that thirty-something waitress

I am waitressing again, like I did during my undergrad. School means waitressing. It’s part-time and I can work nights instead of early mornings like I did at the coffee shop. I am not a morning person. I am not a night person either really. I like 10 a.m.-4 p.m. The rest of the hours I am pretty useless.

A decade has passed since I waited tables and times have changed and I have changed and it is harder now. I have kids at home now that I am missing reading to. People are more skeptical and write Yelp reviews now. You can Google the price of a bottle of wine from your table now. I have run a marathon and put my body through the paces now. I am a hardened mother. I don’t get out and talk to the public often so my dialogue is forced, trite.

I am polite because of my raise, but snarky because of my personality. I try to be customer-servicey, but my bite comes in any way. I hate pop now and don’t want to refill it more than twice. Don’t you know how much sugar that is? In the back of the house, the other servers have cliques that I’m not a part of, inside jokes, complaints about us new people taking their hours or doing our side work wrong or asking questions or not asking questions.

But a job like this–a little one that does not take all my hours from me–allows me to keep writing. It keeps me out of the corporate world, keeps me in the artistic one. My kids don’t go to daycare and Brandon is awake to say, “bye!” a hundred times from the driveway when I leave. It’s OK. It’s a season in my life. I will manage.