As an impoverished student, I have a pretty long history of working in cafes, restaurants and bars in a somewhat vain attempt to make ends meet. And as the days lengthen and the temperature rises, I’m faced with the prospect of the summer months, and the probability that I’ll be spending them not slathered in sun cream, shoving ice cream down my throat, but behind a coffee machine, periodically wiping the sweat from my forehead.
As a waitress, I am expected to maintain the looks of Kate Moss, whilst casting flirtatious glances at customers over coffee cups, and making seductive small talk. This is all Hollywood’s fault. Their films contain endless heroes who find solace in the comforting words of the token beautiful waitress behind the counter of their local diner.
These days it isn’t enough for us to make sure everyone is eating and drinking, we also have to be councillors who listen to every problem and anecdote from our customer’s (always unbelievably hard) days. People come through a cafe door, tired and exhausted and expect a free counselling session.
Hot and bothered
So any customer entering my café must be disappointed to find themselves greeted not by a Keira Knightley look-a-like, but a grumpy, hot and bothered waitress, exhausted from a hard day of her own, and in no mood to take on anyone else’s problems.
The café where, last summer, I worked, is centred in the middle of a busy and popular tourist town in Yorkshire. My waitressing day usually begins at 9.30 am, when I appear, bright eyed and bushy tailed from my previous night’s sleep.
This feeling tends to last approximately five minutes, before I realise that I have to lug seven heavy metal tables outside before we open. This is no easy task for someone who doesn’t exactly clear five foot with great ease. Since I can’t see over the giant table I’m carrying, I end up walking into door frames and tripping over random objects left strewn upon the floor, as I mutter quietly under my breath how much I wish tables just didn’t exist. They must sense my hatred, these tables, because every day they are the cause of yet another bruise on my arm as I miss the step out of the door and fall sidelong into the door handle. Great. I can’t wait to show off my black and blue arms on Friday night in that slinky new top.
As I position the last table in the small yard outside our café, and celebrate my triumph over the evil, conniving furniture, my mood lifts momentarily. It’s a feeling of great relief. It usually lasts about six seconds, until I glance over to the car park opposite and notice the first coach pull up.
The town where I live boasts not only a handful of market stalls selling cheap socks and mobile phones that have fallen off the back of a lorry, but also a castle so small that it could almost be confused with a cottage. It is for these heart stopping attractions that coaches of tourists arrive in droves each day in July. Since our café is located exactly opposite the car park, it doesn’t take Einstein to guess where the coach’s parched contents will head as soon as they are spilt out into the car park.
32 cups of tea
Within minutes I’m frantically attempting to make thirty two cups of tea (why does everyone want a ‘nice cup of tea’ at this time of day?), whilst simultaneously guiding umpteen bursting members of the blue rinse brigade to the toilet. My day is well and truly underway and already I’m sweaty and stressed. At least there is a moment of light relief as I try to explain to one particularly sweet lady that if she just sits down at a table, I will bring her tea over to her.
“So if you just sit down I’ll be right over with your tea.”
“What’s that you say dear? I need a voucher for my cup of tea?”
“No, no voucher. Just take a seat and I’ll bring it right over.”
“Oh, I see. So I have to collect a voucher from the table and bring it back?”
“No. You don’t need to do anything at all. Just take a seat.”
“Oh. Thank you dear.”
It can’t be more than thirty seconds before she appears again, looking confused and dejected. “But dear, there is no voucher on the table… does that mean you’re out of tea?”
It takes me and two co-workers to finally sit the poor lady down and settle her with a cup of tea. The whole event is entirely absurd, but it’s just the light relief we need. We settle back to slaving over the coffee machines still giggling that our northern accents can confuse the elderly tourists so much.
An hour passes in a whirl of bacon sandwiches, hot chocolate and tea. A mound of washing up is beginning to accumulate in severely shaky piles that bear an unsettling resemblance to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Glancing at my watch I note that it’s five to eleven; five minutes and the pot-washer should arrive.
I barely have time to register relief at this thought before the phone rings. This is ominous. It’s with great reluctance that I pick up the receiver. The pot-washer apologises profusely but he’s not feeling too great. Me neither.
It looks like those precarious stacks of washing up have my name written all over them. I’m forced to roll up my sleeves and start scrubbing scrambled egg and chicken soup remnants off the sides of pans. But why isn’t the water running down the sink properly, is it blocked up? Of course it is. Looks like I’ll have to shove my hand as far down the plug as far as it will go and pull out the bits of soggy cabbage. Nice.
It’s no wonder that my mood is far from sparkling as I emerge from the kitchen. So I have little patience when the man from table seven marches over red faced demanding to know where his cheese on toast is. I try, as calmly as I can, to explain that this is a café, and the way things work in café’s, is that you wait your turn, and then you get your food.
“Well, this is ridiculous, I could cook cheese on toast in half of this time, and I’m not a chef.”
“Well, why don’t you just go do that?”
He does. Oh dear. I appear to have lost my ability to be polite and calm to customers, and along with that, have lost the café a customer.
Can we have our table back?
Just as I think I can’t be any more furious with humankind and their ability to annoy me at every possible turn, I glance outside to notice a slightly podgy lady waddling down the path with a table in hand. I have to look twice before I believe what I’m seeing. Is she actually trying to steal one of our tables?!
The chef and I chase her down the path. She explains she is just borrowing the table to eat her picnic lunch off. We calmly point out that we need the tables for our customers. She acts as if we are the most unreasonable people on the planet. But we get our table back.
Thank goodness it’s nearly closing time.
Forget pouting like Angelina Jolie
As we herd the last people out of the café and lug the tables back inside, I breath a sigh of relief. Really its no wonder I have no energy to chat to customers whilst pouting like Angelina Jolie. I’m too busy wondering exactly what I have done to deserve a job in which I am constantly shouted at, covered in dirty washing up water, and beaten up by pieces of furniture.
But as I review the events of the day with my co-workers, I end up in fits of giggles, and I remember what it is that makes my job bearable. Okay so I’m tired, exhausted and pretty clammy, but even I have to admit that in retrospect, I’ve had a pretty funny day. The people I meet, and the weird situations I encounter make me feel far better about myself: there actually are far stranger people in the world than me!
So, 9.30 am tomorrow, I’ll be there again, at the café door. Bright eyed and bushy tailed…