It’s a Thursday night in the restaurant biz and I’m fed up. I’m worried about money, the future in general, and whether or not I’m mentally capable of dealing with the same old bullshit once again for another shift. I had a bit of a breakdown over the last few days. I cried on the phone with my mom earlier because I mentally can’t take the general dumb assery anymore (I know it’s a completely made up phrase, it just makes me feel good). I feel the need to preface this by saying I love my job, and I say this so you know my words about tonight come from a place of caring and love for the people I work for and work with.
For the second night in a row, a group of potential customers walks up to the front door where we have our new Covid policy printed on a bright poster directly at eye level, pauses for a moment to inspect it, then walks up to the host stand. I go through a greeting practically embedded in my brain at this point, welcoming them in and asking if they’re joining us for dinner, and for proof of vaccination with an ID. The group blankly stares at me for a moment before claiming they had no idea they needed all this information, mildly irritated by this “discovery”. When this happens I want to laugh. The smart ass side of me wants to say, “you mean you missed the sign literally smacking you in the face saying the exact same thing I am now when you walked in”? But of course, I’m never going to say this. I apologize for the inconvenience and hand each of them a gift card for next time, hoping they understand and decide to return at some undetermined time in the future.
When I got home from work yesterday I had a moment with my boyfriend, Alex, as I sat at our coffee table and worked on a pair of earrings I’ve been making. We were talking about the state of things with the pandemic, mostly related to the music industry because he’s in a band and I work at a venue, and I confessed I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve felt truly comfortable going out into the world lately. These days I define “comfortable” as moments I’m able to sit at a bar sharing wine with a friend, or browsing a bookstore, without thinking about the potential of getting sick or spiraling into a “what if” induced depression. It feels necessary to be aware of risk, but it’s easy to walk the fine line between awareness and paranoia. It’s even easier to let resentment get the better of you when you start wondering how different life would be now if more people cared a fraction more for their neighbor. I don’t feel special or important because I’m vaccinated, instead I feel a bit hopeless, because I’ve done everything I can as an individual to end a worldwide pandemic. At the end of the day I know it isn’t enough.
It’s funny because the people frustrated with our new policy weren’t even the ones who irritated me the most yesterday. It was the woman who called me frenetic (it means fast and energetic), which I’ve never been called before, all because I tried to seat her at a certain spot. She then asked us to change the music playing in the restaurant because she didn’t like it. I told her to ask the bartender (I really wanted to tell her to deal with it) and she remarked, “I can tell your busy, don’t worry about it”. Yes, I in fact was busy holding down the front of house at the moment and her minor inconvenience was the least of my worries.
Sometimes I want to scream and pull my hair out; I know I’ll never do either of those things. Sometimes I crave the release of throwing the kind of temper tantrum you see from a toddler when their plea for dessert is denied. It sounds cathartic to lie on the ground thrashing my limbs while other people watch uncomfortably. When it comes to the two sides of this vaccine “issue”, we all want the same thing. We want this pandemic to be over so we can get back to some form of normalcy, if there even is a normal to get back to after all this. All the professionals and experts are saying the only way through the pandemic is to trust the science, but every keyboard warrior calls bullshit and rambles on about their rights. Yes, I do believe in the ability to make your own decision, but I’m fucking tired. The misinformation and conspiracy theories are killing me right now; they’re literally killing people as I’m typing this because we collectively can’t seem to get a grip. I just want to be packed in shoulder to shoulder with strangers at a show again without worrying in the back of my mind about getting this damn virus, and I wouldn’t even give a shit if someone spilled half their $12 beer on me at this point either.
I don’t know how much more ignorance I can tolerate from people feigning to not have the slightest clue. It’s daunting letting yourself wonder what happens if this is how you spend the rest of your life, if we’re never able to get over this hump. I don’t want that for myself or anyone. I don’t take joy in denying people entrance into my place of employment, because it’s a great music joint with tasty food, cocktails, and so many talented artists grace our stages every week. I want everyone to experience the joy I feel going into work, but some people have started to take the joy away and I hate it. I’m a pretty resilient person when it comes to most hang-ups I’ve been met with in my life, but let’s be honest, we all reach the end of our personal rope sooner or later.
It’s not very fun reading comments where people wish for your place of employment to go out of business, for you and everyone you work with to get Covid and die, or draw comparisons between you and the oppressive leaders of Nazi Germany. We all laughed at first, but that shit is heavy, and the more it happens the more you lose faith in your fellow humans. Every now and then I get the urge to hug customers who tell me they appreciate what we’re doing; I don’t know if they realize how much it helps to hear this kind of encouragement. I guess it’s a good thing one of my hobbies includes stabbing pieces of wool over and over again with a small needle; it’s a special kind of therapy for me and it’s a lot cheaper than actual therapy. I do go see a real therapist though, it helps too.
If you’ve reached the end of this and you’re worried about me, please don’t be. This is one moment, and this one moment will pass. I’ll stand in front of my bathroom mirror again tomorrow and wonder why I bother putting makeup on the bottom half of my face when no one will see it. I’ll throw a mask in my purse, fill up my 32oz water bottle, slip on the boots that make me feel like a badass, and do it all over again.
The Rummy Writer 