The Horrors of Waitressing

Tomorrow I start my new waitressing job. I don't dread the actual work of it, just the social aspect. It's hard to be the new girl. It's hard to break in, to become one of the crowd, the group. It'll take me time to suss everyone out, to understand who is good, who is bad, who is beloved, who is hated.

Being the new girl sucks.

But there's a part of me that's mildly looking forward to getting back into it all. I always loved waitressing--probably because I think good waitressing has a lot to do with good flirting. It's about knowing your stuff and being prompt and courteous, too, but it's also a lot about being a charmer, a witty little thing, a girl who smiles and laughs at all the right times. And because I'm the type of girl who is consumed with making people like her--a girl who gets really upset when people don't like her for whatever reason--waitressing is a really good job for me. It, like teaching, has roots in performance. It's a job where the people doing it are on display, are showing off. Deep down, those people are cold and clammy and thinking, Like me, like me, oh, please, just like me!

But as much as a person can want and try for that, sometimes it just doesn't work. Sometimes there are people who will be hateful, rude, and downright mean. And I'm trying to remember that, trying to get myself back into the proper state of mind before I drive to the new restaurant tomorrow. I'm cataloguing my best and worst times, weighing them, reminding myself that the scales tip more toward the good, and that's what I have to keep in the front of my thoughts at all times.

Still, it's not easy to forget some of the worst memories.

The first (and only) time I was yelled at by a customer came during my second summer at the restaurant. I'd had fine luck up until that point, but I'd seen some other waitresses--seasoned girls who'd been at it longer than I had--reduced to sobbing by cruel customers. The worst was on a busy Friday night, and the incident almost ground the whole place to a halt. The waitress--who was just an eensy thing, pleasant, irritatingly sweet with her customers--had a table of ten. It was a busy night, and fish frys were churning out of the kitchen at a head-spinning rate. Still, people had to wait. The place was packed. There was a two-page waiting list just to get seated. So it was only natural that everything was moving just a bit slower. But one of the men at this table of ten wasn't a fan of waiting. He wasn't a fan of the waitress's brightness when he was so hungry, when he had already waited so long. At first, after they'd gotten seated, he'd been pleasant enough. He listened with mild interest when his wife talked with the waitress about her "real" job--she was a social worker--and he ordered drinks for his entire party.

As far as everyone could tell, things were going fine, things were under control. But then all of a sudden, there was commotion. You could sense it even on the other end of the restaurant, where I was standing. When I got back to the waitress station, which was in a dark alcove in front of the kitchen, the waitress was heaving with sobs. The other waitresses were trying to put their arms around her, but she kept shaking them off.

"No!" she said. "No, no, no!" She shook her head so emphatically that some of her hair fell out of her slicked-back ponytail. She stormed into the kitchen doors, almost plowing into a dishboy. We watched as she kept walking straight past the line, past the cooks and salad preps, and out the back door. When we went out to find her, we saw her sitting on an overturned fruit salad bucket, furiously smoking a cigarette. Her hair was completely down now, and her face was bright red from the crying.

It turned out that the man who'd at first been so friendly was not so friendly at all. In fact, when he got impatient for his food, when he got angry about how much time he'd already had to wait just to get a table, he called the waitress over. He asked her what was taking so long, and when she gave him the honest answer (it was busy, the kitchen was backed up, there was only so much they could do) and asked if she could get him another drink while he was waiting, the man erupted in a spout of hate. He told her she was a horrible waitress, that she didn't know anything, that she was foolish and silly. Then he struck his final blow. "I can't believe you're a social worker," he spat out. "It's so obvious you'd be horrible at that job."

I give the waitress credit, though. She cried for a good five minutes, then dried her face, smoked one last cigarette, and went back in there like nothing ever happened. You could tell how badly she'd been crying, but she delivered their food, refilled their drinks, brought them more bread, and spoke only to the man's wife, who, she could tell, was hugely embarrassed about what happened.

Later that night, after the rest of the party had exited the restaurant for the car, the wife came back to the alcove and touched the waitress's shoulder. She told her everything her husband had said was untrue. She said the waitress was an extraordinary girl. She pressed an awful lot of money into her palm.

My incident with a yeller wasn't nearly as bad as that one, which threw the whole restaurant into a tizzy, the cooks and waitresses and busboys and dishboys and even the owner trying to calm the waitress, trying to figure out exactly what to do with a customer who belittled a girl in front of a full restaurant. But still, my incident was bad enough to etch it forever into my mind, so I will never forget exactly where these people were sitting, what they ate, and what they said to me.

It was a table of two. A husband and a wife. They were treating themselves. They'd come in for steak dinners.

It started on a sour note after I filled their drink orders and came back to see what they wanted to eat.

"I'll have the prime rib," the husband said.

I told him we didn't do prime ribs on Tuesday nights. It was a weekend thing, and I pointed to the note that explained that, which was written in bold print right above the menu's entries for the different prime rib cuts.

The man was not happy. "That's ridiculous," he said. "You should have it every night." He paused, sighed dramatically. "We'll need more time to think about it, then."

I apologized and gave them another few minutes before returning to see what they'd chosen.

The man wanted one of the 12 ounce steaks we featured, so I recorded how he wanted it done (medium-rare), what kind of potato he wanted (baked), and what kind of dressing he wanted on his salad (ranch, and no garbanzo beans or onions were to touch his salad).

When the wife ordered, she said she wanted the 10 ounce steak. There were two different 10 ounce steaks, so I asked if she meant the 10 ounce strip steak. "Yes," she said. I wrote it and her particulars (well-done, baked, Italian dressing) down on my pad and went on my way.

Later, when I delivered their dinners, the husband glared at me. "What," he asked, "is that?" He pointed to the steak on his wife's plate.

"A 10 ounce strip steak," I said. I thought maybe he was going to complain about its size, say that it couldn't possibly be 10 ounces.

"That's not what she ordered," he said.

"Yes, it is," I said. "She wanted a 10 ounce strip steak, well-done."

He looked at me like I was crazy, like I was a fool. "That," he repeated, "is not what she ordered."

The wife had developed a sudden interest in her flatware. She kept rearranging them in front of her.

"But it is," I said. "I even repeated it out loud, asked if it was correct, and she said yes." I looked at the woman, thinking she'd correct her husband because she knew what I was saying was right.

The man's face turned red. "This steak is not the steak my wife ordered!" he said, his voice now booming. Other tables stopped chewing and slanted their eyes in our direction so they could see how this would all shake out.

The wife finally spoke. "Actually, dear, it is what I ordered," she said.

"No, it's not!" he screamed, and her eyes immediately snapped back down to her plate. She held her breath, blinked her eyes rapidly.

I didn't know what to do. How do you handle a situation like that? I knew I was right, the person who ordered the dinner knew I was right, and yet I was being yelled at for it. So I did the only thing left to really do: I pandered.

"I'm sorry, sir," I said. "I just delivered what your wife ordered. If for some reason you are unhappy with it, I can take it back and get the cooks to make her another steak."

That's when he snapped. He told me he didn't come to a restaurant to have such awful service. He said when he dined out he expected to get what he ordered the first time he ordered it. He didn't want to have to wait around for another steak to be made. He wanted to know if I could understand that. "Or are you stupid?" he asked.

As much as I wanted to crack that man across the face for talking to me, not to mention his own wife, like that, I didn't. After all, his wife was staring down at her plate and looking like she was ready to cry. It was clear this wasn't a new thing. It was clear this was a trend, that he spoke for her, decided things for her, and ignored her on a daily basis. At that moment, I didn't want to make things worse for her.

I breathed. "I'm sorry, sir," I said. "I'll bring a new steak--whatever she wants--and get you some free drinks. What would you care for?"

"Oh, she'll eat the one she has," the husband snapped. "But bring her a chardonnay and bring me a whiskey."

I nodded. When I took a step back from the table, I realized the entire restaurant was staring at me. Everyone was wearing the exact same expression. The I'm So Sorry, But I'm Glad I'm Not You Right Now expression. The only person not wearing that expression was the bartender. She was a tough old broad, a woman who looked like she'd been around the block a few times, a woman who looked like she'd seen all the world's bullshit and tolerated absolutely none of it. Her expression was filled with rage. She was bristling, ready to launch from behind the bar and take the man up by his ear and throw him out the front door.

I retreated to the waitress station to punch in the drink order. The bartender came and stood next to me. "That's just bullshit," she said. "Absolute bullshit. Who does he think he is?"

I was concentrating on the computer. I was also trying not to cry. I'm not one to take getting yelled at lightly, and I've been known to turn on the tears for something as simple as a Campbell's soup commercial, so it was work to get those tears--which I could feel backloading behind my eyes--to stay put. I wasn't about to give that man the satisfaction. I wasn't about to let him see me cry.

"Want me to say something?" the bartender asked, which I loved her for. I loved the thought of her marching over to that table and giving the man a piece of her mind. I pictured her saying, You, sir, must have a very small penis. She'd been known to do things like that to mouthy bar customers. She was possibly the most badass woman I knew. She was the type of woman who not only would wear leather chaps, but look completely appropriate in them too.

"No," I said. "I've got it." I knew it was my turn to be badass, too, just in a more subtle way. I was going to go back to that table and pretend that I got treated that way every single day, that I was used to it, that it was no big thing, and he'd have to do something way worse to break me. It was clear, after all, that this man's hobby was breaking women. I could imagine he'd been breaking his wife down for years now, until she knew better than to talk or disagree or voice an opinion.

"Alright," she said, "but he says one more thing like that, and I'm bouncing his ass out on the pavement." She said it loudly, and I'm fairly certain he heard it.

But I gathered the drinks the bartender made, brought them over, and, later, even brought them a free piece of pie to split.

The man didn't say another cross word to me. He didn't look at me and only spoke if absolutely necessary, but he didn't raise his voice again. The wife did most of the communication from that point on, in a chirppy little voice that sounded like it was an effort just to get out.

I felt so sorry for her. I wanted for her to make a scene or something, to get up and leave the restaurant, leave him with those dinners and the bill. I wanted her to take the car and leave him stranded. I wanted her to go home, get the locks changed, and make him beg to be let back in. And then I wanted her to tell him he was never, ever, ever going to be let back in.

I knew that wasn't going to happen. I knew they would go home and it would be more of the same for that woman, for the rest of their lives.

But, luckily, you don't run into those people every day. Mostly it's people who are pleasant enough, polite, normal, nice. Some days you are even blessed with extravagantly nice people, like the group whose baby shower banquet I once worked. I was the only waitress on the party, and it was a lot of clearing and running around for one girl to do, and they knew it. At the end of the day, as I was breaking down their buffet and they were gathering up all the onesies and rattles and picture books the mother-to-be had accumulated, the two who had thrown the party came over and handed me a slim bank envelope filled with money. "You're a doll," they said. Inside the envelope was two hundred dollars.

There was also the lady who came into the restaurant once a week and tipped forty dollars, no matter what she had. It could've been a steak or a toasted cheese sandwich, but the tip was always forty dollars. "I remember," she said once, "what this is all like."

My favorite of the favorites, though, was a table who came in for a long lunch one Saturday afternoon. I'd had them before and loved them. There were two couples, friends who got together once a week to share a meal and gossip. They were crazy about this cheesy seafood pasta thing that got rolled out on the weekends, if ever there was seafood bisque leftover from the night before. The first time I served it to them, they gushed to me as if I'd been the one to make it. "Brilliant!" they said. "You're a brilliant girl!" They fussed over me as if I was just the best thing ever.

The next time I had them, they proclaimed I was their favorite waitress in the entire world, the nicest girl they'd ever had bring them food. As their meal came to a close that time, one of the men, who, earlier, had been grilling me about my course of study in college and my ultimate dream job (which I told him was to be a successful author), pushed his empty plate aside and flipped over his placemat. He drew a pen out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. "I'd like your autograph," he said. "We all know you're going to be very famous someday."

I thought that was lovely. I took his pen and scrawled my name across the back of the place mat. "There," I said. "Maybe that will make you a little money in twenty years." I laughed, but he seemed very serious about it all. He folded the autograph into a precise square and slipped it into his pocket.

"We'll never forget you," he said.

Of course they threw that place mat away as soon as they got home, and of course they have since forgotten me, but it is nice to know there are people out there who are willing to behave that way--so sweetly, so kindly. It's nice to know there are people out there who can very well make your day in the moment you least expect it to be made.