About

A little collection of anecdotes and things noted – other than your order that is – whilst working in the service industry, whilst relentlessly being dubbed the ‘clumsy’ server.

I’ve worked in the service industry in some form or another since I was 16. There are times I love it, times I hate it, but mostly, I just get the fuck on with it.

On reading other blogs on working in the service industry, I’ve noticed they can become negative and cynical rants about certain customers, and isolated instances. This is part and parcel of working in this industry for too long. It’s inevitable.

I get the impression that a lot of these blogs are also written by servers across the pond. I am English. In England, you hope to receive 10% for good service if you are a waiter, maybe ‘and one for yourself’ if you are a bartender.

These blogs, don’t get me wrong, are interesting. As servers, we meet the best and worst of people, and everything in between. We can serve 50 people in a shift, and if two of them are arse holes, many of us leave the shift disheartened about the state of human kind. I’m hoping to record and remember the weird, the odd, and the wonderful, not just the rude, cheap and spiteful. They make good stories, so I shan’t be omitting them completely.

However, I’m hoping this blog will not just be a long bitch about customers and managers. I’ve been a customer, I’ve been a manager, I’ve been in pot-wash, I’ve spent some time in the kitchen, I’ve been a runner, a waitress and a bar tender. I get it at all angles. There will be days when I get off a 16 hour shift from hell and will write a long moan. If it offers no insight or interesting anecdote, I intend to delete it.

I want this blog to be fun and interesting to anyone has ever stepped foot in a bar, a café, or a restaurant, whether they are paying to be there or being paid to be there.