I landed my dream summer job working as a server at a busy restaurant over the summer. Before the spring term, I had only worked as a camp counsellor. The romantisization of waitressing in society probably played a large part in sparking my interest in the job. Now that I’m in my post-server era and back in Kingston for school, I have a more realistic view of the role.
Serving carries a unique set of lessons and challenges. Here is what I’ve picked up during my time in the industry:
Everyone should work a service job once in their life.
Most people go out to eat. Unfortunately, many of those people are unaware of how to treat waitstaff. Whether this behaviour comes from genuine ignorance or a pointed lack of respect, it’s pretty hard to treat your servers poorly when you’ve experienced the job yourself. There were a lot of things I didn’t know about serving until I worked the job, from the little things like the difficulty of accommodating excessive food modifications, to general things like the inner workings of the back of house. I now have a better idea of how to treat restaurant staff. Serving is a great way to make money and gain real-world experience, especially as a student.
You have to learn not to internalize the BS of strangers.
As fantastic as serving can be, waitstaff end up taking a whole lot of flak—most of it unwarranted. Whether it’s from your manager that has a hundred other problems they need to sort or from a disappointed customer, there are some days you feel you’re constantly pissing off one person or another. All you can do is keep pushing and finish your shift. The great thing about serving is that every day is a new one. The industry is an incredibly fast-paced one, and you will probably never encounter that angry customer again and your manager will probably forget about the random mistake you made the day before. While it’s easy to let someone’s words or actions impact the rest of your shift, the job forces you to manage your anxiety and fear of angering people. You learn eventually to push that aside and focus on growing in your role.
Organization is key
I will admit to being incredibly disorganized at the start of my serving experience. Running around making sure I had my ducks in order wasn’t working for me, and I was forced to figure out how to get myself together. Eventually, I started developing habits that helped me stay organized. As exciting as serving can be, the repetitive aspects of the job help build routine and strategies to stay on top of your game. Many of those strategies are directly transferable to every day life and even school-work.
Social anxiety? Who is she?
I partially credit serving with helping to cure my crippling social anxiety. It’s been said that the only way to beat social anxiety is to constantly put yourself out there until it feels less scary. Serving did exactly that for me. I would walk up to a table terrified that I would mess something up and even more worried that they were picking up on my nervous energy. I definitely embarrassed myself numerous times, but being forced to talk to new people removed a lot of my fear.
Serving is hard work, but is definitely worth the pay off. If you related to anything in this article or are interested in getting involved in the service industry, try giving the restaurant industry a go!