My first day ...

... at work where I was the only waitress for the entire day, not including the part timer who came in the evening. I arrived at Dami at 11.30am, and even then the restaurant wasn't open. Hoan, Sao and Vinh were next door waiting as well. All of a sudden, they were unloading stuff from a car along with Rames looking like a real little boy with his cute haircut and an orange Death Note manga T-shirt. This happened right after Hoan patted me on the shoulder saying 'you're on your own today'.


This is the first time that I worked in Dami without Tinh around, which meant that I had to figure things out by myself if anything went wrong. Well, the first obstacle I encountered was resetting the dining area from scratch with everything in the drawers. The first thing that came to mind were the tissue boxes. Just a couple of days of Tinh's absence, the restaurant was a slight mess - the smoking area tissue boxes were in the non-smoking area and vice versa, and the tables were extremely misaligned.


I corrected all those in a jiffy, wiped down the table-tops, got out the menus and order forms, mopped the floor and wiped down the cake display glass which fogged up slightly over the night. The flow of customers was steady, but rather sparse. I started making our custom-made longer-than-normal bubble tea straws for the whole afternoon. The other staff didn't know how to make them, and we were running dangerously low on them.


Throughout the day without any other waiters/waitresses, Karen and Rames helped me out with food serving, order taking, customer seating, etc. It was a nice day actually - I was happy to be back at work, doing something I actually enjoy and earning money at the same time. It beat sitting at home, being a couch potato watching Korean drama and pigging out practically the entire day.


The job is tiring, but the experience is well worth the work. I find myself more communication-friendly with all kinds of people, even if the person is a complete asshole. It also taught me about being constantly open-minded and cool-headed whenever something comes up. Finally, it taught me that you have to look at both the pros and cons of every thing before making a judgement and it's better to see smiles than scowls.


Anyway, hope Tinh will be feeling better by tomorrow, Karen as well. =)