I was at school in Waterloo and a friend recommended me to this Italian restaurant where she worked. I didn't practise and they had no training, so there I was carrying these huge trays of food and drinks, having never carried more than a plate at a time before. Within the first hour, I dropped a big tray of glasses and about half of them broke. That was not the worst part. I dropped them behind a customer seated at a table. He was leaning forward and a couple of the glasses fell and broke between his back and the back of his chair. I demonstrated with Andrei. "Good one, eh?" My table agreed.
I told this story tonight in a restaurant at a birthday party for my friend Terry. Everyone was in a good mood. The waitresses were doing a good job.
I continued. They may have forgiven the broken glasses, given that they knew I had no experience and they didn't offer training. However, the evening continued. The restaurant served panzerottis, those large sort of up-scale Pizza Pops. Well one of my tables had a few of them and they were huge. You picked them up with both hands to bite into them. Those customers each ate about half a panzerotti and asked to take the remains home.
I put the plates of half-eaten panzerottis on the table in the kitchen where I had been instructed to put food to be put in doggie bags. Then after settling that table's bill, I picked up the boxed food and gave it to them to take home.
Well. Unbeknownst to me, that table was also used for boxing up Take Out and Delivery orders. So apparently my party went home with freshly made panzerottis... and that evening someone in Waterloo received a Delivery order of half-eaten panzerottis... a few little boxes of half-eaten panzerottis. Bite marks even.
The restaurant's owner suggested I might be better at another job, and that was that. My waitressing career was over.
As expected, my table tonight laughed that someone received boxes of half-eaten panzerottis. Andrei suggested something though that I hadn't thought of in all these years. Perhaps the table that went home to discover whole and fresh panzerottis in their doggie bags thought the restaurant was fantastic and came back for more -- they'd be repeat customers expecting a lot from their scraps next time.
