Dining with the Dawgs

Seven years ago when I was hired by Interline Italia, I hung up my waitress apron, did a victory dance and swore off waitressing forever.  I was never, EVER going to waitress EVER again.  I was good at waitressing.   Very good.  What drove me to figuratively spike the football in the endzone was that the customers were bad.  Very bad.  Sure, most of them were polite and incident free, but there were those who almost pushed me to the brink of pulling a Norma Rae and jumping up on the table to rally support for unionization of waitstaff. The worst offenders were the ones who had very little influence or control in life in general, so they would take out their aggression on the waitress--the only person on the face of the planet who they could boss around and get away with it.  Given that I worked for my father in law, I was bound by my marriage license to take it.  With a smile.  And a semi cheerful "come back to see us".   When I sarcastically listed things I'd rather be doing than whatever it was I didn't want to do, the list usually ran "have a root canal, do my taxes, or wait tables".  It would take an act of Congress, a hostage situation or a natural disaster to make me ask "What may I get you to drink?".

Turns out that the natural disaster occurred in the form of my naturally doofusy brain pinning down my normal thought process brain in the easiest wrestling match ever, as my normal brain is very puny and weak--it doesn't get as much exercise and exposure as does the doofus version.  When cornered by the PTSA president last week and asked to "help" at the Dine with the Dawgs at Pizza Inn, my brain couldn't come up with a plausible excuse fast enough.  The president lives on my road and she'd surely know if "I'm having my tires rotated" (don't laugh--I have used that one on more than one occasion), "I'm out of town" or "the water main burst and the house is flooded" weren't true.  I had nothing.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  The gig was up.  I was under the interrogation lights and I folded.

I held out hope that they would assign me to the drink station or even busing tables.  After all, over 10 people were slated to be working at that time and surely someone else would love to wait tables, right? RIGHT?  I showed up all eager and ready to fix drinks.  As soon as I signed the waiver, releasing Pizza Inn from indemnification in the event I sever an arm with the pizza cutter, someone came up from behind me and tied THE APRON around my waist.  They had tied the proverbial bell around the cat's neck.  I was stuck.

Get a good look now.  Me in an apron is like seeing Hailey's Comet--few and far between

Summary report--it wasn't so bad.  People came out in droves to support the school.  Plus, I had the added perk of claiming that I was an "amateur" and automatically had immunity from scrutiny.  Tips went directly to the school and people knew this, so they were willing to overlook my lack of knowledge over the menu items.  I didn't spill any drinks.  Most people ordered buffet, so there weren't many actual orders to screw up.  I didn't trip any senior citizens.  And the best part?  At 8:45 I handed the apron off to the next sucker volunteer and I went home.