For those of you that have worked in the restaurant business, you know what I am talking about. Particularly the stress-induced restaurant business, where you are constantly running busy with no breaks, and basically busting butt for hours on end.
My nightmare always starts the same. I am lingering around waiting for customers to show up, filling ice and stacking cups, when all of a sudden the whole place gets slammed. I am running around taking orders, filling up drinks, throwing down appetizers, and seating people at tables. Suddenly I can't keep up. The cooks are backed up, food isn't coming out on time, customers are glaring at me angrily, and I can't ever seem to get any one's orders right.
In my dream last night I was supposed to make Vanilla ice-cream smoothies for these two little boys, but I couldn't. There was no explanation why, I just couldn't do it and it was making me really upset.
I always wake up in a panic, sometimes almost in tears. It takes me a couple moments to realize I am safe in bed with my family, and not on the pinnacle of a breakdown at Pizza Bob's.
My friend still has waitressing nightmares, except she sleep walks through them all. Her husband will find her running all over the house taking orders and mumbling apologies to customers. One night he found her sitting on the couch, pouring herself a cocktail at the end of a rough shift--asleep.
I waitress'ed off and on at this same place for 6 years and it seems, whenever I have excess stress in my life, these nightmares are always here to haunt me.
I've heard that stress can bring up traumatic issues from your past, through your dreams. Was waitressing really that awful? It's kind of funny to think that,yes, i really hated it. And I will never do it again.
Is there "post-traumatic-waitressing-therapy" for these types of things? Or am I doomed to these nightmares forever?
Me spending a Halloween night waitressing at Bob's. October 2001
