Froyo woes from the froyo waitstaff.

1. I’m sorry for being too embarrassed to tell the wait staff about my inability to work the self-serve machines.

Trust me. We like to know when the place looks like someone melted a can of brains all over the froyo machine.

(By the way, green was not being served that day.)

2. I’m sorry for not pushing in my chair like a total philistine.

Where I come from (whaddup Tejas!) I would get a whoopin’ for an inflection in the respect department. General Rule in Global Civilized Human Societies: if you are supposed to bus your own table, push your chair in.

3. I’m sorry for leaving a tiny bone pile of cherry stems on the bar area.

This one really baffles me. I will watch from the register as grown humans pick the stem off their cherry bounties and lay them carefully in a convenient little pile for me to trash later. Sometimes, I will make eye contact with a person in the act and they will pause, pick their things up, and immediately go to the bathroom with their froyo in order to avoid speaking to me. Like, you know you done wrong when the cashier is staring you down hardcore and you flee the scene.

4. I’m sorry for allowing my minions to serve themselves.

Okay, I’ve actually never done this (or the cherry stem stacking, for that matter) because I don’t have kids, but work with me. Oh, how I wish I could spray-bottle the little hands that reach into the rainbow sprinkles. Hint: If your child is shorter than the sneeze guard (that’s what the plane of glass is called, legit), then get the toppings for him or her, okay?

5. I’m sorry for leaving spoons in terrible displays of impressionable art.

I don't know why parents suggest to their children to, "get the spoons!" But, every time they do, there are thirty spoons to trash. My favorite is when the kids try to be helpful and pick the spoons up from wherever they landed when the atom bomb went off, and place them haphazardly in with the clean spoons.

6. I'm sorry for nibbling at my food before paying.

Y'all, it's hard to keep a froyo place running during the winter, and it's even harder to watch as adults chip away at the overall price of their yogurt in front of their kids. What kind of example are you setting when you cheat the system? I like to think that people are just so impatient to eat their goodies that they forget that they have to pay. Or that they are newbies to the froyo system. I'm pretty sure I did this when I first visited a frozen yogurt shop for the first time, in fact, I think I walked up to the counter and ordered, "a small, please!" Ha.

7. I'm sorry for thinking that food work would be easy and unfulfilling.

Without a doubt, food work is by far one the most gratifying jobs I've had. There's a simplicity in the process, yes, but there's a camaraderie I have with my coworkers that only comes with dealing with the hardship that food work provides. Picking up after another person is difficult because it involves a certain humility that is produced when you serve others. Especially with the world in the state of a very perplexing and difficult "me" generation, service is oftentimes left by the wayside and forgotten. I have a newfound respect for the work that goes on behind-the-scenes of every restaurant because I know that the difference between a good one and a bad is the heart of the workers that run it.