after a week of unfortunate events at work, my
patience was running wire thin tonight. albeit rare i’m mad, it happens.
at the end of the night, a gentleman who paid for everyone’s meal in his party
comes up to me and introduces himself as mike. he’s wearing a black polo and he’s been very receptive to me all night.
smiling, saying thank you, just making me feel comfortable when in reality that
was my job. i didn’t think anybody but coworkers could tell i was upset, but maybe mr. mike could see through my courteous smile and cordial welcomes. he says he works on air conditioning, and that with his clients,
everybody is always happy when he leaves.
he joked
they’re happy for obvious reasons,
because they have ac. we shared a laugh about it and he went on to say with serving, it is
different. not many people are appreciative of servers because people think
they are entitled to service and look at themselves as a step above servers.
he said he wanted to let me know that he appreciates everything we do. one
thing he told me as we were shaking hands (he said it three times) was to never
let anybody bring me down. mr. mike told me to always remember that.
with the way the night was going, that was exactly what i needed to hear. time seemed to unpause itself in that moment and everything went back to normal. suddenly i felt bad for feeling bad the whole night. i congratulated him on his daughter getting married and said i’d hope to see him again. as i walked back, i noticed he left a $195.00 tip. it was a very nice gesture from a very kind man (which i was very grateful for), but i couldn’t help but to think about his tip on not letting anybody bring me down and how priceless that was.
that’ll be something i’ll remember for a long, long time.
-ratha, 10:59pm, 7.28.17
