Here’s a little “waitress confidential” for you. Yes, that kind of service.
I’ve always felt that restaurants raise the finest in service-minded, quick-thinking individuals in an environment not for the meek.
When I worked as a restaurant server, I noticed that re-prioritizing tasks on the fly was critical to the well being of the team and customers. The job requires a constant re-sorting of priorities in an actual hot environment, while fulfilling folks’ most basic needs (hunger and social).
When I first waited tables at 14, I used to sit on a box of wilting lettuce in the basement and sob through overwhelm. Perhaps older staff might find me, and at some point I’d go back upstairs and sling that hash because the show must go on. Sobbing then serving, to me, is a working definition of emotional range, and I’m pretty sure nearly everyone in food service has done that performance at least once.
To do the job well, one also needs to be accomplished at bit of theater, fulfilling dozens of shifting tasks at a rapid pace with grace and the appearance of effortlessness.
The priorities of what was most important in any given restaurant is roughly:
- getting food out fast when it was ready
- acknowledging you see guests and your team, even if you can’t get there.
- getting drinks to people (or in my childhood “drinking town with a boating problem” this may actually be number one)
- cleaning up messes of all kinds
- selling good stuff
- knowing what’s in stock, who’s on what, and solving others’ problems.
- Prep, paperwork, computer work, and side-work (“marrying the ketchup” lol)
Every table was at a different stage at any given moment in time, and with loads of surprises each shift, so these things were constantly re-prioritizing. A matrix of tasks in an ever-changing order.
And genuinely taking care of people was key, as was pivoting with grace and kindness. Most servers love setting people up with a good situation, and helping them to fully enjoy it. I know I did.
It was also so common to be in the middle of a conversation and need to run because the kitchen was buzzing. The ability to extricate oneself from dozens of social situations with dozens of different kinds of people in a few hours was astonishing.
And did I say needy? I can I tell you, HUNGRY people are needy at the most basic level, and so are chefs who just want to move that food.
And you earned a reasonable living only if you turned this magic trick over and over night after night, multiple tables at a time, with every kind of person. Restaurants are an unpredictable environment, affected by the day of the week, the weather, the buzz, and many folks’ financial wherewithal, and whims.
Why am I telling you this? Because restaurant people have some of the highest-level, in-the-trenches real-time skills around. And they usually care about people, or they wouldn’t do the job at all. And they get paid commensurate with their customer’s pleasure (the tipping model)… which also whiffs of a time when I worked in a converted bordello (but more on that another time, I’m working on some stories too).
I hope you see with wider eyes and appreciate all those around you who serve, in whatever realm they do it.
