Devonne Brown

The first job Lucy had was in Brunetti’s Family Restaurant waiting tables, fast paced and busy. You had to be light on your feet and quick in your head to keep up with the baked steak and chicken and dumplin’s coming out of the kitchen. Who got iced tea with lemon and who didn’t mattered more than life itself on Sunday after church. The busiest day of the week. Lucy’s first day. She wished she hadn’t started then.

She left the coffee pot on empty and it crusted over. Betty, another waitress, taught her to pour crushed ice in it, swirl it, and get the crust out – took seconds. The rule was always to keep making coffee. Keep moving, but take your time to keep moving. Make the coffee, take the coffee, pour the drinks, take the drinks, order up. Help the bus boys clear the tables if you have a second, but get the food out to the customers first. Don’t mess up the orders. Draw eights on to go orders.

 Don’t touch the cash register, that’s for the cashier. Your job is to run food. Pick it up at the window. Put the dirty dishes in the tubs or let the busboys do it. Stay the hell out of the kitchen. Don’t get near the doors. They’ll knock you over. Somebody will come running out of there with a stack of plates and hit you with the door and send you flying with a tray of food.

It didn’t take her long to figure out it was easier to carry trays full of food higher than lower. They’d balance better and it looked more professional. All the waitresses had on their white nurse-like uniforms, blue aprons, and white shoes, the trays were becoming easier and easier to manage. This waitress thing was no big deal, she was even pulling ice cream out of the soft serve machine with a pretty curl on the end for the hot apple pie. She was a pro halfway into her shift. Easy peasy lemon squeasy.

More orders came in. Baked steak, hamburgers, rare, medium, well, With or without onion and tomato. Lucy got them all right. She had a mind like a steel trap and lightning in her tennis shoes.

 Not a coke was wrong, not an unsweet or sweet tea went to the wrong guest. She was cooking with gas, baby. She’d found her calling until that Westfall idiot showed up and tripped her with a tray full of hot raisin pie and ice cream, chocolate lava cake, and coffee. He did it on purpose too. Sent her flying face first into the formal dining room, right in front of the boss’s wife Sonja, who had the sense of humor of a longhorn steer and was just as wide. 

Sonja surveyed the damage. Lucy nailed four patrons with hot pie and ice cream, three with coffee, and two with lava cake. The dry cleaning alone would cost a fortune. She gave Lucy the evil eye. Lucy froze in fear. The Westfall kid slunk out the back door of the restaurant. His work there was done. 

Sonja began to snicker, then to belly laugh. Poor Lucy knew she’d be fired for sure, but Sonja doubled up and laughed until tears rolled down her face. Sonja gave Lucy the rest of the night off, and all the patrons free meals, dry cleaning vouchers, and a promise to skin the Westfall kid alive. Lucy’s job was safe.