The good news: I don’t have the flu.
The bad news: That’s the only thing my neighborhood drugstore clinic is treating for.
More bad news: I waited an hour and a half to find that out.
The good news: It’s Friday.
Last night, my choir director mentioned an incident that occurred when he was a waiter at Chili’s. It involved veggies, a lap and a very angry lady.
That reminded me of my time as a waitress – three of the longest months of my life! I was not a good waitress, and I didn’t enjoy it one bit. Honestly, I don’t remember a whole lot about that job, but I do remember one night in particular.
The night I dumped a whole tray of drinks, splashing a huge (HUGE!) glass of tea onto a man’s lap. He was kind and gracious and forgiving, but still. Embarrassing!!!
Cheer me up today. Tell me a horror story from one of your early jobs. (Or recent jobs, if that provides better material!)
Sorry to hear you're not feeling well, Mary. Here's a waitressing story to make you feel better. (And, unlike you, I waitressed at three different places and for a lot of years. Put myself through graduate school on tips!!) But I digress . . .
I was waitressing at a fairly nice restaurant one Friday night, and I had a table of six which was racking up a large bill. I was anticipating a good tip because they were all happy and on their way to a movie. Their table was kind of near the entrance to the kitchen, though, and just as they were finishing up their meal, a female bartender was walking by their table with a huge bucket of strawberry puree. She tripped, and the bucket of puree went flying through the air, landing on each and every person at my table. One guy had it dripping off of his earlobe! It was such a mess, you just wouldn't have believed it. Needless to say, the people were furious and even though my manager offered to pay their entire dinner bill and their cleaning bill, they stormed out of there WITHOUT EVEN LEAVING A TIP!!!!! That was a serious low point in my waitressing career.
i worked as a bank teller for two months – and i accidently set off the silent alarm twice. (which we noticed when suddenly there were cop cars screeching up outside) WHOOPS!! the second time was REALLY embarrassing!!
I had a waitress–at Chili's, nonetheless–spill the whole contents of my fajitas on the table and not even offer to bring another one or say she was sorry.
I let something…and by something, I mean a Beth Moore product…go to print with the word majesty spelled with a g. Way to go, copy editor!
Although I have had tons of jobs (I bet my resume looks much like yours, M. We are more kindred than you realize)the toughest job is motherhood. And on day 1 of being home with my precious 6 pound baby girl, I decided to put her in her crib for a moment to see how she looked in in. As I was passing from the hallway into the nursery, I was gazing lovingly into her sleeping face, speaking oodles of love from my heart to hers. It was a tender moment of new found joy.
That is until (because I was staring at her so intently) I cracked the top her soft spotty head while walking through the door when I wasn't paying attention to my surroundings. She was fine, but I WASN'T. I cried for hours, sure that I had done permamant damage. Turns out she is fine, and now that she will be turning 10 in 2 weeks, I can fully attest that she is as hard headed now as she was then. :)
Oh Lordie…I hope this makes you laugh:
When I was 20 I was a shift manager at a video store. Shift managers? Had to do inventory.
The store had a p0rn section.
Shift managers? Also had to make phone calls when p0rn was late.
Machine: Hi! You've reached the Hendersons! Jack, Amy, Amber and Cole can't come to the phone right now – please leave a message! BEEP!
Me: Uh, hi…yeah, this is Colleen from BlahBlah Video. "Forrest Humps" is now three weeks late. We're asking that you please return it to our store on Military Avenue at your earliest convenience. Thanks!
Yeah…that job didn't last long…
my first job was cashiering at a woolworth's (remember those?). one night, i fainted behind the register as i was ringing up a customer.
a few years later i was working as a pharmacy tech and fainted behind the counter.
no, i wasn't pregnant either time. i just apparently have a tendency to faint a lot. oh, the stories…
Another waitressing story (and at Chili's no less!) I was less than a month into the job and this was back when Chili's served everthing in baskets that the wait staff stacked up their arms to deliver to tables (no tray). I was delivering a stack of burgers to a table of 6, with one order of chili on the very top basket. You guessed it…that bowl of HOT chili came tumbling down all over the man sitting on the end. He jumped up so fast that I dropped the remaining burgers all over the floor. The poor man was covered in chili and I was a sobbing mess. I cried and apologized profusely. After the manager comped their meal, they left me the biggest tip I ever got (but not big enough to convince me to hang in there…I quit shortly thereafter!)
Hope you feel better soon.
When I was a student in Germany, I took a 1 day temp job as a cashier to earn some extra spending cash. Here's little old me, trying to master a foreign language, with all these old women trying to chit chat with me in line. When a fish head, leaking juices out of a little wrapper of saranwrap came across the belt, with bulging eye looking right at me, I decided I'd rather be a poor student than a student with a little extra spending cash!
You already know mine: I got pulled over for going 81 in a 55, ticketed (no excuse will do for that), and then had a referral to see the cop's child the following week at his house. Awkward…
I also once talked to a mother about her son needing speech services (she worked at the school as an associate), only to find out it was the wrong mother… (there were 2 kids in the class with the same first name, and I got the info. for the wrong one!) She didn't seem to mind, but I still see her around and wonder if she still remembers it. How embarrassing.
I think I forgot you were a waitress. So weird… (I so couldn't do that! Delivering pizzas was hard enough!;)
Colleen, that's awful! Talk about awkward!!
I was a live in nanny for 6 kids with a single mom, recently divorced, and we lived an hour away from where she worked. Enough said.
I am never going to Chili's. That's all.
well i don't really have a horror story from any jobs… i worked at the bookstore at my community college, so for the most part i pretty much got paid for doing my homework at work!
and then i was a delivery girl for a florist shop. FUN job! i guess the only horror type of story i would have from that job would be delivering flowers to the wrong place. but i don't really remember that happening!
and i also worked at ace hardware as a cashier. nothing really bad happened there, except my boss was an [bleep!].
but inbetween a couple of those jobs a temp angency sent me to an abstract company. which is apparently where they closings on properties and stuff with titles and such. my head hurts just thinking about that job. i guess i was the receptionist, answering the phone and telling people to wait when they came in. but then i had to go through STACKS of papers and put them in the correct order. for instance, document A always needed to come before document B. but it wasn't quite that simple for me. because the documents looked different for every case. and she didn't really explain things that great for an 18 year old who knew NOTHING about property documents!
i started on a friday. and i ended on a friday. at the end of the first day i kindly told her i wouldn't be back. that was my horror JOB!!