Community Voices

My favorite waitress

I married a waitress, so it seemed appropriate to take her to see "Waitress: The Musical."

You know that a play is off-off-off Broadway when it's being performed in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Not that I'm complaining. Driving an hour to enjoy a Broadway show beats the heck out of jetting to the Big Apple, navigating the reeking rat race of traffic and people, and buying tickets from some skeevy-looking guy standing on a street corner because I forgot to book the tickets in advance.

"Waitress: The Musical" was chockablock with drama and heartache, along with a hearty serving of romance. And all types of pie. It's a very pie-centric production.

According to my wife, the musical is not unlike her waitressing experiences.

My wife had not set her sights on becoming a waitress. After graduating from high school, she earned a two-year dental lab technician degree at a vocational college. She learned how to make crowns, bridges, and dentures and soon landed a dental lab technician job in Brookings where she learned that dental lab technicians earn only slightly more than the minimum wage.

Faced with paying for student loans, groceries, and rent, she began to moonlight as a waitress in a bar. She made more money working three nights a week in the honky-tonk than she took home from her day job. Much of that extra income came from folks who were rather tipsy and were feeling rather generous.

It's somewhat hokey, but yes, I met my wife in a bar. The young lady whom I was with that particular evening -- I had bumped into her on the street and asked if she would like to have a liquid refreshment -- excused herself soon after we ordered our drinks, saying that she needed to visit the ladies' room. She got up and left, and I haven't seen her since.

After waiting for an hour, I gave up and decided to leave. On my way out, I chatted with the nice little waitress who had served me. I opened with, "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"

That line was totally unoriginal, but it worked. The nice little waitress and I have been married for 45 years.

Even though she waitressed at the bar for just a short while, my wife collected a plethora of war stories.

One memorable incident occurred during a high-stakes game of pool. An explosion of strong language filled the air, fists began to fly and a pool cue was cracked across a skull.

In the midst of the melee, some random guy casually walked past the pool table, grabbed the stack of cash that was at stake and quickly exited the bar. He was never seen again.

Was it all a setup? We'll never know.

My wife routinely had to deal with inebriated and obnoxious people. One particular tippler was going from table to table and downing the drinks that belonged to the folks who were out on the dance floor. My wife and a barmaid physically pushed the scalawag out the door. He grabbed the door's outside handle and tried to open the door as my wife and the barmaid did their best to hold it shut.

The barmaid whispered, "Let go on three!" They did, and the door flew open with such abruptness that it hit the drunk's head, and he was sent sprawling across the sidewalk.

"Oh my gosh!" my wife exclaimed, "Did we kill him?"

The barmaid peered out the window and replied calmly, "Nope. He's moving."

Did the guy leave?

Nope. He sneaked back into the bar via the rear door and continued to liberate libations until the cops came to haul him away.

The drama wasn't confined to the bar's patrons. One night, two of my wife's fellow waitresses got into a heated altercation that culminated when one of the combatants snatched the wig off the other's head and hurled the hairpiece into a toilet.

Talk about the Mother of All Commode Clogs! Sadly, there was no word regarding whether the young lady who had given me the slip was still hiding in the ladies' room.

While my wife is relieved that she no longer wears out a pair of shoes every month while waiting on people, she doesn't regret her waitressing experiences.

"Everyone should be a waitperson at some point in their lives," she says. "You learn a lot about human nature from being a server. Most people are as nice as can be but there are some who are always crabby no matter what."

I'm deeply grateful that my favorite waitress gave her phone number to a total stranger on that long-ago summer evening. She should receive a generous tip for that.

-- Jerry's book, "Dear County Agent Guy," is available at Amazon.com and in bookstores nationwide.