Hey, waitress: you look so sad. And when I say that, I don't mean a little blue, but truly and deeply despondent. Your mouth is actually turned down at the corners, all the time, as if you were born without smiling muscles. Were you? Born without them? I’ve seen you around, in the wide upper tier out front at Country Cupboard, skulking around, shoulders hunched forward, neck inclined. So angry. Like, your eyes! Your eyes are as hard and mean as skipping stones. When you ask a diner if she would like more coffee or if he is ready for the check, there is a menace to how you ask, like you couldn’t care less or couldn’t be possessed of more contempt for those in your care.
Hey, waitress? I've watched you, in your Pennsylvania Dutch milkmaid's duds, in the waitstaff station with the other waitresses, surveying the floor with a pervasive balefulness. The other waitresses are, mentally, on auto pilot, going through the motions of their duties with a listlessness bordering on indifference, but where their faces are blank masks, your mean mugging is fierce, like you're going in for the full Cruella DeVille. There’s not an ounce of you that wants to be here at this moment, clearing plates or bussing tables or dressing down kitchen staff; your soul is at home, rotting in a glass encasement guarded by gargoyles. Do you gargle blood for kicks? There is no sense of joy about you, no "give," nothing to suggest that you're a person with hopes, dreams, or aspirations.
Hey, waitress. We sat in your section once, and couldn't figure out why you were in the food service industry. You're pretty in a way: super blonde, Nordic, bony. But there’s no life or bounce to your inflection. I hope you aren't sustained by tips alone. It might be argued that your employment as a waitress in a milieu where it's imperative that you display some modicum of personality—even just, like, a smidgen—is in actuality research for an anthropological exposé of some kind, but if that were true, one would think that you would try at least a little to fit in, to fake good will and folksiness, to make strangers remember you feel enough to consider asking after you upon their next visit. But that's just not how you roll.
You should be behind the counter at a Burberry outlet or working the lot at a Cadillac dealership or doing administrative work in an S&M dungeon/funplex—you know, someplace where people are accustomed to feeling despised, belittled, and made uncomfortable. What the fuck are you doing in a restaurant?
