Food Service Awkward Sauce

Any server will tell you that the most coveted art of food service is knowing, unlike the psychopathic small people eating fruit loops at your table, when to speak and when to shut up.

            Here are some examples of both.

            Example 1: Imagine this: you are standing behind a bar and tiny college girls holding empty white plates form a line in front of you. You are wearing a hair net and rubber gloves and holding a giant bunch of purple grapes which you have been de-stemming for the past hour. This job is called This is America, of Course there’s a Job for That! Or, alternately, Sisyphus Goes to America!

The girl directly in front of you holds your tongs, perhaps unconsciously clicking them at the bowl. As each grape plops into the bowl, Girl-with-Tongs snaps it up and tongs it onto her plate.

            You are thinking of the way baby birds snap their beaks at their mother while waiting for masticated worms to be dropped in their mouths, which ought to be your first clue that this is as close to a time-to-make-conversation moment as an instance of buying only tampons would be.

            Instead, you look at Girl-with-Tongs’ plate which holds a single boiled egg and a strawberry. 

“Have you been finding everything okay today?” you ask.

            Girl-with-Tongs shifts wide eyes to the right and then back at the grape bin. She is accessing the creative part of her mind which allows her to imagine herself as someone who would speak to Girl-with-Hairnet.

            “Yes,” she mumbles.

            “Good!” you say brightly.

            Ah, but the cheap thrill of feeling useful has got you going. You can’t stop now.

 “Here, I have an idea!”  you say. You start placing the grapes directly onto her plate, gently like topping a scoop of ice cream with a cherry. You are an innovator! You are the best fruit stand attendant Girl-with-Tongs has ever seen!

 Girl with Tongs is still holding the tongs, which have now become completely useless.

“Tell me wheeennnn,” you croon, smiling at her. Somehow, her plate has now become completely full of red grapes, and she drops the tongs into the empty bin. She is replaced by another Girl with Tongs.

It occurs to you that this could also be an episode of Twilight Zone or simply your afterlife.

Example 2: See above, wherein “I have an idea!” is followed by you throwing grapes into Girl with Tongs’ face.

Example 3: This example involves a time wherein silence backfires.

You are no longer employed by the cafeteria at which you made questionable decisions with fruit. Now, you work for a corporation.

It is one of those strange 4:30 in the afternoons in which you are the sole server, and suddenly there are nine parties in the restaurant, and none of them have even received drinks. You begin to notice that one particular woman (party of one) is determined to ignore the “Oh shit” look you have been giving everyone, and pointedly asks questions the way you might ask your accountant about your next twenty year investment plan.

“You really don’t have root beer?” she asks, again.

“Nope,” you say, before realizing that one of your creedoes here in the Corporate World is Life After “Nope”, “Ya’ll”, “Huh?” and “Yep”.

She leans forward and looks off into the distance for a full ten seconds. She appears to have retrieved something from her teeth.

“Well, I’ll just have tea then. Half sweet, half unsweet.”

You whirl away without speaking and return some time later with said tea.

“Oh, could I have an extra glass of ice?” she asks sweetly.

You return with the ice.

This freaking woman then takes a full five minutes to order a single crab cake, with dressing on the side, please be sure there’s no peanuts anywhere near the crab cake, if you can make sure all the cooks haven’t eaten peanuts lately, even a slight peanut-laced sneeze will set this woman’s allergies a-roaring….

Ten requests later, and this woman wants ketchup. You are baffled. In the kind of way you would be baffled by a request for peanut butter soup with no peanuts or a request for a taste of diet pepsi. You whirl away and suddenly you have no control over your movements. You are advancing towards the ketchup dispenser. You grab a plate and a handful of ramekins and proceed to fill fifteen shiny ramekins with ketchup.

If you had, say, only announced the ketchup’s presence at the woman’s table (“Here you are!” or “Here’s that ketchup!” or even a quick yet concerned “Can I get you anything else?”) as you set that two feet by two feet plate precariously at the edge of her table-for-one, perhaps her reaction would have been different.

But no. You sat and ran. Silently.

You sat that ridiculous plate of ketchup at her table, and that is when Crazy Lady became Crazy Ketchup Lady. That year and a half at George Mason studying psychology came in handy for her after all. She jumped up, holding that full plate of ketchup and managed to find your manager, sobbing about her passive aggressive waitress and her fear of peanuts and not wanting to be served food by someone who obviously hates her.

This is when you realize that in food service, silence can be interpreted as a message.