Does Waiting Tables Make You Weak?

Working more that one job can certainly reduce financial stress as it provides added income to a low-paying job where the bills are barely getting paid. Teachers often moonlight just to make ends meet, the second job relieves the stress of trying to figure out where your next meal will come from, or how you are going to pay for heat in the winter. Working a second job can also lead to higher stress levels than working only one job as time constraints leave you little time to enjoy yourself, there is increased structure in your life and you see fewer of your friends as your free time decreases. I was fortunate enough to finally be in a position where I didn’t need to work a second job; I had finished my Master’s degree and was slowly working my way up the pay scale. I was now doing it out of habit. It gave me something to do, and I enjoyed it. Then I decided to buy a house. I was tired of throwing money away in rent. I hadn’t purchased a home right away for two reasons. One, I didn’t know if I was going to stay in my teaching job. I needed to establish tenure to guarantee I had a job, and I didn’t know if I was going to like teaching where I was. The second reason was financial; right out of college I had no money for a down payment. With the purchase of a home, I now found myself back in the same situation financially as when I started teaching. My mortgage was four times what I had been paying in rent; I again needed to work the second job. This time, however, it was self induced, and would pay off in the long run. One Saturday afternoon, Delilah and I were working together. A table of four young men came into the restaurant, all of them my students. I took their order, even though Delilah was actually their waitress, and she took them their food as soon as it was ready. They were the only people in the restaurant and so we visited with them. After a while, they left. An hour later or so, Delilah went to leave. As she went to clock out, she received a computerized message indicating that she still had open invoices. She looked to see which ticket had not yet been paid and discovered that it was the table of students who were in earlier. She came back to the kitchen to ask me if they had paid me. She knew both of us had been out to the table on several occasions and she thought perhaps they had given me the money for their bill. They had not. I was outraged. Not only had these students run out on their bill, they had also stiffed Delilah. It is bad enough that some people feel it isn’t necessary to leave at tip, but when it is someone you know, it is even worse. The stress level had gotten to me. I should never have let it, but it did. I really felt as if I had received the greatest lack of respect from the students I had ever received, and they weren’t even my table. Treating those with whom I work without respect is disrespectful to me as well. I don’t think they understood that. I was the delivery driver that day and I happened to know where one of the students lived. On my next delivery in that direction, I made a stop by his house.