I Had A Nervous Breakdown At Work

I was the closing server Friday, Saturday, AND Sunday for many years. I had tried to find better jobs, but to no avail. I had a kind heart and a great personality, but I always seemed to be getting the “no”. I was tired of being “the weekend bitch”. I was tired of being the bad server that if I didn’t close, I would be “on the street”, but being kept as the weekend server, never having a weekend to myself, and if I did there was the big MAYBE I might not get it off because no one wanted to work five pm to one am on a Friday or Saturday? Are you kidding? I was tired of servers not doing their jobs and then as soon as there was a second lull, they asked to be cut. They would get their wishes, as they were in good with management and I was the one they loved to talk about. I was tired of their games. “Oh there is a basketball game at the high school, and I don’t want to get stuck here, so as soon as it dies, I am gonna scram,” was the mentality. Then I would have late tables, clean forever, and have to restock what was now gone because they filled it at four when they got in. Therefore, they did their job. I did this for at the time, EIGHT years, and one night I just lost it.

“Uh, you were late in getting that pizza out,” my boss who looked like Peter Griffin said. He looked JUST LIKE HIM. “Sorry, I was at a table taking an order. How very un pizza professionally of me!” He said, “Well maybe if you’d think you were a professional, you’d do a better job.” Then the server who had worked for the place for decades, who loved to screw me over said, “Why didn’t you refill the croutons” and I LOST IT. I said I wasn’t the only server who worked here and she frequently left things messy. I was tired of it. She got upset, and of course, Peter Griffin got involved. I started to cry. It was the angry cry. It was the cry of almost a decade of lost weekends, lost time with my family, and being screwed over…. I had had it. I was so pissed at my situation, no jobs available to me, stuck doing this, and HONESTLY I should have been sent home. I was walking up to tables, fighting tears, and all I got from the boss was “You gotta take care of you, Mama”. He didn’t “care”. He didn’t ask what was wrong. In fact, he told people to be mean to me, to pick on me, and to make sure my life was a living hell there. That night, it just came to a head. That night. I had a nervous breakdown at work, but no one would close. So, I fought tears all night, cried into the next day, and then went back to work…

This my friends is what the service industry is like….