My Curriculum Vitae

I meet all kinds of guests attending the events I work at. I guess the majority of them treat us, the waiting and other members of staff, serving them generally quite ok, they smile and usually show their gratitude with a thanks or nod. There are, however, also a surprisingly vast amount of guests at every event that treat us as if just because we are paid to do the work, it is ok to treat us as slaves that serve their masters.

It is freaking difficult work serving guests. You need to serve them with a smile, even though they answer your smile with a cold stare. You need to treat them with respect even though they look at you as slaves. You need to carry their heavy plate of meaty food all the way from the kitchen to their table, which can sometimes be several hundred metres in the bigger venues. Very often it happens that they give a disgusted look at the food and tell you that they're a vegetarian, at which point you have to fight down the overwhelming urge to chuck with all your might the food right in the middle of their face and hope to break their nose, because they should have let the event managers know in advance. You must now carry the food back all the way, and run back with a vegetarian fucking plate.

When clearing away glasses and bottles and plates and all the leftover crap, you carry a tray in one hand, and use the other hand to load the empty stuff on. When your tray is already full and heavy as a big slab of cement, because most of the glasses and bottles still have liquid in them, most guests seem to assume that besides waiting, we all also have the hobby of bodybuilding with unlimited strength in our arms, and pile even more bottles onto the tray. Sometimes it causes the other stuff already on the tray to fall and break, and they look at you apologetically, and then turn around and walk away as if they're still an angel leaving you in a shower or shattered glass (luckily, another Esprit staff will be at your side in seconds to help you though). Another even more annoying thing is that when you're looking one way loading stuff onto your tray, guests come at you from another direction, and without notifying you, just start putting things onto your tray. I guess the most logic explanation of that action is that guests are completely thick, because they can't figure out that when we look in one direction, we can't see them putting things from another direction, and the outcome is very often that the whole tray tilts and falls. Well, they do the same thing and act like angels and float away. More annoyingly is when the venue is packed with people, and you're trying to clear stuff, walking around with a loaded tray. Some guests see you coming, but refuse to make way for you to get through with your tray for some bizarre reason, at which point you nearly yell in utter desperation: OI, YOU FUCKING BASTARD, do I have to slam into you with my tray and cause all the drinks to fall on your ugly suit for you to realise that you need to get out of my fucking way?!!

This is just the tip of the iceberg of the behaviour of guests. So please guys, if you're reading this, remember next time when you attend an event, go to a restaurant, or do anything or go anywhere where people are servicing you in any way, please treat them with respect, do not treat them as slaves. They are paid to do the work, yes, but you will make their work so much easier and also a more pleasant experience for youself, because if you treat them well, they will reciprocate the good treatment.

Puh, now that I've done my venting, I'm going to work at a wedding event today! Hope they will let us have the leftover cake, that will definitely shut my mouth from venting, hihihi.