They grow up so quick.....

looks easy eh?

I had just returned from a quick smoke break, that is to say a one smoke break as opposed to a two smoke break, and was surveying the damage of yet another fantastic Friday. It had been busy, bend over and take it sort of busy. My table of ten nutritionalists had just left. Lovely people, didn't order any fries or anything with fat but seemed happy with their steamed veggies and fish with sauce and flavour removed.


The restaurant was emptying, the guests were air kissing each other goodbye and trying not to trip over their own feet on the way out. Many don't realise how much wine they have guzzled over the past few hours until they try to leave. It's most amusing to watch seemingly genteel and strait-laced ladies do the earthquake walk in their heels through the restaurant. Most amusing indeed.

It's around this time that a whole new wave of energy ripples across the restaurant floor. It's like a giant can of Red Bull has been opened and cocaine is falling from the ceiling. Waiters who twenty minutes previous were labouring hard with every simple task and huffing and puffing about sore feet are suddenly energized. People start moving like characters in a silent movie, that is to say very bloody fast and sans the inane chatter that normally accompanies our toil.

Someone, normally me, sets a target finish time which is of course ridiculously short but it gets the kids moving. It's also ridiculous because we always finish at the same time every night, half eleven. Don't know how it happens but it's always half eleven. I mean I'm not sure what will happen when we have to work past half eleven some night. Unchartered waters and all that, a few may perish on the rocks of lateness.

Clearly as everyone else was busy clearing and setting I decided it was time for another smoke break under the guise of "leaving the rubbish out". This is normally a two smoke break. Lovely two smoke break. So of I toddled with the rubbish and waiter chum number one who is of course wise to my many ruses and deceits when it comes to smoke breaks. But this also when we pick the night apart and dissect the service. Guests get rated (arseholes or awesome, there is nothing in between), food gets scored, management involvement gets mercilessly criticized or on occasion praised.

We pulled hard at our last smokes and headed back in. We got to the bar where we spied one of the new younglings setting a table. She was a worry for a while but seems to have turned a corner following a particularly bad weekend. A bad weekend can make or break and in her case it's seems to have made her. Well she is still here so that's a good sign. We stood back and watched her set a four top. A few weeks ago her table setting was, if I'm being generous, a fucking tragedy. It was as if the cutlery had been dropped on the table from a great height. But now it was precise, perfectly symmetric, and set with all the love and care of a heart surgeon operating on their mother.

"See that?" asked waiter chum number one.

"Yup, just brilliant."

"Yup, brilliant." I concurred dabbing a tear from the corner of my eye with a napkin.

"She's setting at an OCD level now."

"She sure is."

And that's the sign of a good waiter, an obsessive compulsion for symmetry.

We are ever so proud.