For the last month I've waited tables at a Hawaiian fast food restaurant.
Unfortunately, when I say "behind me," I don't mean that it was of my choosing to leave, but instead, I was taken off the schedule. My boss said she gave away my two shifts a week to servers who want to make scooping rice and mac salad "their careers." I hope they all live happily ever after in delusion.
Anywhoo, now that it's over we can all laugh about it, right? Many lifetimes ago I vowed never to wait another table, let alone do so for $25 a night, wearing a bright orange T-shirt and serving soda out of a can. It seems absurd that at 32, I was being bossed around by my 23-year-old coworkers, these same coworkers who'd ask me where I'd previously worked, ones I tried to tell without sounding arrogant or like a pathological liar that I write for the state paper and that I'll be soon graduating with my MFA. I could justify why I took the job (it's the recession, we're all taking crappy jobs to pay the bills; it was temporary until I move; I'd just come back from Hawaii and was nostalgic; I knew I wouldn't run into a single soul I knew there), but ultimately, the whole thing was a lesson in humility.
Here's what else I learned while serving salty meat products for $8 a plate:
1. I still hate haoles. Sure, I'm haole (or white) but when white people are juxtaposed against local Hawaiian people, it becomes very obvious why locals hate whities. Haoles think they know everything, especially haoles in their twenties, whereas locals never assume to know a damn thing. They're from an island for chrissakes. They know they don't know shit. Half of my former coworkers grew up in the islands and had humble positions at the restaurant like cooking and dishwashing. They smiled and showed me where things were; they treated me how they'd want to be treated. My haole coworkers were the servers who told me it was my turn to mop the floors and how I'd sprinkled coconut on the haupia pie the wrong way. This could obviously be a metaphor for how whites end up dominating indigenous people and getting ahead. But when it comes to making the perfect riceball, their ambition is being wasted. Haoles simply need to relax.
2. The perfect scoop of rice is all in the firm touchdown--when the scooper meets the plate or to-go container--before the release of the handle.
3. Free food shuts people up.
4. As much as I'd hate to admit it, mindless work from the hours of 5-9 is kinda the perfect break for someone who sits in front of her laptop, mulling over her life every other hour of the day.
5. Eating Kahula pig never gets old. Neither does mac salad. (Reason #3 also applies to grumpy servers who get shift meals.)
6. Every once in a while, you need to feel rejected by something you never really wanted. Puts into perspective who you think you are.
7. This will surely make great fodder for an essay one day.
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