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Served: Your Waitress Gets Reprimanded

Posted by Hannah Howard, June 9, 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 hate being yelled at. Everyone hates being yelled at. But I am a people pleaser, and when the scolding starts, clearly I have failed to please.

Sunday night was ridiculously slow, in part because of the Tonys. The theaters were dark, and many of our customers are theater people. It was one of those evenings where we folded a whole lot of napkins for lack of people to actually wait on. We listened to nostalgic music and sang along. We nibbled on the new dishes the chef had put up for us to taste: a grilled romaine salad with white anchovies and cheesy croutons, a strawberry and goat cheese dulce de leche sundae, a silky chocolate custard with peanut butter whipped cream. We planned a picnic in Central Park. The theme would be “toplessness” and we would eat open-faced sandwiches.

Then, a few minutes before midnight, the place started to fill up. The phone rang with inquiries: “How late are you open?” “What avenues are you between?” For the first time that evening, we were running a little.

An hour later, I sat down to do my paperwork. The early server (that was me) shows up an hour before service to set up the dining room, cut bread, and light candles. In turn, they are the first to leave.

But before we can leave, we have to do our paperwork. The paperwork is about making sure the numbers add up. I’m notorious for having frustrating kinks to unknot in my numbers, so I like to give myself plenty of time to tackle it as early as possible before I get exhausted. Then I can stay a little longer and help the late server take care of the guests without worrying about math problems.

A Spoon and Some Water

I gathered my paperwork paraphernalia—a calculator, my credit card receipts, a glass of wine—and sat at the end of the bar (if the space is crowded with customers, we can find anther place, but it’s easier for me to think while comfortable).

“Hannah!” said my boss, loudly and clearly unhappy, from the bar where he was sharing a glass of wine with a friend. It sounded like he had been trying to get my attention for a while. I jumped up; a customer needed my help. He was asking me for something, but it was loud and I couldn’t hear what.

“Excuse me?”

“I need a glass of water, please! And a spoon.”

“Sure.“ It looked like he had gotten up from his table to ask me. “I’ll bring them to your table.”

“What the F?” said L. She had been standing right there and happy to get him whatever he needed. It’s a certain kind of diner who needs to get up from the table when it’s not at all necessary.

Unsatisfactory Waitressing

Our boss, the owner, was not happy with L. and me. He expressed his grievances: I shouldn’t be doing my paperwork if the other server needs help on the floor, and people shouldn’t be wandering around looking for wait staff to get our attention and what they need. We nodded and apologized. It seemed unnecessary and useless to mount a defense, but of course I drafted one in my mind as soon as he started speaking. I had asked L. if she needed anything before I started my paperwork, and she hadn’t. This guy was being rude: L. was on her way to help him when he jumped up to get help from me.

When I was little my dad used to joke that I suffered from “attention surplus disorder.” Some of my preschool teachers worried that I might have hearing issues. My hearing was stellar, I was just not paying attention because I was so thoroughly involved in whatever project I was doing.

This is not a good trait to exhibit while waiting tables. I can be totally focused on getting the answer to a table’s cheese question, but it’s not wise to be so focused that I might fail to notice that another one of my tables needs a wine list and more bread or that a couple has just walked into the door. When I was doing my paperwork, I was in my own little numerical world, concentrating on adding up my cash and Visa sales. The dining room faded a little bit around me. It took me a moment too long to notice the guy.

Pay Attention

My boss, of course, was not all wrong. Both L. and I should have anticipated this guy’s needs better. If he had already had water and a spoon, he wouldn’t feel like he had to go in search of these things. And I shouldn’t disappear into a hazy paperwork fog; I still need to be conscious of what’s going on in the dining room and know when I need to get up and get some water and some spoons.

Being yelled at is infuriating because I love and care about my job, and it’s important to me to do my best. But it happens, and there‘s no use getting too worried about what I cannot control—my boss‘s mood, the pushy customer. I put my paperwork down for a minute and took a food order from table seven. Then I finished my paperwork, went home, and slept very well.

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