I've worked at a particular restaurant for close to a year now. Before I became a waitress, I never really considered the men and women who served and prepared my food. I never gave the waiters and waitresses a second thought, much less considered them to be actual people with lives, thoughts, hopes, and ambitions. And the cooks? Forget about it. I never even saw them. I suppose when I was younger I believed that the food was just magically summoned by some tiffy little food gnomes. To be honest, I can't really say that that's not the case. I've known some cooks in my time who could be referred to as "tiffy little food gnomes" only at their best. We won't even go into what they could be called at their worst. I doubt many of your fragile hearts could bear it. Trust me, some days mine barely can.
Being a waitress has taught me more than any school or university ever has. I always held a pretty high opinion of myself. Am I the prettiest woman in the world? Probably not, but I'm sure as hell not bad looking. Have I won the Nobel Prize? Not as of yet, but a pretty lucrative scholarship has shown me that there are some who see my potential. Am I a bad person?....Maybe not bad so much as misguided, but you get the point.
Being a waitress, if nothing else, has taught me that none of the aforementioned qualities count for shit. Every person who walks through those creaking wooden doors considers me to be beneath them. To these people I'm nothing more than a kid waiting tables. Hell, half of them probably think that I flunked out of high school, had a baby, and am living off of that oh so lucrative government money. Now, is any of that true? Hell no. None of the people who walk through those doors even take a moment to consider the fact that I am a real person, much less that the rest of the staff are real people. And the cooks? Forget about 'em. The only people who get anything that even remotely has the semblance of respect from our customers are the managers. The honest truth? I know more about running the store and handling the customers than most of them do. Now, does that mean that they're bad managers? Certainly not. One of my managers is one of my absolute favorite people on Earth. He's a genuinely kind, compassionate, caring person who legitimately wants to make the customer happy. The fact that he's probably the cutest guy I've ever seen doesn't hurt anything either.
But I digress. Simply being criminally attractive a good manager does not make. Even if he was painfully unattractive, the fact would remain that he's a fantastic manager who not only cares about the customer, but also cares about the staff. There are too few managers in this business who legitimately care about their staff. I know my general manager doesn't. At least not to the extent that he should. The only thing that matters to him is numbers. As long as the numbers are good, the world is perfect. The second they start to go bad, the world falls apart. The fact that we're in the middle of a huge rush doesn't matter. The fact that I'm the only person in the front of the house trying to pacify the hordes of voracious and sometimes angry customers means less than nothing. The only thing that matters is getting the numbers back under control. It truly is a sad, sad reality.
For now, I must abandon ship and succumb to that sultry, salty lass Slumber. But if nothing else I'd like to leave you with this thought: Your waiter is a human being. They are NOT your slave. They want to offer the best service possible and strive to make their customers happy. Unless of course you really piss them off.
But please, be kind to your waiter. And if you're going out to eat at a restaurant that doesn't involve a drive thru, don't forget to leave a tip. At the end of the day, that's really all we have.
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