Chilimare Revisited

I have only had one “recurring dream” in my life.  I used to get it all the time, back when I was waiting tables, and then sometimes even after that.  All of my friends that worked at the restaurant would have them…we had a name for them:  “Chilimares”  (after the casual dining restaurant we worked at).  I haven’t had that dream now for a good 8 years or so.

We had this really cute little hostess that worked at our restaurant, and her dad was a manager in the corporation so she had some major job security.  She could never quite get a grasp on how to seat the lunch crowd (there’s a strategy to hosting: better to rotate new tables to each section, so that the server has a chance to greet the new tables and get drinks out before getting a new table).  She would pretty much just take every new table that came in the door to the same section until it was full and then move on to the next section and do the same thing.  She was the queen of the “quadruple seat” as I would call it in restaurant-eez.

In my nightmare, I had a 12 table section, and every time I looked up, here came said cute little hostess with a new table for me, so I would go and greet the first table, get their drink order and then have to go and greet the second table.  This happened with all 12 tables, but I would never get a chance to leave my section to go and make and deliver drinks, and enough time has passed that I need to go and take orders from the first table again, so I would need to make the rounds through my 12 tables empty handed.  They’re mad that they don’t have drinks yet, but it takes time to take orders from 12 tables, and I just keep rotating through the 12 tables, apologizing, but I never actually get to leave my section to do anything about making anyone happy.  I had this dream quite regularly for a while.

I saw the cute little hostess, for the first time in like ten years, working at Home Depot yesterday.  I got a little short of breath, but quickly realized I wasn’t having a nightmare, I was just shopping for plants.  She didn’t see me, even though I tried to make eye contact.  She maybe didn’t recognize me, we were never really friends.  I am happy to report that she was doing a bang-up job in the garden center, and as far as I know, her dad doesn’t work for Home Depot so she probably got the job all on her own.