“Server nightmares” are a common topic of discussion among my co-workers. I used to have them quite often when I started waiting tables, but they’ve slowly dissipated over the years. I hadn’t had one in a long time until the other night.
A brief write up on occupation dreams and how every occupation has them. Share yours in the comments section. Here’s mine:
Had a server nightmare last night. Very detailed. I was waiting on a 15 top which was sitting around a giant wooden table with wooden picnic benches. It was a birthday party and there were several people there who didn’t know what they wanted to drink or to eat, and they were all moving around and switching tickets thus screwing up my ‘system’ for keeping track of the tabs. As I’m bringing out drinks one by one I get sat a table of 9. It takes me at least 20 minutes to get the drinks for the other table and I tell the 9-top that I’ll be right with them. I never make it back because I somehow flash into a supermarket aisle where I’m forced to enter the food orders of my larger table on a point-of-sale system that is set up on a set of monitors in the supermarket aisle. I get hung up on the order because two of the diners ordered dishes called “Rwanda” and “Botswana”. In my dream I spend 30 minutes looking for the “African food” section on the food ordering system, and, of course, I can’t find it. So because I can’t complete these orders – my coworkers are stacking up behind me waiting in line to use the computer that is set up in this random supermarket – I have to switch computers. To do this I have to physically set up the other computer terminal. Unscrew and re-screw cords and monitors and what-not. In the back of my mind I realize that I’ve been entering these orders for about two hours and still haven’t checked back on the other table. It’s also 10 minutes until closing. Also, the new computer terminal is made out of wood. It has the food ordering system uploaded on it, but it also doesn’t have “Rwanda” or “Botswana” on the menu. My restaurant is ’86′ Rwanda and Botswana apparently. This makes sense considering I work at an Italian restaurant. I look over at a TV playing nearby and see news that the right fielder for the Texas Rangers (in my dream), a guy named ‘Miles’ something, just died after running head first through the outfield wall while going after a fly ball. He caught it.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Sounds like your dreams are more interesting than mine. However, I do occassionally have ones that would make a good Troma production.
I have not waited tables for 15 years, and I still have an in-the-weeds server dream once or twice a year.
I occasionally have a dream about making out with a cute coworker.
As to anxious dreams, none are about work. Periodically though I will have a dream about realizing that I forgot to attend a college class and I’m unprepared for an exam, or have a paper due. And it’s always college, never highschool. Oddly so, as I took highschool with deadly seriousness but pretty much fucked off in college.
Strange. I thought I was the only one who had those dreams. I waited tables for several years during college and had these types of dreams at least a couple nights a week. Typically, they involved me being in the weeds really bad and then going back to the kitchen and falling asleep and waking up to find myself even more in the weeds. Then I would wake up in a panic. I had these dreams about once every couple of months for a couple of years after I stopped waiting tables. I’m about to start waiting tables again part-time, so I am not looking forward to these dreams coming back.
I think I know where you’re coming from.
When I first started out as a banker in New York City I frequently had feverish dreams in which I forgot to send that $20M wire or submit those Trust documents to legal for approval, or wore the wrong Gucci loafers with the wrong Brooks Brothers suit.
They pretty much went away after a couple of years.
Rwanda. Botswana.
Must mean something.
I have work dreams, but it largely involves being arrested for saying the wrong thing.
Rwanda means that you and your brother will get into a fight. Botswana means that you’re thinking of proposing to your girlfriend.
@PA
The Rwanda idea makes sense. Why do you think that’s what Botswana means?
I used to have this dream when I worked in a soda bottling factory, where I’d look to my left and see glass bottles as far as I could see. Then I’d be “transported” somewhere else for a while, like my grandma’s house, when it would suddenly occur to me that I’d left my machine unattended. Then I’d go back to the plant and see this catastrophic bottle crash, with broken glass shooting out everywhere.
Can’t wait for Olive Garden Confidential.
My work dreams always involve me getting in trouble for either punching a coworker, banging a coworker or saying something inappropriate. Completely unrealistic. I have not had a dream where I am actually in the act of doing work at work ever.
When I first started waiting tables, these nightmares would happen at least 3 times a week. My nightmares never involved big tops but rather dozens upon dozens of 2 tops. The worst part was I would sit them since we didn’t have a host. Come to think of it, I basically did everything. I was the only one in the restaurant and the patrons just kept on coming in.
The one thing that always irked me was the fact that I could never distinguish a patron. They always seemed like a blur. I would also wake up at 3 am and still feel like I was at work. It would take a couple of seconds to convince me that the restaurant couldn’t possibly be opened at 3 in the morning. I must have handled this stress somehow because I haven’t had a nightmare in over a year.
I’m a line cook. My work nightmares mostly center on a POS printer chattering away. Funny though– as I’ve gotten more confident working my station(s), and the more I get used to customers/servers sandbagging me via an ominously silent-then-suddenly-nonstop printer, the less of a fuck I give, IRL and in dreams. Everybody’s gonna get fed eventually. I can handle it, I know I can handle it, I deal with issues one at a time since that’s all I can do, and first order goes first (unless I can– as a for instance– “create synergy” by firing every calamari on the board at the same time). But I still get dream orders that Escoffier himself couldn’t un-fuck.
Been hooked on your blog for some time now, Chuck. The industry connection finally made me give notice. Kinda rare for a line doggie to prop a waitron, but thanks for doing what you do.
I have dream interpretation skills – no sarc.
Your dream is your unconscious reaction to your real life demands of keeping up with work, a gf and blogging. You are feverishly trying to feed the blog monster (your readers/orderers); your research in the African food aisle is the time-consuming research you do for your articles in the now cluttered googleswamp. The backlog pressure you feel to fulfill those food orders is your conscious reaction to writing new material. The death imagery of the ballpark is your subconsious fear of failure while vigorously pursuing a new goal.
I’d tell you more, but you hate me.