A Glimmer of Hope

It’s been a rough week in the waitering biz. Financially, it has probably been the best Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday since I started as a waiter, but I reached my breaking point mentally at both my serving jobs on Tuesday and Wednesday.

First, at Stephen Anthony’s, the owner repeatedly dogged me about wasting food at the restaurant. As a small, specialty restaurant, the place only has a limited amount of food, and the owner is understandably concerned about making sure everything that is prepared goes to a customer and is paid for. However, in verbally attacking me for wasting food on Tuesday, the owner wasn’t actually talking about food that had been prepared because of me, he was talking about food that was “almost” wasted because of me. This “almost” apparently happens whenever the cooks have a question about one of my orders. In the case on Tuesday, it was whether a piece of salmon should be made well done or blackened, and the matter was settled before any food was wasted. In the five weeks since I was hired, the amount of food that was actually wasted because of me (prepared food that was sent back because it was wrong) totals about $11, which is for a side of breakfast ham, a Western omlette and a sandwich. If you add the one beer and two glasses of wine from my first two days of training, I figure I’ve wasted about $30 total in menu value, which is not a small amount but not above average compared to other servers over the course of five weeks. Now, I genuinely feel bad about all the mistakes I’ve made and wouldn’t mind if the owner spoke to me in a professional fashion about needing to shore up my work. Instead, though, he scolds me using the same manner and tone of voice I use when I yell at the dogs for peeing on the carpet. He also uses the terms “all the time” and “on every shift” when he talks about me wasting food, even though he only happened on three separate shifts out of the 25 or so I’ve worked. And Tuesday was just the culmination of everything, in general, he uses the same demeanor (see, again, like yelling at dogs peeing on the carpet) whenever he is addressing the wait staff.

If Tuesday at Stephen Anthony’s drained me mentally, then Wednesday was a marathon taking me to the breaking point. First, both my waitering jobs had been pressing me to take an Alcohol Awareness class so I know how to spot a fake ID and when to cut someone off from the drink. On Wednesday I finally went to a class that was 25 minutes away. The class, of course, started an hour late (making me an hour late for my night shift at the Picadilly Pub; good-bye tips), and the entire session consisted of an old lady talking to herself for three hours in several different character voices, often pretending she was drunk. She did, of course, take the time to repeatedly insult the three Japanese waitresses who didn’t speak English very well, and verbally assault another waitress who had to leave early because of the late start. Then, at Piccadilly Pub, I had to stay late because one of the older waitresses refused to do any of her side work and had the manager force me to do it for her. The older waitress then used her free time to hang by the host stand, steal customers from the rest of us; and then, at the end of the night, sit on her fat butt and eat popcorn that is meant for customers. To top off my day, the manager also made me wait an extra 30 minutes to leave because she couldn’t figure out that the $10 gift card she rang up for one of my guests was the same $10 gift card charge that was on my report at the end of the night. What made this whole situation worse was that Sarah, Maggie and Desmond were waiting out in the parking lot for 15 minutes because they had to come pick me up. Of course, it was after Maggie’s bed time, so when we got home, she spent an hour crying in her room before she finally fell back asleep.

I tell you now, if I wasn’t so in desperate need of money at this point, I couldn’t stand waitering much longer. It is getting harder and harder not to bring this all home with me every day, disrupting what are some of the best moments of my private life.

Monday, though, brings a glimmer of hope.

I have a job interview with a legal magazine in Boston, looking for me to become their next courts reporter. I would be working right in the downtown financial district, and if everything goes well, Sarah and I can move our family a lot closer to the city. We would be living and working in Boston, not in freaking far Marlborough, which is an hour away. It’s not quite The Dream of combining my private and professional life to the benefit of both, but it is the dream we envisioned when we first said one year ago we wanted to live in Boston. This is a job I could keep and stay in and excel at. Yes, the money would be important, but I would also be furthering my career and doing something that suits me far better than bringing people plates of food. When I was having a rough time Tuesday and Wednesday, I just kept repeating to myself that it could all be over soon; that I wouldn’t be a waiter for life; that I wouldn’t have to abandon the dreams of a Boston life.  This could really be something.

Of course, I may be putting too much on this one job interview; that if I don’t get a job, that it will be even harder to pick myself up off the mat once again and keep going to Stephen Anthony’s and Piccadilly Pub. Or, even worse, it will turn out like the Patriot Ledger, where I have a job offer, but the position is very unstable and the pay is so low that I couldn’t possibly support myself, much less a family.

Still, I’m talking this job interview for what it is today: a glimmer of hope guiding me through a difficult time in a my professional life.