Okay, okay, let’s see…table 21 is waiting on a side of fries, table 14 needs a refill on her diet coke, I see a credit card on table 6, and there’s food up for table 11. Lucinda Williams croons in the background, “I think I’ve lost it, let me know when you come acrost it.” Is “acrost” even a word? Bits of conversation shoot around the crowded room like embers sparking off a complicated fire: “Helen LOVES her new podiatrist”; “Daaaad, when I grow up I want to make maps that kill people!”; “You said you were camping with FRIENDS!”…Of course, this is after the brain untangles the yarn of words. Before, it sounds something like, “Helen’s friends make podiatrists that kill people with maps. They love camping.” Then there is the image of Helen and her evil friends around a campfire; half of them are making maps laced with explosives and the other half are conjuring podiatrists out of dust using witchcraft. They are all singing, “Kumbaya” as the podiatrists materialize out of thin air. They all have perfect feet…

“Waitress!” Someone drops a knife and needs a new one. Tom, can you ring in a side of sour cream for table 17? There’s something sticky on my wrist and the coffee is not brewing fast enough. “Behind you!” warns a voice that sounds like Carrie. “Crap! I don’t have enough change to break this guy’s fifty.” I need a snack and two aspirin. “So, this dyslexic walks into a BRA….” Ladies and gentlemen, my co-worker Stephen. Unfortunately, he’ll be here all night…

I grab the Diet Coke from the bar. “Hey, Irv!” I say to the 70-something curmudgeon as his ass struggles to find the red vinyl stool. “Hey, kid! Got any decaf around here?” Oh, those regulars. They always seem to come in the middle of the madness. “In a minute, Irv. I think we have some from yesterday,” I quip.

I stack three platters of fish and chips on one arm and wrangle the Diet Coke in between my thumb and forefinger with my other arm. Ooh! There’s that shoulder pain I’ve come to know so well over the years. I drop the Diet Coke off as well as the fish and chips. No one looks at me. One guy mumbles a “thank you” into his napkin and immediately asks for tartar sauce. I tell him there is tartar sauce on the plate and point to the ramekin of whitish goo with the little lumps in it. Then his friend next to him asks for tartar sauce and I tell him the same thing and point as I try to mask my impatience with a generic hospitable smile. The third guy asks for ketchup for his fries and I point to the glass bottle of Heinz on the table. I feel like a kindergartener whose teacher is trying to get her to grasp the association between word and object. Just point and smile.

Some days are like this. Where no one really notices you or thanks you and you feel quasi-invisible until you bear the brunt of some slightly rude comment like, “It seems this dish looked better the last time I was here.” What am I supposed to do about this? I try to apologize and ask if they would like something else. They usually say, “No,” and I feel uncomfortable as they suffer through some meal that they’ve imagined is somehow not as good as it once was. They leave me a 10 percent tip because they are disappointed and I am stuck, responsible for destroying the lofty dream of meatloaf like Mom used to make. I jokingly glare at Fabian in the kitchen as if it’s his fault, and he shrugs his shoulders, “No habla!” he grins.

The gestalt of the food service industry remains somewhat of a mystery to the public we serve. So, this is how it is: On the worst of days, there is a war between the kitchen and the waitstaff. They get mad at us because customers modify the food to death or because it simply gets busy and they can’t keep up with the demand. This is somehow our fault, attracting high volumes of people so we can watch the kitchen crash and burn under the impossible volume of meals the staff is forced to cook. We think they’re ridiculous for taking it out on us; we are the ones who have to deal with the public face to face. Then we get mad at them for their impudence and wonder why our food is taking so long, why three or four line cooks can’t seem to get it together to make food for the entire restaurant.

This is a silent war, one of dirty looks and under-the-breath comments. We have somehow lost the ability to be compassionate to one another. “Hey! It isn’t me, man! I didn’t ask that asshole to order his omelet with peanut butter, sautéed spinach and lightly salted red peppers with a skoach of jack cheese cooked medium-well with hash browns cooked without butter or oil, yet miraculously still crispy, and toast with no crust!” We forget that both sides—kitchen and wait staff—are in it together.

Then, at the end of the shift, we sit down and drink beer and talk about the rudest of the rude and laugh because it’s all you can do in the trenches of food service. Because it really is ridiculous—how stressed you get over pancakes, how angry you become over a $2 tip that should’ve been a $4 tip. It is a bizarre concept to exert so much energy over a mass of people having one meal of their lives and then leaving. At the end of the day, when the restaurant is empty, I often sit and stare at the tables and wonder where the evidence of all of my hard work has gone. They come and go and I am left with this pile of cash and it has to be enough to validate my usefulness in the job I do to pay the bills.

This is the beginning of what I call the “existential spiral.” Because more people will be back tomorrow and the next day and the next, etc., an ad-infinitum merry-go-round. And most of us working here, behind the aprons and the smiles, have aspirations of doing things with our lives that seem to exist on a different planet from syrup in the hair and spilled Cheerios on the floor. We want to paint miracles. We want to serenade.

But we can’t fend off the familiar panic: “What if I’m waiting tables for the rest of my life!?” We begin to blame the ever-demanding public for alienating us from our dreams, blocked from view by a wall of Belgian waffles and BLTs. It is a twisted logic to follow, a captive, anxious logic. Occasionally, we scowl at a customer in a moment of misplaced frustration and still expect a generous tip. Sometimes we feed the hand that bites us before we bite the hand that feeds us.

But this is only how it is on the worst of days.

On the best of days we see regulars who seem compassionate and happy to have us, specifically as individuals, in their lives and part of their routines. They know I love to write. They ask me about the stories I’m working on, and I use their idiosyncratic quirks for developing characters. Waiting tables is tremendous fodder for character study.

And there is downtime to contemplate the weird nuances of human behavior. I love watching the solo diners. They are exquisite and fascinating. As I scrub at the crop circles of coffee mug rings staining the Formica, there is Margaret across the room, desperately trying to prevent all of her foods from touching one another on the plate. And Dave, toiling away at the Sunday crossword with his hand at his brow, lips quivering in thought. You get to know the intricate lattice of personal space, how those around you spend their days outside of the restaurant. Where do they go? What do they do? The intrigue is endless.

It can be difficult for those of us in the industry to admit we actually like doing what we do because waiting tables is supposed to be a waiting room for greater things to come. You can’t like it too much or there’s the fear of not getting out. There is the constant battle of maintaining enough ambition to foster the other side of your life, while the exhaustion weighs you down.

I sometimes get asked who the worst types of customers are. People expect me to pin the “bad-tippers.” But it’s really those who don’t comprehend the common graces of public interaction. The types too unaware of their surroundings to respect that they are sharing a dining experience with others—and with the employees. Of course, the lethal combo of these troglodytes also tipping badly is the absolute worst. But even when I wait on someone who’s blind to the symbiosis of public space and they tip 20 percent, I feel depressed. I feel bought off for their right to behave like an ass.

There can be a lot of subtext going on in the experience of eating out. But it’s important to remember that we like you when you behave yourself, we want you to enjoy your food, and we want you to come back. If I had to sum up the effect serving the public has had on me, it would be simple: My feet hurt, and I am humbled.