1
THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT
“I have the item” is the first thing I hear when I walk into work on Sunday night.
The item in question is my duvet, and the person winking at me about it is Kyle.
Kyle, who is standing behind the host stand in the cheery foyer of the Goat wearing a mini cowboy hat with plush horns curling out of it—the latest in his growing collection of goat-themed apparel. He looks hilarious, cute, and deceptively harmless.
“It’s in my truck. I’ll give it to you after?”
“Sure. Thanks,” I say, with what I hope is a neutral-seeming nod.
I’ll have to wash it in hot water. Twice.
“Or we could go for a drive, climb into the back, get cozy,” Kyle suggests, with a waggle of his white-blond eyebrows.
My insides take flight like a flock of startled birds, and then I’m doing this awkward thing where I’m cringing and trying to smile at the same time. But smiling might be too encouraging and so I stop, because even after three weeks of my ignoring his texts and generally avoiding him as much as possible, Kyle continues to look at me with those stupidly hopeful, flirty eyes.
Still, I don’t want to be rude. We work together, and in that capacity Kyle has been fine. In fact, except for the one (admittedly problematic) incident, he’s been great. Not to mention, I’m the one who asked him to bring me the duvet when my mom finally noticed it was missing today. I’m also the one who let him wear it home from my house in the first place.
“I’ll just grab it from you after,” I say. “I have a lot of homework.”
“Your call,” he says with a shrug.
“Right.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” I say, with another too-bright smile. “Um, what’s my section?”
“The patio,” Kyle says, gesturing at the giant, erasable seating chart that sits on the host podium.
“Alone?”
“Yeah. That okay?”
It’s a big section to handle solo, but more tables means more tips, so I say, “Totally.”
“By the way, Perry’s coming in, and he asked for you specifically,” Kyle says, looking at me like he expects this to make me ecstatic.
Perry Ackerman is a handful, and high on the list of people I’d rather not have to deal with right now. But he’s a great tipper, and a regular, so I give Kyle a thumbs-up and say, “Awesome.”
“I knew that’d make you happy.”
“So happy,” I say, and walk away taking deep breaths.
On my way through the restaurant I wave at my fellow servers Brianna and Kat, both of whom are working in the front tonight. Kat seems not to see me, but Brianna gives me a thumbs-up and pulls a comically panicked face that tells me she’s already in the weeds.
The patio is at the back of the restaurant, and is, in fact, not a patio at all, but a windowless, rectangular space tricked out with fake plants, paper lanterns, an anemic fountain, and painted “windows” on every wall that do not fool anyone.
I have just enough time to tidy the section, tally my float, and gulp down a half cup of hideously bitter coffee behind the wall of the service station before I hear, “Libbyyyyyyyy!”
“You got the ol’ perv?” Brianna gives me a wry, dimpled grin as she comes through with a stack of dirty plates. Her amazing crown of black braids adds at least three inches to her diminutive stature.
“Yep.”
“All right, tits up,” she says, which I’ve come to understand means some combination of “chin up” and “good luck.”
I snort and square my shoulders.
“Libbyyyyyyyyyyy!” Perry is now advancing conspicuously through the dining room in one of his linen suits, with a shirt almost as pink as his bulbous nose, his silver hair gleaming. He’s accompanied by two of his friends, Douglas and Garcia, while Kyle trails behind them with a stack of menus.
I paste on a thrilled expression and step out from behind the station.
“There you are! Where’s my hug?” Perry demands with open arms, then closes the distance between us and yanks me into one of his boob-crushing, bone-cracking, full-frontal embraces. Perry Ackerman is Pine Ridge’s much-loved town savior, thus the hugging must be endured. It’s a bit much, though.
When it finally ends I take the menus from Kyle and usher Perry and his friends to their table. I get them settled, take their drink order—Ackerman beer to start with, of course—punch it in, and head to the bar to pick it up.
Nita, our bartender and niece of the owners, Dev and Maya, gives me a wave.
“Hey, Nita.”
“Perry, huh?” she says, with a knowing look.
“Yep,” I say, carefully balancing three beer glasses upright in my left hand, then grabbling the bottles by the neck in my right. “At least it won’t be boring.”
“That’s the spirit,” she says, then adds, “Oh, hey, can you try to sell some of the cucumber salad? Or the butter chicken burger? People are really digging the fusion items and Maya and Dev really want us to keep pushing them.”
“Sure,” I say, and head off.
Perry, Douglas, and Garcia order a ton of food and agree to every upsell and special I suggest. They’re going to have way too much and their table is going to be overloaded, but I’ve become pretty mercenary about this stuff. Every little increase of the bill increases my tips. Not only that, but the more I sell overall, the more shifts and better sections I get. And the more shifts and better sections I get, the higher my bank balance climbs, which is the rather urgent reason I’m working here in the first place.
Kyle is careful not to fill up my section until Perry & Co. are settled, but soon all my tables have been sat, and the pace picks up. I’m checking on orders, cranking the pepper mill, delivering and clearing plates, taking more orders, making suggestions, chatting people up, running bins of dirty dishes to the dish pit, making pots of coffee, getting another round of drinks for Perry because they’re switching to sangria, and helping Brianna and Kat any time I’m not busy for more than ten seconds.
Dev makes his way around, overseeing it all and lending a hand where needed. Kyle’s there too, on the periphery, bussing and turning tables, but I don’t have time to think about him. I don’t have time to think about anything.
This state of bonkers, nonstop busyness where the entire world falls away was one of the biggest surprises for me about this job. Restaurant work can be hugely stressful, but when the place is full and everything is going right, it’s wild. You get into this zone, like a flow state, where you’re thinking and moving so fast, juggling so many things at once, that hours can pass in what feels like the blink of an eye. You come back to reality with your brain melted, feet/knees/back throbbing, smelling like you live inside a barbeque, but also knowing you somehow survived.