During my breaks here at work (and there are a few - one cannot take multiple practice exams in a row without a little breather in between), I’m either messing about with this thing, or I’m reading random blogs. For the most part, I’ll spend a couple of seconds or so skimming one, realize the information provided is too personal for me to take an interest, and move on to the next one via the said person’s blogroll. Those types of writings can only really be appreciated by the person writing them, or the people who know that person, erm, personally. I have, however, decided that I’m a huge fan of those blogs written by people in the service industry. My top three right now are WaiterRant, The Insane Waiter, and New York Hack.

The first two are, obviously, written by waiters, one in NYC and one in the Midwest, both very capable in their own right and both amused/horrified/infuriated by the caliber of customers who enter each’s respective restaurant territory. If you’ve got a spare moment, I definitely recommend checking through some of their posts. They’re hysterical, yet poignant, and I’ve already found myself acting differently at restaurants because of them.

When I worked at The Seafood Restaurant in St Andrews, for the most part the customers were tame: little old ladies enjoying a leisurely lunch, European tourists, American golfers, and, on special occasions, students from the university. We very rarely had parties with small children (thank god), and had very few complaints, the biggest one that I can recall being that the oysters weren’t cold enough (which is ridiculous, really, because those oysters were like a party in the mouth). That’s not to say that working at the restaurant was boring; it was just pretty uneventful where customers were concerned. The kitchen, however, was kept up with sexual innuendos and bad jokes, which made up for everything, even when one mini Scotsman decided to serenade me with an Elvis song and then proclaimed himself to be “devastated and heartbroken” - and was serious about it, I found out later from a friend - when I turned him down for a date. Ah well. Working as a waitress/bartender was hard work, and tips in Britain suck, but then, we weren’t getting the $2.90 or whatever it is that waiters get in this country, but rather amassed five quid an hour, or almost ten bucks. Hey, every little bit helped when it came to funding my social life.