Dry Sausages

Occasionally, after an especially draining or tedious day at the office, I reminisce about my waitressing job of high school and college. Those days under the tray were exciting, indeed. I never knew what characters would sit at my tables and the money wasn't bad, either. I regularly pulled $300 in tips a night on the weekends at an Italian fine dining house with very over-priced wines. In fact, it was a much fairer compensation system than my current civil service pay structure. Your tips directly reflect your customers' satisfaction and motivate you to provide your very best service. In civil service, everybody gets the same salary and automatic (albeit tiny) pay increases once a year whether you're a hard charger or a slug. Unless you have designs on management positions, which are almost always inside jobs, there's really no monetary incentive to do your best. Thus all those civil service worker jokes..."how many civil servants does it take to...". Naturally, there are always exceptions. I count myself among those. There are employees who have a strong work ethic among the sloths. It's just a broken system, all the same.

Of course, waitressing has its pitfalls. Strange birds who might crack off a dollar on a $100 tab, or those curious people who must round the charge total to an even amount, even if it short-changes the waitress. Grrrr. Waitressing is hard work, folks. My restaurant was a former house, with the kitchen upstairs. The owner was a bit Cruella DeVille-esque (crazy white hair, loooong red nails, black and white outfits) and insisted us girls wear those black parade shoes with 2 inch heels with our Italian maiden dress uniforms. Every one of us took a tumble down the stairs and if you'd been holding food or dishes, she'd take the cost of what you dropped out of your check! Beyotch, eh? No matter, the tips were so good we came out ahead anyway.

I had my little share of regulars and one guy, in particular, was beyond odd. But I was always happy to see him. He dined alone and was crabby. No small talk whatsoever. Always insisted on the same table and ordered the same thing: spaghetti with Italian sausage and peppers, with a twist: the sausages MUST be dry. We marinated our sausages in sauce all day. Mr. Dry, however, wanted no sauce anywhere near his plate. So I obliged, washing off the two sausages, drying them and placing them in their naked glory on the plain white noodles. He was happy at last! He left me a $50 tip that first night and every night there after until I left the job four years later. See? He appreciated my service! And that just made me want to dry those sausages extra nicely time after time.

So I propose all civil servants complete one year of waiter/waitressing prior to permanent appointment. It will be readily apparent who wants to work and who's there for the free ride about five tables into the first night. And remember, support your food servers. Please tip accordingly!