One of my hobbies is defending choices I've made that no one has bothered to actually criticize.
One of the choices I find myself feeling defensive about is what I do for work: I bus tables at a restaurant and brewery in Asheville, North Carolina. No one is trying to make me feel bad about it, but sometimes I do. Mostly it consists of trying and failing to avoid touching food that has been chewed on, and sometimes, mid-scraping mutilated nachos into the bin, I wonder just what the hell I'm doing with my very expensive education. It's not the kind of job I imagine my parents bragging about. It's not the stuff of which alumnae bulletin dreams are made. It's dirty and hard and underpaid almost all of the time.
But I love it. Even and especially when I end the night saturated in nacho cheese, my own sweat, and other people's beer.
But I love it. Even and especially when I end the night saturated in nacho cheese, my own sweat, and other people's beer.
I love rolling silverware, still warm from the dishwasher, the subtle flick of the wrist, the casual speed. I love seeing a dirty table and knowing that in less than a minute it will be clean and ready to use again. I love the challenge of carrying 17 (my pr) glasses in one arm and still being able to wipe with the other. I love the brute strength I use to carry buckets of ice, move tables, cart loads of dirty plates and bowls, haul sacks of used linen up the stairs. I love darting in between customers, weaving and dodging around pulled out chairs, free-range toddlers, drunk bros, and servers balancing dishes of food that I will soon scrape, half-eaten, into our compost bin.
This kind of work makes me feel strong and capable, dexterous and graceful in a way that I could not be accused of in other aspects of my life.
I love the spanish version of "My Heart Will Go On" my favorite dishwasher plays.
I love observing people who are out to eat, on first dates, bachelorette parties, family vacation, birthdays, retirements, anniversaries. I love listening to their conversations, witnessing their weird eating habits, counting how many napkins they let fall on the floor. I love making a table of patrons laugh when I'm wiping down their table or taking away their plates or bringing them an extra ketchup. I love explaining my tattoo to them. I love being part of the scene of their experience. Oh vanity: "Remember that lovely girl who bussed our table when we visited Asheville? She's so charming and smart and quick with a towel and she totally made me feel better about spilling beer all over the floor and myself".
My work suits my brain chemistry so well: exhausting physical activity and repetitive, short tasks that require brief spurts of intense focus and concentration is my mental health sweet spot. And bussing tables well requires the kind of mindfulness I'm trying to practice. A deep breath is your only true weapon in the battle against bros, and when your present moment includes balancing ten plates heaped with used chewing gum and collapsing sandwiches, it's pretty helpful to stay in it.
I love being paid mostly in cash. I love swapping dirty jokes with the kitchen, I love the access to unlimited amounts of ice to chew on, I love being surrounded by smart, hilarious female servers who won't take shit, I love that we all call each other "girl" without irony. I love witnessing the weather change out the big patio windows, twilight falling over my town in a different way with every season, the routine of it all and the novelties.
In my particular social milieu, it seems that it's only acceptable to work a service or blue-collar job if there are ambitious caveats attached. One must also be a writer, a scholar, an actress, what have you. And while I do a lot of work that has nothing to do with the remains of the burger of the day, I'm not interested in negating one kind of work in order to defend another, more palatable one. I want to stop saying, "I just bus tables."
I bus tables. It's challenging and rewarding and necessary work, and it's perfect for me right now.
