You Know You’re a Server When…

By Danielle Lattuga, 1-12-09

Things you do after waiting tables for most of your adult life:

1) Neatly stack and clear plates, for your friends, your family, your neighbors . . . the dogs.

2) Constantly push the limits of how much you can carry with one hand
a. Six wine glasses or three pint glasses
b. A full laundry basket, two cans of paint, and a basketball
c. Four plates, a bowl, four knives, six forks, one spoon, and a small pitcher of milk
d. Two bags of groceries, your purse, one dog on a leash
e. The exception: Your newborn nephew (he requires two hands, deliberate foot steps, and a full heart)

3) Garnish your breakfast cereal

4) Become confused when your friends don’t know if “An earthy nose, with robust spice, deep rich hues, and a long, smooth finish,” is a description of your lover or the glass of wine you consumed last night.

5) Crave roasted duck with a port huckleberry reduction at 3 a.m.

6) Ask friends and acquaintances how they are enjoying their meal when you run into them at other restaurants

7) Trust your nose more than the date

8) Feel remorse if you let your glass or anyone else’s become less than half full

9) Inadvertently and simultaneously listen to four conversations while grocery shopping and struggle to refrain from offering your advice or assistance

10) Appreciate those who provide you with true, quality customer service and exercise forgiveness for those who do not

11) Remind yourself that even though you’ve observed the inherent cruelty one woman inflicts on her boyfriend on numerous occasions, it is not your job to bite her and tell him that he deserves better—just fill their glasses, feed them well, and step gently around them

12) Have the epiphany that “light appetizers” means different things to different people; yours happens to include a vat of soup, a plate piled high with spring rolls, a bottomless bowl of crab dip, cheese and crackers, peppered goat cheese and roasted beets, and banana ice cream cake

13) Spend a good part of your 20s describing restaurant work as the way in which you support your education, your career goals and your lifestyle, then realize in your 30s that it has become your family, an exercise in decadence, your passion, and the reason why you still have a great ass

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