If any of my readers have been wondering where I‘ve been the
past few weeks, believe it or not, I haven’t been on vacation; in fact, quite
the contrary. I’ve been living in the
depths of hell, painfully waiting on the masses of the uncontrollable
summertime travelers to America’s Finest City.
I’ve realized throughout my recent posts how much I enjoy
writing about the good stuff; the meaningful connections I make, the quirky
people I encounter and all the smiles I’m able to generate in others. Because the people I’ve been dealing with
recently have been, for the most part, stressful and negative, I haven’t felt
inspired to write a single thing. Lately, the majority of my guests have been
an agonizing combination of high maintenance families on tight budgets, tons of
foreigners who drink like fishes and tip like hell, snobby rich travelers who
apparently think we’re slaves on their payroll and transients who complain we
have “nothing good to eat” yet camp out for hours snacking on appetizers while
chugging Miller Lite and tip like you
know what.
But the more I thought about it, there have been a few treasured
moments among the chaos where I’ve been able to ignore everything negative
around me, take a deep breath and smile.
And it’s been those people, the rare gems, who have had the ability to
make me smile. How refreshing.
Here’s one example…
I waited on a foreign family the other day. They had a three-course dinner, along with
two bottles of wine. When I picked up
their credit card slip, I saw a $5 tip on a $283 tab. Frustrating, yes; unexpected, not particularly. I don’t expect much from a foreign table
(there’s a stereotype for a reason), but no matter how much we expect it
coming, it still burns a bit.
As the sting was still fresh, I tried to keep my cool and
greeted a new table. It was a couple
down from Orange County for a quick San Diego weekend getaway. She immediately smiled at me and ordered two
glasses of Pinot Grigio. She said, “I’d
love to order a third glass and you can join us!” I grinned and replied, “I wish. You have no idea...” When I delivered the wine, she was glowing
and asked me, “What do you eat here?” I was
apparently feeling candid and replied, “Well, to be honest, I don’t really eat
here that much. We try the new food
items once and that’s pretty much it.”
She said, “What?! They don’t feed
you?!” I explained that this restaurant
is a hotel-owned establishment and we eat cafeteria-style food elsewhere in the
hotel. Needless to say, she was shocked
and seemed to feel bad for me. We
continued with our playful banter for a while which eventually led to her
inviting me to hang out with them in Orange County. At some point she confessed her and her
husband were playing some type of people watching game. She grinned, “Ok. I’m going to ask the next
guy who walks by to take you out on a date tonight!” She was hilarious and brought me to giggles. She was so entertaining that I forgot about my
$5 tip and all of the other nonsense I’d been dealing with for the previous four
hours. She drew me into her upbeat
energy and I will forever be grateful for her that night. She literally saved me on a day I was drowning.
As servers, we deal with so many difficult people and
unbelievable amounts of stress that one positive person can truly turn our day
around.
I bid a thank you to those rare gems who have restored my
faith in humanity and have inspired me to write once again.
