You are Always Wrong
When a guest tells you he wanted a Coke, but your memory and your notepad and perhaps even everyone else at the table (the ones not paying the check) tell you he wanted iced tea, the iced tea you brought is wrong. Shame on you.
Tipping Out
Let's say the busser for your section did a fantastic job during your shift. Let's also say you had guests order scores of mixed alcoholic beverages, requiring the bartender to sweat bullets getting them out. Let's further imagine you split a couple parties of, oh, say ten people each and all their tips with another server. Let's finally recall that your guests do not care about any of that. Math time: average tips in - conscientious tips out = (approximately) crap in a bucket.
Groceries
You can't afford those.
Children and Their Parents
“I'm so sorry,” your guest tells you, “he spilled his drink again!” “Oh, that's all right,” you say, wearing a bright smile as you bend down with a towel. “Maybe we should try a kid's cup with a lid this time?” “Oh no,” your guest tells you, “he'll just throw an even bigger fit if he gets a cup that looks even LESS like a beer glass. Tell you what, why don't you bring him a plate of melted butter for him to lick on? That'll make him happy.” “Certainly, ma'am,” you say, on your way back to retrieve three more towels.
You are a Remedial Economics Teacher
Your guests are up in arms. They did not know - because YOU did not inform them - that their drinks, their appetizers, their salads, their scoops of ice cream with whipped topping and peanuts and chocolate sauce and caramel sauce and three cherries each (ingredients which all come from different places in your restaurant), were not complimentary. You apologize profusely for not reading the menu aloud for them. Your manager apologizes and clears their checks. They leave jubilant, assured they have no responsibility to pay for anything that has occurred over the past two hours. You are ecstatic for them.
No Moving Up
The professional ladder is more like a step stool. If you are not serving, you are in some form of management. If you are in management, you are waiting to die. (That is, unless you find you really enjoy it. In that case, we've solved the mystery of why you're failing to comprehend the content of this article.) Also, no raises. More about that below.
Conversation
Your guests will ask you if you are in school, no matter how old you look. You will either tell them yes, and then answer the follow-up question about your major, or you will tell them when you graduated and what your major was. If the former, they will wish you luck. If the latter, they will smile solemnly and turn their pity into renewed hunger. Either way, your answer will provide some rationalization for a sub-par tip. You will go to your next table and repeat.
Same-Side Sitters
There is room on both sides, but your couple will not utilize this room. They must have as many parts of their bodies in contact with one another as possible. This is because they have something special: they are one. If you do not acknowledge their deep abiding passion for one another with a good, audible, “awww”, you will betray yourself as an enemy of love. They will view you as an intruder in the sacred folds of their union and they will tip you or not tip you accordingly. Besides, they know that money is a mere trifle compared with the utter veracity of their love. They know better than you how little you really need that cash and how much you have been longing for something much, much more worthwhile.
Birthdays
It is Mrs. Checkpayer's birthday, and initially she is on your side. She silently communicates that she wants no fuss. In fact, she secretly wants no one in her group of eight or so to know that she is afflicted with the curse of aging. Mr. Deadbeat Non-checkpayer, Mrs. Checkpayer's brother, quietly insists upon cake and a song. You look longingly at Mrs. Checkpayer, hoping she heard and will insist otherwise. She does not. You will then neglect every other table you have to prepare a cake, candles, plates and forks, and search desperately for other servers whom you must beg, with your last shred of dignity, to come enrich the musical spectacle to come. Every poor sucker who says yes will then abandon their sections to crowd your table and, depending on your restaurant, you will either begin leading the group in the happy birthday song or some abhorrent creation adapted from the most embarrassing backlogs of music in the public domain. Mr. Deadbeat will be in stitches, as though there were no better entertainment in the world than to watch his older sister squirm. Mrs. Checkpayer will not know whom she despises more, you are her deadbeat brother who won't even be contributing to the cost of the cake. In the end, family ties will win, and the only person to receive any financial assistance from Mrs. Checkpayer, because he still has no job, will be Mr. Deadbeat. Your only earnings will be your coworkers' bitterness, directed at you for forcing them to audibly announce the silly off-key reason they have not even gotten drinks to their tables.
$2.13
You will earn $2.13 (yes, two dollars and thirteen cents) per hour. This has not changed for years, despite economic factors such as inflation or the abolition of slavery, and will most likely not change, ever. True, the restaurant must guarantee you make minimum wage. This means there is a safety net in place for you if you average less than around four or five dollars in tips per hour some week, depending on the minimum wage at the time you are reading this. Somehow this is little consolation to you. The fact is, you probably earn more than that in tips (ever so slightly more), which means the restaurant is never going to have to pay you more than $2.13/hr. This is a good gauge for how much the restaurant values you as an employee. Somewhere between Tom Joad's earning power in The Grapes of Wrath and your financial portfolio at fifteen, working that first job you had cleaning out grease traps with a spoon, this is where falls your value as a restaurant server. But you will not let this discourage you, no. You will pledge to provide $2.13 worth of service every hour, every day you're at work.
With a smile on your face.
