I have worked in 10 restaurants. This gives me the kind of food service street cred that most waitresses and busboys only dream of. I’ve worked at sandwich shops, high-end seafood restaurants, pizza places and even a tea salon. It’s safe to say that I have journeyed to the savage heart of the food and beverage industry, and lived to tell the tale.
As it turns out, the tale is just as lurid and depraved as you can imagine. That’s right: behind the nametags and the aprons, waitressing is all about sex, drugs and rock and roll.
I got my first taste of the lifestyle when I was 16. I got a job at a newly-built Friendly’s, a restaurant and ice cream parlor that championed both the family dining experience and ridiculously long shifts for employees. On one such interminable night, I was closing with one of my attractive, available co-workers. The shift had been filled with furtive glances and come-hither stares, and even a table of nine that came in five minutes before closing time couldn’t detract from what was sure to be a steamy encounter.
We finally stole a moment alone at the very end of the night. It was dark and cold. In fact, it was subzero, because we were in the walk-in freezer. After a few unfulfilling minutes of making out and shivering, I realized the absolute absurdity of the situation, and, with the intent of salvaging what was left of my dignity, I fled the freezer.
Many people might have started looking for a new job, thinking that making out with a co-worker in a walk-in freezer would make things awkward. But not me; I was hooked. Although my flirtation with my co-worker never became a relationship, the awkwardness that came from trying to avoid him made my eight-hour shifts a lot more interesting.
A few years later, at a different restaurant, I found another way to cure the boredom that would inevitably begin to wash over me about an hour into my shifts: drinking on the job. The secret about waitressing is that it is painfully easy. Take order, bring food to table, bring check. Refill waters if feeling attentive. If not, screw it. The sober repetition of this cycle is mundane. A drunken waitressing shift becomes a carnival, an obstacle course and a stand-up comedy act. I was lucky enough to work with several people who were also veterans of the industry, people so bored with restaurants that any diversion was welcomed.
We would start each night with a wine tasting. It’s important to start a shift with a good buzz, in order to forget the night stretching out in front of you and to make bearable the dregs of humanity who you will be forced to serve. Employee happy hour began at 6:30, just as the dinner crowds began to come in. My recollection of these nights is largely a blur, as the entire staff would begin doing shots at 8:00 pm and not stop until well after closing.
Currently, I work at a pizza place, and my behavior is constrained by class and other worthless commitments. Once school is over though, all bets are off: once a rock and roll waitress, always a rock and roll waitress.
