By Elizabeth Ednie
In all my years of working in the food industry on Cape Cod during the summer, I have never felt more beaten down and confused after three long and hard months of serving. COVID-19 came into the restaurant business like a bomb, and it did not settle down, as we can see from the situation we find ourselves in at school. I was a server this past summer at a local family-run restaurant, and saying it was hectic would be an understatement.
Like many local Cape Codders, I did not just work one job. I had three different jobs all summer and ran around like a chicken with my head cut off. After all, you have to take advantage of the economic boost during the summer months, especially during a pandemic, when people from all over decide to come to their cape homes to escape.
I would come into the restaurant at 3:45p.m. after working since 8a.m. with a Celsius in hand, ready to tackle the (mostly) stingy tourists, who surprisingly forgot we were in the middle of a pandemic. With that, patrons also forgot how to tip properly, which made me feel defeated night after night, wondering if I could have done something better or faster. And with the J-1 students not returning to the States to work, it put us at a disadvantage, as we only had three to four servers a night at a very busy restaurant.
Social media during this past summer made me feel heavy-hearted because friends and peers were posting stories about patrons at their places of employment being rude and disrespectful to teens and young adults, which eventually caught up to me. One time, at the end of one of my nights, a customer gave me such a hard time about how the woman’s steak was cooked, that I eventually broke down and cried and could not stop. She was just so rude and heartless over something that I could not control, and I tried everything I could to fix it and make it up to her.
The lesson I learned here was that some people could care less about treating others with respect and that enjoying a night out could mean being rude to your server. You have to accept that people will not always be 100 percent pleased with every single thing, and sometimes there is nothing you can do to make it better. Working in the restaurant business definitely gives you tough skin. It takes a lot for me to break down at work, but because of the restrictions we had to deal with, as well as the unkind comments from customers, made it that much harder.
Overall, as I had my fair share of rude customers, I also had so many great people and tables that made my nights so much better. I love waitressing and getting to interact with people, (behind a mask of course) and could not picture my summers any other way. Let’s just hope next summer will be better and COVID free!
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