You Gotta Have Thick Skin When You Are A Server

I have been a server so long that this is actually the way we used to send checks to the kitchen. Write it down and walk over and hang it up with a clothes pin on a wire they had strung.

Now everything is computerized and when a computer goes down  we have to use our brains...that's when the trouble starts.

I've worked too much this week and I know it, but when you are in my line of work every shift is a paycheck.  We are so close I can smell it... It smells like being in the black!

I fell asleep on the sofa in the living room Wednesday night. I keep the ceiling fan on high so it helps keep the house cooler. Woke up the next morning freezing and both my ears ached. My throat hurt and my nose was stopped up . NOT GOOD...

I waited for it to go away instead of simply taking some medicine. By Friday I was miserable. The problem was I was scheduled to work Friday day and night, Saturday day and night and Sunday day and night...added bonus was Sunday was Father's Day or as we like to call it in  the restaurant world "A Mother of a Father's Day."

I started pumping in the meds on Friday during my break between lunch and dinner and felt somewhat better. It doesn't help that I have terrible eating habits unless  you consider coffee a food group. Saturday I was on the fence but feeling a bit better, I found some 800 MG Ibuprofen Zach had left over from when he was sick. They ran out today...and so did I.

I got to work five minutes late today...it wasn't the day to do that. We were already filling up quickly and I got my head bit off when I walked in by  a manager. I knew better than to be late, but almost never am.

Then a computer crashed and we were all fighting to ring our orders in on the two left running.

Here's my beef...

I work like a demon from the time I get there til  the time I clock out and I clock in A LOT! I am fifty two years old and weigh 99 pounds. All the working is of my own choosing and I totally realize that but  keep a good attitude and try to be nice to everyone. I am nice to the dishwashers, the prep team, the hosts out front and even the surly cooks...on top of being nice to customers who sometimes aren't.

I'm not sick a lot, but today I felt terrible. When things went whack with the computer and the kitchen lost one of my checks it got dicey. One of the cooks was yelling at me, Barb was yelling at me because she was trying to make people happy up front waiting to be seated and I was so behind it wasn't funny.

I snapped. And then the worst thing possible happened...The tears started pouring.

I am usually tough skinned (you have to be in my line of work.) I didn't feel good, I'd been working too much and it suddenly BECAME too much. The cooks were screaming at me, the managers were screaming at me and my customers were screaming at me.

Calgon never showed up to "Take me away."

MY point is that YOU don't have to be ugly to get your point across. I get it. I treat every person I work with as an equal. I treat every one the way I want to be treated. It's called the Golden Rule but the memo got lost today. I had a thirty minute breakdown and had absolutely no mascara left, and a snotty nose to boot.

Had I not been sick I could have handled it perfectly and probably even with a joke or two. Feeling like crap though...they better be glad I don't carry a gun.

I think it shocked and  surprised all of them. I am usually the one that can blow off  or defuse any situation and here I am sniveling like a baby.

"I wanted my mommy."

When I got cut from the floor for my break, the owner said "Let me make you some Chicken noodle soup." I told him I just wanted to go home and lay down for a hour and he said "Just take it home with you."

I got home and lapped the soup up, crawled in bed in with my work clothes on and assumed  the position of Lily Munster sleeping...not mussing my hair or what little make up I had left on.

I got back to work and they all seemed to be walking on eggshells around me. I tend to have my seldom breakdowns at home and  think I terrified them all. They let me have an extra hour off, I was due back at five but they let me come back at six.

Six is good...we close at 8:30 on Sunday. The soup was great (everything the owner cooks is) and I felt better having a hour on my back with my girl beside me and two pups wagging those stumps they call tails every time I say their name.

Ya know...sometimes you just gotta flip out, sometimes you just gotta say..."We're all in the same boat and it's not just YOU with an oar... Let's row together."

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love my job. I absolutely love the people I work for. When I'm feeling great I can do it shift after shift after shift.

But when I already feel like crap, don't throw more in my face.

All's well that ends well...and the night ended well.

I usually always work a double shift on Monday but when the owner posted the schedule for the upcoming week before I left...he had me scheduled off for Monday and Tuesday. He said "Go home and get well."

Sleeping til I wake up. Taking a day for myself . Then starting all over again.

Til next time...COTTON