Buffet bum

The thing with buffet is that it brings out the hog in you. It separates the food lovers from just those with huge appetites with no regard or respect for quality of the food. In short, hogs. There was a time I was serving in a buffet setting and the people got in queue as usual. They were extraordinarily famished and I could see them trying to crane their necks to visually sample that which they would have when it was their turn.

A certain man caught my eye. This man had a hard time choosing what to have thus he heaped his plate with all the items on the buffet and his plate had an unholy amount of food. I wondered if all that would fit in him for he was quite small in stature. Plus isn’t that like bowel suicide? Mixing that much food is tempting fate and fate has a way of accepting challenges and giving you exactly what you put it up to plus a little bonus so that next time you will think before acting or speaking rashly.

As the man was precariously balancing his plate, he missed a step and the plate danced a little on his hand. He managed to maintain balance but dropped a gigantic piece of chicken. I saw him attempt to dive for it as it fell and it all played out like a movie in slow mode.You should have seen the look on his face. You’d think someone shot his favorite dog and made him watch it. He was crushed! He just stood there clearly debating whether to pick it up or not.

He looked right, and as his eyes were cruising the room towards the left, his eyes met mine. I could almost see a curse word in the look in his eyes. He looked at me and then down to the chicken and he looked distraught and angry all in one hungry package. Stifling a laugh, I walked up to him and I offered to bring him another piece of chicken. He almost hugged me with appreciation. I think I had just singlehandedly made his day by simply doing my job of looking at guests to see if they need anything.

Of hallucinated constipation

Some days are good, some are bad and others lack a clear word to define them. Well, I had, is it usually have, too many of those days.

Waking up in the morning and I feel like a bulldozer spent its free time cruising on my poor head. I look around and I am not even sure I am alive or gone to the other side. Curse the one who invented rum and coke. Why does it have to be so sweet yet so potent? I smell like a sailor and my eyes are seeing a blurred imitation of my house. Or is it mine? My phone is never far from me so I stretch out and look for it. I find it and to my horror, I have 30 minutes to get to work. To make matters worse, I am not at my house but at my equally wasted best friend’s house. There must have been an amnesia outbreak or something because neither of us has any idea how we even got to her place.

                    

So I drag my dehydrated self into action and in no time I am showered and dressed. Or at least seemingly dressed. I have to go to work in a fraction of a dress because that is what I wore the previous night. This was enforced by the fact that my friend has a particular aversion to length, so I was better off showing up to work with familiar scandal in the name of a dress than with uncharted territory that may be too much for me to handle. Thank God for trench coats for it made me have a semblance of decency.

Sometimes I wish I had a regular office job where you sit around all day and pretend to work while chatting on Face book. As for me I get to walk around while balancing a tray and at moments like this, balancing my own body weight is an issue in itself. I slip into my uniform, and blend in with the rest before the managers notices I am late and slightly ‘disoriented’. I literally avoid serving anyone because I am still seeing some extraordinary visions that did not earlier exist at the restaurant. Who knows what type of illegal and legal substances I consumed? A very deliberate slap from a colleague plus a secret concoction from the bar man set me straight and I was near sober. And devilishly bloated. Or was it hunger? My whole body is in a blur. I should probably pay more attention to adverts and read the fine print that says that alcohol is bad for you. But who sees that stuff anyway, let alone care about it? If they wanted you to feel the impact of the warning, they would increase the font and change the font color to a bold atrocity.

The manager sees me and I say I am fine. Just a little off and with a splitting headache. He knows I am telling half truths but I don’t care. I go to the washroom to hope for retrieve. If I tried serving a guest, I would probably scare them off or bite off their head if they get obnoxious. I was feeling like a one girl Rugby team with a bad case of constipation so I was grouchy and itching for a fight. These are the days you just accept that you need help and go to the washroom to catch some shut eye. Yes, even us waiters have these episodes…

Hail the Queen bee and her calvary…

People are different. Very much so that most of the time, the differences cloud all other possible interactions. This is usually much worse if the differences flare in a work situation. In psychology the say that each society has personalities in all the extremes. The madman, the diva, the bully, eccentrics and what not. Well, sometimes I feel as if i landed in a scenario with more than the standard ratio of the extremes. Being ‘normal’ is relative here. It is usually defined by the queen bee and her band of followers.

Let me introduce the queen bee. Either by rights or self proclaimed and appointed, she is the “epi-centre”. Usually too cowardice to act alone, she forms a band of the power puffs who’s mission is to thrush all who “rub” them in the wrong way, those that don’t care about their existence and sometimes they thrush just for the sport of it. If you ask me they are just busy bodies who are inborn bullies who are trying to flex their muscles to people. Just barking toothless bulldogs.

As far as I am concerned, my job description as a waiter is to serve the guests and assist them in any way that I can to make them feel at home. So when my job also includes starring in made up tales, I have a problem because I don’t remember getting paid for that. There is no worse morale killer than vicious rumors flying around about you. Sometimes I think I should actually do what they claim that I do just to humor them and make at least one thing in the string of made up blur true.

I’m pretty sure I got my work cut out for me in terms of workplace drama but if I have made it thus far, I guess I am more resilient than I thought.

All’s not fair in love and War…

Love chances on all of us. Sometimes it is actually love but most of the time it is just Lust masked behind a flurry of heartwarming words. Other times it is just a passing phase commonly referred to as a crush.

Now when your job or the perception of it gets in the way or completely spoils your chances of nailing someone, it becomes a pain in the rear. As a waiter you serve all manner of people, and being human, there is the occasional crush. The only problem is the perception accorded to waiters. Not all waiters are unschooled unfocused people without any education. I think people forget that so many of the current Big shots did such work as a start to support things like schooling.

This is why I talk like this. There are some guests you serve and they light up your day. Sparks light up the conversation and there is obvious chemistry. A sly smile here, a witty comment there. Every minute is the very definition of blissful. Then they leave the restaurant. After one last glances your way as if to contemplate fate, they walk away. The body language says that they are interested but factors keep them away. The factor is common knowledge. The perception of this work. You both know it so you just let it slide. Its life and sometimes it’s unfair for no apparent reason.

Then there are the workplace affairs. The worst thing you could get yourself into. Your dirty linen suddenly becomes everyone’s business. When love becomes public, it become susceptible to outside involvement and opinion thus at a higher chance of collapse. But if you have learnt to live your life and ignore popular yapping, then you have nothing to worry about. However, the peculiarity of love is that it happens differently to people. I guess that’s why they say all is fair. However when it is so close but yet so far due to factors outside your control, it then becomes a nagging pain inside that keeps whispering what if… (Sigh) But what can we do anyway. C’est la vie!

The late worm catches the storm

You know how they always say that Kenyans are never on time for anything? Tell that to a boss who’s only concern is that you know how to read a watch and doesn’t care from which crevice you hail. You will find your ‘Kenyan’ self kicked out to go join a more ‘Kenyan’ organization. For some people like me, I struggle quite a bit with the concept of time. It passes too fast! One minute you are indulging in something, and the next, two hours are gone. Really? I think I live in a kind of freeze frame where time stops when I am doing something and unfreezes when I am done. Only then, I’m I hit by the fact that time doesn’t freeze and that I should probably buy a watch with a needle as an alarm. So that it can prick me each time it is time to shift to something else or to go somewhere.

 
In a waiters line of work, punctuality is crucial and is normally a matter of tranquility or world war reloaded from the manager. Usually, when one has just started a new job, you are on your best behavior until you start getting tired of putting up a facade. A serial latecomer will slowly slip back to his ways because punctuality is oh so foreign. I did that. In the first few weeks, I was on time like dawn but I started slipping. Pretty soon I had given so many excuses that I began chuckling before I said anything because even I was finding it hard to believe my own conjured stories. Then I got to have a taste of the consequences.

You see, when you come late at our workplace, you write a report. I wrote many. It was embarrassing. I loathe reports. Why? Because having written documentation of your misdemeanors strewn all over your record, in your own handwriting, is tantamount to career suicide and self damnation. I am not a fan of suicide or similar antics.Far too extremist for my liking. Plus coming late had a way of placing a bad mojo on your day and things just go wrong for no apparent reason. You get the moody guest, the manager is on your back like a shadow, you get bloated thus standing up straight is an issue, and by the end of the day,your nursing a massive headache from hell.

Bad days here have an extra B in the bad so I think its about time to make some resolutions. I don’t think I have it in me, to write more reports or endure more avoidable  bad kharma. It will age me prematurely and I am too young to start getting physically scarred by life.