“Hello, how are you today?”
“My name is Caroline, I am going to be your server today, can I start you off with something to drink?”
This is how I start off virtually every interaction during the work day. Sometimes I get interrupted before I even say “how are you” with things like “coke,” “I’m starving,” “is this going to take long,” lovely things like that.
I work at Friendly’s, a chain restaurant known for its ice cream products, in North Conway, New Hampshire. As you drive through the mountains of New Hampshire, you come across North Conway, a town filled with chain restaurants and outlets in the middle of the White Mountains. This string of outlets, Applebee’s and Friendly’s seems out of place—maybe even a bit trashy—in its pristine backdrop of the Presidential Range of New England. This is a “vacation destination” in New Hampshire, with people flooding from all over the US and Canada to come see the mountains.
The people who typically eat at Friendly’s are either: families looking for a kid friendly and fast meal, older people (over 60) looking for the free sundae that comes with their meal, or teenagers hoping they can order off the kids menu. It is not quite McDonald’s, but it is no 5-star restaurant.
Everyday, when I arrive at work, I sit in my car for a few minutes trying to psych myself up for the day; as soon as I walk in the door I can tell what kind of day it is going to be. On my walk from the back corner of the parking lot to the red-framed, glass door at the entrance, I am able to see how busy or slow it is, how the other servers are moving and what seems to be going on. When I open the door and step into the red and grey, 1950’s-esque restaurant and hear the voices of the people around me, I can listen to the anger or the laughter coming out of the kitchen.
As I walk past the first row of alternating red and grey booths and into the service aisle, I can see that it is trashed, there is lettuce and sour cream all on the salad bar, milk containers out and spilled, ice falling all over the place. As I look towards the computer screens I can see that the slips are “in the red” meaning that it is falling behind, that it is taking too long for the food to come out. As I reach into my bag to grab my swipe card to clock-in, my manager Cathy, runs up to me telling me I have a table of seven waiting for me in the “new room” (a section of the restaurant that is ten years old and is the worst section as it consists of mostly tables made for large parties).
Cathy is one of the sweetest people I have ever known, always calling me “muffin” as soon as I walk in the door. She is a good manager, she is a nice manager, but she gets incredibly overwhelmed by seemingly small matters and so, before I can even say anything back to her, she has run away, mumbling something about the dish room falling apart.
I shuffle away to put on my apron, grab my notebook and some pens, another server approaches me telling me about the table waiting for me, laughing at how the day has gone. I cannot help but laugh either as I have been there for a total of three minutes and already know every detail of how the morning has been. So, after a few minutes of speaking to Christina, I walk into the dining room, round the corner and introduce myself to the table. As expected, since they have been waiting for a grand total of seven minutes, they are a bit harsh with me as I ask if I can get them anything to drink.
The old woman, probably the grandmother, is harsh; her responses come with a twinge of anger as she feels the need to say everyone’s drink order after they have told me. It seems like they are towards the end of their family vacation, and this I have noticed, is when people are the most irritable. Oh well. I move on from this table, accepting that they will likely not be happy with me, but that’s alright, I will have other tables.
As I walk away from table 81 in the corner of the new room, I scan the remainder of the restaurant. The middle section is Dee’s place, she has worked at this Friendly’s since it opened 31-years ago; she is 70-years old and is a happier and better waitress than anyone there, she is the queen of Friendly’s, always running around with her pink and blue dyed hair. This summer, Dee is having two great-grandchildren, one boy and one girl, hence the blue and pink hair. She is so proud of her family, of her four kids she raised on her own and of her dozen or so grandchildren that all love her to no end.
Frequently, I find my coworkers asking Dee if she will take them in as her grandchild, she always replies “Thanks honey, but I have enough.” As usual, Dee’s section is completely full. I can already tell which tables she is going to dislike, the ones with more than four people at them usually get to her. Or the ones where adults are outnumbered by kids. This is when her age starts to show, usually tables like these run her around too much, make her take more trips than necessary in order to get one thing done. We walk into the service aisle at the same time and she seems happy enough and asks me to make more coffee.
I turn to the gigantic coffee machine in the corner and press the button for the coffee before grabbing the drinks for my table of seven. As I am pouring my third glass of sprite, a middle-aged, frazzled looking woman hauls her way into the kitchen asking to get some ketchup. The way she said it would have made you think it was a national emergency if she did not get it instantly, so I move away from grabbing my drinks and turn towards the shelves across the way where I go through five bottles of ketchup in order to find a semi-full one. I hand her the ketchup and she looks at me like I just saved her life—as I am walking back to finish pouring my drinks, I take a glance at the woman’s table. It is her and three children who are no more than 5-years old. Maybe the ketchup did save her life.
I finally bring my drinks out to that first table, tell them their food will be out shortly and float on to the table next to it. There, two adults and two children are sitting. The kids are coloring, the adults are smiling and laughing to each other. And so I begin:
“Hello, how are you today?”
“My name is Caroline, I am going to be your server today, can I start you off with something to drink?”
This time, I can tell it is going to be a good one.
