When Your Server Sucks

Exactly the expression of courtesy that I like to see on my waitress's face.

Yes, food service is a bitch. But that doesn’t mean you have to be one to go into it. One of the key words in the job description is service, a.k.a. “the act of helpful activity,” you indentured servtards who don’t seem to understand that your very paycheck—and thus your ability to fucking eat this month—depends upon my happiness. And, yeah. It’s not like you are snailing it to my table for free either. When you accepted the job, surely you realized that you were not going to be paid to lean.

Now, I’ve experienced stellar service at times, and it’s sad to say that I’ve made a huge deal out of those responsible because they are not the norm anymore. Generally, the folks who scan my package of women’s gentle laxatives at the pharmacy do so with a look best characterized by someone who needs a fucking enema. And the embryos at the fast food window all seem to be in a state of continual annoyance at my existence, as if my supersizing were chafing their mini balls. I just don’t get it. What happened to good, old-fashioned pride in a job well done? What happened to Bob down at the Chevron station who cheerfully filled up my tank and squeegeed my windshield with orgasmic glee? What happened to washing traveler’s feet for Christ’s sake?

Anyway.

The other day I met my lunch buddy, Lisa, at a certain sit-down place in town, and we had a crappy server of a different kind. She didn’t have a shitty attitude, or the kind of nonchalance that makes you want to drive a salad fork up her ass, or butt-of-warthog breath like that one guy who knelt down extra close to my olfactory system while he was breathfully explaining the menu specials at Olive Garden recently. Jesus. My whole meal smelled like colon.

No. This girl had impeccable timing. She wouldn’t come by when we wanted her for ages and ages like to take our order or refill my tea or bring me some extra napkins because that one little square that goes under my drink wipes approximately none of my sticky fingers; but then she would wait…wait…wait until the exact moment that Lisa or I arrived at the climax of an anecdote, and she’d materialize just in time to fuck it up. She’d just stand there, rocking on her heels, glaring at us in our awkward silence.

And about four seconds after she put our meals down, she popped back over and asked how we liked everything. Hell. We hadn’t even created saliva yet. And then she just hovered there like we were going to chew and rate right that fricking minute. Didn’t she have other customers whose plates needed spitting in or some stuck-on shit to scrape off a toilet or some translating in the kitchen to do? She clearly does not belong in a “people career.” She needs to work with lab samples or conveyor belts or the newly lobotomized. Whatever.

I realize that food service is usually the place where most folks test the waters of the job world, to see what it’s like to swim upstream for an all-mighty paycheck. But listen. If you hate people, if you think your fecal matter is somehow floral scented, if you are more interested in having your every need met by a group of scantily clad and oiled men than in helping someone else have a nice day, then please. Just take off that apron, unpin that name tag, and stay the fuck out of my restaurants.