Waitresses I Have Known

(This was written by kaz for the old blog site)

by kaz

Spanning a twenty something year old career in the restaurant biz, I have had the pleasure of meeting all sorts of characters. I’ve had the pleasure, sometimes dubious, of working in all sorts of places. And well, I’ve met people who simply sling hash and want to get off shift as soon as possible and met others who, after far too many drinks still want to stay and relay what’s really been on their mind despite the fact that it’s 3am and the shop has been locked shut for hours. I have to say I’ve loved them all. They’ve all had some great stories to tell.

I have a voracious appetite for stories it seems. Red wine increases my ability to listen. And laugh. Linda. What a trip this girl was. One of my favorite people ever to work with, Linda brought her sparkling funny self to work no matter what. She loved white wine. We’d stay for ‘A’ glass and end up finishing the bottle. The thing with Linda was that she was beautiful. Inside and out. The boys always appreciated the out. Trust me. She had so many stories about the out. The girls. She had huge girls. To her credit she always hid the girls discreetly when she worked for me. I made her.



In retrospect, I should have encouraged otherwise but at that time I still believed a restaurant could flourish in a small town despite being 10 minutes out of town. On the highway. Oops. Her laugh would resonate between the fake log walls though and you always knew when she was on shift. Her stories about the men who loved her and the girls that didn’t were numerous. She’d be easy to hate if you didn’t know her, being so gorgeous and everything. I remember one staff meeting, when the manager was giving a pep talk on up-selling the entrees. He mentioned, during his diatribe,” that we were never to forget that we were the BREAST restaurant around”. That did it. End of meeting. Well, end of anyone actually hearing anything else.

Lisa. What a fabulous woman. Blonde, beautiful and as smart as a whip. She loved white wine. She and I were always only going to have ‘a schnickey’ of white wine together but we’d always end up swallowing a bottle somehow. A hostess that was keen on letting me make money at my wee bar. She’d let me know (in code language) that she was getting ready to seat my customer, thus allowing me time to get that person to pay off their tab. Transfers almost always got forgotten and plus who really wants to track down a server that owes you a buck. Not me. Not ever. So I’d tip her phat and pour those schnickeys on demand.

Lina,. The best waitress in the world. A true legend in her own mind. She was at a table one day and felt a sneeze coming on. She turned her back to her table and ended up farting on them instead. I was on the floor laughing, she was in the back in tears.

Lynda. The only other female server that I worked with. Two girls made the cut and we had to make sure that everything we did was ‘up to snuff’ lest those boys have something to bitch us out for. Eating was against the rules, but Lynda didn’t make it in time for ‘family dinner’ so she grabbed some pine nuts to munch on. Sadly Lynda was very allergic to pine nuts and began to swell up rather rapidly on this very busy night. Very calmly she asked me to look after her section while she bolted over to the ER to get a shot. Lucky for me, she didn’t die and was back in time to take payments on her tables. The managers never did know she left the floor.