The Bad Waitress

It’s got be tough if you can’t make in the world as a waitress in a greasy spoon. I mean the expectations aren’t that high. You take the order, pour the coffee, deliver the food and somewhere in-between maybe force a smile and mumble a few words. That’s good enough for 20% in my book. I don’t expect a dance routine or a symposium on the String Theory . I expect the minimum and sometimes, well, I don’t even get that.

Last Saturday my Grandfather and I went to breakfast at the same diner we go to every Saturday. My sister, her husband, baby, my Dad and half-sister joined us too. Since there were seven of us we had to be seated in the back room at one of the big tables.

After we were seated we waited and waited and waited until finally our waitress appeared from around the corner. She dropped the menus on our table and pulled a chewed pencil out from behind her ear.

“What would you like to drink?”

She had on a dirty pair of magnified glasses that distorted her eyes so no one could tell exactly who it was she was looking. I took a chance. “Coffee and water?”

She scribbled on her pad. While she was taking the rest of the drink orders I noticed that she had a stain of some sort on her collar. It sort of looked like ketchup but it just as well could have been blood. I shuddered inside.

As she walked away from the table I could smell cigarettes and body odor. I pulled my sweatshirt up over my nose.

My grandfather used to be a basketball coach so we talked about the college basketball tournaments and who are favorites were. We then moved on to Obama’s education agenda, my niece’s new teeth and several other topics I can’t remember. Finally the waitress wandered back with our drinks. She almost dropped my cup of coffee, spilling half of it on the table.

I mopped up the coffee. “Uh, could you get me a water too please?”

She peered through her eye distorting glasses, oblivious to the fact that I had asked for water before. “Oh, okay.”

She took her time leaving looking around absent-mindedly—as if she’d forgotten something but couldn’t remember what it was.

Twenty minutes passed and my 9-month-old niece was starting to get antsy. She’d already thrown every spoon on the table down on the ground and was trying to crawl up on the table. I knew how she felt. I’d just been to the gym and was starving. I started to feel lightheaded and nauseous. The sugar packets were the only sustenance on the table and I lurched for them knocking over the salt and peppershakers. I looked around sheepishly. My niece started bawling. The people at surrounding tables scowled. Sure, they could look down on me they had FOOD!

Damn it, grab hold of yourself you damn fool, I said, to myself. Don’t lose it now. Fuck it. I had to eat. I stood to go look for our waitress and almost ran over her as she lumbered around the corner with the tray on her shoulder.

“Excuse me,” I said and sat back down in my seat.

The tray was perched precariously on her boney shoulder and teetered back and forth. I reached out ready to catch anything that might fall in my lap and then I noticed something very disturbing Her greasy hair was sitting in my bowl of grits.

My mouth opened involuntarily but nothing came out. She set the tray down with a loud clank and then tugged at her dirty apron. “Almost didn’t make it.”

“Really?”

She set my grits down in front of me and I studied them, looking for an errant hair but saw none. I pushed the bowl aside.

After she set everything down she put her hands on her hips. “Can I get you anything else?”

“Ketchup,” my dad said, knowing deep down he would never see it.

I pondered whether I should even bother asking but I did. “Can I get a glass of water.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You want a water?”

I nodded, knowing I would never see the water.

We ate our meal—minus the grits—and then waited fifteen minutes or so until the waitress wandered back to us.

She pulled a pile of checks from her apron. “Would you like anything else?”

“No,” we said collectively and way too quickly.

She peeled off a check and my Dad took it. She dreamily wandered off again as if controlled by a stoned puppeteer.

My Dad covered the check and I gave the tip. Even as bad as this waitress had been I was still going to leave her a descent tip. She hadn’t done anything rude but had just been slow and well, bad at waitressing. I felt bad for her.

The waitress wandered back to our table. “Would you like your check?”

I rubbed my goatee. “You already gave us our check.”

She snatched the check from the table. “Let me see that.”

She proceeded to go through the stack of checks from other tables she had. “This isn’t your check.” She rooted a while longer and then with a confused look on her face handed us another check. “I think this is it and it’s only two more dollars.”

She wandered off again led by that same stoned puppeteer.

Actually the bill we got was seven dollars more. I got out a few more dollars out to cover the check but the tip did not go up, in fact part of the original tip went towards the new bill. It takes a lot for me to leave a tip under twenty percent but this waitress was one of the worst I had ever had. I still felt bad for her but she was in the wrong line of work. She would have been much better at something like coal mining—far, far away from people.