Posts Tagged: making mistakes waiting table

“DOING SO WELL, BUT THEN, . . . OOPS!”  

On June 20, 2017 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

 

“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”  (Proverbs 16:18, King James Version.)

“Look, Mom, no hands!”  (Nine-year-old boy, doing tricks on his bicycle.)

“Look, son, a broken arm!”  (Mom of the nine-year-old boy, at the emergency room, after the doctor had read the x-ray.)

"I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. 
I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. 
In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it. 
Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal".
(George MacDonald, Phantastes, 166.)

I was doing well, I really was.  I was hustling to sit people in my station, which wasn’t the best in the restaurant.  However, if I look pitiful enough, I can often persuade (guilt?) people into sitting there.  I was getting the orders right.  After about an hour, I said to myself, “I’m doing pretty well tonight!  Maybe I’m getting the hang of this serving business.”

I immediately discovered that I was entirely premature in my self-congratulatory thoughts.

I seated a grandma and grandpa and their little grandson in one of my booths—and proceeded to make three mistakes: I forgot to give them their silverware until the food came out.  (They had to ask for silverware!)  I didn’t get a salad out in a timely fashion.  I forgot that the little guy got applesauce.

It seems that every time I think I’m doing well, I’m not.

So, what is the solution?  Not, I think, believing that I am not going to do well in a given situation.  Rather, I think that the solution is to simply focus on what I am doing, and striving to do it well.  Not beating myself up, and not evaluating.  Just being a doer of the work.

Pride precedes a fall.  Yes, it does!

So, I apologized profusely, and offered to give them a “d e s s e r t” at my own expense.  (I spelled it in case they didn’t want the little guy to have any dessert.  Hey, I used to be a dad of small children!)

I did give them a small dessert, paying for it out of my tip money, and they went away fairly content, I suppose.  In fact, they left me a six-dollar tip!

Self-congratulation is always a dodgy business.  Humility is a choice, but it isn’t really optional.  Sometimes, failure is a wonderful reminder of this fact.

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