Busboy and Waitress

Megan Corvette Ward English 101 1/26/10 The View from a Waitress at a Truck Stop I am a waitress; I work at the Flying J Country Market Restaurant in McCammon, ID. I have worked there for about two and a half years. My duties are to take peoples orders for food and drinks, serve it to them and make sure they are satisfied. As a waitress I’m the face of the restaurant to the customer, and if something goes wrong, my fault or not, they blame me. It takes a whole restaurant to make a table of customers happy. I am simply the one who retrieves the drinks and makes sure the food and service is to their satisfaction. Where I work once I take the customer’s order I enter it into a computer that prints out their bill and sends the order to the cook. If there are any really specific instructions to the ticket I have to tell the cooks or write on the ticket. Sometimes I forget, but four out of five times it’s the cooks fault. When another waitress takes a break or has a personal issue the other waitresses have to take care of the whole floor, this means all the tables, while the other waitress is gone. The dishwasher also plays a huge roll at the restaurant; they help keep us going with the small things that add up when you don’t have one. The things that add up that the dishwasher takes care of are the cups and little dishes we use for dressing or toast. The guests in the restaurant play a huge part in how the restaurant functions. Guests are exactly that they are guests. You treat you guest with respect and make sure they are happy, and in return they treat you with respect and thank you for all you do to make them happy. When I am working if I’m having a good day it helps sometimes, but no matter what the customers can change my mood. My guests are mainly travelers such as truck drivers; other than travelers we have the locals. More than half of the guests will treat a waitress like they are trash or something lower than them, which is mostly hurtful to new waitresses. When customers treat a waitress horribly it just makes her job harder. For example a restaurant can be a very noisy place; some people like to talk quiet and I can’t hear their order so they get mad. After they get made the customer will tend to treat you like an imbecile. One thing people think is that we spit in or somehow ruin the food we are serving them if they send it back; it’s not worth it to lose our jobs over that. As a waitress myself, walking into a restaurant to eat is a whole new experience now. I expect the server to do exactly what I would do. I am very laid back, but if the server keeps screwing things up I will talk to a manager. It doesn’t happen often in fact most of the time I leave at least a $5 tip even if I’m on a date. If it’s not enough I will slip in some extra. Being a waitress has definitely made me a stronger person not only mentally but physically too. I have learned how to read people very well, but of course only to the extent of what kind of customer they will be. This has helped me be a fake person in certain situations like family gatherings. Even though I act like a nice and sweet waitress normally if they push me too far my nice face goes away. Being a waitress can also take a huge physical toll on your body. Waitresses have many wrist and leg problems that’s one reason I’m going to school because I’ve seen what it’s done to others. Final thing is that you should treat your waitresses with more respect their job becaue is a lot harder than most people think.

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