The "Buzz" on Servers

 The recent news story of a well-known restaurant serving a small child alcohol made me cringe.  Not just because of the act itself, but because I’ve been there and know what this server must have been going through.   Being a server- a good server rather- is a work of art.   Anyone that has waited on customers for a living would understand that the base pay a server makes is equivalent to buying a bag of Purina Cat Chow.

The customers that a server encounters can be downright strange.   I once had a couple come in with their two children and demand that I sing to their father for his birthday.   Not only was the restaurant I working at a non-singing type of establishment, I have about as good of singing voice as the rejects that appear on the American Idol auditions.   This didn’t seem to faze them so I finally found a pitiful candle that looked like it had been gnawed off, and placed it in a dish of rice pudding.   Three minutes and two bribes to my co-workers later, we assembled around the table and sang in a sad off-key range.   This seemed to suffice though, because I was rewarded for my efforts with a two dollar bill, a gold coin and a business card for Avon products.  Yeah- I’ll make sure and add Avon business card to my deposit slip at the bank.

Servers can also be marriage intervention counselors.    Once, on a busy Friday night, I had a gentleman flag me down urgently.   As I anticipated whether I was going to get yelled at for a steak being undercooked or an order being wrong, he asked if I could take a drink of his Crystal Light Raspberry Ice.   You see, he and wife were in an argument of whether not that drink had a good flavor and naturally the server should be the tie-breaker.   I’m not sure what disturbed me more- that I didn’t know we were serving that drink or what I was being asked to do.   Needless to say, sometimes you have to bite the bullet and do what the customer wants.  Remember-the customer is always right.

And sometimes- customers can be just downright mean.   One afternoon as I was sweeping underneath one of my recently departed tables, I saw an older lady sitting by herself eating lunch.   As I was having a deep moment about life and human nature, a fellow server asked if I could stop cleaning for awhile.  When I asked her why, she informed me that sometimes people are just mean.   Apparently, the silver haired grandma told my co-worker that ‘she just can’t eat while watching a cleaning person.'

So, while in no way am I excusing this incident, the next time you are giving your server a hard time because they haven’t refilled your third Blue Moon draft with an orange slice, think a little about what they are going through!