It looked so cool when a waitress would come by my table when I was a girl, and she would ask for our order. She wouldn’t even write it down on one of those tablets. She just remembered it. That waitresses had such a calm, confident, almost stunning demeanor…and she did it. She brought over our food, having remembered it all. Sure, she forgot that I had wanted extra cheese on my pizza and that my father ordered tea, but for not putting in the effort of writing it down, it was pretty cool that she at least nailed the absolute fundamentals of what people wanted. And I thought to myself, “Hmm…she has this really smug, satisfied, calculatedly cool look on her face. I wonder if it comes from being able to do that.” So I grew up with the dream of waiting tables.
To keep my options open, I frequented diners and memorized every menu I could. I would order the different foods to have a visual companion, as it were, to my memorization. Then the dream came. I walked into a Kelly’s and told them I was interested. They signed me on. From the get-go, I was taking orders without writing them down. Sure, I may forget that someone wanted their eggs scrambled, or banana pancakes instead of regular pancakes…a lot of details are forgotten in taking people’s orders like that. But I think it’s more important that I look cool to my customers, just the same way that waitress did when I was little.
I hope one day, some girl will come up to me and say, “I remember you. You messed up my order a little bit, and I think it’s because you were to cool to bother writing it down for our consideration, to just make sure we got what we were paying for. I like when people are willing to forgo a simple, polite gesture. That you would rather look cool instead of being hospitable to a guest…that is, like, super cool.” I really want to hear those words someday.
