A story in which everything that could go wrong, does go wrong.
"Got any sevens?" He softly asked, his gaze on me as he waited for my reply. Ignoring the temptation to meet his captivating green eyes, I puckered my lips as I focused my stare on...
It was steady for most of the day and the morning flew by quickly. I was on edge the whole time but I felt in control of myself which was a plus, I suppose. It wasn't until the late afternoon and into the evening that things started going downhill quickly.
I had been sat a table that I assumed was a family of about seven or eight people. They were pleasant to serve and very well-mannered and patient. They racked up an almost two hundred-dollar tab by the time they were through. After they left, I didn't get the chance to look at what I was tipped for a little while because we were getting slammed and I was super busy. When I finally did get the chance to look, I noticed they only tipped me five dollars. I tried my best not to get too upset or let it affect the rest of my work day, but unfortunately my brain didn't work that way. They hated me. I was too slow and didn't smile or laugh at their jokes. Damn it. I took a few deep breaths and tried to push those thoughts out of my head, but they lingered.
I continued my day as normally as I possibly could, but I still could not get that shitty tip out of my head. No matter how hard I tried any time I had a second to breathe, I was pondering where I went wrong. Even a couple hours later I was still struggling to move past it and it was affecting my work as well.
One of the tables I was serving was made up of four people who were in their late twenties, if I had to guess. Somehow, I keyed in one of their meals incorrectly. Which I didn't understand because I double-triple checked my orders before sending them. When the tables' order came out, the woman was upset that her meal wasn't correct. I had to send it back, key it in again, and get her a whole new one. I apologized profusely, but the woman still wasn't happy. When I went to give them their bill, they not-so-kindly pointed out that both the messed up meal AND the correct meal were on there. Which inevitably increased the price by about twenty dollars. Once again, embarrassed and extremely apologetic, "oh my gosh. I am so sorry about that. My mistake. I'll go fix it for you now and be right back."
The man that pointed the mistake out to me only nodded in return, but as I walked away I could hear him complaining about how ridiculous the whole situation was and how the company needed to train their employees better and that "she has no idea what she's doing."
I sat at the desk working on some anatomy work, trying my hardest to get the answers right, but it was getting difficult because he was looking over my shoulders the whole time.
"Are you sure about that?" He asked, frustratedly. A part of me really wanted to stand up to him and tell him that I wasn't sure because I had no idea about any of this stuff since it wasn't a class I was taking—that he should be the one doing his own work. But I knew where that would leave me.
Not wanting to say anything stupid, I simply shrugged and had no time to react as he roughly grabbed me at my elbow and pulled me out of the chair I was sitting in. "You have no idea what you're doing!" He screamed at me, then he pushed me with so much force that I landed hard on my ass across the room. For a second I remained laying on the ground to recoup before I got up, but little did I know that it was a precious second wasted. He kicked me in my side so many times that I lost count and was wishing to be swallowed by darkness.
I did my best to shake the memory away as I fixed my mistake, but there was no missing the way my heart thudded against my ribcage. My mind was lost and there was no way I'd be able to get it back before the end of my shift. The only thing I could do was try my hardest to pretend. Pretend that there weren't tears stuck in my eyes that I refused to let fall. Pretend I was going to fall apart at the seams at any given moment. Pretend that everything was fine. Pretend that it was just a normal shift. Pretend that I was okay.
When I returned back to the table, I apologized again multiple times and then wished them a good night after making sure that there was nothing else that they needed. As I walked away to grab a drink of water I told myself that that was it, nothing else would go wrong tonight. There would be no more mistakes, no more memories, no more.
