A man calls me over to his table. He is wearing a dark navy suit and has a head of salt and pepper hay atop his head. He blends in easily with the surrounding corporate lemmings that routinely visit this restaurant each weekday between noon and 2pm. I head towards his table at his request, indicated by a direct glare and a nod of the head. Yes sir, right away sir, I somehow find myself assuming the role of his lunchtime subservient executive assistant, not due to my role as a server but the expectant manner he exerts.
"This curry is cold" he says looking up at me. The only power a server holds over the guest is height. As long as the guest does not rise from his lowly place atop the wooden chair, as long as he is down there and I am up here, I maintain a sliver of respect. He remains seated.
"Oh I am so sorry sir, let me take it to the kitchen and have them remake a new meal for you."
"No, no, no I don't have time for that, I just wanted to let you know that the curry is cold"
"Please sir, the kitchen will heat your food immediately, your meal will be their first priority"
"No, no there is no time for that.... I just wanted you to know, maybe you could tell someone"
"Are you sure sir?"
"Yes, there is no time."
A nod of the head again, I assume I am dismissed. I rush back to the kitchen. As a server in a high volume establishment I find myself walking at extremely rapid speeds, near Olympic racewalking pace, simply out of habit rather than necessity. I walk with my elbows bent with my forearms out at ninety degrees and my hands hanging down like an obedient puppy dog. This is the prime position to poke our noses over tables and see if anything needs clearing, refilling or attending to at all. This is the natural fast paced waitress pose, we all find ourselves in that exact position at some point, at which moment we jerk our hands down to our sides and blush with rosey shame.
I locate the owner/manager, a comibined title that I highly reccomend avoiding by both the employee and the employer and will address further in a later post. I quickly blurt out the issue, refraining from adding any opinion, unnecessary words and whilst maintaining a military tone and pace. "Table 51 has a cold curry, they refused having it reheated or remade, unhappy guest" The owner continues scraping plates into the garbage bin and placing the heavy porcelain plates atop the quickly escalating pile infront of the dishpit, correction by current owner/manager: dish area ("no one wants to work in a dish pit"). "Okay", nothing more, he grips my shoulders and moves me aside to doubly inform me that I am in the way and too slow to respond to normal verbal cues such as "excuse me". "How long did he wait for his order to arrive?"
I stutter. I don't know. I didn't bring his food to his table, a common occurence in this restaurant is that another server will run food to a table as it appears on the ready side of the kitchen. He glares at my ignorance, without question implying that it is now, my fault.
Not five minutes have past when he finds me at a computer screen with a handfull of dirty plates. He takes the plates without warning, throwing me off balance and replaces the plates with a bill fold with table 51's adjusted check. "Make sure the print out excludes the curry, assure the customer it will never happen again, GO!" I race walk away from the computer without closing the screen only to later be repremeded for not closing the screen. But at that exact moment I related closing the screen to turning off the television when a air raid alarm begins sounding: unnecessary and also worthy of punishment.
I return to table 51 where I am greeted without eye contact or comment. The two men continue their indepth conversation while intermittedly sending emails on their palm pilots positioned uniformly within hands reach on the right hand side of the table, just infront of their beverages. It astonishes me that these two men, who I assume to be succesful in the business world, can truly be under the impression that I think they cannot see me. I am standing within sneezing distance of each one of their noses, but for some reason they cannot seem to see above the crown of their heads. No, I stand corrected,how could I forget? I am wearing the invisible cloth I put on with my serving apron.
"Would you like any coffee or tea gentlemen?" I interrupt.
The looks I recieve are vibrantly exuding the question of "how dare I interrupt, and what took me so long". I wonder how each table despises me so for interrupting, yet is upset for the space of time between my visits to their table. How can I get from table to table at a quick enough pace without interrupting, if each guest refuses to acknowledge my presence or existence at their table? I remind myself that I am standing and they are seated, I retain my respect.
"No, just the bill" they return to their conversation forcing me to interrupt once again.
I place the bill on the table and politely reassure the guest that the bill excludes his cold curry.
"No, no put the curry on the bill"
"I couldn't sir, it was cold, you can eat cold curry at home, but its unacceptable here"
"But I ate it, didn't I? Put it on the bill"
"No sir, I cannot"
"Put it on the bill"
This is getting awkward, and the man is not advising me to put it on the bill nicely, he is actually quite angry that I have excluded it.
"Have a great day gentleman, and sorry for the cold curry"
I racewalk back to the kitchen, the safezone when unattended by the owner/manager and chef/angry angry lady with hot plates and hungry look.
Another server walks into the kitchen at a pace nearly as fast as mine with her hands full of dirty plates, she drops them with a thud that I can't believe didn't cause breakage and races over to the big silver bowl. The always present, "big silver bowl" that is always full of greasy premade french fries. She lunges her hand into the bowl and races back to the computer stuffing her face with greasey starch while stressfully punching in orders.
I am tempted to do the same to drown out my misery. Just as I am tempted to walk up to the bar after shift and have round after round of shots, just as I am tempted to stand outside with the other servers and angrily suck back some cancer, but instead I just wonder. I wonder about, and hate on the entire industry, my inovlvement in it, and the uselessness of a Univeristy undergraduate degree. And lastly, I wonder why the man wanted to tell me his curry was cold if he didn't want me to take it off the bill.
I racewalk back to table 51 and collect the billfold to see that he has left me a flimsy ten percent tip despite the excluded curry. If I didn't take the curry off he would have been upset, and because I took the curry off he was upset. I remind myself that I am standing....but he is no longer sitting and I am left to wonder where that leaves our power struggle. Why did he bother telling me his curry was cold?
