Upon doling out the last fish stick you yell “86 the fingers!” and wink to the imaginary line cook that hangs out with you on Formican Island You are his favorite waitress and he loves your sense of humor.
Sometimes you silverware roll for fun. Often it is highly competitive.
Instead of “excuse me” you yell “BEHIND YOU” during your double-coupon-day grocery cart slalom. You know you have complete control of the vehicle, but neither your steering nor your break/lurch/smoked-turkey projectile skills instill confidence in your startled co-shoppers.
When your husband asks where your children are, you refer to them as the “two-top that totally just dined-and-ditched”
You know the aesthetic value of curly endive, and how it differentiates “Cheerios” from “Brunch”
On the way down to the basement to change the laundry you:
pack a lunch
grab 2 plastic bags
retrieve an errant pullup
deposit renegade pullup in bag 1
stick bag 2 in your pocket
put the lunch in the back pack
put the backpack on the boy
throw bag1 in the trash
walk the boy to school
readjust your hightop Reeboks and support hose
return home and go directly to the basement
use the bag 2 for scooping the cat litter
and ONLY THEN change the laundry. ALL IN ONE TRIP.
Then you mourn how much more efficient that trip would’ve been if you’d started a new pot of coffee before packing the lunch.
Sometimes you cocktail napkin spiral for fun. Often it is highly competitive.
You bring your own corckscrew to dinner parties and remark about the “jammy fruit” and “chickory” notes of the $5 screwtop wine you are manually drilling through.
Upon experiencing culinary intimidation, you throw out words like aioli, ramekin, frisse, and beurre blanc in rapid succession. Why yes, I too adore preparing organic raw slow food for my family. My specialty is an aioli ramekin frisse beurre blanc!
Instead of wearing your baby or pushing a stroller through the throngs at the farmers market, you balance your child on one flat palm and yell “COMIN’ THROUGH!”
When having a housework tantrum, you throw out subversive lingo like “set-ups” “sidework” and “GARNISH!”
Sometimes you carpet sweeper for fun. Often it is highly competitive.
###
Thank you, Mouthy Housewives for giving me your much-coveted seal of approval for my Hair Memoirs. I want you to know that I share this award with Rudy Huxtibles everywhere.
Thank you also to Cheryl at Deckside Thoughts for The Sunshine Award.
And to Maggie and Becky for the amazing LTYM shout outs. I know there are people I am forgetting to thank, but my brain just invited Maggie to see David Sedaris with me on Tuesday April 13th…Last Tuesday. Meaning, I have no business posting right now.
This was so funny. I’m starting to agree with a friend that everyone at some point in their life needs to work in a restaurant. Sadly I haven’t, but there’s still time…
I still use BEHIND YOU and my husband just doesn’t understand the whole efficiency thing when it comes to planning ahead for a trip to the washer. I so get that.
I had to look up aioli ramekin frisse beurre blanc. Curly lettuce in a ceramic bowl with both garlic mayo AND reduced white wine with butter sauce is WAY over the top. Show off.
. . .and of course, after dinner (but before dessert) you run a crumb catcher over the table and ask if anyone would like coffee.
Wonderful!
I wish I had your brain, what a great thing to think back to.
And your dead on with everyone.
Yeah, I was a COCKTAIL waitress, no less, while in college. A 21 yr old cocktail waitress, how cliche is that. But it was my life.
I’m picturing this existential version of Marge Simpson.
Do NOT knock screw top wines.
Some of the best of Australia and New Zealand are now bottled with screw tops. Cork, you see, is not “green.” Napa Valley is following suit quickly.
It’s still a hoot to order a $60 bottle of wine in a fine restaurant, have the sommelier show up at your table with his important, smug demeanor, and hear a click, “There you go.”
Sorta takes the sport out of it.
Beautifully done, Ann.
I think this is my all-time favorite.
XO
A.
I love the “two top who just dined and ditched”. My kid also has yet to pay for a meal.
Loved it!
This is great!!! I can so identify with just about all of these!
“My specialty is an aioli ramekin frisse beurre blanc!” LMAO!!!!!
And if you worked at TGI Fridays, your side work would be called OTLEs and a server is a dub/dub.
Perfect! To this day, I contend that waitressing is the hardest and most stressful job I’ve ever had, because you do have to remember a zillion (give or take) things at once.
And it really is good training for being a parent.
Where was the “spitting in the eggs” part?
The chunk of my soul that worked food service for 10 years thanks you for this post.
A brilliant post from you Ms. Imig.
Now, I’m off to marry my ketchups.
I….can’t….breath.
That was so awesome.
I say “Behind you,” still, in random environments where “excuse me” would suffice. I especially enjoy saying it when I’m walking to restaurant restrooms – which may appear as though I’m showing solidarity but probably just makes me look like a giant, delusional ass.
I also still carry way too much stuff at once wherever I go. I’ll take my badges of honor where I can get them.
It really doesn’t ever leave you, like it or not. Loved this. 😉
I think you need to organize the Waitress Games. I want to see all these highly competitive sports in action!
I always changed the behind you to “hot behind”. Also when cleAning for Dinner parties I always yell out…WEEDS! I’M IN THE WEEDS.
This one time, in college, I came busting through the library doors with a “COMIN’ IN!” like the library was a bustling kitchen in which someone might come around the corner and smash into me with a tray of…books.
It’s really quiet in libraries.
P.S. This post made me strangely nostalgic.
P.P.S. The former server life comes back to haunt me in my dreams to this day. The nightmares where I just CAN’T get to my tables are the WORST. And all because I’m just stuck out on the back dock smoking a cigarette, all distracted like.
Perfect!! So funny:) I think being a waitress was great training for me being a mom, if only being a mom included tips:)
Ah, I do mourn wasted efficiency opportunities. And create more work when I shout “Behind you!” at my husband and he spills coffee all over the floor.
The rest though, I don’t do. Those are just sick.
I’ve been in the service industry for 14 years (OMG – when did that happen?!)and although I don’t have children, my boyfriend totally cracks up when I’m trying to do a gazillion things at once – but it always works! Awesome post!
This is such a funny post, I loved it from start to finish. Although I think the bit about your trip to change the laundry and what you do before you actually get there is typical of any Mom multitasking with a mile long “to do” list in her head!!
In the weeds! The back dock! The comments are just as good as the post itself. Love this one. Especially COMIN’ THROUGH!
Ok, 86 me. I’m stocking the caddies and getting out of here.
xo e.
Like Heather of the EO, I’m still haunted by those dinner-rush-and-you-just-got-slammed nightmares.
But this post actually made me nostalgic for the good old days. I loved being a server.
And since I married a man who also worked as a waiter at one time, I can say “Behind you!” without needing to translate.
LOVE THIS.
Haven’t strapped on the server shoes in over 10 years, but I too, still have the dreams. Loved the job, did it for a very long time and it still makes me smile.
…and no, my husband has no clue what I mean when the lingo slips out, which also makes me smile. 🙂
HA!
My name is JD, and I am a former waitress.
I still sometimes feel the need to consolidate ketchups (often in a competitive manner) and can clear a table of six plates by piling them all up one arm. I find myself doing silver service when spooning up vegetables and always make sure the water glasses are filled and on the table before anything else.
And when I eat out, my table is the cleanest one in the restaurant.
I still consolidate condiments. And I have a desire to clear empty plates as soon as they are empty to make room for the next course.
And I was a lousy waitress…
This is totally true. I used to get REALLY annoyed about my friends corkscrews (seriously, where’s the sport in a two handled corkscrew)?
I do not miss those days!
Oh man, you nailed it Ann. Hysterical and true.
Thank you! You just gave me a vocabulary for tomorrow night’s PTA “mixer” dinner where I will undoubtedly be recruited for something though “I’m just a girl who cain’t say aoili”.
Cheers,
Julie
Sadly, I have no restuarant experience, but only because I knew I’d be spilling more than serving. I’ve got bakery experience though – I know, not an impressive.
But I could totally tell you the difference between a sour creme, glazed and cruller.
(P.S. somehow ‘m following you twice. I’m trying to solve that issue, but I have one son wanting a snack and another wanting to play Mario Bros., give me a minute 😉
That is excellent, Ann! “Comin’ through!!!!”
It’s a good thing I was never a waitress. I’d get all the bad tables and would envy you in a very competitive manner.
Still do.
There’s a lot of similarities between the tasks in waiting tables and nursing (and house keeping for that matter).
The common denominator is thinking ahead, being prepared and being proactive (reducing repetitive steps and increasing efficiency).
Think of all the thing that saves:
lives
meals
tantrums
sanity
dates
I could go on but I have bigger fish to fry.
the image of the kid resting on your flat palm is awesome. i spent so many years in food service that it’s still hard for me to eat in a restaurant without having a “waiting tables” nightmare later that night.
You are hilarious! so glad i found you…
Oh, the memories. Love was a server for 12 years. I heard every story imaginable. And I know all the lingo. She still has nightmares even though it’s been many a day since she waited on the elderly couple who all but guaranteed her a 50 cent tip. Or prom night. Love prom night. We’d often celebrate and split a 40 and bag of peanuts with those high-profit events.
Beautifully told!
Cheers,
SLC
BRILLIANT!!!
I waitressed for a huge, grouchy German chef. SOOO goddam scary.
Did you really go see David S.? It’s really fun to watch him read. I have seen him every time he’s come to town- and I have a book for each of my boys that’s he’s signed to them. Oh boy, they’d better appreciate those when they’re older.
My computer crashed and I’m too broke to replace it- I have missed my Ann’s Rants! The flesh and blood world is highly over-rated, I gotta say.
#1 sign you are no longer a waitress, nobody tips you for good service and nice legs anymore…
This is hilarious. I notice though you didn’t include anything about dressing a little bit sluttier than normal in hopes of getting better tips from seriously old men. Or was that just me?
I love this so much I am compelled to reveal my secret pact with God made 15 years ago.
“Dear God, I promise to tip 20% after tax to every server for the rest of my life if I NEVER have to waitress ever, ever again.”
So far so good.
I still yell “Comin through at the grocery store.” And a Ramekin is sometimes referred to as a Monkey Dish at our house.
Hilarious! And if you use bleach and water in a bucket to clean grease off your kitchen floors. And if you obsess over varicose veins.
And if you’re always telling your husband you’re ‘in the weeds.’ But like a true restaurant manager, he slaps you on the bakc but does very little to ease the demand.
This post is pure genius.
And I am absolutely incapable of NOT saying “behind you” when I duck past someone. It’s like a handicap of some kind.
Waitresses of the world, unite!
xo
I’ve been a server in a breakfast place, a pizza hut, a dairy queen (ew – the serving part, not the treats) and a bar/restaurant. I truly preferred balancing the tray full of entrees on one flat palm and 4 mugs of beer in the other hand to runny eggs and coffee. Dinner / drinks for the win!
(not to mention the cash. oooooh, the cash. those were the days).
Everything after “hightop Reeboks” was a blur….
This is so, so, so funny! And so true! I was a breakfast/lunch waitress in college but got quickly moved up to a Cocktail Waitress. I am sure it was much more because of my boobage than my mad waitressing skills.
Thanks for the laugh!
I totally forgot about all that!! Sigh. Good times.
You threw me right back into Bud’s Diner on all you can eat fish night. Oh yes, I did. Completely awesome post, and then the comments reminded me of even more.
I do almost all of the things you mentioned … once a waitress, always a waitress?
My sister-in-law is a waitress and I have seen many of these in action, even when she is “off duty”. 🙂
i love it! i have no kids but i do ALL of those things. especially BEHIND YOU. also, whenever i’m being waited on in cafés, i always bus my own table. that gets a lot of interesting looks here in paris. they don’t quite know what to make of me. but since you don’t tip here, it makes me feel a little better if i help them do as little work as possible.
Here from google reader share…
I was also a waitress for many years and I found myself laughing out lout at this.
My new favorite post!
Despite having done my fair share of multi-plate carrying, memorizing of orders, quick-check of seven tables walking to the kitchen-ing, it never dawned on me that my obsessive multi-tasking while on the way from one place to another in the house might be the result of the job that paid the college bills. Thanks for the brilliant insight into myself, wrapped in a ball of hilarious.
Hysterical. Absolutely, 100%, genius.
I was never a waitress because I’m too cranky. I have complete respect for them though – you are hilarious, Thank you!
I waited tables, and although I TOTALLY sucked because I couldn’t remember what people ordered (I’m blonde) I can still carry five cups of coffee and refer to things going kuput as “86” as it: “Hey guess what honey? The Taylor’s marriage is 86.”
I LOVE “two-top that totally just dined-and-ditched” And I thought I had it rough with bad tippers.
That brought back memories…. What a hoot. But I never worked in classy places so dang!– I never had anything to used when “experiencing culinary intimidation”…. until now.
Great post.
xo
I was the worst waitress ever. Or, so I was told every day at least once until I cracked under the pressure and quit. Hardest job I ever had. Seriously. Please tip well, folks. Your waitress just might be on the edge!
I always tell my husband, “Full in — full out,” when he makes empty-handed trips in or out of the kitchen. And I’m teaching my kids how to pour wine and use a crumber. I was an excellent waitress.
i’m so happy that you used 86ed. i’m afraid too many people don’t know what that means & i’ll look like a doofus when i say it outside of a restaurant.
this took me back to my waitressing days!
awesome post! glad i’m not the only one who has 2 dine/ditchers in the house.
http://jingleyanqiu.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/jingles-may-awards-week-1-awards-4-u-all/#comments
Happy May,
Happy Tuesday!
Funny stuff, my friend. I’ve never been a waitress. Can’t remember crap. Can’t balance crap. Can’t be that nice to crappy people.
Ha! I’ve totally yelled “CORNER” while moving from aisle to aisle in the grocery store.
I love this post. I spent my college years slinging burgers at the Nitty Gritty and I blame it for the reason I nearly REFUSE to make two trips from the car with groceries. There is no reason I cannot carry all of this at the same time!