…some kind of way out of here….

i was talking with a friend about waitressing. we both have a history of being servers, and we were reminiscing about our old jobs that led us to hate humanity so much. i liked being a server for the most part, actually. it’s just that waiting tables is such a manic occupation. the good times are very fun, and the bad times are VERY VERY BAD. and so much of your job is dependent on the crew you work with. if they are selfish, catty, morons, you end up fixing their mistakes and dealing with their gossip more than taking care of tables. you do end up seeing some pretty crazy stuff as a server. the one thing i really didn’t like was sidework. in every establishment i’ve known people to work in, each server was assigned a job to be finished before they left. this is typically some kind of maintenance that needs to be completed so the next servers (either the next shift or the next morning) can effectively do their jobs. usually you would be taken off tables about a half hour before your scheduled ending time so you could do the work. it was in your best interest to complete the task as quickly as possible because you were still only making your crappy hourly rate (likely $2.13), and you wanted to leave. because of this, a lot of servers end up half-assing their side work. and half-assed sidework leads to a crappy shift as you realize that soups are still frozen instead of being rotated to thaw, or chili heating pans are dried up instead of filled with water and therefore the chili is being scorched. you usually would realize this in the thick of a mad rush. so in the middle of being triple-seated, you have to run into the walk-in and grab all kinds of things to quickly put together what you need.

here’s the greatest hits of wins and fails from my 3 years of waiting tables:

• taking cover in the walk-in during a tornado warning
• crack addict cleaning out his crack pipe in the bathroom
• working with a russian girl and an indy homeless guy, and seeing them spontaneously break out in a conversation in fluent french.
• a giant lady eating enough food for 3 people while feeding her kids vienna sausages, then cleaning up the sausages and congealed gunk from the floor when they left.
• cleaning up a giant pile of kid puke in the middle of a dinner rush. and getting a 10% tip from the kid’s mom who helpfully stated “i’m a nurse. you should wear gloves when you clean that up.” no kidding, and thanks for the assistance nurse vaginaface.
• seeing a hamburger thrown at a crying server.
• working circle city classic 10AM-10PM and walking home with $25 ($5 of which was from 1 lady). also not being able to go out the front door because there were so many people, and walking home while being called racial slurs (CC classic is an african-american event attended largely at night by younger people).
• having an idiot server try to pass me a tray of shakes into my non-dominant tray hand and having them fall all over in front of corporate vps (they knew what happened and left me a huge tip)
• being called out during lunch rush by the overall vp of operations for the company and having him tell me i was the best server he’d seen in a long time. after every other employee and manager had been pestering and butt-kissing him hardcore the whole time, while i just smiled and said hello. my short manager was so mad.
• working gencon. 6PM – 9AM a couple of nights. making so much money. walking to work that evening, then walking home to my apartment downtown. this was 2 weeks after i moved out of my parents house. it was an amazing sense of freedom and independence to work 14 hours and then walk home with hundreds of dollars to my own place, seeing what the city is really like early in the morning on a sunday.
• lots of other crazy customers. the stalker who would only let kathy wait on him. playboy who liked to look at playboys while he ate. white girls, the black guy who looked at white girl porn and touched himself. the campus crusade, who came in huge numbers and left huge tips for me and mandy. the first crazy customer i had in indy, who hated mustard and screamed it looked like baby poop.
• meeting dakota fanning, ron artest, a couple of random other people. seeing the mayor leave a cheap ass tip.

it was a good time. i think everyone should wait tables at some point. you learn a lot about society.

Filed under: Uncategorized on December 20th, 2009