It was the summer after my freshman year of college. I was 19 years old and staying with my parents for a couple of months before the new Fall semester rolled around. After a couple of weeks of putzing around the house, I started to receive subtle signals from my dad. He would come home from a long day of work and say something like,
“You need to get a job.”
OK, so maybe the signals weren’t that subtle. I can’t blame him for wanting me to start pulling my weight around the house. I spent every day for almost a month smoking weed and making elaborate sandwiches from the contents of the family refrigerator.
I was out to dinner one Friday night with my parents at a fancy Italian restaurant called Esposito’s. My dad was a friend of the head chef and manager of the place, Tony. Tony approached the table and sat down next to me in the booth; his bulging tattooed arm swung onto the seatback next to me. He smiled and spoke in a thick Italian accent. His breath smelled like cigarettes.
“So you’re ready to work, yes?”
I was confused when Tony produced a white button-down shirt and a black apron.
“Go into the kitchen and get started. We are very busy.”
I learned that my dad had applied for me. I could hardly finish my Caesar salad before the news was dropped on me that I was going to be busing tables at Esposito’s for the rest of the summer.
Busing tables at Esposito’s meant always looking busy. If I wasn’t in constant motion, Tony, or any of the people on the wait staff, would reprimand me. So I paced around the dining room with my hands folded neatly behind my back. If I saw an empty plate, or any plate that wasn’t being touched, I interrupted whatever conversation was going on between the patrons to ask, rather sheepishly, if they were “still working on it.” A lot of people didn’t hear me, or they pretended not to hear me.
When patrons left, I had to clear the dirty table in a state of frenzy. This meant stacking plates and cups into unstable formations and speed-walking through the tight spaces between tables to the dish pit. This area had no air conditioning and was steamy with the aroma of hot garbage. I would plop these heaping piles of ceramic into the sink, where a defeated Haitian dishwasher would curse at me in Creole.
If I dared to take my time while cleaning or took a break from my duties, one of the many tense employees would come berate me. You see, a restaurant is a machine. Working there, you must become a cog, always moving to keep the place running smoothly. I recall one night on the job when I spilled a full glass of red wine onto a table I was trying to squeeze by. In my haste, I knocked the wine over with my hip, spattering it onto an older woman’s white blouse. She and her date got their dinner for free, and I didn’t get paid that night.
On another shift, I was asked to box up a slice of pizza for an elderly gentleman. He handed me the plate, and I rushed back into the kitchen with it, only to knock into a waiter hastily running into the dining room. The slice of pizza tumbled off the plate and onto the dirty kitchen floor, cheese-side down. I quickly picked it up, boxed it and handed it to the man without a second thought.
Jeremy Haas is a UF English junior. His column appears on Wednesdays.
