By Marie Beachdale

Sunday, Jan. 8, 2012, Surfside Beach - The unsexy side of serving is behind-the-scenes restaurant work diners don’t see, and most of them don’t pass the smell test.  

In the summer, during the peak of the busy season, I arrive at the restaurant two hours before it opens. During these two hours, the other servers and I stock supplies, cut fruit and make sure everything is in order for the day, but we also have to do the one thing we all dread the most: sauces.  

I don’t know what it is about “sauce duty” that makes us all cringe. It sounds simple enough-- make and portion the sauces we serve into two-ounce cups. There are about a dozen sauces to make and portion, including Ranch dressing and one of our signature sauces that has a strange resemblance to baby poop before it has been thoroughly mixed.  

I guess it’s just the fact that the last thing I want to do at 9 a.m. is get a face full of horseradish, or find myself, quite literally, elbow deep in Ranch dressing.

 
Early in the morning is also the time when the cooks assess the food, discarding anything that looks or smells even slightly suspect. Unfortunately, there is a morning cook who has mysteriously lost his sense of smell over the years, and I am usually the unlucky server he chooses to help him with his assessment.

“Smell this,” he’ll say, jamming a pan of fish under my nose. Spoiled or not, the smell of fish makes me gag. I have tossed my cookies at work in the morning on more than one occasion.  

Once the afternoon rolls around and the restaurant fills up, I divide my time between serving my customers and washing dishes. That’s right; there is no dishwasher where I work. That means that I have to clean off plates and wash them by hand.   

That also means that when the drain in the rinse sink gets clogged with coleslaw, raw shrimp from the kitchen, and customers’ half-chewed food particles, I have to stick my dainty little hand in it all to pull it out and throw it away. By the time the dishes are finished, I want to bathe in the sink full of bleach water. (Through working in the restaurant I have discovered that I might be a slight germaphobe…)

Aside from the aforementioned day-to-day duties, there are also the miscellaneous maintenance and upkeep tasks that management usually sticks on the servers when no one else wants to do it.   

“Your job description says wait tables and perform other duties,” the managers will say.  

These other duties include the not-so-glamorous task of combing the parking lot for cigarette butts and trash, dusting, painting, washing windows, and the part of my job I absolutely hate the most-- unclogging toilets.  

I swear sometimes it feels like I have a sign on my back that says “Tell me about bathroom troubles!” because it never fails… a diner will walk out of the restroom with a furrowed brow, pull me aside, and quietly say, “It wasn’t me, but someone clogged the toilet… it’s not flushing.”  

I always try to pawn the bathroom problems off on management or other servers.  

“I’m a girl and we all know girls don’t poop! I don’t know how to deal with these problems!”  I’ll tell them.

It never works. They hand me gloves and a plunger and tell me to get to it, but what table wants to see their server going into a bathroom to deal with human waste? Bleach is my best friend.  I always make it a point to reek of Clorox after jobs like that.  

It’s easy to complain, but when I can make almost $200 in a shift, I guess I have to do some jobs that make me cringe.  Just remember, being a server isn’t just about being able to smile and walk and talk. There’s much more that goes on that the public doesn’t see, and one might not even think about unless you’ve worked in the restaurant industry.  

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