not my real life

"Not my real life" - what I repeat to myself over and over in my head/under my breath while waitressing these days.





The country club has successfully broken my spirit leaving me crying in the wait station multiple times/days this week. The tears were for many reasons stemming predominantly from being completely overwhelmed with tables/special food requests/lack of knowledge of menu and computer system/being passive aggressively reprimanded by the manager/lack of sleep aka the general failure of my waitressing attempts this week. I don't do failure well. What's the point of doing something not to the best of your ability, I say.





While being in a state of pre-breakdown, ridiculous things continue to happen to me/around me:


-I was serving drinks at a 50th wedding anniversary party and the old man gave me a hug when I gave him his coke that lingered too long and then when he pulled away his hand grazed my boob. And I didn't even get tipped. God dammit.





-One of waiters was fucking up so bad that the head chef said he couldn't have any more tables so he sat in the waitstation the rest of the night. And got paid the same amount of money as me. Maybe I need to stop teetering on the edge of complete failure and just allow myself to slip entirely into the abyss.





-We now administer detailed comment cards to the members of the club so that they can rate us. Our boss then puts all the data into the computer and posts a weekly service rating of all of us in the wait station. It's like the god damn stickers for good behavior system in my 2nd grade class.





Ergo I cope by chanting 'this is not my real life'

STELLA!

Last night I took drink orders at a party from 6:30pm - 10:30pm. Straight.

I stopped for 30 minutes to drink some water and take away empty glasses. I took trays of 12 beers with some wine glasses mixed in back and forth from the bar to the party pausing only to beg someone to open the door for me. I learned to tell Sierra Nevada, River West Stein, Sprecher Special Amber, Spotted Cow, Stella Artois and Miller Lite apart by color. I kept losing the people who ordered Stella and subsequently got to yell out "Stella" multiple times ala Street Car Named Desire. I made $60 in tips that I had to split with the girl serving the food.

Lesson learned: I make a significantly better bartender than a waitress.

I am not a janitor

"I am not a janitor": what I wanted to scream when the hostess turned to me and asked me if I wanted to clean up the old man vomit all over the patio at the club, along with "of course not you crazy girl-who WANTS to clean up vomit?" Don't pretend like you are being nice or accomodating when you ask me if I want to do it, really what you are saying is "Hey you are being paid and as a waitress are lower on the employee hiearchy than me so get a mop and clean that shit up because you are too nice to refuse like the other employees." God dammit.

Also "I am not a mind reader": so when you mumble what you want/don't want on your burger and when I repeat it back to you (or at least what I think you said) and you nod your head don't be surprised if it is not correct. Oh and by all of sudden becoming completely articulet when I bring out the wrong burger just pisses me off so why don't you try annunciating your request the first time instead of pissing me and the kitchen off, eh? Jeez.

Lastly "I am not in high school anymore": ergo I don't want to listen to your high school problems fellow employees. So take your "oh my gods" and "I can't believe its" and the whole "I'm only to going to do exactly what you ask of me and not try to help you out one iota even if you are clearly struggling and I'm doing nothing" attitude and get the hell away from me. And stop pretending to me shocked and offended by my off-color language/bad mood. I'm a waitress and by the time I get to the club I've been interning aka being super polite for 8 hours already and am a tad bit tired/frustrated.