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Interview with my self #2: 14-year-old Busboy

    Pat (restaurant manager): So, you are how old?
    Me: Fourteen.

    Pat: Do you have any work experience?
    Me: I have to unload the dishwasher and clean my room before Berdie our cleaning lady comes–if you can believe that.

    Pat: What is your schedule?
    Me: Home Room, Spanish, Social Studies, Study Hall, Lunch, Algebra, Bio, Health.

    Pat: I mean, when are you available to work?
    Me: Saturday. Not this Saturday, or the next one, but maybe the one after that. I’ll ask my parents. Maybe on Sunday, but I switch houses on Sunday, so I’m not sure.

    Pat: Why do you want to work at The Deli?
    Me: I love cash registers.

    Pat: You will be clearing tables, not working the register.
    Me: Okay, but these scrawny arms will drop a bus tub full of dishes on more than one occasion. I’ll be all “GOT IT. Got it. Got…CRASH”

    Pat: Busboys make $3.50 and hour. Will that work for you? You will also get tipped out by the waitstaff
    Me: Pat, I think that will support the essentials: enormous chewy sweet tarts, show tune cassettes, and frosted pearl lipstick. I’ll leave the cash scattered around my room, and drive my brother crazy with my nonchalant wealth.

    Pat:Wow, I’m impressed.

    Me: There’s more! One day you will promote me to work at the take out window, where I will drop trays full of cookies, and I cry in front of the customers as it takes me two hours to close a six foot by six foot mini deli.

    Pat: True Dat! Years later, you will return to waitress in our roach-infested downtown location, and I will beam with pride as my prodigal deli daughter returns back into the fold.

    Me: Lest we forget catering, Pat. Lest we forget. I will also serve as catering help for this burgeoning enterprise—learning such vocabulary as carving station, chafing dish, and ramekin.

    Pat: And we will educate you in the art of fanning napkins with a cocktail glass. Don’t forget the napkin fan!

    Me: Pat, I could never forget the napkin fan. I’ll see you three weeks from Saturday, when I will leave work exhausted after my two-hour shift.

    Pat: That’s my girl!

    if you found this interview illuminating, you might enjoy my interview with myself as a twelve-year-old babysitter.

    0 thoughts on “Interview with my self #2: 14-year-old Busboy”

    3. CatLadyLarew

      Maybe I should apply for a job at that place… I think I could probably handle it. And $3.50/hour? Oh, the riches I could amass…
      My first job was babysitting for 35 cents an hour!

    9. Lyndsay

      I think if you return to my room at my mom’s house, you’ll be able to recover hundreds of dollars that I earned and subsequently littered my bedroom with.

    13. anymommy

      I love cash registers. That’s priceless. I hostessed at a dive in our town all through high school. All you could eat fish on Wednesdays. Quality clientele.

    17. Brutalism

      The crying part is so relatable. I cried once when I waitressed at Red Lobster because a customer noted that it took 25 minutes to get his lunch during our “20 minutes or it is free” promotion. He was so nice and good natured, and I burst into tears. He did not pursue the free lunch after that.

    18. Zoe Right

      I too was a dishwasher but at a prestigious country club. Well until I dropped the wedding cake of one of the daughter’s of a board member. Ahhh good times.

    23. KMcJoseph

      I used to tip my busboy very well…

      Quickly cleared tables = more customers = more tips = more tips for busboy = quickly cleared tables

      The circle of life.

    25. Heidi

      That’s hilarious. I’ve cried many times at work. Not recently, thanks to Lexapro and not giving a crap anymore.
      I was fired from my only waitressing job because I gave a customer their spaghetti “to go” in a paper bag. Well, they had sent it back 3 times!

    28. lisa

      You’re not showing up in my reader so I’ll have to track you down on my own.

      Fan napkins and crying….you just described my family’s Thanksgiving dinner.

    30. merlotmom

      Hysterical! Took me back to my first job where I also made $3.50/hr. (We must be around the same age.) It was at one of the first “salad by the pound” joints (I think it was called “Salad by the Pound) and I can still smell the kitchen disinfectant. To this day the combo of lettuce and Lysol make me gag.

    31. Amy@Bitchin'WivesClub

      And now you are responsible for the lives of two young children…. Hmmm. Obviously past deli disasters cannot be looked at as indicators of future abilities. 😉

      p.s. Will I really be back to commenting soon??? My internet is supposed to be up and running at home tonight by midnight!!! I’ll be up waiting….

    34. TechnoBabe

      Waitress work in high school. Yep. Mine was in the restaurant in the local bowling alley. The restaurant manager got fresh and I was not “nice” so I didn’t get many hours there. This is a good interview.