Why isn’t anyone writing about “100 Things Bank Tellers Should Do” or “Top 20 Pet Peeves about Electronics Store Employees?”

I guess it has to do with food, the big kahuna of human survival: You, the dining public, must eat to survive, thus you, the dining public, feels emboldened and empowered to tell those in the service industry how to ensure your survival by spelling out in sometimes whining and nit-picking detail exactly the way you prefer to pound your food in a restaurant setting.

Oh, I know. You were once a waitress or a bartender in college, so you are justified to make these semi-arrogant suggestions about not talking too much to your table unless I am handsome/beautiful and want to comp drinks or dessert, or to not leave plates on the table too long after you are finished. Ha ha ha. We’re all in this together, right?

No, we are not.

Spend a day serving. Spend a day tending bar. Today.

Better yet, spend the next two months depending on this income to live, so you get to know the best and the worst aspects of serving the public as well as that of bonding with your co-workers, upon whom you will depend for laughs and venting, but mostly for covering your ass when you’re weeded and for picking up your shift when you are too hungover or actually sick to work.

Better yet, make the hospitality venue your full-time profession. Hone your skills and be able to work plenty of doubles and still have the energy to get the orders in and the food served after 13 hours on your feet. See how much you care about striving for that perfect balance of not-too-perky but oh-so-jovial with your customers.

Some days you will have other stuff on your mind and will get distracted and forget an iced tea or a side of spinach. Some days you won’t feel well but you have to work to earn money, and you don’t want to lose your place on the schedule by calling out. Some days the cook will be hopeless and strung out and you will bear the brunt of it on the floor.

Some days your customers will drive you insane with insane demands, but you will laugh it off with your fellow servers in a successful attempt not to give in to the overwhelming urge to dump food in said customers’ laps. Some days you will have customers whom you would love to wrap up and save for tomorrow’s shift, because they are incredibly nice to be around, which makes them incredibly easy to serve well.

One day you will have more tables and customers than you ever have, and somehow on that day you will stay in your zone and get it done just right so that you, your customers, the kitchen, and your managers are all pleased, which will result in a fat bundle of cash in your wallet after your shift is done.

Some days you will understand that, by and large, most customers are simply okay to really great, and that the truly heinous ones–mostly an exception–feel as demanding as a table of 20 all by themselves, and they are the ones you never forget and who can ruin what was otherwise a good shift.

Learn to do your serving job well by knowing your menu and understanding the overall pace of your store, keep your focus, welcome the reasonable customers and cope with the terrible ones as best you can, and your profitable, good days will outnumber the others. You won’t be perfect, even though the rest of the world expects you to be as evidenced by recent press on the topic, but you will be a pro.

I detest bad service as much as anyone. I like to enjoy my dining-out experience, too. But so much of what I have been reading lately seems so petty and, well, unimportant in the grand scheme, you know? Go out, have a good time. Focus on your friends, your lover, your spouse, your kid, and don’t waste those minutes setting yourself and your server up for disappointment because you’re over analyzing the whole damn thing.

Still feeling a need to chastise your server for bringing out the entrees too soon because one member of your party kept texting someone and didn’t finish the soup 10 minutes ago like the rest of you did?

To quote one of my favorite co-workers: It’s just food. Everyone will get fed–some sooner than others.

“Baby, I love you. You have no idea.”

“I love you, too. You know that.”

“But you don’t understand. I LOVE you. I will do anything for you. I will cook for you. I will clean for you. I will pay the rent for you. I will do anything if you just know how much I love you.”

“I know. I hear you. I love you, too.”

“I don’t think you do know. I don’t think you have any idea.”

She sips her rum and cran through a tiny stirrer. He slurps his vodka and OJ in continuous thirsty gulps. She pushes his shoulder, then leans into him and shakes her head.

“You have no idea.”

“Baby, don’t start this. Don’t. I love you.”

“No, I don’t know. I don’t know. You don’t know. Because if you really did know, I’d know.”

She pauses, brushing imaginary stray wisps of hair out of her eyes.

“I love you more than you know. You don’t know. You may never know.”

She raises her head and pouts.

“You have no idea.”

He sighs and pushes his empty plastic cup toward the edge of the bar. He is ready for his fourth. She slowly sips her third.

“What do you want you do later?” he asks her.

“I want you to know how much I love you. I want you to really, really get it.”

“Baby, I don’t know how else to tell you. I love you.”

“But do you? Really? I don’t know.”

She starts to cry. He hugs her again.

“I love you, baby. I do.”

Her tears evolve into giggles. He hugs her tighter. Their awkward embrace causes them to sway on their bar stools. He brushes a sloppy kiss across her mouth. She smiles and takes another sip of her drink.

I glance down at my uneaten plate of food for which I was starving a few minutes ago. At this moment it is as appetizing as sand.

I glance at the couple I have been trying to ignore, trying not to hear, trying not to watch. But how can you ignore a train wreck that is playing out before you?

Even on this side of the bar, even when I finally have a day off, even when these are not my customers and I, in fact, am just another customer, I surprise myself with this sudden and remarkably low tolerance for dumb drunk talk–the talk I hear all the time but never listen to.

I slide my plate to the edge of the bar and nod to the bartender. She hands me my check. I shove a $20 toward her.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Thanks,” she answers.

It’s 7:45 a.m. Time enough to go home and cook my own breakfast.

“I’m just drunk enough to tell you this, now that he’s gone to the bathroom,” said the 40-year-old woman who had just paid a “compliment” to one such bartender by telling her she looked “49 at most,” even though said bartender is only 47.

“What?” asked the bartender who is also my professional mentor. She dwarfs me in size and always makes fun of mine, always telling me to “frickin’ eat something already,” even as I order fries and baked potatoes and anything else that won’t poison me, even when it is close to midnight. “Yeah, because someday you’re gonna wake up and look in the mirror and see me!” She is, in my mind, beautiful.

The single most important thing my mentor bartender has taught me is how to handle a drunk who should be served no more. With absolutely no drama, she can cut someone off with little more than a glance and the most subtle shake of her head. Her confidence, her don’t-even-question-me demeanor quiets the crazy ones almost immediately.The first time I saw her do this, I was in awe. The first time I tried it myself, it worked, much to my surprise. Someday, I need to tell her this.

“Ken and I–I mean I know we seem good, but we’re getting divorced,” continued the customer.

I did my best bartender routine to not listen to anything the woman said, even though I heard it all. After all, my mentor bartender had just introduced me to this couple, and they seemed happy enough, even if she was a horrible judge of age.

My bartender mentor nodded toward me for less than half a second, her glance telling me, “Yeah, I’m going in, even though I’d rather not.”

“Oh God, really?” she said to her customer.

“Yeah, we just decided tonight. But we’re the best of friends. We’re going to keep it really friendly. It’ll be fine.”

On this slow night, I had been $20 short in my drawer, which meant I had to make it up out of my already pathetic tips on a slow night. I wanted nothing more than to have my one drink after work at someone else’s bar and be done. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, really. And now I was thrust into someone’s extraordinary, life-changing moment.

“Well, that’s good,” said my mentor, looking around to see who needed another drink. “But wow,what a surprise.”

And as my mentor bartender walked away to tend the other side of the bar, I watched the husband of the couple return from the bathroom. Within mere minutes–less than five–he mentioned a car, and she mentioned how she might need it. He mentioned that he’d made the payments, and she mentioned that she couldn’t believe he was saying that.

Within ten minutes, she told him he’d better stick to what they’d agreed to do, and he told her he would only if she did. She said he wasn’t being fair, and that this was not going to be THAT kind of divorce. He said he knew that, but…. Being just drunk enough, she started to cry. Being just drunk enough, too, he put his arm around her shoulder.

My mentor bartender continued to tend to everyone else. I sighed and took on the couple, now listening, despite my every attempt to only hear them.

“I’m okay. I’m okay,” she said to him, shrugging off his arm as she wiped her eyes and moved her barstool a few inches from his. He stared at her, and through his concern was a slight glimmer of relief. But she wasn’t okay, and he really wasn’t relieved.

“One more round,” he said to my mentor bartender.

“You got it,” she said, grabbing two icy mugs from the freezer under the bar.

I looked at my mentor bartender. She looked at me. I gave her a subtle shake of my head. She gave me a moment’s glance, then smiled.

“On me,” she told the couple.

Within seconds I had my tab. I know exactly when to cut myself off. So does my mentor.

It also turned out we were only 10 years apart in age, which seemed huge when I was 12 and hugely insignificant when I was working in the same school with her decades later.

“We should have lunch out sometime when we’re not working,” I told her one afternoon as we watched the urchins in our charge slurp warm milk from tiny cartons and dip fish sticks in ketchup.

“Oh, no. I never do lunch,” she said, almost angry and clearly appalled.

Ooooookay. Seemed like it might be fun….

“Nothing personal,” she added, now apologetic for her harsh response. “It’s just that after my husband died, that’s all everyone wanted to do–lunch. I don’t know why, I swore I’d never be one of those ladies–a young widow no less–who did lunch!”

Got it. Well, not really. But okay.

I never had lunch with her. I never had a drink with her. I never saw her again after my short subbing tenure. Happily, I was able to tell her she was the single most influential teacher I ever had in terms of my writing. So it wasn’t a total loss of re-connection.

“Lunch?” came the text last Monday from the boy who’d ditched me last month.

“Working,” I texted back. Didn’t he already know that?

Frowny faces and “Awwwww” popped up on my iPhone.

“Lunch?” came the text the next morning, Tuesday.

“Working,” I texted back. I knew he knew this. “How about a drink later after you get off work tonight?”

No response.

Much later that night, when I was asleep in bed, came this text: “Just got your text. Not feeling well. Lunch tomorrow?”

“Working the next two days,” I texted back, adding, “I’m sure we’ll catch up whenever.” No response. Oh please, I thought, you are the one who instigated this nifty little invitation thread. WTF?

“Lunch?” came the text on Friday, three days later. Brilliant.

“I have plans later this afternoon, but an early lunch, sure,” I texted back. Because now I was genuinely curious about his odd persistence to meet for lunch. Surely he had finally realized his mistake in ditching me! Haha.

He chatted about nothing much. He drank three vodka crans and I downed the same number of mimosas. Right, we were perfectly comfortable with one another. The bartender hung around, telling us how he and his girlfriend were leaving to go north for the summer. What were we up to, etc.? The boy responded in generic kind about staying put “even in hurricanes.”

As far as I could tell, there was absolutely no point to this lunch.

So I asked him, “Why are we having lunch?”

“I miss you,” he replied. “And we’re buds, right?”

“You don’t miss me,” I answered, shaking my head. “And buds? Oh, okay.”

“Look I know I hurt you. But you have to test the waters before you get your feet wet, right? At least I told you how I felt. I mean, hasn’t that ever happened to you when you didn’t feel it for someone?”

Yep, time to call it a lunch.

“You didn’t hurt me,” I said. “You confused the hell out of me. And yes, I remind myself every time I think I feel badly about you, about how I didn’t feel about a couple of guys.” He smiled like he’d won something.

Except I never asked them to be my guy, I never led them to think I was crazy about them, and I never asked them to stop seeing other people, I thought but didn’t say because I’d said it before and I was very much done.

“Thank God, I never slept with you,” I said, calmly. “You probably did me a favor, ditching me like you did.”

He was a little stunned–enough not to respond for a second. Then, “Ouch!” He paused, “But yeah, maybe I did.”

“Well, you’ve forced me back into the wild whacky world of dating,” I smiled, waving the screen of my cell phone in front of him that displayed two texts, one missed call, and a voice mail from said whacky dating world.

“We’ll take the check,” said the boy to the bartender. He turned to pat Rouletta’s head. Then he was oblivious when I paid the check with my credit card.

“No, no!” he feigned concern upon realizing.

“Yeah, you leave the tip,” I mumbled. And with that I untangled Rouletta’s leash and we walked to his car. I had walked to the restaurant, but he didn’t offer me a lift home. Which was fine, because I would have declined it, anyway.

I am becoming rather skilled at deleting numbers from my cell phone and blocking those whom I’d rather never know about again from Facebook news feeds and then deleting them from email lists. Bye and bye and bye.

There’s another world out there, as whacky as it is. It’s one in which people call me first, return my calls, make plans, and call again. It is a world in which I caught my first fish and had a blast with someone I’ve known but kept at arm’s length. It is a world through which I no longer feel the need to rush.

And no doing lunch unless it’s a first date. And never again, after the fact.

Thus, I could not understand why I could not shake a pretty horrible hangover yesterday. Sure, Upset Waitress and I had tied on a pretty good one the night before, but still.

“We need breakfast,” said UW when she picked me up yesterday morning. “A huge breakfast, which I know YOU can eat because you eat like a damn pig all the time. Why you’re so thin…oh, never mind.”

UW is always so good to me.

We scarfed eggs and bacon and hash browns, and when UW and her husband didn’t finish their has browns, I ate theirs, too. They were greasy and crisp fried. In other words, perfect.

Within an hour I felt horrible. Worse than I had when I woke up. Within two hours I felt like I was going to be sick.

“Let’s go get a beer at the other place near your house,” said UW.

“Um, I cannot drink anything except Coke. I am a frickin’ mess,” I told her.

Like many places down here, the spot she was referring to has a pool, so if you’re eating or drinking there, you can use it.

“You can go to the pool and I’ll sit inside at the bar, if you want,”
she laughed.

I was not laughing. I was thoroughly ill. Pool, hot sun. Maybe I could bake this stupid hangover away.

So began a bizarre day of dunking myself in the pool, getting sunburned and stumbling back and forth to the inside bar to refill my Coke, while UW regaled the local and tourist crowd inside with whatever UW regales anyone about. She’s never met a stranger, and she knows every local in town. A party always swirls around her.

Meanwhile, outside, I dozed in the sun and willed my head and stomach to settle. My will had no effect. I felt worse and worse as each minute passed.

At the exact moment I was sweating and shaking–even as I was still soaked from a quick lap in the pool–a text came in from the boy who’d ditched me the week before: “U ok? Bad hangover?”

And he knew this, why?

“Yeah, u drunk texted him last night, then deleted it. I guess you sent it after all,” UW laughed while I did not.

I told him I was baking away my troubles at the pool, and he asked if he could stop by.

Wonderful. Whatever.

I woke up an hour later to find him standing over me. “Hey!”

Hey.

He rambled on about a friend coming to town, about how he’d had too much to drink at lunch and now had to get ready for work, haha. I don’t know what else he had to say, because I felt like my stomach was in 17 knots and my whole body ached. WTF kind of hangover was this, anyway?

Suddenly he bent over, kissed my forehead, and said, “I still miss you.” Then he walked away.

In my aching, sick state, I asked myself what I ever saw in him. In my aching, sick state, as UW laughed and carried on inside and the boy was gone yet again, I asked myself why I tumble into like with such immature, unavailable guys who promise their care and adoration and great intentions and then flee–almost within hours of stating them. In my aching, sick state, I wondered what the hell was wrong with me, on all levels.

And just as I was ready to throw myself down the rabbit hole, it dawned on me–the hash browns. Those deep fried, greasy delicious patties. I’d eaten almost four of them. Of course. Most hash brown patties are made with wheat. I avoid them all the time. What the hell had I been thinking when I ate them several hours ago? Right, I hadn’t been thinking. I was tired and hungover, and now I was really sick.

Ugh.

It had been so long since I’d had an “attack,” I’d forgotten how awful it was. And I’d really done it this time. What an idiot.

The irony is that May is Celiac Awareness Month. No one is more aware of Celiac disorder than those who know they have it. And here I was, smack in the middle of May, sicker than sick because of wheat-infused hash brown patties.

Sometimes, however, you can see your life clearly when you’re battling just to keep from doubling over in stomach pain. Suddenly, the boy is not such a great catch. A pal, perhaps–but nothing more. Suddenly, the beauty of the Keys is colored by the nonstop partying, where every hour of every day can be measured by quantities of draft beer and shots of Nassau.

Suddenly, you just see it all for what it is and isn’t. And you make peace with it, because this is the life you’ve chosen, for now. Mostly it’s good. It’s fun. It’s hilarious. But it often takes you to the edge, and then a dance with gluten brings you back to reality.

Take care, you say to yourself. Take much better care. No one else can do it for you. No one else ever will.

We were starving. We were tired from work. We were drinking. We decided to order a big fat steak to make us feel better. “We’re putting our TIPS training to work,” UW laughed, referring to TIPS Class Rule No. 2,304–offer food to someone who’s done in. Who could potentially be us.

TIPS training is a program one’s bar makes you endure every few years to teach you how to recognize who’s a drunk and who’s not. Based on what I learned at my class a few weeks ago, UW and I should be cut off on a regular basis, and no one frequenting my bar should be served after 1 p.m.

Haha. Kidding.

Sort of.

So there we were, doing our best to behave ourselves in front of the remaining two bartenders in these parts who still smile hello when we walk in, and now a hungry drunk was making us look like t-totaling church ladies as she scarfed our fries.

“Are you kidding me?” I said to UW, turning to hunch over our plate of food so the drunk couldn’t grab any more of our coveted food.

“Eeew!” UW grimaced. “I’m not touching those fries now.”

The drunk girl stumbled away, only to return a moment later begging for more of everything. Every time she reached toward the bar and our food, I blocked her with my shoulder. This continued for another 20 minutes, despite the bartenders’ best efforts to force her out the door and into a cab they had called.

“Rouletta has better manners when she begs!” I told UW. “This is gross.”

“She’s just a drunk,” UW replied, her appetite now clearly gone. “We should just give her the damn dinner.”

So we did. And she ate it all until the plate was clean.

When she woke up the next morning, she remembered nothing about her steak dinner, until the bartenders gleefully told her about her antics the next evening. And then she offered to pay us for it, except she didn’t know who we were. Which made us even, because when UW and I woke up the next morning and laughed as we rehashed the night’s events, we didn’t know who she was, either. Nor did we care.

***

I had only been tending bar for a minute when he walked in, so thin and so obviously not well. He nursed a rum and Coke for three hours, barely taking a sip. He asked me where I was from, and when I told him, he regaled me with stories about the years he had spent in D.C. He made me smile, and I made him laugh, just a little.

When his sister woke up yesterday morning, he was dying. When she came in later that evening, she cried because he was gone. When UW and I cried with her, I knew there was nothing we could do to ease her pain. Time, we told her. Time. And then you’ll wake up one morning and you won’t cry.

***

He prefers his Manhattan in a plastic cup, two cherries please. She’s the social go-to gal at my bar. And I wondered how it was they both seemed so alone and lonely, until I found out that they wake up every morning next to one another. Which just goes to show how little I know.

***

I try not to hang on his every text. I tell myself I don’t care at all. Then I wake up in the morning, and I wonder if I’ll hear from him. When I do, it means so much fun. When I don’t, I shrug and I tell myself I still don’t care.

Because when you wake up in the morning, you start all over again. And again. And again.

Then, while out on a date last night, I saw a table of people I had served earlier. My date did not believe I recognized the customers because, as one who is in the biz, he says he always thinks he recognizes guests everywhere. But then I told him the nuances of what they ate (fries no chips for two, fries for one, one extra side of slaw, two ice teas, one Bud Lite) and how they wanted to split the check, but I forgot to do it–he thought I might be right. Ya think?

He laughed and got the group’s attention, telling them he had seen them at my restaurant when he was eating there and how the food was great but the service sucked. Very funny. But the customers had no clue their beloved, adorable waitress was me, and they said, actually, they thought the service “was okay.”

Geez, it’s such a small town, I think I see my customers everywhere–and I really do.

The new owners are begging me to stay on, having got wind of my catering, event planning and journalism backgrounds. “I’ve seen your resume,” laughed the new owner. I did not laugh back. I was too perplexed as to how he had seen my resume. No one has ever seen my resume at the restaurant.

“My sister is on the board of the yacht club, where you applied to for a job last week,” he laughed some more. “She called and asked if that was the same RG who was working for me, and how you had incredible experience.” Yeah, just not as a waitress. But wait, your sister? A board member? She saw my resume?

Good Lord. No wonder the yachties never called me back for a second interview. Oh well, the new owners seem to want me to hang in. And I’m making money and feeling more comfortable. But small-town stuff, yes?

My date doesn’t live here, but he’s down here all the time and he knows everyone. I am sure my being out to dinner with him will cause a slight stir with the local boys. But it’s so low-key, so small-town in these parts, there’s not much to really tell. “Hmm, she ate grilled fish, he paid.”

“But is it too quiet down there, too small of a town?” asked my pilot girlfriend from Fort Lauderdale when we talked on the phone yesterday.

It’s really quiet. Most nights I am asleep by 9.

It’s very small. I may not know everyone, but they all seem to know about me and where I work and how I just got to town and so on and on.

Too quiet? Too small? Maybe. Right now, though, it’s close to just about right.

In a certain kind of bar, and this one is no exception, you hope to see the bartender open a new bottle of wine if that is your drink of choice. Because in this certain kind of bar, you never know when an open bottle was actually opened–today or last week? The beauty of this bar is that the wine comes in little single-serve bottles, so it’s always just opened. Ha ha.

“I’ll take another glass of your fine wine–the airplane-style vintage, please,” I laugh to the bartender.

“Would you like to taste it, first?” she deadpans.

“No, you can just unscrew the top and pour,” I say.

This bartender has not paid a lot of attention to me up until now. I have been sitting by myself off to the side, content to be quiet, alone. But now a pony-tailed gentleman has just asked if the bar stool next to me is taken. I sigh. Oh well, conversation is probably good after almost an hour of none.

And now the pony-tailed man has also attracted the bartender’s full attention to my quiet part of the bar.

“Oh my God, talking about the wine reminds me of one of my favorite regulars,” she says, talking to the pony-tailed man more than to me. “He used to always order my cheap white wine, and I’d make a big production out of it.” Her pretty brown eyes sparkle as she begins her story. The pony-tailed man and I exchange a glance.

“I’d put a white bev nap over my arm like this,” she gestures in an imitation of a wine steward. “Then I would present the bottle of jug wine to him, and he’d read the label.” We all laugh. “I’d unscrew the top, he’d sniff it like a cork, and I’d pour him a taste.” She pauses, glancing around to see if someone’s glass needs refilling. The band starts playing a version of “Brown Eyed Girl.”

“When he died,” she continues a minute later, now looking at me as much as the pony-tailed man, “I did that whole thing, the napkin and the label and all of it, right over his casket.”

Before she began this story, I had hastily hung up on my day-at-a-time boy in a momentary fit of misunderstanding and confusion with which I am trying not to become too familiar. So far, I am three for three in having it all wrong, as he will reassure me very soon. The pony-tailed man knows the phone call has upset me, as does the bartender, because they both overheard my side of it, and I think that maybe she is sharing this story to diffuse the moment and recall a sweeter one for all of us.

“They drilled a hole in the edge of the bar–not this one, the one around the corner. And they poured just a little of his ashes in it,” she smiles. “He’s there to this day.”

As the night goes on, and as my misunderstanding hangs in the sticky air that feels more like September than two weeks before Christmas, the pony-tailed man and I talk for hours about relationships and starting over and over again. When we part ways at an early hour by Key West standards, we have said much and solved nothing, but for some reason, I get it that I overreacted on this night.

I don’t know it yet, but I will find myself embraced and reassured by my one-day-at-a-time boy the very next evening when we meet at my neighborhood dive bar. He wants many, many days at a time with me, he will tell me. Wherever that takes us, he will say, he wants it to be together.

An older couple will walk in to the dive bar as we are having this talk that involves lingering stares and tiny kisses. I will be nursing a terrible glass of white wine when the couple raises their glasses across the bar to us.

“I want to be them,” my boy will say, and I will only be able to stare at the couple who smiles back at me, at us. It will be hard to grasp that I am hearing this, and it will likely take me many days to believe it, as much as I will find myself wanting so much to just live it and let it be.

And when I sip the wine that has a definite kick to it, I will be reminded of the story I heard the night before about a man who got the joke about his jug wine and who will always have a place at his bar. I will silently toast the couple across my dive bar and tentatively grasp my day-at-a-time boy’s hand. I will allow myself to feel a faint, first blush of possibility.