Oscar Casares
The Waiting Game
Working in a restaurant seemed like a good way to make some quick money—until I had to take the Pappasito’s entrance exam.
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At the next table he pointed at the packets of sweeteners, grouped together in their little black caddy. “What’s wrong with this picture?” he asked.
There was a pink Sweet’N Low mixed in among the white packets of pure sugar and another one in with the blue packets of Equal. I plucked each one of them out and placed it in its rightful spot.
“Nice try,” he said, “but all that’s going to get you is rolling silverware.” He was referring to the chore assigned to those who failed to follow restaurant policy. Then he spun the caddy around and set it to a certain angle, identical to every other caddy in the restaurant. “Sweet’N Low always faces the front door, regular sugar always faces the kitchen, Equal always faces the bar. Walk into another Pappasito’s or Pappas restaurant, and if you see the Sweet’N Low pointed the wrong way, you can bet somebody’s staring at a tray full of forks and knives.”
I passed that shift’s written test with a 94. Bart was right about the tests’ getting harder. Now they were asking us to name the six meats that came on the Plato Fiesta, which of those were also found on the Plato Loco, and how each of those Platos was prepared. Still, a 94 was a safe and respectable distance from a 90.
A few days later I followed Bart out onto the floor for his dinner shift, the time when a server can expect to make good money.
“I think we’ll start with the chile con queso,” said an older man at one of the out-of-the-way tables. He was with a young woman sitting a little too close to be his daughter.
“Great start,” Bart said. “I’ll be sure to bring out some warm chips with that. Do you want the queso plain, just by itself, or can I add some of our famous grilled fajitas to that?”
The man looked over at his date, who only smiled back, waiting to see if he ordered the chile con queso by itself, really just a bowl of melted cheese, or one flavored with our famous grilled fajitas. “Yeah, why don’t you add those fajitas?”
“Good choice. Our fajitas are standout,” Bart said. “What about some fresh guacamole, prepared right here at the table?”
“Ooh, I like guacamole,” his date said.
By the time Bart brought around the ticket, he’d added more than $30 to the tab, meaning an extra $5 in addition to what was already a nice tip. If you multiplied that by all the tickets he’d have during a five-hour shift with five tables, you could see why he was one of the restaurant’s top sellers.
I spent most of the shift carrying Bart’s trays and, later in the kitchen, learning how to serve beans. In fact, I served beans during most of training week. You wouldn’t think serving beans—refried or a la charra—would require so much instruction, but the assistant managers believed one couldn’t have too much experience in this department. And really, what did I care? Tomorrow I’d be on the floor earning at least as much as the waiters at my sister’s restaurant—probably more, considering the prices on this menu. All I had to do was pass my last test.
“You forgot to write down the chocolate,” Stacy the kitchen manager said. We were standing outside the break room and had to move aside every time somebody wanted through.
“I’ve never had capirotada with chocolate,” I said.
“Probably because you haven’t eaten capi-rotada here at Pappasito’s.”
“Yeah, but usually it’s just bread pudding and . . . whatever else,” I said, wishing I’d stopped long enough to ask my mother all those times I was stuffing my face.
“Here, the ‘whatever else’ is chocolate.” She actually made the quotation marks with her fingers.
“Well, an 89.3 is practically a 90, right?”
“Sorry,” she said and walked away, her ponytail bouncing side to side from the back of her Pappasito’s cap.
I followed her through the kitchen. “You’re saying you can’t round the score up from an 89.3 to a 90?”
“What I’m saying to you is you need to do the shift over.” She turned around, up close to my face now, and right then I thought I saw something move inside her mouth, a shiny piece of gum or a marble.
“Because I missed a 90 by .7, I have to serve beans again?”
“Because you got the answer wrong.” She reached for a menu lying near the touch screen. “ ‘Capirotada,’ ” she read. “ ‘Warm chocolate bread pudding with cinnamon ice cream.’ ” She read slowly, as if English were a second language for me. “That seems pretty important to know if you expect to be a server. Just imagine if one of our guests was allergic.”
I would’ve paid attention to the rest of what she said, but I was distracted by the silver bead in her mouth. A pierced tongue was the last thing I would’ve expected to see at Pappasito’s, which is probably why I saw it in the kitchen and not out on the floor. All I could think was “Some twenty-five-year-old with a silver bead stuck in her tongue is forcing me to spend another night serving beans because I forgot one ingredient that’s already listed on the menu.”
We might have argued all night, but the night manager walked up and took her side, and then a minute later I quit. I was only a day away from getting on the floor, but already I knew that at some point I’d miss that one less-than-perfect saltshaker or put on my bow tie the wrong way or forget to mention the chocolate.
The phone was ringing when I got home. From the caller ID I knew it was Sylvia. If I answered, I’d have to tell her the whole story. I imagined her telling me it was just a dumb job anyway and that if I wanted, I could still move to Houston and work at her place. At least now you have some experience, she’d say, trying to cheer me up. Then we’d talk about how our mother used to make capirotada and how she was never sure if the recipe came from her grandmother or our father’s mother or some other relative, and Sylvia would laugh because she couldn’t remember if she’d used the same recipe or changed it in some way, and then maybe we’d both laugh, because as much as capirotada might have changed over time, we were pretty sure it was never meant to have chocolate.
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