For the past four months or so, my life has consisted solely of work, school, and taking care of a house all by myself. Almost literally nothing else. With that said, it's no surprise that work often jumps out of reality and burrows it's way into my dreams. In fact, it happens quite often.
Last night I had a dream that I was once again at work. This time, I was in 1 and 2 left. It was a fairly slow day. For some reason, I was given a six in 4 back (for those of you who aren't tracking with me, that's clear across the dining room). After I went up to the table for the first time, it became quite obvious that this was going to be a table like no other. Four out of the six people ordered right away, but there were two people--a husband and his wife--who were taking their grand 'ol time picking out what to eat. They had also never been there before, and they wanted to make sure that they didn't miss anything, so they asked me question after question after question. "What's the Soup, Salad, and bread bar?" "Can I get this with a meal?" "How much does it cost to add this if I got that?" "You guys have any drinks here?" On and on an on it went, and I was starting to get impatient. I looked back over at my original section and saw that I had gotten another table while I was waiting for them to make up their minds. "Alright, I'll give you guys a few more minutes to look over the menu here. I'll be back with your drinks awhile!"
"Well, hold on there." He said. "Do you guys have fries? I'd like to order two sides of fries awhile, one regular, and one buttered." Buttered fries?
"Yeah, for sure. I'll put that right in for you."
"Great. And do me a favor, will you? Bring me some honey mustard and mayonnaise with that as well."
"You got it." And off I went.
I went back to the table that I had just received and saw that someone else had already picked them up and was taking care of them. I looked out the door and saw a mass of bodies all swarming towards the dining room waiting to be seated. We were about to become very busy and I was wrestling with this table trying to pry their orders from them. Enter freak-out mode.
I briskly walked back to the kitchen to the cook's line and said, "I need two sides of fries, please!" We don't serve buttered fries, so I figured I'd give him some butter on the side that he can stick his food into. That'll give it some extra grease to slide down his gullet. I walked over to the condiments area, and ran into Jesse Newcomer. "Hey, buddy, how's it going?"
"Eh, not too bad. I have this one table that's giving me a hard time, but it's fine."
"Here, this might help" Jesse took the pan of water he was holding and threw it at me, completely soaking me from head to toe in water.
"Oh man, I'm so sorry!! I don't know what I was thinking, I'm so stupid sometimes." He was half apologetic, half laughing.
"No dude, it's alright. Accidents happen."
This "accident" was going to take a while to clean up. I went to the dining room office to dry off and ask the supervisors what I should do about my soaked clothes, but by the time I got there, I was already starting to dry off. I walked back to the kitchen, and on my way, I was stopped by Reba Baker. "Hey, Ben, do you have a few minutes? I'm trying to decipher something my boyfriend sent me last night. Here, take a look." She pulled out her phone and showed me a text that her man sent her the night before asking about the first time they started liking each other. "Oh, Reba, it's nothing bad. He's just asking you to remember the first time you had feelings for him."
"Oh, okay. Thanks!"
Off I went, back to the cook's line again. I grabbed my fries and went to get some honey mustard, mayonnaise, and butter. Jesse Newcomer was there again. "Hey, you dried off!"
"Yeah, it didn't take long. Now I just need some honey mustard, butter, and mayonnaise for my table. This guy wants to soak his fries in butter, can you believe it?"
"Here, well let me help you since I soaked you in water. I'll get you some honey mustard." He grabbed a serving cup and filled it with honey mustard. He was about to hand it to me when he tripped, throwing the condiment right at my neck and grabbed my right arm for balance, which threw me off balance, and in turn, I dropped the two orders of fries I was holding. "Shoot, man, I am so sorry! Here let me clean you up." He was laughing so hard he was crying.
"Dude, like, what the heck? First you soak me in water, now you throw honey mustard in my face? C'mon, man!" I was starting to get stressed out and angry.
After I was, for the most part, cleaned up, I took the food out to the table of six. They still hadn't made up their minds! More questions. I started to get really impatient and drop subtle hints by tapping my foot or my pen, looking around the dining room, and even sighing pretty loudly, but to no avail. This table had already taken 30 minutes to read over the menu, they were going to be here a long time.
And that's when I woke up.
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