So I work in a restaurant in downtown Portland. Working downtown means that you’ll get to experience all types of people -- and I mean all types. While I’m grateful to be able to sharpen my customer service abilities, there has been some trauma inflicted on me in the service industry that I may never fully recover from. Here is a list of the eight worst things that come with working at a restaurant:
1. Kids.
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2. Bad tippers.
There’s a certain mixture of anxiety, hurt, and anger that can only emerge from receiving a check on a table and seeing they left you a $5 tip on a $65 tab. Sometimes you can predict who will do it -- the people that interrupt you when you introduce yourself, in order to give you their drink orders. They are usually a suspect -- but the most disappointing is when you think you’ve gotten along well with a customer and they tip badly. It’s like, I thought we bonded over that book you just bought and told me all about!
3. Never knowing your exit time.
You always predict at the beginning of the shift that you’ll be out by 4 p.m. because it will be slow around an hour before your relief arrives at 5 p.m. But lo and behold, there’s a Timbers game you didn’t know about, and you don’t leave until 7 p.m.
4. Seating people.
.
I think the phrase, “Do you have a booth?,” will forever be ingrained in my mind as the number-one trigger for a wave of inner rage. I always make sure to throw the server with a section that has only
5. Creepy guys.
There’s something about females and customer service (which means the fakest smile ever) that makes the male population think they’re entitled to hit on you in all the worst ways. I’ve had two different 43-year-old (yes, that age exactly -- I don’t know what it is) men ask me out on dates --
after I had told them I was only 20.
6. About that smile.
Speaking of that fake smile, it’s truly painful to have it on for 10 hours at a time. I have to physically force my lips to move upward when a customer at hour 10 snaps his fingers at me to refill his coffee. I also immensely dislike how as a woman, if this smile isn't pasted on, I'll get comments like, "You are not chipper enough for this beautiful a day!" Maybe it's because I'm inside serving you?
7. Large parties.
Like I’ve mentioned before, working in the service industry means you’ll get accustomed to many different types of people. It also means that you’ll continually question the sanity of those people. How could any rational human being walk into a restaurant during dinner rush and legitimately think that they could get a table for 20? When customers walk in the restaurant and casually announce their plans for a large party and we don’t have room, I always relish the moments when I can say, “We don’t have room,” and see their faces fall and their feet shuffle out the door.
8. Rudeness.
Rudeness is an essential element in the service industry experience. The most common experiences (by this I mean on a daily basis): are people snapping at me to get my attention, pulling out their phones while I’m talking to them, yelling at me for not seating them at the most desirable table and commenting on my body when telling them about my favorite items on the menu.
But despite all these unfortunate occurrences, it’s always nice when you get to take off your apron at 2 a.m. and head out for a late-night drink with your coworkers, after all of your college friends with their unpaid internships are fast asleep.
