The Nightmare Returns

Thursday morning found me waking up covered in sweat and breathing heavily. My heart was pumping oceans of blood every second. I haven't had this dream in years, but it instills fear in me like no other. Several happenings over the course of the week conspired to re-form the old nightmare in my subconscious mind.

Wednesday night found me watching my must-see program, Top Chef. The episode airing this week is always my favorite of the series, Restaurant Wars. Those who have opened a brand new restaurant on little sleep, with high pressure bosses, in the shortest period of time possible, can attest to what goes on. Many, many hours. Alcohol flowing at the end of the long night reviewing what went right and what went horribly wrong. Lists on top of lists of what is still undone. All leading up to that moment when the doors open and customers stream in to a sparkling clean and perfectly set dining room filled with shaky employees and managers chewing Pepto tabs by the handful. It all comes back to me every time.

Last Friday was another encounter with my ex-boss. He called our store at 4:45 pm wanting to know if someone would bring four cases of glasses to them. The guy taking the call turned and looked at me while saying, "Let me call you back". They do this to me every time. "It's on your way home". "They're a big customer". "Maybe you'll get a free meal out of it". BIG SIGH. Even though all I wanted to do was go home and fix a giant cocktail, I agreed.

Tuesday at work, one of our customers, an Italian "Grille" owner, came in and was talking about what a hard time he was having with his staff. His restaurant was just recently opened and his servers didn't know the menu, and were lazy and unprofessional. Even though he had spent a "whole two days" training them.

Which all led to my nightmare....

I was a cocky, experienced server who was recruited to help open this new Italian restaurant. In my head, I knew that I knew more than the owner, and we were butting heads over assorted matters. I was also arguing with the manager, who I knew that I knew more than. It became too much and I walked out in a huff, flinging my bistro apron in the air with a flourish.

The morning of the opening, I get a frantic phone call from the owner begging me to come back. The other servers he hired were worthless and he needed someone with experience to help him out. For some reason I agreed to and showed up one hour before opening. The manager was frantically trying to catch me up on the menu and steps of service. Everyone was running around with horrified looks on their faces and a line was forming outside the doors.

When the doors were opened, customers streamed into the restaurant and proceeded to fill every table. And there was no table chart. I looked down and realized that I had no apron. Worse yet was every server's worst nightmare. I HAD NO PENS!!!

Which was when I woke up, thankful in the knowledge that it was only a dream.