Good Cook, Terrible Waitress

Once upon a time, I was a waitress. A really, really bad waitress.

My clumsiness has been well documented. I walk into things, drop things and break things. I cut myself. I sometimes hurt others. The simple act of moving from one apartment to another, with the assistance of movers, has left me looking as though someone took a switch to all four of my limbs.

So naturally, I thought waitressing would be an excellent job choice for me while in college. Let me take you back to that first day on the floor.

I'm working at Coach's, the restaurant in the Schenectady Ramada Inn. It's the lunch shift, and I only have one table. Easy, right? One table. Six people. Piece of cake for my first foray into waitressing. Herb, the tiny spaz of a manager who bore more than your passing resemblance to Hitler (seriously, it was uncanny) was hovering, watching my every move and barking directions at me.

I grabbed two drinks to carry them out to the table.

"You have to carry those on a tray," Herb said.

"Okay," I said nervously, putting two Sprites, two tap waters and two Diet Cokes on a tray.

Herb followed me into the dining room. I put the tray on the table next to me and picked up the two Sprites.

"You can't do it like that," Herb hissed in my ear. "You have to hold the tray with one hand and serve the drinks with the other."

I looked at Herb in a panic. What he was proposing seemed as impossible as carrying the tray while walking a tightrope. Six drinks, one tray, one hand -- no way was that going to end well. Still, Herb's face told me that FAILURE WAS NOT AN OPTION.

Well, I'm not really sure how I managed to dump all six drinks onto one woman's lap, but I did. For some bizarre reason, Herb didn't fire me. And I continued my offenses against casual dining for the entire summer. What I lacked in technique, I made up for in smiles and apologies, which got me by. Once I hung up my apron, though, I decided that waiting tables was not for me.

Fast forward to tonight. Because I'm in the Chef's Training Program at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts, I need to do a Friday Night Dinner floor shift. Wish me luck -- I'm going to need it. Especially given the fact that it's BYOB. I have about a 40% success rate when it comes to not breaking a cork in half while trying to open a wine bottle. Hopefully this crowd likes their plastic corks and twist-off caps, and that they don't wear anything that's dry clean only. Or white.