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.

I double and triple sat you all the time. Many apologies.

I begged you to stay late and take the last table that, in the end, only left a 10 percent tip. Many thanks.

I didn’t help pre-set and pre-bus tables enough. Many thanks, again, for getting it done.

I didn’t fully comprehend the concept of being so weeded you were in the thick of the Everglades (to quote beloved Upset Waitress). Many reality checks today.

I didn’t get it. Ha! Now I do.

And it wasn’t even that busy in my little corner of paradise. I am so exhausted I am willing myself to stay up until 9 p.m. Yet, I somehow managed to make a little bit of bank.

Season’s coming, so they say. So we all hope. Bring on the northern blizzards and send ‘em down–but give me another couple of weeks to figure out how to write tickets so the cook can read them, carry a tray of food on my shoulder, not slosh trays of drinks, up-sell everything, and recognize this fish from that fish from all the other fish and eggs “oe” from eggs “om” from all the other eggs as they come off the line.

Actually, the job does feel like brain surgery to this gal, what with everything being all mixed up in my head. I’ll get it eventually, right?

Right, Upset Waitress???

Fries on Friday mean you are slightly hung over from drinks on Thursday night out with someone who is actually “smart.” Smart is not a term you use often to describe people in these parts. As it turns out, he is from D.C. Figures, right? But that’s what happens when you only eat fries on Friday.

Fries on Friday mean you have given up on ever hearing from a guy you kind of wondered if you should actually WANT to hear from again. Thanks to having those fries only on Friday, a sense of relief ensues, albeit tinged with a kind of sadness.

Fries on Friday mean you meet up on Friday with your one girlfriend here, the one who is so not of the calibre of the friends you left behind in D.C., so much less so that you cry when someone tells you she is SO not your type of friend. Because she is your only friend here, and very much the reason you have a social life beyond her so-called unworthy friendship, you eat fries on Friday and just try to enjoy them for what they are.

Fries on Friday mean you suddenly have a full Saturday that revolves around a dog you cannot wait to walk, an appointment to get your nails done, a yacht to be briefly met for a BBQ, and a dinner with the “smart” guy.

Fries on Friday mean you are coming off one of most challenging weeks at work, along with one of the most soul-searching times in your life, and none of those who should realize this, realize this. Because there weren’t enough fries on Friday to go around, you guess.

Fries on Friday mean you ate just enough fries on Friday. And maybe that’s all it means.

One Friday a few months ago, at 11:45 a.m., we were told we had five minutes before the reservation system would be down. I scrambled as best I could, but when my screen went blank and the foyer filled, I felt clumsy, at best, scribbling names and pager numbers to keep up with who was where and when and why.

Yesterday’s Black Friday event, however, took out the back of the house, and it wasn’t pretty.

Sometime between noon and 12:30 p.m.–the very peak of the busiest lunch rush of the week–the kitchen computer decided enough was enough, with 350-plus covers and counting at various stages of ordering, receiving, and paying for their meals. Not to mention those waiting for tables.

OMG.

Our normal 20-minute wait grew to 45 minutes. Servers and bartenders frantically hand wrote and hand carried their orders.

One of the bartenders, normally the image of serenity, waved his paper orders about like a crazed trader on the commodities floor. When he caught Restaurant Gal Daughter’s attention, he thrust three slips of paper in her hand and told her, “Run them!”

Restaurant Gal Daughter scurried back to the podium, a look of semi-panic in her eyes, and asked, “What am I supposed to do with these?”

I had my own multiple crises brewing as unhappy patrons groused about how long it took to get their food, arriving reservations threatened to back up, and the wait list was growing long past earlier quote times.

“Grab one of the other hosts to show you how to take orders into the kitchen.” Truthfully, I didn’t have a clue what to do with those slips of paper, either.

Restaurant Gal Daughter’s description of the unfolding kitchen drama was fit for filming:

“Kara and I walked into the kitchen, almost holding hands because we knew it would be kind of scary in there.” (An aside–I find the kitchen line scary during any mealtime rush, much less when all hell has broken loose. I’d have clutched Kara’s hand, too!)

They were met by a virtual swarm of striped-panted, clog-wearing chefs, sous chefs, line cooks, prep cooks, and anyone else who fit the bill. One of the chefs saw the girls huddled together, slips of paper in hand. “What do you need?” he screamed over the din.

Restaurant Gal Daughter offered her handful of orders to him. “Great. Got ‘em. Thanks!” he shouted as he snatched them.

“It was like every disaster movie,” Restaurant Gal Daughter smiled, many hours later. “Everyone was running in all directions, like they were grabbing their stuff to escape the ship before the lifeboats got too full. Only instead, they were grabbing plates of food!”

A visual, for sure.

In the end, patrons got fed, just slower than usual. Reservations were seated, only a little behind schedule. A few wait-list folks got testy, but no one was mean or nasty.

Because ultimately, pretty much everyone understands the phrase: “The computer’s down.”