Monday.
I work in a restaurant. But from what I experience, I've just got to believe it's a very peculiar environment compared to other diners. I never really get out, so who’s to know what other places are really like. I take the food, I serve the food, and when it’s all over I get things cleaned up and start the process again. I work long hours. Actually, I and the servers work everyday we’re open, for as long as were open. What a joyous relief we only serve lunch and dinner.
I’ve been extra nervous at work lately. It seems like all of us graced with the title of server have also been tagged as welcome mats to accidents and injuries. And not just little scratches and burns back in the kitchen, but even misadventures out working with the customers. Most are minor, but they're issues none-the-less. Cuts, scrapes, burns and the likes – I’d really like to think they’re all just being clumsy. But that can’t always be the case because my friend Harriet came to me with the most bizarre story yesterday. When I saw her she seemed just absolutely furious.
“I was serving a well-done steak to a slick willy of a brute, you know our prime customer prototype,” Harriet said.
“Of course. And then…?” I replied.
“And then as I approached you could just see his chops drooling, I could just see he was dying to dive into that juicy steak. Well that hungry beast, why, before the steak was even before his face… Trae are you still listening? No, Trae, get this! He was so beastly impatient he plummeted right in and nearly took me out with his fork and knife!”
She claimed he had actually scratched her without so much as an apology, but I actually couldn’t see any marks. She is right though. We seem to always have savage, pushy customers and maybe they're just the likes that our greasy, meat-a-licious menu seduces. Steak, brisket, Buffalo wings, and burgers – they’re the top choices and they seem to always attract an abundant crew of boors.
Maybe it is the seemingly savage gang of customers we always attract that make our restaurant seem so very different, and for me so very unnerving. You never know who you’re going to serve, and you always know you just have to take what they give, and hopefully you take it with a grain of salt.
I know if you keep it from getting to you, you’re better off. But it seems like for some of the long-timers here, the enamel is just wearing away and more and more stuff is getting to them. I fear that maybe a restaurant could never be a lifetime job for anyone, and at some point they just have to crack or break, and then that’s just it. It’s over. I’m afraid of that, because although I am young with so much ahead, I really don’t know where else I’d go or what else I’d do. I’m not educated as much as some folks and probably not domineering enough to get out there to commandeer some other fancy vocation.
Thursday.
It’s been a few days since Harriet’s frustrating fiasco took place, and, you know, I actually thought things seemed to be getting rather peaceful. But instead it’s just gotten more bizarre. Something very peculiar has happened with one of my favorite co-workers, Kevin. He’s left. And everyone says he’s gone for good. He’s a loud one he is, but he always gets the gentlest of jobs. So I really can’t figure out why he’s left us. He always seemed to get female customers. He’d get these silly weight-watching women ordering minestrone soup or cheese and broccoli, and he would always get lots of salad-eaters. I can’t find a good reason why he has quit and Harriet and I have been talking about what happened to him all day.
“Maybe he got sick of all those silly women,” Harriet said.
“I hardly think so, Harri, I mean, really, he boasts all the time to us about the lady customers he picks up. And why should he complain, they’re calm and they don’t go diving at him with fork and knife in hand.”
“Okay, but maybe it wasn’t something that happened with a customer, maybe he got sick of everyone in the kitchen.”
And on that note, I think Harriet may have been onto something, because it’s what goes on in the kitchen that I’ve been thinking about lately. Sure, we can get a lot of rough customers, but things seem just as rough behind the scenes. The rushing around, the bumping, the burning, and there’s many fellow employees who are always zipping around with a chip on their shoulder. And the meals are always hottest coming straight out of the oven. We’re always perspiring and bumping into one another, just slaving away in there. If you weren’t feeling well beforehand, you certainly wouldn’t expect your day to get much better if you had to stick around in the kitchen all day. And maybe Kevin just couldn’t deal with it anymore.
Monday.
I still miss Kevin a lot, he was always cracking a joke, and today I could really use a good one. I remember my favorite one that he’d tell all the time to get a laugh out of me and Harriet.
“A customer called the restaurant, and he asked, ‘Do you serve crabs?’ The manager politely answered the phone and said, “Oh of course! We serve all sorts of folks!"
Kevin would laugh, and Harriet would love it because she said she always got the crabbiest and most obnoxious of customers. Yes, I think I’m going to be just fine with out Kevin if I can just remember all of his silly jokes.
Tuesday.
Another wave of spindly nerves is flowing over me. Maybe it’s just because today has been so hectic. Everyone is rushing and bustling around, and it feels like there is this certain un-easing air in the oily hot atmosphere. As I was rushing out a meal of Shish kabobs I bumped into Harriet, and I could tell I had only made worse an already cutting chip on her own shoulder. She was perspiring from the heated work and I thought she looked utterly exasperated.
“What a voracious day, Trae.”
I continued along my route and took her tone as nothing personal, though I could see through her own sweat that she was growing tired of the restaurant. I really hope she isn’t considering leaving too.
After my roving customer demolished the Shish Kabobs I was back in the kitchen, where I entered upon the one thing I’ll surely never forget. There was a crash, and then a lot of stumbling and then my vision brought witness to the sharp clash of sound which forever revealed the truth of what I always wondered.
I saw Harriet’s life shatter before my eyes.
Once a beautiful plate, she had simply been the one on top that could not hold the towering equilibrium. Her broken shards were swept into a goodbye, and I am here – left to grieve the farewell of another dear friend.
Saturday.
Kevin’s first words to me were the beginning of a joke. I remember them well and they have kept me going this week. I have been thinking so much. What cruel creator made us into dining pieces that can break so easily? The answer came quickly. I realize the sacrifice is that we are the things that make the dining experience what it is. No paper, styrofoam or even plastic plate could endure the weight of a juicy steak much less the vicious slicing that goes into making it into palatable pieces.
And none of those plates could express the elegance that we do. We serve a fine purpose, and we should serve it with every bit of valor and a sense of enjoyment. In a way, my pleasure at work is no longer dependent on my companions, but I have instead finally found delight in just the fine purpose for which I am there. And I get filled with such a chuckle when I think about what humor Kevin added to work.
“You’re the plate called Trae,” he’d say. “Kind of an oxymoronic type of name, don’t you think?”
He’d laugh and I’d laugh, and then I’d think things would be just fine.
Sunday.
Today I met a fine looking dessert plate, and she seemed quite young and inexperienced. She had a lustrous glow about her; her youth shined through beneath the ravenous brownie topped with whipped cream and a cherry. I though she seemed a bit distressed so I shared a joke with her, that joke Kevin first told me, which has been circling in my head since yesterday.
“What did the one plate, say to the other?” I asked.
“I don’t know, what’d he say?” She sighed.
“Well, he said lunch's on me!”