Interlude: Waiting

Today I quit my job!

Now, this statement is not usually proclaimed with such joy and aplomb, but it has been a long time coming. Well... a month coming.

I'm not usually a quitter. I don't think I've ever quit a job on a whim, without a really solid reason, ever before. Apart from a short spell at Waterstones as a Christmas temp bookseller, I've never quit a job before hitting the six month mark. I'm stubborn. I don't quit. Trust me - I've tried to quit drinking. Several times.

But there I was just a few short hours ago, notice in hand. Quitting. Like a big fat quitter.

To be perfectly honest, I wound up in this job in the first place purely by chance. I happened to be in the restaurant in question, a place I frequent, sipping coffee and searching for part time bar or receptionist jobs on my whirring, beaten-up laptop, when the manager asked me what I was up to. When I told him what I was doing, his reaction was "Well, we need a waitress... could you start next week?"

He needed a waitress. I needed money, and fast. My other day job pays very well for what it involves, but with the rising costs of travel (TfL I'm lookin' at you) and basic living - as well as the unfortunate coincidence that almost everyone I love's birthdays fall in the month of July - I was feeling the squeeze.

Week by week, I could feel myself slipping into my overdraft. And as someone who historically prides herself on her financial independence, asking family or friends for a loan was almost instantly ruled out as an option.

So waitressing became a thing, for me. At the beginning, I got really into it. I felt a bit like Rachel in Friends - but replace the cool kooky 90s gear with an ill-fitting white shirt from the men's section of Primark...

Throwing myself into it, I realised that I could recycle a lot of skills learned from other jobs: I could help out on the bar when they got busy; I could put together aesthetically stunning bar displays; I could schmooze customer-service-style with the best of them.

But, soon enough, tiny red flags started popping up. Starting with a small, tingly gut-feeling of unease, and culminating, over the last few days, in full-blown anxiety attacks.

I'll tell you what is is - and I'm not going to name the business at all, here, because I have no doubt that these kinds of problems are profligate - there was something deeply patronising and insulting about the way the wait-staff were treated. By the kitchen staff, and occasionally the managers. It's a sort-of dehumanising sneer, as if talking to small children, that often made me want to blurt out "I haVE A DEGREE!" at the top of my lungs.

One thing I will say is that the other wait-staff were so mature and unflappable - I've never seen anything like it! Whatever was thrown at them, they would float above, like swans seeming smooth whilst kicking frantically underwater.

However - me, with my easily bruised self-esteem that I wear like an ugly accessory on my sleeve - I didn't stand a chance. Luckily I've toughened up a lot over the past two years or so, or regular tears would have been on the cards.

Furthermore, I cannot deal with flies. Something about a swarm of barflies just makes queasy chunks rise and burn the back of my throat, and I have to go away. And, in the back room where the sticky glasses were left waiting to go in the industrial dishwashers, often for hours on end, the little bastards were a real problem.

I actually found myself feeling guilty for talking about these red flags! For example, the female staff toilets (I can only speculate about the male, but gender is a social construction and we're all disgusting monsters) were a horror story. You know the part in Trainspotting - "The Worst Toilet in Scotland?" - That.

Well, I won't go into the gory bits, but one major worry/cause of this mess was that the light was broken, leaving one to pee in near-darkness, forever scrabbling for toilet paper that was never there (I had literal nightmares... HOW was it ALWAYS. OUT?!??)

When I inquired to a fellow waitress - an old-timer with bags of waitressy wisdom - about the time scale in which we could expect someone to come and fix it, she merely replied, in a deadpan, matter-of-fact voice, shrug and all: "You'll get used to it."

Get used to it?! I didn't want to get used to it. I wanted to go full She-Hulk and smash that smeary porcelain cistern into smithereens!!

I mentioned it in a morning meeting, and it was fixed the next day, and afterwards I felt a strange sense of power. Was it because I was new and fresh, and they didn't want to disappoint me? Was it because I was a "rare Brit" that I received this special treatment (the majority of the staff consisted of EU nationals, which brings up major issues about the exploitation of such staff - which I could write a whole damn essay-post about, but I'll spare you. Basically, to our government and big hospitality companies: STOP. EXPLOITING. PEOPLE.)

I felt like the Princess and the Pea. After that, every time I brought something up, like the flies or the lack of management presence during hectic times, I received the same look - that mixture of awe and unease, like I was stirring the pot unnecessarily.

On top of all this, the niggling uneasy feeling never went away. Every second I spent there, I felt as if I were wasting my time, trying to be someone that I'm not; I'm just not cut out to be a waitress. I'm too clumsy. And too selfish.

Overhearing snippets of theatre-talk when bringing coffee to an agent's meeting table, I couldn't quite muffle that screaming little voice inside me that goes "I should be having these meetings, not serving them!"

So, my main takeaway from this blog post IS:

If you go on a date with someone, and they're rude to the waiter, don't sleep with them.

Thank you for reading this v. important PSA.

Char

xxx