22
July 2003
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I know it’s horrible of me to even admit it, let alone think it, but I sort of miss the Steakhouse. As I was looking at the three sad lonely dollars in my wallet I thought of how nice it would be to accumulate many more bills to stuff in there simply by working a shift. As I was hitting snooze for the fifth time in a row I remembered how nice it was to never have to start my day any earlier than 10 a.m. As I was unable to go to the post office as they don’t keep hours any normal working stiff will ever be able to adhere to I remembered how nice it was to always have at least one weekday off, even if it was only for the afternoon. And then I smacked myself. Still though, there is something to be said for a waitress’s life. You always have cash, you get free (though fatty and unhealthy) food, you make your own schedule and you rarely, if ever, work more than 35 hours a week. Plus you’re always meeting new people and there’s never a shortage of great stories. But all of that isn’t enough to make me ever go back there, despite the surface benefits. Well, for one, there weren’t any benefits, insurance wise. I went over a year without health insurance and I’m just lucky that I didn’t break my leg or get in a car accident because I would’ve been in a world of hurt. And it’s frightening because there are so many people, some of them mothers and children, who are still floating along in that same boat. Plus there was the lack of money. I was always scrambling – picking up extra shifts or working straight from open to close, in order to come up with rent or to have money to buy new jeans or to just go to a movie. You may always have cash as a waitress, but that cash has to be spread in all directions. Not to mention always stinking like restaurant and standing on your feet all the time and being surrounded by French fries that call your name from under the heat lamp. Plus there are the burns and the falls and the drama and the gossip and the annoying customers and the bad tippers. And more importantly, now I have my life back. I’m able to see my friends on the weekends (other than the times they’d come to eat at the Steakhouse) and I can make plans more than a week in advance. When I meet people I don’t have to tell them my dramatic work history, “Well, I was working for Brand X but then I up and quit and moved here and I couldn’t find anything so right now I’m just waiting tables. It’s fun. Really.” The new NBC reality show The Restaurant deceptively makes it all seem so glamorous and fun. Granted, I was working for a corporate steakhouse chain, not a trendy NYC hot spot owned and run by a gorgeous chef, but people are people and serving is serving. It’ll be interesting to see how much they focus on the relationship between the front of the house staff and the kitchen staff as well as how much inter-server drama makes it on the air. That could end up being the whole show. I also wonder if the customers were on their best behavior of if they hammed it up for the cameras. Did any of the all-female tables run their waitress ragged asking her to bring them a million different little things they never even used and then still leave a 10 percent tip? I’ll be tuning in, that is for certain. Going from the Brand to nothing to the server’s life to this has made me realize one important fact: Unless you make a concerted effort to happy in the now, the grass will always, always be greener, my friends. And that’s a little truism that you can take with you because it applies to everything, from work to romance to weight loss. If I didn’t watch it I could be one unhappy, lonely single girl. Instead I choose to embrace my situation and live my life. It’s obviously going the way it’s supposed to, so why fight it? It takes more effort but the payoff is greater. Because you know, negative thinking is the sort of thing that snowballs and I moved down here to get away from that kind of weather.
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