In my last post, I wrote about the customers that bring me joy, make me laugh, and truly make my job worth doing. However, dear readers, I’m sure you anticipated what was to come next. I can’t be nice forever because holy friggin heck this job sucks sometimes. So without delay, let’s jump into my list of the worst of the worst, the customers who occasionally make me wonder if I’m already dead and waitressing is simply my special punishment in hell. After reading, you can let me know if you think I’ll be serving until I’m financially solvent or if I should anticipate being here for all eternity.

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It’s hard to believe that July is here again and the Portland tourist season is in full swing! The summer months can be wild, uproarious, and occasionally painful for a server in Portland—and yet every year I seem to forget, and then I find myself doing the damn thing again. Which is how some women describe childbirth. Horrible pain, complete amnesia, and then—oh hell why did I do this again??

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In my last post, I revealed some of the best things about being a waitress, which is a kick-ass job most of the time. But there’s no doubt about it: Sometimes, serving is the WORST. Rude or high-maintenance tables can turn the joy of serving into a professional nightmare. In fact, you might be committing restaurant transgressions that are causing your server to curse your name and—don’t you doubt it—take her sweet time getting your order to the kitchen. So I’m here to help! The following is my personal list of the most annoying things customers do in restaurants. In a city where dining out is an integral part of daily life, every customer should learn how to act like an upstanding food citizen.

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I must begin with the most terrible, most humiliating secret of all: I am a waitress! I am yet another overeducated, underemployed, late-twenties-to-early-thirties Millennial that, despite all the initial promise of my generation, has found herself trapped in the food service industry even though I am, like, way too old to being doing this. The TV soundtrack goes wah-wah.

But it’s okay! Thanks to years of therapy, in which I have dealt with the fact that I’m surely letting my pulled-themselves-up-by-their-bootstraps Baby Boomer parents down, and thanks to the last legal drugs for those moments when all that therapy fails, I have come to terms with the undeniable truth that I actually enjoy being a waitress. I like it so much that I’ve stopped skirting the issue when people ask what I do. A few years ago, I would answer, “Well, I’m working as a waitress, but I’m looking for something better.” Or maybe, “I’m a waitress, but I’m really working on my short story collection.” [Read more…]