It's Friday afternoon. Your friends and classmates are finishing up their weeks at school and work and preparing to enjoy the weekend. You, however, work at a restaurant, so you go straight to work after class and prepare for your weekend, which really isn't much of a weekend at all.

3-4 PM: You arrive at the restaurant and begin setting up the dining room or bar. Throughout the set up, you are complaining either in your head or out loud, angrily, that whoever closed last night did a god-awful job and left you a mess. You continue to do so until you realize that YOU closed last night. Whoops.

4-5 PM: The dinner rush hasn't started yet, so you probably are standing around or trying to stay busy. The Chef is filling you in on the specials and whats 86'd (out for the night), and the floor managers are telling you what's what in regards to what to expect this evening. There's a ten top coming in at 6:45, so be sure to hold those tables. The two top at 7:30 are VIPs, so they're being sent a round of drinks, etc. There's silverware to roll, coffee to be consumed at an alarming rate, and coworkers to rag on and goof off with.

5-6 PM: The guests begin to trickle in. You stay busy filling sodas and glasses of wine, going over dinner specials with the guests and answering questions. Your section is your domain, and so far it's running like a well oiled machine.

7-8 PM: The "trickle" of guests has turned into a river, and it's not stopping. Orders are flying. There's always something to be done, and it's always something small and annoying- a ramekin of honey for one table, oregano for another, and one guest is claiming that her gluten free pasta with no butter, cheese, or salt, does not taste good. You told her it wouldn't. You have about ten tables, half of them outside, and they all want something, and the phone won't stop ringing. Oh, and you just got sat again. Three times. Hopefully you're on your game today, if you are not, you probably feel like you are drowning in quicksand and eventually just let it happen. If you are on your game, you might feel something like this:

8-9 PM: You have lost all concept of time. You don't know what your hair looks like and you don't care. If you had any makeup on, it's probably all sweated off by now. All you're thinking now is that it has to be almost over.

9-10 PM: It's over. Your tables are closing out and leaving, and the influx of new diners has slowed considerably. At this time, the once productive and hard working staff has turned into a cluster of baby birds, flocking around the kitchen demanding to be fed. Every time a pan hits the flame, a server pokes their head through the kitchen window and asks hopefully, "family meal?" Every ten minutes or so brings a new server or two hovering around the salad station asking what's for dinner.

10 PM: The chef concedes and makes dinner for the staff, who at this point have turned into vultures circling around the back room waiting for a gargantuan bowl of pasta to appear. Almost as soon as it does, it disappears. Like a pack of ravenous wolves, the pasta is inhaled, and all table manners that the staff once had are abandoned. When the pasta is gone, someone meekly wonders if anyone told the bartender there was food. If there is a new server, you tell them, never forget to feed the bartender- it might just be the last thing you do.

11 PM: After wrapping up side-work and closing out the last few tables, the servers gather and ponder the next move for the night. You know you have to open the restaurant in the morning, but you figure, hey, it's been a long day, I can get one beer with the crew. So you head over to your local bar with the gang- but only for a few minutes.

2 AM: They just did last call, and you are closing down the bar (again). You do one more shot, tip generously, and head to CVS to pick up some late night snacks. After a night of debauchery, you might get to sleep around 3 or 4 AM, and you already know you'll regret the entire night in the morning.

10 AM: You were right. You do. You feel like crap, but you get yourself out of bed and back to the restaurant (almost) on time. You feel like you just left the damn restaurant, and you'd rather be in bed, but at the same time, you wouldn't have it any other way.