How to Keep Your Sanity

Your six top wants to know why they can't have a four person booth by the window. Your chef has added three garnishes to the soup that you're serving all night long. Your busser forgot to cut anything but white bread. Your manager is tired and has given you four VIP tables within an hour of each other. Your fellow server is half an hour late and another server is fighting with her boyfriend. Your pantry cook still hates you and is hung over.

Here's what I know. On my good days I'll barely notice snarky comments, moderate hostility, people wanting you to invent a way for them to have Foie gras, or tells you they don't need a list they want a bottle of that wine they had that one time at that place with the oysters... When I'm on my game I don't even bother to play twenty questions I sell them one of my favorites, It'll be there new favorite that's what the last waitress did after all.

On my bad days I roll my eyes so many times I'm afraid there going to be stuck like that. Nobody can see that I'm doing it, it's actually my favorite form of passive aggressive behavior, the new grill boy cracking jokes about it being my turn to be in the weeds has me contemplating throwing a bottle of White Zinfadel at him. One bottle down, one less in the world to get on my nerves.

Here's what gets me through. My girl Anette will laughingly tell me how impressed her table is at the local Chardonnay that non of us can get through a glass of much less a whole bottle. My Sous Chef will crack a joke about my love life. Nodding his head towards the twenty-two year old intern as I hum the Mrs. Robinson song. And I know that my best buddy is a text message away. He'll give the appropriate groans at how 'spicy' the bouillabaisse was for my seventy-year old woman. He'll understand my frustration with forty dollar bottle thirty year old Bordeaux with corks so soft that they crumble literally in my hands. It makes me feel better.

I know without a doubt that I'm going to be in my fluffy robe at some point tonight. With a cup o' noodles and a new netflix at one in the morning. I love that the boss was the one with the restaurant nightmares the night before. My last one was disgusting. I was being held hostage, sitting on the piano with a tray full of empty glasses that people kept coming over taking off of the tray and then demanding that I get off of the piano and refill them. Did I mention it was morning in the dream like seven a.m. Not that I'm actually awake at seven in the morning but the principal of being at work at seven in the morning was probably the weirdest.

I stay out of restaurants on my day off. I'm much more likely to order a pizza or make a run to Subway than I am to volunteer to sit in a dining room dissecting food and service. I like the movies for winding down. I like comfy sofas sandwiches and wine at home. call me crazy but I don't want to see a uniform unless I'm wearing one. My face hurts. Literally my cheeks hurt from the smile that I wear all night long.

I don't feel the least bit bad talking about customers, tables or anything that I over hear at those tables. Most of which is completely boring. Your dog had an ingrown toe nail, your sisters son is dating a bi-sexual, your dandruff shampoo isn't working as well as it used to? Nope, we don't care. But, if you caught your babysitter getting it on with her boyfriend in your hot tub or you just bought that itty bitty little vibrator that the television commercials have been showing lately. Well, that gets repeated. If you drink six vodkas every server knows how many you've had. If you sent your, well anything back to be re fired.

In my head I'm thinking that there's a new movie out that I want to see. I need to get my bangs trimmed and my nails done. That I think I'm going to go buy the new laptop If I can just get a handle on all of that technical shit that's like a whole new language featuring me, the village idiot, that doesn't know which processor is shitty and which isn't. Any advice out there will be welcome. I'm taking notes on slips of paper my plan is to dump them all out of my purse at Best Buy go buy a c.d. or two and then come back to the twenty-year old salesman magically pointing towards my new computer. A Laptop that is pretty turns on quickly burns cds and dvds doesn't crash, doesn't cost over nine hundred dollars doesn't weight a ton and in a perfect world comes all ready to go so I can turn it on and continue my ebay shopping, blogging and finally download my photos from October on.

Oh, yeah. I need to get that second bottle of Rombauer for my third VIP table. Tomorrow I'm taking a flat tire to be patched to the tire fixing place, getting the nails done, buying bobby pins and then going to work. Where all of my tables will be nondescript tourists all of my coworkers will be in glowing good moods and I will like every single person that sits in my station.