It Was An Accident

I agreed to help a friend do a fundraising catering gig recently, and so on a Thursday night I found myself in an igloo shaped tent while reindeer milled about outside and someone blasted Christmas music loud enough to shake the glass on a tank full of otters.

Once I’d arrived I quickly remembered why I’d taken such a long sabbatical from waitressing, it’s not the crowds that I mind, but it’s the pushing through them. I don’t know how anyone can pretend that someone isn’t coming towards them with a tray of scallops leveled at their face. Me, I move, trying to stay out of everyone’s way and not get soya sauce in my hair. But most people just stand there, as if the wait staff are invisible, though in all honesty they’re moments away from picking goose-liver out of their extensions later.

I worked with a girlfriend some years ago who wore Doc Martians for the specific purpose of kicking people out of her way. She’d been employed at a concert venue and when hauling a tray of drinks through a crowd she’d simply kick out at the shins in her way, “And that’s the warning shot,” she’d told me. “The second time it’s the back of the knees.” After that I had always pictured her as some pixie-like warrior moving through a crowd of stunned concert goers who looked up at her, dazed, from their spot on the ground. It was no surprise to anyone that she much preferred to be behind the bar rather than on the floor though I’d always wanted to see her in action, like Typhoid Mary felling the masses.

Back when I’d waitressed in a venue the size of a treehouse I’d taken on a habit of shoving people, kicking out was too hard with a tray of drinks. Friends of mine said that this was excessive, a manifestation of how pissed-off the job was making me, but the thing is you can say excuse me as much as you like and most people either aren’t listening or don’t care. So I took to wandering around with one hand under my tray and the other up in a gesture reminiscent of a full contact sport.

I noticed myself doing it when the bar was half empty too—but it seemed I just couldn’t stop myself, it felt like the one way to get back at the swaying blonde standing in my path, yelling that I was sorry as I picked my way over her limbs after I’d knocked her right off her too-high heels and onto the floor.

At the catering gig the thing that kept me steady though, the thing I’d actually missed about the job, was the comradery with the fellow wait staff. Those who, like me, were just trying not to call anyone an asshole. It’s so easy to make fast friends when you’re all just trying to get through the evening. I find that there’s always someone there for you to bond with, someone to join hands with and clothesline your way through the crowd, making your way through a sea of people that are simply too proud to duck.