The Job Search: Day Two
So I broke down and went to this beach restaurant where my friend at school tends bar, to see about getting a hostessing job. Hostessing. This seems more benign than waitressing. You smile wide at people. You greet them. You walk them to their seat and keep track of where you’ve seated them.

No remembering that this guy needs more mustard, while this lady’s returning her ice water because she wanted no ice and moreover, no balancing multiple hot dishes of piping-hot food on your arm.
Okay; let’s just admit right now that I have a phobia about that. The dish-balancing thing. That it terrifies me.

So, also true; hostessing also seems like you make less money. Because you do. But it beats the six dollars an hour I’d make doing just about anything else in town.
(And oh, my god; I’m almost thirty. I’m almost thirty and I’ve been a professional and my work’s been respected and even like, vaunted, but now I’m looking at service fricking jobs again deep breaths phew god okay.)

So this was what I was thinking as I walked up to the restaurant, retail resume in hand. I filled out the application and a waitress went and got the manager, who flew out of the kitchen and grabbed my hand and shook it hard and I smiled big, big, big. She was the picture of harried and said, with the voice of someone used to breathing more smoke than regular air,
“Good to meetchyou. Let’s look at that application.” She sat down. I sat across from her. “Uh-kay. Uh-kay. When could you start? Immediately? Uh-kay. We need someone for next week. Oh, hosting? Good. Very good. So you’re good with people-”
“I’m very good with people.”
“Good.” And she pulled out a paper napkin. “Tell me your availability.”
“Like, for now?”
“Yes. This month. When?”
I told her the days I could work, she nodded approvingly as she wrote, then stood and shook my hand again and smiled and said she was glad my friend had recommended me and that it looked very, very good; they’d call me sometime this week.

I went back outside, dazed by the move from icy air conditioning to midday heat. Also: Good with people? Oh. And realized she’d read my application so fast, she’d misunderstood “host” to mean “host at restaurant,” when what it really signifies is “radio host,” which is quite a different beast which requires an entirely separate set of skills. Most radio hosts are, in fact terrible with people, if you want to know. If there is an opposite job in the world from restaurant host, that’d be it.
But she still may call. And I will say Yes.