Tales of A Blonde Waitress

(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:

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    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.

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   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!