Just Another Starving Artist

Slacker

Wow, I’ve really been falling behind on the blogging.

It’s most likely because when I work I don’t sleep much so I’m exponentially tired all the time. I just got home from work and I’m dead on my feet. 4 hours of sleep and 5 hour shift will do that to you. Work is going well, nothing major to report. Other than potentially hitting a customer with a high chair the other day…

Ok, so it’s a decent story.

It was really bustling the other day at work (I forget which day because my lack of sleep at night and my propensity for naps have made all of the days seem to blur together into one homogenized clump of week). I was hostessing and a young couple came in a with a baby (pre-toddler, post infant) and asked for a highchair. I seated them in the back corner booth because it was the only one open and then I went to get the highchair. I was moving at a super-human pace because it was so busy and all I could think about was other tables that needed to be bussed so I could seat people and not have to stress about having “a wait”. So anyway, I get the highchair and I’m practically running through the restaurant to bring it to them and all of a sudden BAM!! I smash the highchair into the back of a booth. Right on the edge where a nice man with grey hair was sitting. It wasn’t a little bump either, I was moving so fast and I just plowed right into the booth making a huge noise and the highchair smashed into me and bruised my knee and everyone, I mean EVERYONE stopped talking and looked over at me. I apologized to the man, I don’t think I hit him, I surely hope not at least, and brought the highchair to it’s destination. When I got to the couple with the child they looked at me, almost apologetically- as if my clumsiness were their fault somehow- so I felt I needed to explain somehow. All I could come up with was “It’s just one of those days” I sounded like some jaded veteran waitress!! The crazy thing is, it wasn’t even “one of those days” the day was going fine! But my statement seemed to appease them, they nodded and said “oh really?” and I left.

So that was my first experience with accidentally assaulting a customer.

Oh! Today at work a woman took of my shoe! Not a woman I know or have ever seen before even. Just a woman who came in for breakfast and sat at a booth by herself. I was setting her silverware and menu down and she asked me if my shoes were a certain brand or some other (she named two brands but I don’t remember either of them) and I said I didn’t know and I lifted up my foot to show off the shoe. She asked again what brand it was and I said I didn’t know but I got them at DSW and then I looked at the bottom of the shoe. It seemed right at the time, like the only thing I could really do to move to conversation forward was to look at the bottom of my shoe because we had both stopped talking but she was still looking at my foot. So, I’m standing there, leaning on her booth with my one foot propped up upside-down thinking she would see that the brand written on my shoe was not something she recognized and then I would leave. That was not how it played out. She looked. Couldn’t read it. Touched my shoe. I moved my hand to my foot to better twist it so she could read it, and then she said it. “Can I…Can I take your shoe off and look?” The only proper response is yes, and I said yes without even thinking twice and before I knew it she’d slipped my shoe off of my foot and was reading the bottom of it. Suddenly I realized what was happening. I was not in an invisible bubble, I was standing at the front of a food-establishment on one foot with some strange woman holding my shoe. And then it occurred to me I didn’t know what the next step was. She started to put my shoe down and I didn’t know if she was going to put it back ON me, like Cinderella, or put it on the floor for me to guide my own foot into. We did sort of an awkward move about it, like when you go to hug someone but they go to shake your hand instead and then you put your hand out to shake and they make a move to hug you, it was like that except with someone potentially putting my shoe on for me. Eventually she set it on the ground and I put my foot in it and told her to enjoy her meal. I didn’t even mention it for almost an hour because I’d  convinced myself it probably wasn’t that weird and I was just thinking too much about it. But, when I did mention it the waitresses I was working with thought it was very strange. We had a laugh about it. No offense to the customer at all either! She is a very nice lady and apparently goes into the cafe often and I was AT LEAST as awkward, probably more-so, than she was. It’s just something silly that happened.

Oh, and here’s what all the fuss was about. Not even anything fancy, I know.

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