For three years, in my early twenties, I was a freelance writer with no contacts. What that meant was, I waited tables and wrote a blog that 20 people read in the evening. Occasionally I’d do work experience and fall asleep at my desk because I’d been up till 2am on a close shift the previous night. Unsurprising why nobody hired me - if they’d have offered me a job, I was too asleep to notice.
What really got me was how different waitressing was to what I’d expected when I went into it. I thought it’d be a good, easy way to get some cash and make rent, and would allow me to pursue other ventures on my days off. I was wrong. Here’s what it’s really like serving paying customers food - and a shoutout to all my waitresses who don’t want to be waitresses: it’ll end at some point and you’ll look back and be like ‘What the actual vicar’s arse was I thinking, why didn’t I get a temp job in an office’.
1. You will not pursue other ventures
Actually, make that ‘You will not pursue other ventures unless you’re either a) superhuman or b) driven to it by how much you hate waitressing’. Why? Because despite the time off you may have, the free morning, the much sought-after free evening, you will spend that flat on your back aching from the shift previously. Your arms will hurt. You may develop frozen shoulder from trying to impress bartenders with your stacking skills. Your legs will hurt from walking all the time. Your brain will hurt from how stressful it is keeping five tables happy that are all at totally different stages of both their meal and politeness.
2. You will become unable to write simple words
I had a notepad. I had a pen. I kept it in a pocket that I had on my trousers (I’m very clever). Thing is, when someone said ‘two fish and chips, a beef roast, and a lasagne’ I would scribble it down at length then, when it got to relaying this information into the till, would often find I’d written ‘fewog and twyd’ next to a very important looking asterisk and a drawing of a hat. It’s the stress of fucking up someone’s dinner. It does weird things to your hand-eye coordination.
3. You will experience interesting weight changes
Either you will lose an excessive amount of weight from running around, getting 3 minutes worth of breaks in seventeen hours, and being too stressed to eat or you’ll go down my route and pile on a hearty two stone from all the shit food consumed. In most gastro pubs, there’s a bread board manned by the waitress. When that waitress isn’t serving customers, that waitress is dipping bread in oil. Also, most restaurants I’ve worked in have a system whereby the chefs pile a load of chips onto a plate for the end of the waiting staff’s shift. If you’re on an evening shift, this means that sure, you’ll have been running around a lot (exercise) but you’ll also have had dinner before you started followed by a huge pile of chips on top of all the bread and oil.
4. You will debase yourself in front of the pot washer
There’s usually a man (or woman) who washes pots constantly in the kitchen during peak times. I used to be a pot washer, it’s a bullshit job. The only interesting thing about being a pot washer is that waitresses will come in and kick things, swear, cry, and generally do all the stuff you can’t do on the serving floor in front of you. My regular humiliation was to be so hungry from lack of breaks that I’d eat leftover food from peoples’ plates. I literally did this on more than one occasion. It got to the stage where I was targeting tables with very thin people on them on the off chance they wouldn’t touch their dessert and I could eat it. And the pot washer would say nothing. Partly because he couldn’t speak English, but also partly because pot washers are the silent watchmen of the kitchen world.
5. You will have to start smoking
Or pretend to start smoking. Why? Because smokers get fucking smokers breaks, and non-smokers get nothing. I blame waitressing for the fact that I still, once a year, have about a month where I become a smoker again.
6. You will think you’re a shit waitress
When I finished waitressing, my boss told me I was a good waitress. He said ‘We’re losing one of the good ones’, actually. This will come as a surprise to everyone that knows me considering I consistently told them stories involving me dropping gravy in a woman’s handbag (Mulberry), cutlery on babies (it was a knife) and smashing a wall-sized mirror with a prosecco cork during a wedding reception only to be applauded out of the room and into the kitchen where I tried to drown myself in the pot washer’s sink. You will fuck up. Every night you will cover for the fact you forgot to put the right thing through the till, you forgot the bread, you forgot to get tap water before they’d asked, you’d written some batshit code on your notepad which makes no sense and had to go back and ask. Thing is, that’s what waitressing is, and you’re almost definitely doing a better job than you think you are.
7. Chefs are dicks
Even the nice ones. They also do a lot of cocaine. They also look at your arse when you take their food out. I don’t like stereotyping but I’ve worked in seven kitchens and this has been the case in every single one. There was only ever one female chef and she did a lot of cocaine and still looked at my arse, because she was a lesbian. This is isn’t me bragging about my top class arse, I’ve got a perfectly fine but unremarkable arse. It’s just a thing that happens to us all.
8. Sundays are ruined forever
Three years after I stopped waitressing, and I still feel bad going for a meal on a Sunday because I know how horrific they are from the other side. Babies, prams, screaming, the kitchen running out of food at like 2pm so everyone shouts at you, everyone’s drunk and shouting at you, the chefs are totally overworked and boiling hot so shouting at you. That’s why, when you work at a restaurant, Sunday night is party night because hot damn you fucking need it - plus, most places close early on a Sunday so you can have a proper lock-in.
9. People are crazy
I’ve had people order sandwiches without the filling. Demanding chips when the restaurant doesn’t do chips and refusing to leave until I went across the road, bought oven chips, and cooked them for them. One time a 17 year old on a date called me a ‘stupid bitch’ after telling me he wanted creme brûlée, confirming that yes, it was creme brûlée, then saying ‘I asked for chocolate gateaux’ when I brought it out, while smirking. He did it just to fuck with me and impress his date. I went in the kitchen and the pot washer had to physically restrain me from drop kicking a wok. The general public are all insane, but at least you can bitch about it with other waitresses. That’s the only saving grace.
10. Yep you have codes for fit people
Ours was cereal-based. Cheerios was a hottie. We would toss a coin for who took a fit table. It also works the other way, too: we had codes for arseholes. Namely ‘that table is an arsehole’.
11. You make genuine friends
You will work with jobsworths, obsessive compulsives, and really lazy people who consistently ruin your shift by screwing everything up. You will also work with some of the most interesting people you’ve ever met - waitressing is a classic stopgap for creatives, and anyone in-between jobs. At my last, and favourite, restaurant I worked with a Brazilian mime, a trainee carpenter, a children’s storybook author, a primary school teacher and a musician. We bolstered each other up, we encouraged each other and egged each other on to get the fuck out of here and make something of ourselves. You’re in it together, you’re sweaty and stressed, and the drink at the end of a shift is a shared relief that forms surprisingly strong bonds.
Basically, it’s summed up by the classic Charles Dickens quote ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was mainly the worst though and try not to smoke because it’s a habit that may never leave you.’ That about the long and short of bring a waitress, I reckon.
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Follow Stevie Martin on Twitter @5tevieM
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.