Kitchen Nightmares
Would you like a side of mental breakdown with your burger?
At the end of my first shift, I tried to hand my apron back to my new manager.
“I understand if you want me to quit.”
It was my first job in service and I was disastrous. I forgot food, I was too slow, and I wasn’t mastering the art of a perfect cappuccino (Why wasn’t the milk fucking frothing?). During my second month of employment, I was temporarily banned from cleaning the wine glasses because I kept dropping them directly into the ice bin.
Waitressing was very obviously not my forte. I hated it and I was bad at it, but I refused to let myself quit. I was in a weird place in my life, a post-college nothing with no career on the horizon. I wanted to be an actress, and actresses waited tables, so I decided that not giving up would constitute some symbolic victory.
“Can I get you anything else?” I ask a father of 3 on his fourth martini.
“You?” He says, his hand dangerously close to my ass.
My first halloween at the restaurant, I was Baby Jane: blond pigtails, white dress, white powdered makeup. “I thought your hair was real” says the drunk asshole at table 20. He sticks his hands in my wig and gives it a good yank. “You should take off the makeup. I wonder if you’d look just as adorable underneath.”
His lady friend giggles and asks me discreetly to get him some water. I cry at the service station and try not to think about how he smelled like cough drops and vermouth.
3 months in, I sat on my fuckbuddy Tate’s couch, still in my uniform, and talked at him for 15 minutes about the terrible shift I had just had.
“Sorry. I’m rambling.” I took a sip from the glass of cheap wine he had offered me.
“I have a lot of friends in the service industry. I’m used to it.”
He tells me that one day I’ll be tough like them. That I’ll be able to brush off the things that make me uncomfortable and furious. I don’t believe him. I think I’ll be the same way I’ve always been forever.
He was right.
It’s been two (almost three) years and my skin has grown thicker than it’s ever been. I can be as sweet or as passive aggressive as I want and feel bad about none of it.
If there’s one thing I can tell you about working the occasional 10:30 AM to midnight shift, it’s that you get to know yourself very, very well. So well, in fact, that it can make you want to crawl out of your own skin. You accept that you have never been and will never be anywhere but inside the four walls of this establishment, and resign yourself to purgatory. On the other side of a terrible shift is a story to tell, a burst of energy that lasts just long enough to survive the train ride home without falling asleep on the Q.
“Do you think I’m attractive?” A man with liver spots and a ballsack-lookalike neck asks me. His wife rolls her eyes at him, sighing “oh Wilfred!”
I giggle and smile back at him.
“What a question to ask your 23-year-old waitress!”
I hope he’s embarrassed. I don’t think he is, but it was worth a shot.
Here are some things I’ve learned:
Tiny babies are cute and leave messes all over the floor. Older people can be rude and cranky and also give the best advice. Sometimes people who make the wrong first impression can be the ones who end up caring about you the most.
Being a waitress (or a bartender, or a fill-in-the-blank) means being a part of a community. Part of your job is to know and to love the people you serve. I’m glad I didn’t quit. I can cut a mean lemon. I still suck at wine service.