BP

In the restaurant biz, there are a lot of shitty things that can get you down (lousy tips, incorrect orders, fights with the kitchen staff, lunatic customers, etc.) I usually try to let it roll right off my back because I figure if I didn't stay positive, I would end up just miserable and bitter all the time. Plus, most of the time there's nothing I can do about it anyway.

Today I was talking about this with my manager, who has a similar outlook, and I told her about how I served a party of 8 and they all left me just horrendous tips, but it didn't bother me too much because I was pleasant and polite and nothing went wrong with their food. I figured these people are just cheap by nature, and there's nothing I could have done to change that. She agreed, and said I'd probably make awesome tips on my next table, and it would all work itself out in the end.

I only served three more tables after that and each one of them left me at least 20% (which is definitely not the norm.) It was the nicest thing ever. It's reassuring when stuff like this happens, mostly because it helps me deal with the really awful things that sometimes happen (ie. being left a handful of pennies as a tip because someone's lasagna "was weird"; being screamed at in front of the whole restaurant because the kitchen made a plate of nachos wrong (after having apologized profusely and offering to have them remade and the bill taken care of); working a nine-hour close shift to find that all of the other servers slipped out without doing any of their side duties or even cleaning their section...you get the picture.) I just wanted to share my nice day.

In a slightly less nice, but more hilarious story...

My restaurant is about three minutes away from my house, but they decided this weekend they wanted me to work at the other location, which is all the way across town. Yesterday, my first day there, I was crouching down to get something and one of the other servers dropped a steak knife on my face. I still have a mark on my lip.

What a warm welcome I received.