Everyone laughs and jokes that it should be mandatory to work in the restaurant business at least once in your life. Serving at a restaurant has its ups and its downs. The ups are rather obvious; money, experience, friendships, and understanding how to smile and listen to those around you. The downs, however, are the funny experiences and lessons learned and they cause you to change your mannerisms and tipping behaviors towards your servers. So here it is a look into some of the daily struggles of working in a restaurant.

1. Not wanting to tell your customers that you haven’t eaten the full menu.

2. Splitting checks is one of the most time consuming and annoying parts of the job, so it is always a joy to hear your big party only wants one check.

3. Sometimes you get lucky with one check and sometimes you have to split a check 25 ways and hog the server screen for an hour.

4. The constant worry that you have upset or not pleased a customer and that they are going to complain.

5. Breaks? What are breaks?!

6. If you are a server, odds are you have become a complete obsessive pen hoarder.

7. When customers seat themselves and by time you realize they are there, they are already hangry.

8. Food running is an art and it is a lot more difficult not to spill everything than most think.

9. Everyone knows that when speaking to a customer, the smile sticks and your voice goes up, at least, three octaves.

10. That uncomfortable moment when a customer interrupts your welcome speech

11. Having one table can cause you to feel like you are being overbearing.

12. Everyone hates closing duties; if you’re supposed to leave at 10:00 p.m., you have to expect to leave at 1:00 a.m.

13. The dreaded sprint back to the kitchen when something goes wrong

14. Nothing is worse than waking up after a closing shift, knowing you have to open today.

15. Attempting to claim a table on a slow day, we're all just trying to earn our living.

But regardless of what happens, we are servers; we complain no matter what but are thankful for the fantastic opportunities given to us and the honor we feel to have a good job, great management, and wonderful coworkers.