A New Outlook…

During my shift waiting tables on Tuesday night I came to the realization that I hated my job and I was completely over it.  This is not something you want to realize when you have only been at the job five weeks.  The past three or four shifts have sucked for various reasons, and I haven’t made nearly as much money as I should have and this only makes it worse.  So on the way home on the subway Tuesday night I had a little chat with myself.  I basically said to myself that I needed to stop taking the job so seriously, I needed to stop getting upset by things when they didn’t go my way, and I needed to realize that the job for better or worse was excellent money and that I needed it.

I had the same conversation with my roommate who agreed with me that it was not good to hate a job you’ve only had five weeks.  He also reminded me that it was a means to an end and that if I hated it, that would keep me motivated to look for a real job.  I reminded myself of all of this on my way to work tonight.  And without a doubt I had the best shift tonight that I have had since I started working there.  I didn’t make the most money, but I dealt with every thing without getting upset and just let the crap roll off my back.  And all though it wasn’t THE BEST money night, it was the 2nd BEST money night.

And trust me when I say it was not a smooth night at all.  The restaurant just spent a trillion dollars getting a state of the art computer system with all the bells and whistles.  And it sucks ass.  It has a response time of about 20 seconds.   Meaning you touch the screen to ring up a burger and it takes 20 seconds to register that’s what you want.  This means it adds minutes to every check you deal with every night.  To make matters worse, the entire system was down tonight when the shift started.  Luckily it was back up withing 20 or so minutes so it didn’t create too much havoc.  Unfortunately at about 10:30 when I was very busy it lost all of my checks.  Well sort of.  I could see them.  I just couldn’t access them.  So anytime someone ordered something new, I started a new check.  And then when the table was ready to pay I had to get a manger to override the system, combine all the checks and then print it for me.  And then if a table was paying with a credit card, once again the manager had to override the system and do the card manually.  Of course all of my tables wanted to pay at once and it took forever to take care of them.

But I did not get upset.  I just explained to them all that it was a new computer system and that I would get them out as quickly as possible.  Most of them found it funny and were fine.  Trust me when I say I could have let that ruin my night, but I didn’t.  I just rolled with it and let it go.

I also had one bitchy table.  They hated everything from the word go.  I didn’t get the drinks right.  They weren’t in the right glasses.  The drink wasn’t pink enough.  I wouldn’t give them separate checks.  Needless to say, I realized about three minutes in I wasn’t going to get a tip, so I cut my losses and ignored them.  I waited on them as much as I had to and was as nice as I could be.  They left me exact change on the tab with no tip, just as I expected.  I just laughed about it.  Some people are just unhappy and there’s nothing I can do about it.  The way I see it, 42 other tables thought I was great tonight.  One didn’t.  I don’t think it was me.  On other nights yes, it was me.  But not tonight.

Tomorrow (Friday) I have to be at a meeting at 9:00 a.m. for the shows in Oklahoma for next summer.  Maybe tomorrow’s post should be Oklahoma Day One?