Thank Something That I Don't Work in the Service Industry Any More

My family have never done anything special for Mother’s Day, although I believe my sister usually sends flowers these days. Nick’s family do, so we go and buy something pretty and then have a nice family meal.

But every year, the thing I’m most thankful for is that I no longer work as a waitress. Mother’s Day was always the most awful night of the year for waitresses.

The Chinese restaurant I worked at years ago went all out for treats for the customers on special occasions: candied fruit and vegetables for Chinese New Year (I liked the peanuts, which my boss told me would increase fertility. When I expressed a hope that they certainly wouldn’t, she said, “But you won’t have a baby: you’re not married.” Oh . . . yeah, that’s right.); roses for Valentines Day; chocolate eggs for Easter; and buckets and buckets of multi-coloured carnations for Mother’s Day—which arrived in huge bunches, and had to be split into small arrangements and attractively wrapped in cellophane. By the waitresses.

That was the start of it.

Then we’d be booked out for weeks in advance, but would still have to argue with customers about the availability of tables, even though there were only twelve tables in the entire place.

Then there’d be the angry walk-ins, who couldn’t understand why they couldn’t have a table on the busiest night of the year, even though the entire restaurant was packed and they weren’t prepared to wait.

Ah, Mother’s Day—I’m so glad I won’t ever spend another one of you asking, “And what would you like to drink, sir?” and getting patted on the bottom.

Still, I suppose it’s not the worst thing that ever happened in my waitressing years. That would be either the time a man punched out a window because he’d been waiting too long—my fault how, exactly?—or the time a customer hired, without warning us, a stripper for his friend’s 50th birthday.

We had a “no shoes, no shirt—no service” policy.

Maybe we should have made that “no shoes, no shirt, no bra—no service.”

And the friend wasn’t that impressed, either.