It's the afternoon, and I've got to work soon. I'm closing tonight ... I won't get out until eleven or so. And if tonight's anything like last Wednesday, there will be hell in-between.
I love this job, but it takes a lot of energy. More often than not I get home, ready to sleep, and suddenly remember the stack of homework I've got to do for classes the next day. There's no way I could make this kind of money doing anything else without an advanced degree, though, and technically it aligns nicely with my class schedule.
Really the only bad thing about working in the restaurant is an artifact of the shift before. Alive, awake, alert, and enthusiastic I can navigate a shift with the skill and grace of an master artisan. When I don't get enough sleep, though, the dinner rush feels like being beaten about the face with a sack of potatoes until I can't feel it anymore and that worries me so I want it to stop for a second so I can figure out why it's stopped hurting.
This is especially true on Wednesday night, when instead of having been up all Tuesday night doing homework, I was in a bar listening to Alex Muller and Casey Graham play folk music until 2am. And then started on my homework. And then gone to school at 9am for most of Wednesday's light.
The prospect of a Wednesday shift is even more disparaging when I find out I've been scheduled to close, which involves among other things being the very last server to leave the building.
Worse, I've got to open tomorrow.
I'll talk to you later.
- Brandt
I seem to get five Wednesdays a week these days. But it was much better in the not-too-distant past and will be much better in the not-too-distant future as well, I think.
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