Swap Meet Sunday's

I’m late. Shit, was up studding for that stupid test, writing the finishing touches to that one paper, needed a shower, and food. Hell. I’m up and out the door 5 minutes tops. Call work. Tell them I’m late as usual, and get there in a jiffy. Oh, no. No. No. No. I can smell it from miles away. Cow and horse manure, chicken coops, I pull in the parking lot; in slow motion I see the trailers with chicken coops, horses, and cows on the back; I smell the terrible fesses all over, I have a splitting headache knowing what I am about to walk into.

“There’s a 20 minute wait, ma’am,” I hear Katie the host say as I walk in the door at 7:00am. Starving and tired I run to the server lane to help catch up in the food window. “Danielle! Hope! Tyler! You’re up!” Now the decision to run the tray that came out first. Everything is dirty, chaotic, and servers are almost in tears from being so overwhelmed. A person can only move so fast and smell so much mud, body odder, and bad breath.

Servers are frantic, customers are angry, and the boss is only one person and can only be in so many places at once. It’s a cycle really, a few cycles actually: customers come in, servers become overwhelmed (because there are not always enough for anticipated business), customers get mad, then there are other guests waiting by the door and see these customers walk out, and they leave too. Then the next cycle of impatient people starts: customer is waiting 20 minutes for a table, server is already ambushed by people at tables and is getting breathed at because these people just sat down and are peeved because they are hungry. As a server you want to scream, “DO YOU SEE WHAT I AM DOING?!?!” Instead what comes out of your mouth at this angry table is, “Hi, guys sorry about your wait I’m sure you’re starving by now, but let’s start with something to drink first, shall we?” With the fakest, put on smile anyone could ever imagine; what’s great and terrible about server life is the ability to be fake.

 It’s great because if you’re actually a good server, the motto is, “Leave your personal stuff at the door, it’ll be there when you leave with an extra $100, or keep it on you; your stress will fill your pocket too, when you leave with $10.” Heard this every day for two years. As we all know it’s impossible to leave our personal lives at the door. There is no way! Especially if there are children involved. It’s a hard not life. While the money we know isn’t going to be the best and we are going to work our tails off for less than what we deserve, we still do it for that buck’fidy.

Table turn times are great, though. People only sit there for about 20 minutes, no squatters, and everything is bamb BamB BAMB; speedy fast. However, that table of ten people who attended swap meet Sunday and just bought a lot of chickens or traded horses or cattle or whatever, now have no money. So they leave $.50 a person (sometimes) sometimes less. $5.00 on a $100.00 plus ticket, is never okay even if the service sucked; we are human too guys. We have lives and unexpected things happen all the time.

In small rural communities we still trade and barter. It’s kind of like a miniature flea market or gathering of the redneck kind where I reside. People gather starting at 4:00am at the local fair grounds with their horses, chickens, guns, hunting dogs, the list goes on of things traded so it’s not traditional enough to be considered a flea market I suppose but definitely similar in how it’s ran.  These people come from everywhere to see what others have. Trading is really cool to watch, until it’s making mud prints on your chairs, poles of your tables that you now have to lay on your back to scrub once everyone has gone; swap meet Sunday’s are not for the thin skinned.