So Much For “Easy Like Sunday Morning”

In the early 1990s, I was a waiter at [Restaurant Chain]. On Sundays, I worked all three shifts: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Sunday nights were particularly brutal; it was our busiest night, yet we were always undermanned due to staff not showing up, and I was tired from a long day.

Every Sunday night, this large church group would come in — about twenty-plus people. They would come in at the tail end of the dinner shift, just as I was about to pull myself out of the weeds, and they would ask for me to be their waiter. Then, if they couldn’t get five tables near each other, they would spread out all over the restaurant into other waiters’ zones but still insist on me being their server. They would act disappointed (and in some cases annoyed) that I didn’t remember their drink preferences from previous weeks. They would place their beverage and food orders and then get up and change tables. They weren’t trying to mess with me, mind you; they were just being sociable with each other.

Then, they would get fussy with their orders. “This or that was wrong,” “This is undercooked,” “I didn’t think it would look like that, so can I order something else?” etc. It was hard for me to tell whether I had gotten an order wrong or if maybe I had the right order for the wrong guy because they wouldn’t stay in the same seat throughout the experience. It went on and on. They were, per capita, the neediest customers I had to deal with all week, and there were twenty of them all at once. Every. F******. Sunday.

Don’t even get me started on the cooks who couldn’t get the orders right. Let’s just say that [Restaurant Chain] didn’t exactly draw the best and the brightest, and only the dumbest ones showed up Sunday nights. I was too poor not to.

So, here’s the kicker: religious pamphlets. That’s what I got tipped every week, plus about $5 in change.