Why I Waited Tables After College
There’s a rampant social misconception about waiting tables: that it’s reserved only for the biggest fuck-ups in life.
Yeah sure, there are some other presumptuous ideas about servers that are also casually tossed around. Like the fact that “ALL servers want to be singers and/or actors”, or my personal favorite — that “we just LOVE to wait hand and foot on cheapskates and assholes”. If you’re wondering where such miserable specimen exist (in the largest numbers), you need look no further than basically any establishment in Bergen County.
I first got into the service industry during the summer after junior year in college, because I backed up into some fratty dude’s brand new red Audi convertible. One second he wasn’t there, the next second he was; and just like that, I owed him something like $967. Rather than take it up with my insurance company, however, I decided to deal with it on my own. So I got a job.
My first gig was playing hostess for $9/hr at the local sushi hotspot. Once I’d proven I could memorize a floor plan, delegate table sections and pack up to-go orders, I was allowed to join the ranks of the tip-earning servers.
I’ll save for another post the visceral details of what it’s really like to work a busy night when the guest list is on a two-hour wait and 90% of the people dining at your restaurant are your peers and classmates. But just for fun, I’ll recount a few gems… like waiting on large parties comprised of slutty sorority girls and their drunk, douchey dates. Or recognizing one of those drunk douchebags as someone you may or may not have been set up with at your last sorority semi-formal. Or hearing people butcher the word “edamame”. Or explaining to a guest that a veggie roll consists of avocado, cucumber, and carrot — then being told, “I’ll just have an avocado roll then, but like, can you add cucumber and carrot to that.” Or best of all — getting a $1 tip on a huge bill from some rich bitch in your Pub Pol class who probably didn’t even recognize you go to school with her (and you know she’s rich because she has a building named after her family; that, and you stalked her on Facebook).
The good times continued into my senior year at Duke, by which point I was kind of hooked on the extra cash that waiting tables allowed me. How else was I going to fund my extracurricular activities, Monday through Sunday? And how else was I supposed to pay off my gazillion campus parking tickets?
Then shit hit the fan in 2009, as the story goes. After a string of unsuccessful interviews here, here, here, and here (the list goes on, by the way), I graduated without a single job offer and no real skills to speak of. After all, college isn’t where you go to acquire “job skills”; whoever heard of such a thing? No. It’s where you go to get an education. There’s a big difference.
In July of 2009, after two months of putzing around in Durham post-graduation, I packed my bags and moved up to New York to continue the job search. Okay, that’s a bit of a lie; in actuality, I moved up to New Jersey and took over a spare bedroom in my aunt’s house — but for a while, I let everyone believe the fantasy that I HAD DONE IT! I’D MOVED TO NEW YORK!
I didn’t have to pay rent; my aunt was super gracious. But I still had some bills to pay and wanted to chip in for groceries so my family wouldn’t think I was completely useless… and no one was biting. I couldn’t even seem to get interviews anymore. So I got the only job I could.
What was supposed to be a temporary means of survival turned into 13 of the most demoralizing months of my 22 years (22 at the time). One time, at around the 6-month mark, I dropped off a bowl of spinach dip at someone’s table; as I looked up, I realized it was an old varsity-cool guy-superstar-prom king from my high school in Seoul, Korea — with his newly minted wife. Another time, around the 1-year mark, I waited on another one of these old acquaintances from high school… and his entire family. It was only as I brought out dessert menus, however, that he finally tapped my arm in recognition — fuck if I was going to acknowledge him first! Yeah, I was ashamed at the time. Then he looked deep into my eyes, and holding both my hands in earnest he asked me: “What happened to you? W.. Why are you working here?” I muttered something back sheepishly about “networking” and “trying to get into the music industry”. But I know he was barely listening; all he could see was how far I’d fallen. How far I’d tumbled from the days of my ‘Most Likely to Succeed’ yearbook superlative.
I went home and bawled my eyes out that night, and more than likely polished off a bottle of wine or two. He’d looked at me with such searing pity and concern, I felt like all of my innards had been totally eviscerated. Upon some tear-soaked investigating, I discovered he’d graduated from Swarthmore the year before me and was now pursuing some course of graduate study at Columbia. Just great. I’d now thrown gasoline onto my roaring fire of self-pity.
Years later, I can finally look back on those days with some semblance of humor. I mean, life really does work in funny ways. Within a month of that ego-demolishing encounter, I was offered a job at Time Inc., took the job, then was offered another job in music (FINALLY!) by an old acquaintance I’d met… waiting tables.
So if you’re reading this by any chance, aforementioned-asshole-who-made-me-cry, I hope you know that I’m talking about you. And that I did get that job in music, even though you didn’t believe that I would.
I’m not vindictive, but I feel vindicated in my own small way for all of us servers who do and have done what we do to survive and make a living. Biting our tongues, day in and day out as crazy people shout at us because they wanted their steak well done but “still juicy”.
There’s still a lot of life ahead, wherein which — yes — I may prove to be the biggest fuck-up yet. But maybe not. And one thing I can say for sure is that every ounce of success I’ve had thus far, I owe to waiting tables. It taught me patience, humility, and most importantly — it gave me grit. I never would have survived a day in music without it.
And that’s more than most of you degree-touting ninnies can say.
