(from Pinterest.com)
Waitressing in a small upscale restaurant certainly has its
perks, like going home with leftover filet mignon. But that little piece of
meat is hardly compensation for the blonde dilemmas I face serving five-course
meals.
My
family rarely eats out, unless you count Taco Bell. So you can imagine my difficulty with 5-star dining. It's hard enough to remember that the wine glass goes above the knife (or was that the spoon?), much less to remember "serve right, clear left" when space is tight.
So naturally, I've had some minor infractions of the laws of fine dining:
****
Like the time I
cleared a cute young guy’s chopsticks right before we served the Chinese course.
But don’t worry, I replaced them just in time and I imagine he marveled at what
an attentive waitress I was to get him the freshest pair possible.
Or the
night that I filled a couple’s water glasses three different times, and each time picked the exact moment that
they were holding hands across the table and gazing lovingly into each other’s
eyes. I almost felt like I should ask if they wanted a photo of the three of us
enjoying the night.
Then
there are the multiple times I’ve cleared plates and forgotten to hold on to
the silverware. I could only hope the melodic crash of metal gave a resounding
finish to the sultry jazz piece in the background, but usually people turned
and glared at me.
****
These
offenses don’t warrant any serious penalties but the next two might be enough
to have my “waitress license” revoked.
The
first one happened when I was clearing plates from a table for four. One man was
still eating to my left as I stacked plates up in my right hand. As I turned to
leave, my left hand for some reason swung out. In a split second, out of the
corner of my eye, I saw the man put his hand to his mouth, and heard him chuckle and say to me, “Oh, sorry.”
As I strode to the kitchen, I noticed my hand was wet. And then I realized...yep, you guessed it, I had
timed it just right, so that in
the instant the man had opened his mouth to take a bite, my hand had brushed across
his tongue.
I stayed in the kitchen until I could compose myself from laughing (and get over the grossness of it), then peeked out to see if he was reporting
me. He seemed perfectly fine! But I couldn’t bear the embarrassment of even
getting near that table the rest of the evening.
My second catastrophe
had to do with water glasses. The close quarters of the place meant
that I had to reach across a male patron to get his glass and bring it towards
me to fill it. I carefully held
the glass over the table and started pouring.
It was at precisely that moment that my mind decided it
needed a vacation.
I don’t know why, but I completely stopped
paying attention.
It was a short vacation—3 seconds--but when I returned, I was still pouring and the glass was overflowing like a fountain, onto my hands, into a puddle on
the table! Startled, I ran to get a towel.
But that wasn’t the worst. I
suddenly remembered the rule “water glass on the right”, and so embarked on the
agonizingly slow journey of pushing the brimming water glass all the
way across the table in front of the man to get to his right.
I was hoping the customers would just think I had some kind
of depth-perception problem, but I proved to them that I was just being blonde.
I said afterwards, “I’m so sorry; it came out faster than usual.”
Well that’s all the shameful stories I have for now…but if I’m not out of a job soon, I'll be sure to post more of them!
Well that’s all the shameful stories I have for now…but if I’m not out of a job soon, I'll be sure to post more of them!
