Working Girl

I need a summer job. The semester ends soon, and I'll be officially unemployed until the end of August. I've been preparing for this since last summer, since before I got my university job, back when I was convinced I was going to have to wait tables full time or work at the local credit recovery agency for the rest of my life.

Anyway, I've been preparing. It's been hard to prepare. Each day I have to wake up and say to myself, You are only two months away from waiting tables, you are only one month away from waiting tables, you are only weeks away from waiting tables. Some people--mostly my parents--think I'm being too dramatic about it. They think it's no big deal, no big shake. They don't understand why it would bother me to go back to waiting tables after receiving a terminal master's degree, after I have been hired on as an instructor of college English. My mother especially thinks I'm being a baby about it. When I ask her how she'd like it if she had to wait on one of her students she says she'd like it fine. What's the big deal? she says.

The big deal is this: it's one of the world's most uncomfortable experiences to wait on one of your students--to bring him a nice steak dinner and an extra potato when his father asks it, even after he says, No, no, it's okay, Jess, you don't have to! because he feels weird, weird, weird that the girl who just spent fifteen weeks teaching him how to string together coherent sentences is standing in front of him with a coffee pot in one hand and a bottle of ketchup in the other. I did that while working banquets in Minnesota. I don't ever want to do that again.

The chances of that happening now, though, are slim. I live very far away from my university, and the places I'd wait tables are places my students wouldn't be likely to go. This makes me feel slightly better about returning to the world of serving, to a world where men think it's okay to talk about your nipples as if you aren't standing in front of them, refilling their water glass.

It makes me feel slightly better, but not entirely better.

My father thinks I'm crazy for not driving to the restaurant where I used to work and asking for my job back. You know the place! he says. You know the menu and the people and the way things work! And it's true. I do know those things. I can still hear myself reciting the list of potato choices (We have baked, fries, curly seasoned fries, cottage fries, or potato salad!), and I can still see myself sucking up to all the cooks on the off chance that I will really screw up someday and need them to make me food that I forgot to ring in, and I can still myself sitting at the bar and counting out a filmy stack of ones onto the slate counter.

It wouldn't be horrible, but it would be strange. It would be contrary to what I was hoping and assuming on my last day of work. That night after I clocked out for the last time, after I had my last post-shift-drink, after I had appropriately nuzzled every boy I loved (the cooks, the dishwashers, the bartenders), I walked out thinking See ya! Adios! Au Revoir! I walked out thinking, I'll never have to do that again. I foolishly thought that once I got my terminal master's degree, life wouldn't be a struggle anymore. I wouldn't have to have some crappy part-time job that involved flipping salad bars, washing down a patio, zoom-brooming the carpet where some parents let their baby toss half a container of gummed-down Saltines.

While working at the restaurant, I'd secretly felt sad for the girls who came back to work after graduating college. They had full-time jobs--they worked as teachers and social workers--but they were still driving to the restaurant and slipping into long black aprons, they were still floating beer-loaded trays on the palms of their hands, they were still asking people how they wanted their fish fries done--battered, broiled, or breaded?

I knew why they were still working at the restaurant. I wasn't stupid. While these girls made decent money at their full-time jobs, it was hard to give up that extra money even two shifts of waitressing brought. They might be able to walk out with $300 in their pockets, and that money could go to all the best things in life: wedding funds, vacation funds, clothing funds.

But it didn't stop me from thinking, God, I hope I never have to do that.

Well, I've got to do that. I'm coming back, fully degreed, with a decent resume and decent accomplishments for someone my age. But I've got another of those muggy summers in front of me--a summer where I come home with aching legs and a pocket bulging with dollars, a summer where I'll have waitressing nightmares every week (I forgot to bring table 52 extra tarter sauce! I never brought table 32 their water! I can't remember where to find the computer!)

Yesterday I went around my little country town and I applied to a few places that have an atmosphere, menu, and clientele that won't throw me into a never-ending spiral of depression, a spiral of Where did I go wrong?! I haven't yet convinced myself to go back to my old restaurant, to become one of those girls I'd felt sorry for three years ago.

But yesterday I got to sit down and interview with one manager--a young girl, probably younger than me, who sported a nose ring and a earrings made out of turquoise feathers.

You could tell I made her nervous. "Do you think I'm doing an okay job with this interview?" she asked me. "Maybe I should practice on people who already work here. Maybe that'll make me feel better about it."

There was an ant or a spider crawling on the table as she was saying this. I didn't want to flick it because I thought it would embarrass her--after all, what did that say about the cleanliness of where we were sitting? What did it say about whoever wiped down that booth? I also didn't want to look closer because if it was a spider, I'd be pinned to the booth by a crushing tumble of fear and revulsion, and she might very well think I was psychotic, that I had some sort of mental disorder than kept me from functioning like a regular member of society. I just smiled and told her she was doing a fine job, that it was very standard, that she was asking pretty normal questions in a pretty normal way. I ignored the spider-ant.

When she fanned open the application I'd filled out, she looked for quite a long time at the education section. "Wow," she said. "Wow, that's a lot of stuff to list. You're really overqualified for this job."

And that's when I had to do something very, very hard. I had to plaster a smile to my face and look her in the eye--without sighing, without reaching for a knife and gouging it into my eye--and tell her that was a very nice thing to say. "Thank you," I told her. "Thanks very much."