Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Food & Life The waitress anxiety dream: Will it never end?
Posted by Besha Rodell @BeshaRodell on Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 10:52 AM
It's always the same. I am training at a new job, but no one has really shown me how to use the POS system. My first table comes in and sits. I get to the point where I've delivered their drinks and taken their food orders when the rest of the section begins to fill up. Because I don't know the computer system well, it takes me forever to enter the first table's order. Everything I have to do in the back gets fumbled - it takes me what seems like hours to get anything done. I have three and four and five tables I haven't even been to yet, waiting in my section. Etc, etc.
These dreams seem to last the length of an entire shift, and they're incredibly detailed. I could draw you a floor plan of the restaurant from my dream last night, complete with table numbers (this was a kinder dream than some, where I have no idea what the table numbers are but must try to deliver food anyway). I know the menu and the orders I took. I woke up in the middle of the dream and groaned - ugh, this is NOT restful. But I fell back asleep and continued right where I left off except my thoughtless time-wasting had put me even more in the weeds.
I haven't waited tables in almost ten years, but I expect to have these dreams until I die. And while I've worked other stressful jobs - in fact, I've had many jobs that were, in my awake life, far more stressful than waiting tables - but none of them have stayed with me in this way, the stress embedded into my subconscious for decades.
Is this universal? Or just me?
Comments (9)
Showing 1-9 of 9
I have them too - but with mine the restaurant is outside my bedroom. I wake up and start waiting tables in what I slept in! Running around a restaurant half asleep, trying to get back into bed but then I'll have the "ding" that food is ready. Mine very detailed also, when they start there is a full staff but as they go on I am the only one working. I'll wake up in reality but fall back into the dream just to freak out that I forgot someone's water!!
like
dislike
I have them too and I've been out of the business for 14 years!!! But I was a bartender so in mine, I'm back behind the bar at the same place but everything has been moved around and I can't find anything and the bar is slammed!!
definitely universal. i'm always inescapably in the weeds and i can never move faster than slow motion.
Yep, I still get the "in the weeds" dreams from time to time, too. Haven't waited tables in 7 or 8 years -- in that time they have decreased in frequency but not in intensity. They leave me with a very specific panicky feeling that I haven't encountered in any other aspect of my life (academic, career, or personal). Bizarre. And, it sounds, universal.
Same here and it's been 20 years since I've waited tables!
Scenario is usually: I don't know the codes for the POS system, table numbers are confused, I ignore tables...been having these dreams off and on for 10-15 years, usually when I'm stressed about something in life.
me, too and I have not waited tables or bartended since 1998!
Mine is the sound of the Remanco POS tickets rolling out of the printer and hitting the floor in concession, all the while, shouting out firing orders and no one can hear me...the tickets keep printing and its chaos....Thanks to my first KM job back at the beloved Indigo Coastal Grill, Ahhh the days...Probably why I dislike POS systems.
Should mention it was a verbal only kitchen and KM is a glorified Expeditor but to this day it was the hardest job I ever had and one I look back on with reverence and gratitude....
I have them from time to time (like last night) but it's not always about being in the weeds. Sometimes it's just having to go back to waiting tables for a living. And though I was a bartender for many more years than I was a server, these dreams are always about being a server or FOH manager.
Latest in Omnivore
-
Local restaurants honor the late Warren Bruno
Percentage of sales will be donated in Warren Bruno's honor.
-
Weekend food events, May 25-27: 3B Fest, a patio party, and more
Weekend events for Friday May 25 to Sunday May 27.
-
Waiting on Shaun Doty's chicken at Ansley Mall
It's a game of retail dominoes
- More »
More by Author
-
Atlanta food events, week of March 12 1
Stuff to do and eat this week
-
Win tickets to Sweetwater's Brew Your Cask Off - and try XL: CL's 40th Anniversary Ale
I made a beer! Come help me drink it!!
- More »
