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Served: Already Nostalgic for My Awesome Job

Posted by Hannah Howard, May 5, 2009 at 8:30 AM

I blog by day and wait tables in a New York City restaurant by night. I'm excited to bring you Served, dispatches from the front of the house. Enjoy!

I read poetry last Thursday night at Columbia to celebrate the release of a publication that included a few of my poems. It was fun to listen to people read stories, poems, and nonfiction. So much of the work was so good. After, we went out for drinks and snacks at a restaurant nearby.

“I loved your piece,” I said to a very tall guy who had read a nonfiction piece that included “high-carb grammatical carnage.”

“I loved yours,” he told me.

Over beers and calamari, we got to talking. Turns out he’s my year (a senior), a writer, and that he works at a great restaurant in Chelsea.

“How can we not know each other?” I asked, confounded. I feel like I know the vast majority of people in my class, especially those who are part of the creative writing department. We spend a lot of time smoking outside and hanging out in the office eating cookies. And with the waiter job on top of it, I was sure our paths would have crossed. New York City restaurant world is tiny.

But they hadn’t crossed, until Thursday.

“What are you doing next year?” one of us asked the other, the unavoidable and awful question all graduating seniors must ask and be asked.

His plans sounded strangely like my own. He wants to write and look for a cool waiting tables gig. He loves where he works now but is only part-time. And he’s been there for two years; it’s time for a change. (I want to write. I love where I work now, part-time. I’ve been there for two years.)

My Unreal World

Graduating from college is all about change: being a real person, with a real job, who pays real bills. It’s kind of terrifying and kind of exciting.

I wouldn’t want to hit the pause button and keep living my life how it is now. But sometimes for a second, I wish I could. I will miss coming home from my server job at 3 a.m. to a house of friends chilling and smoking on the fire escape, or dancing crazily in the living room. I will miss stopping by the creative writing office after poetry workshop to talk to Dorla, the wonderful department administrator, about what awesome burgers we’ve consumed in the last week.

I will miss nights like Thursday. The chair of the department told me he liked my work. I’m a little in awe of him, so his praise made me feel totally validated. Then we all drank together and make nerdy poetry references.

My Job Rocks

I will miss where I work, too. I will miss the room filling up with friends, people I feel lucky to know. I will miss watching people have some genuine epiphany—they thought goat cheese appalling until they tried some woody Pata de Cabra. They come in next week and ask for a funky goat. They won’t stop talking about the braised short rib, and they shouldn’t. It’s damn good. Or selling a bottle to a skeptical table because I am sure they will love it (and being right).

I’ll miss talking about wine with my coworkers, who will always know more than me no matter how much I learn. Not that it’s a contest. “This is prototypical verdejo,” someone will say knowingly, “It’s all lemon zest!” And I will make a note to self: lemon zest, verdejo. I will miss them reminding me that laughter is the appropriate response when a diner is bizarrely, relentlessly nasty for no apparent reason, not anger. Sometimes, though, a little anger is healthy.

I will miss them making fun of me. D. asking about every guy I know (“Are you boning him?”), just to see my confused response. Sneaking off at slow moments to get some air. Having the Platonic ideal of a grilled cheese sandwich, a happy glass of prosecco, and my first breath of the night at 1 a.m.

Playing whatever music I want, although it is sometimes a fight for my iPod (the hPod) to get face time. Loving everyone else’s music, for the most part. Getting to be by myself, say what I feel, and wear what I want. Even if I get made fun of: “Those earrings look like tribal torture devices.” Or, “That’s a dress? It looks like a shirt.” Yes, it is a dress. I think.

So Thursday night, high off cheap booze and great writing and praise, my new friend and I decided we were ridiculously spoiled. Whatever job is next will have a lot to live up to. I can’t speak for him, but I am going to try to stop worrying so much about what comes next and enjoy what I have right now. It is, after all, pretty great.

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