Bridget :: Alfredo’s Pizza Cafe :: April 2000
“Bridge!” I heard like a constant, nagging reminder. “Bridge Bridge Bridge!”
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and smoothed down my frizzy hair. Three hours of sleep didn’t exactly call for a fun day at work. Especially when we were starting to get busy, and my mind was starting to flood with panic as my boss appeared next to me.
“Bridget,” he said evenly. “Get back to work. We’ll talk about this--” He gestured to my unkempt appearance and sleepy face. “Later.”
Unable to even process the possibility of being fired, or maybe warned for the millionth time, I sucked in a breath and turned my beat-up sneakers in the direction of my next table.
A family. Okay. Not sure if I was up to serving so many people. I counted nine full seats and over half of them seemed pretty hungry. The other half was content talking, I could tell--- but it still made me wonder how long I had kept them waiting.
Come on, keep breathing. Keep smiling, no matter what happens.
It really bugged me that my motto didn’t apply to anything but waitressing. Realistically, I couldn’t smile all the time. Of course, I could breathe all the time-- but that fake, plastered-on smile was more than I could handle.
I felt the corners of my mouth starting to form up, like an impulse.
Almost more than I could handle.
“Hi, Welcome to Alfredo’s Pizza Cafe,” I said cheerily, like I was excited and thrilled and a million other things I wasn’t. “My name is Bridget, and I will be your server tonight.”
I flapped down menus in front of each person. Luckily, they weren’t mad, up-close. You could never really know for sure, until you could see the fidgeting, the eyes anxious to leave.
They didn’t have them, thankfully. I was off the hook, for now and maybe for the night if I did a good job.
This was a family made up of mostly good-looking guys and their wives and girlfriends. The mom of the family was there, too, and I heard something about the dad working late as I gathered their drink orders.
I went back and contemplated where I was going to get more drinking glasses, we had run out and I was too scared to ask the boss. My order pad was practically screaming at me to get a move on, each line filled with specifications and even a chocolate milk, which I absolutely detested making.
“Porter,” I said, walking into the kitchen warily. This was their domain, and they didn’t like waitresses encroaching in their territory.
“Yeah?” he answered, annoyed. He was covered in grease and flour and all the other things that I went home smelling like at the end of the day.
“Um, where could I get more glasses? We’re all out, and there’s none in the dishwasher.” Oh, man. Time was ticking and I was going to get killed with an insult or some little comment that took me hours to dissect.
“Bridget,” he started, mixing sauces with spices in a huge, bubbling pot on the stove. “Can you not see that I’m a little backed up here? Goddamn Jeff has to call in sick, when you know he’s really at the Steelers game for the weekend. My goddamn wife has to call and tell me she wants a goddamn divorce, right in the middle of the dinner rush. And, oh yeah, one more thing. You goddamned little kids think you’re good enough to fall asleep on the job and assume that everyone else will pick up the slack!”
I hadn’t had a bad one like this since-- well, I couldn’t exactly remember. Maybe it was the last time his wife had called for a divorce.
My face heated with anger as I swallowed any built-up response. This was not the best time to have an opinion, and I had a family of nine waiting for me.
The “wait” in waitress really encompasses the job as a whole.
Waiting on customers to decide what they want. Waiting on the chef to finally agree with you. Waiting for people to come during a slow stretch. Waiting for your life to turn around and for something to open up somewhere else so you can quit.
I swiped ten styrofoam cups from Porter’s secret stash of supplies in the back. I didn’t care, at that point, that this family wouldn’t be subjected to the “True dining experience” complete with real glasses and silverware.
Filled the glasses, ran back to the table like my life was depending on it. Everyone was laughing over something I’d come to see the middle of. It was quite the production, I had to say.
I placed each drink, one by one, carefully and listening all the while.
“I dare you,” the taller guy said. He was lanky and had a mess of brown hair, his cheeks were red from laughing. “You have to do it.”
“No way,” the other guy said.
Their mother intervened. “Boys! We’re in public, for god’s sake.”
The taller guy looked at me and asked, “Do you guys serve pickles here?”
I wasn’t really sure what he was getting at. “Um, yeah. Why?”
He just shook his head. “Forget it.”
I smiled and took their orders, went back to the kitchen and pegged three sheets of paper up in front of Porter without saying a work.
“Everything okay here?” I asked later, when they had torn through two large pepperoni and sausage pizzas.
“Yes, everything was wonderful,” the mom said. “If my boys would just get along-- it would have been the perfect family outing.”
I was in one of those moods. “Well, everything can’t be perfect, huh?”
“Isn’t that the truth?” The woman beamed over at her family, from where she sat at the head of the table.
As I collected the finished plates, I paid careful attention the messages scribbled with crayons on the butcher paper littered with pizza sauce and grease stains. I found it odd that neither of the brothers said anything to me, not even a word, a peep. Then I noticed that they really hadn’t said anything at all since I’d checked on them last.
Their mom informed me of the story. “They’re always making these dares, my Jim and Ben. I hate it so much, that I finally just made up one of my own. I’m going to see how long they can go without talking. But this time, with a bet. Loser pays dinner.” She smiled slyly.
The girls at the table laughed and I laughed with them.
When I came back with the check, everyone was trying to get the two guys to crack, peppering them with questions and annoying them to no end.
For fun, which I needed desperately after a day like this, I added a question of my own into the mix.
“What was the dare?” They both looked at me with knitted eyebrows. “With the pickles?”
Refused to budge, but at least it put me in a good mood. Now to face the wrath of Porter.
“Bridget, let’s have a little chat, shall we?” he said to me, almost sweetly as I sat down with a glass of Coke and my cell phone, ready to relax for the evening. We had been reduced to mostly to-go orders, aside from the family I was waiting on, who lingered and talked constantly.
“Okay.”
“I’ve been thinking about your performance at work lately, and frankly, I’m not satisfied,” he said without really looking at me.
Breathe. No apology, but what was I expecting? A hug?
The family at my table started to gather their things and the taller guy came up to the counter to pay the bill.
“Hold that thought,” I managed to say to Porter.
“Everything okay for you tonight?” I asked the brother, forgetting for a second about the dare and getting kind of peeved that he didn’t answer. I hated it when people did that. I hit clear on the cash register and ran through his credit card before snapping back to reality.
Porter and his damn “frankly”s. The bet, the good mood.
“Still not talking, huh?” I said, a real smile, an ironic one, playing on my lips.
He shook his head and smiled back as I handed him the receipt to sign.
“Really treating your family tonight, huh?” I asked. Nothing.
“Jim!” I heard the other brother, the other one in the bet, call after him. Ben was his name, and Jim looked up from the receipt to him.
Okay, so he had broken the bet.
“Jim! You can start talking again,” Ben said, stepping up next to him. “Holly, mom, tell him it’s over! He lost!”
“He lost?” I said. “But you’re the one talking.”
“Yeah,” Ben replied with a grin. “But he broke the bet. Answered your question, only you didn’t hear it.”
I looked at him, confused. Jim shook his head and shrugged.
“Pickle juice.” Ben laughed out loud as the rest of the family started to shuffle out the doors. “He wanted me to drink pickle juice.”
I found myself laughing over nothing.
After they had left, I had cleaned the table, and went back to face Porter, I had an idea.
He was arguing with me, challenging me, coming up with a million reasons to fire me.
“Well, Porter, I’m all the help you’ve got right now. I dare you.”
He recoiled and said goddamn more times than I could count.
Three weeks later, without seeing that family again, I quit my job.
He’d never know what courage he had given me.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Jim and his family out for pizza.
Chapter End Notes:
thanks for reading :)
