“I’m gonna be late; I’m gonna be late,” I think, easing the accelerator all the way to the floor. Just minutes earlier, I cranked out a 15-inch story on the County Commission’s latest actions, but already my thoughts are elsewhere.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
I know it’s a 45-minute drive, but every time I think I can do it in 30.
When I finally do barrel into the parking garage, I’m already five minutes late. Walking quickly through the door, I scan the restaurant for my manager’s eyes. Not seeing them, I head to the back room, where I shed my khakis and dress-shirt and don a pair of clean, black pants, greasy, well-worn Wal-Mart shoes and an apron stocked with ink pens.
Just a minute to clock in, say what’s up to everyone, read the nightly special and that’s it. I’m sat with a table of four: time to get the night started.
Like most restaurant servers, I didn’t think I’d be at it this long.
All the bleached-white shirts, the $200 nights, the swinging kitchen doors: They all seem to run together at this point.
But something about the job keeps me coming back.
In at four; done by midnight — Wednesday, Friday, Saturday nights.
Whether I’m tired, hung-over, pissed off at the world or in love for the first time, I have to laugh at the table’s jokes all the same and show concern when a fork is dirty or a side dish comes out cold. It’s not that I don’t care about your experience — I do. I realize you’re paying good money for an enjoyable night out. It’s just that I encounter a situation so many times that instinct generally kicks in before emotion.
I end up repeating the same phrase so many times — “our 14-ounce prime strip, topped with Montchevre goat cheese that’s smothered in peppers and onions and then sautéed in a Grand Marnier-brown sugar sauce” — that it’s as if you’re asking for my phone number or street address.
“It’s excellent. A little sweeter, but one of our best cuts,” I say.
And the Merryvale Chardonnay?
“A buttery white. For something a little more crisp, try the Villa Maria … nice, grapefruit scent but really a smooth finish.”
What I’m saying is legit. But it’s a variation of what I tell people over and over again.
So much of what you see at the table, for me, is an endless routine: greet the guests; offer drinks; offer appetizers; recite the special; clear dishes; fill glasses; take salads; clear dishes; bring the steak knives; bring another glass of wine; arrange entrees; fill glasses; clear dishes; etc.
At the newspaper, I have a different story to write each day. The news is always changing. The restaurant is not.
There’s still the Mexican guys in the kitchen playing grab-ass; still the constant mother-fucking we do when you leave us a 10 percent tip; and still the endless trays and tickets and dishes that pile up.
By now, I have Frank Sinatra so tattooed on my brain that I may sing every word to “My Funny Valentine” without even knowing I’ve opened my mouth.
While requests for salad dressing on the side, split entrees and a steak “somewhere between medium and medium-rare” don’t sound that difficult, add them up and multiply them by three, four, six tables and my shift that began with a cheerful mood eventually sours.
You might not realize it, but it’s the strain of waiting tables — not the pressure of getting every detail of my reporting 100 percent accurate — that can wake me in the middle of the night with a sharp gasp and pounding chest. Ask any server about the nightmares. For some it’s a kitchen located two blocks down the street. For me, it’s a cavernous dining room. Before I can even get a drink order for the table in front of me, a group of eight goes down at the far end of the restaurant. I stumble through a maze of chairs and different rooms and, when I finally do get the next table’s order, I return to the kitchen to find that my tickets haven’t printed. Then five more guests walk through the door.
It’s crazy how much the job affects me sometimes.
It’s the couple that orders an appetizer, tells me they “haven’t even looked” at their menus and then inform me they have a seven o’clock show to make when they finally do order. It’s the guest who shouts my name while I’m reciting the special to the table right next to him.
Or better yet, it’s the waking-life nightmare when my manager returns to the kitchen and asks, “What the hell’s wrong with you?” In weaving through traffic, arm extended high under an entrée-laden tray, I’ve managed to drip hot, soupy Fettuccine Diablo con Pesce on three separate guests — not including a baby in a high chair.
You might not realize that, in serving all this food, I haven’t eaten since lunch. Undoubtedly, I haven’t gone to the bathroom in six hours, and I hardly had time to grab a quick smoke or drink a cold soda.
As with anything in life, though, a simple please and thank you goes a long way — whether you’re the five businessmen who tip more than 20 percent and are on your third bottle of Silver Oak, or you’re the sweet, old couple that holds hands on your 50th anniversary but thinks $5 on a $60 check is a generous offering.
But for as much complaining as servers do, for all the moments we spend contemplating what we’re doing in life while rolling silverware into crisp, white table linens, there’s actually quite a few plusses to the job. I can pick out a great bottle of wine and uncork it in seconds flat. I’ve meet so many great people — including my girlfriend — in restaurants. And, believe it or not, it’s actually helped me as a journalist, too. I can scribble shorthand as fast as anyone I know, and, chances are, I can remember the last six things you just told me. I can walk up to someone I’ve never met before and jump into a conversation. But the real reason I keep coming back to restaurant jobs is the bulge in my billfold at the end of my shift that wasn’t there just hours before.
When I finally do cozy into that barstool — a nightly allotted Tanqueray and tonic in front of me — I know I’ve made in three shifts what I did in a week’s worth of reporting. It pays the rent. It keeps me ahead. And it’s enough to bring me through that door the next night, the next weekend — and just like that — the next four years.
