate and hurried out of the kitchen as Ronda turned back to Hunter. "Come on!" she shouted at him. "This is your kitchen, man! Why am I running it for you? What's next?"
"I need a lasagna," Emma said again, her nerves clearly on edge.
"Uh, what table?" Hunter asked, floundering around with the stack of tickets he had left on the work surface.
"Twelve," Emma said impatiently.
"We already did that," Bayley said nervously. "We did the order for twelve ten minutes ago."
"Then where the fuck is it?" Ronda yelled, looking up to the heavens for divine intervention.
"I can't find the ticket for twelve," Hunter said, quickly losing his own temper. "It must have gone out to the wrong table."
"Get your ass in gear!" Ronda roared at him. "Arrange the damn tickets properly, don't just toss them on the side! How can you send food to the wrong damn table?"
"Stop fucking shouting at me, bitch!" Hunter screamed, rounding on her. "Get out of my kitchen!"
"I'll shout at you until you start running it properly!" Ronda yelled, going nose to nose with him. "Supervise your sous chef, and get the right orders out to the right tables! It's not exactly fucking rocket science!"
"Stop shouting," Bayley begged them, on the verge of tears. "This steak is done. What am I supposed to do next?"
Ronda didn't back away from Hunter, but she raised her eyebrows, challenging him to step up and do his job properly at last.
"We, uh, need a lasagna for table twelve," he said, backing off after a tense moment of silence and turning to Bayley. "As quick as you can, please."
"Okay," Bayley said, hurrying over to the refrigerator to fetch ingredients.
Ronda took a deep breath, which allowed her to speak to Hunter more calmly as she picked up the ticket for table eight. "Appetisers, Hunter. Let's go. We can turn this around. Tell me what you want me to do and I'll help you."
"Right," Hunter said, composing himself. He took the ticket from her and read over it. "I need a garlic flatbread. While you're doing that, I'll do these two orders of cheesy potato skins."
"You got it," Ronda said, getting down to business.
Standing out in the parking lot, Ronda was ready to give a piece to camera. She looked a little red in the face due to the amount of shouting she had found herself having to do to get the staff to perform. It appeared that the cool night air was doing her some good.
"I've just spent half an hour watching what's going on in the dining area of the restaurant," she began. "You really couldn't make up some of the things that happen in this place. I've seen Stephanie arguing with customers and staff, and I've seen Daniel running around like a headless chicken, looking like he's about to cry."
"But, on the positive side," she went on in a slightly brighter tone, "I've been impressed with the way Hunter has run the kitchen, after we had a shouting match about it. I've also been quite impressed with how the rest of the wait staff have handled a service that is much busier than they're used to.
"What I've taken away from all of this is that what Brianna's needs the most is a restructuring of its staff. We already took Nikki off the housekeeping team earlier today; now I have other changes to suggest. I'm going to have to get everyone together for a serious talk tonight, after we close the restaurant."
She paused for a moment, then grimaced at that camera. "Something tells me there are going to be a few people who won't like my suggestions at all."