Patience
Patience is hard to come by. Especially in New York but maybe everywhere. “Thank you for your patience” I repeat time and time again over the course of a busy weekend at the restaurant when we are overflowing and we can’t possibly seat and feed everyone at the precise moment they would like to place their order and eat. It’s better than saying “apologies for the wait” as that implies we are at fault, when really we are just busy and we can’t rip plates away from people while they’re still eating or force them to vacate a table before they’re ready. As a highly sensitive person or HSP (yes, there is a test) working in hospitality I have to create an energetic bubble around myself that is impenetrable to piercing stares from hangry guests or the limitless possibilities arising from any kind of perceived slight. From the coat rack tipping over and it feeling like a reflection of our failure to create a functioning dining room (even though a child rammed a scooter into the base of it) to the music being too loud to the sun being in the guest’s eyes. It’s very easy to take these kinds of requests or complaints as judgement or personal criticism.
It requires a god like amount of patience to host a busy restaurant and it just so turns out that patience is not one of my strong suits.
I’ve always been fast. I learned how to speed read by age 10. During my short lived soccer stint I played forward which is a position focused on speed and cunning. There was brief talk that I should join the track team and specialize in sprinting but it also required a genuine enthusiasm for long distance running which is to me a hellish activity. While it can take me some time to begin working, once I get in the zone, I usually complete the task very quickly. One of the things I found most frustrating about office life was that even if I could get my work done in a few hours I still had to stay in the building until after the first folks left. The reward for being fast in corporate America is more work.
The patience I have to practice now is wide ranging. I could be explaining to a partially present group of 8 that come in during the Saturday rush that they won’t be seated right away and I can not take their order until I have a table because then their food will come out and where will they sit? Seems obvious, but it’s not. Or the patience required of me to coach someone through the agonizing decision of which flavor of pancake to get even though they may have already waited in line for an hour. What were you doing that whole time?? I would want to murder my friend if they got to the front of the line after all of that time and still had no idea what they were going to order. Or the patience it takes to be the guinea pig for a kid learning manners and having to interpret whatever thing they’re mumbling because the parent wants them to practice ordering on their own. Or when a new cook is training and their pick ups are taking forever. Or when a new server is training and asks me for the tenth time which flavor can be made vegan?
Sometimes its a perfect confluence of a guest breaking glass, the subsequent stunned hush of the other diners before everyone realizes it’s all ok, the kitchen ringing the bell for food runners, a demanding woman circumventing the line to ask how the line works, someone needs a high chair, someone needs more oat milk, the wrong food went to table 10 and the next people in line to order are drilling holes into me because they don’t want to wait anymore. It requires a lot of patience on behalf of the guests who may not be expecting to exercise patience when dining out and also of me to not let my head explode or worse, my mouth. (Note: if you go out to eat as a large group during any restaurant’s busy time, you should anticipate that you will have to wait.)
I had an incredibly ugly public moment last weekend where after a busy service we went to get a snack down the street at the cutest place I plan to become a regular at and my dear Chris was taking a long time to decide what he wanted while the server was standing there hovering over his shoulder and I snapped “you’re being obnoxious, just pick one!” I was trying to empathize with the server that it sucked to have to linger over someone while they tried to make a decision and he probably had other things to do but it ended up backfiring terribly and everyone involved felt uncomfortable. I felt horrible. I teared up. I shut down. Chris, ever the darling, forgave me pretty much instantly knowing that I was overstimulated and overtired. Moments prior to this we had just settled into a tiny corner of the bar, battling with coats and bags to try and squeeze into a space big enough for ½ of a person. A more spacious table had just opened up and we played make yourself smaller and try not to knock anything over once more. Suddenly it felt like my scarf was strangling my neck, my coat was a too warm sleeping bag and my bags became 50 lb kettle bells. I was on the verge of hyperventilating and I don’t think it had actually been that long that he was debating what to get, but it felt like an eternity.
I had used up all of my patience muscles for the day on the scooter kids and the mysterious side door the architect designed that is unusable and also hazardous because there is an 18” drop off to the curb and apparently it’s a big deal to put in a step. My patience tank was all but depleted.
I believe learning patience is one of my big lessons to try and work through in this life and so I don’t think any amount of patience increasing exercises are going to solve the problem for me. Things I have tried: taking deep breaths, go outside for a moment and taking a deep breath of fresh air specifically, attempting to pause before I speak when (if) I notice my brain wants to hurry someone or something along. This one is really hard.
This dissonant pairing of my struggle to cultivate patience in a field where patience is valuable currency, feels to me like life is somehow working out a grand plan that I can’t make sense of yet but one day I may be able to.