vocab control

(swear word alert)

Saturday night was a rough one at the Roadhouse. We got hit with a lot of large parties at once, and the kitchen ran behind. I had one table with a twenty-seven minute wait for their food; they were understandably pissed. I'm not sure why they were pissed at me- it's not like I cook the food- but that happens all the time. I'm wearing a Roadhouse t-shirt, and thus can serve as the representative of the institution at which to direct derision.

Left at that, it would be a boring story. I like most of my tables, but there are a few every night that are jerks.

I tried to fix it, though. My people-pleasing desires took over my ability to read hopelessness in a situation, and I kept trying and trying to make them happy. "More lemonade? More rolls? Anything else I can get for you?"

We put our salad dressing in little plastic cups at the side of the salad plates, presumably to further contribute to landfill problems. (Hey, it's a steakhouse.) There was just such a container of honey-mustard dressing sitting on the table, and in my flusteredness I sat a glass of lemonade down in the container.

"Oh, shit," says the distraught waitress.

The people at the table completely stopped talking to me. Stopped making eyecontact, even. I apologized profusely, but they didn't even acknowledge that I was standing there.

I went back to the kitchen to find the manager, Derrick, (luckily, the general manager wasn't working Saturday), and instead stood by a glass rack trying to remember if swearing at a table was grounds for firing. Derrick came over to me and said, "so, table 211 says that you spilled a drink on them and swore at them."

Distraught waitress: "I didn't spill the drink!"

So, yeah. Lots of jokes about the resident preacher* needing to go to church and get cleaned up a bit. It was pretty funny, although I hope I don't find out at work tonight that I got wrote up for it.

One of the other servers was picking on me about it in the bar, in front of a funny white-haired man who comes in a few nights a week to flirt with the waitresses. Of course my ministry student status came up, and he expressed the appropriate level of shock that a 'good little minister-girl' would use such language. He also pointed to the beer mugs in my hand, and noted further incongruity. (He was far too sloshed to say 'incongruity,' but I don't remember what he actually said.)

No longer quite so distraught waitress: "I'm a beer drinking, swearing, Pentecostal woman preacher. That's just how it is."

Drunk white-haired guy: "Well, serve me up, sweetie!"

Current song on Pandora: Life Becomes Me, The Nadas
So here's my revelation I am, I am,
I'm all right when you're right beside me.
I'd never heard of The Nadas before. Good song.

*Adriana's advice was pretty good, though: next tine I find myself in a similar situation, I'll say I'm a student at Bethany.