This week I need to...
1. RUN. Outdoors, at least 6 miles, without the jogger (sorry, kid).
2. Clean my friggin' car. It seems to only rain when my car is in a garage so there's still evidence of tree sex (PG-13) all over the outside. Inside, it looks like parts of mine and the daughter's closets threw up on the seats with a good mix of stale Goldfish and cereal bar wrappers.
3. Take full advantage of my "weekend." Tomorrow, we are not doing anything, except maybe walk the dogs, before noon. I will not feel guilty for using "Little Einsteins" to insure the opportunity to drink an entire cup of coffee without having to reheat it in the microwave.
4. Cut myself a break. I've been alternating between just arriving at work ready for whatever and being filled with a sense of anxiety as soon as the towering building comes into view as I drive up Peachtree. It's been a few years since a serving job has conjured such a strong sense of fear. While I often relish in the opportunity to feel and be treated younger (I try not to act offended when I'm not carded at Trader Joe's, even though all the cashiers know me by now), it's different when a job makes you feel like a freshman on the first day of school... in a new district, where you don't know anyone.
I realized I needed to relax because it was brought to my attention that I was unnaturally paranoid about screwing things up and getting fired. Long story short, our POS system (that's Point of Sale, not Piece of S**t, although I prefer to call it the latter) is a pain in the ass. Add to that the fact that I rang in a party's dinner orders on another table. When I went back into the computer to "fire" said entrees, I accidentally did it under the wrong table number, so that the guys in the kitchen didn't know to actually start cooking the food. Thirty minutes later I'm in there asking where my food is, to which they reply, "You didn't fire it." And I'm sure what they really wanted to say was, "You didn't fire it, you dumbass nitwit ditz."
The wonderful guys in the kitchen did have my back, though, and got the food out quickly. My guests seemed none the wiser to the delay. Everyone loved their food. Mix-up disaster averted.
Later, my manager comes to me and in a serious tone says, "Hey, do you have a second?" I told her I would after I closed out my last couple of checks. Her tone sounded serious. I knew I was about to be read the riot act. I had fucked up and needed to get my shit together or reconsider whether this restaurant was right for me.
I went to go find her after my last tables left and she had gone home. Great. I thought. Now I'm going to have to wait until the morning and start tomorrow's shift with a write-up.
Funny enough, I didn't actually have nightmares about serving that night. I dreamed I was running a trail marathon. I finished in 4:40. I was a little disappointed that it took me a full hour longer than my road marathon PR but was happy to have survived a trail race of that length.
I awoke happy that I hadn't remained at work in my dreams, but was soon on my way to work with overwhelming trepidation. When I finally saw my manager again I asked if she still needed to talk to me. She was confused. She didn't remember asking to speak with me. I told her what she had said as I interpreted it, down to her ominous tone and she had absolutely no clue what I was talking about. Then, her eyes went wide and she says, "OH! I was just going to see if you could take another table!"
WHAT??
We had a good laugh at my complete misreading of what was going on, but I just can not believe I had myself worked up that much.
April Fools!
So back to this week's To-Do list: Giving myself a break. Since I'm as big a fan of self-induced anxiety attacks as I am of Nickleback or bleu cheese, I think I'm going to sit back an accept my fallibility. Chances are, no one else really notices my mistakes the same way that I do and if they do, hopefully, they just won't care!
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