Serving Chat Book Idea

I work at the Olive Garden. I admit it. This hateful place has become the fuel for my writing fire. My memoir class was the most inspiring and useful writing class I have ever taken, and I learned that creative writing does not have to be fiction.

By the second week of the class, I decided that I would begin constructing personal essays based on my experiences in serving and food service. Most people think it has been done before, but few people have written about the restaurant industry in an unbiased and constructive manner. Movies and books on this topic are written by bitter servers who want to 'get back' at restaurant patrons.

I want to tell the truth. The unbiased truth from a fly-on-the-wall point of view. I want to leave m opinions and feelings in the kitchen, so to speak, and write in the same way that I serve.

Serving tables takes quite a bit of patience, creativity, and the ability to put your own feelings and opinions aside long enough to feed a group of people and get them out of the restaurant quickly with a smile on their face and as much food as possible in their belly. Servers are self-less, servile actors and actresses. We really don't care about your day or your problems, or the weather, or even what you thought of the food. we care about the wallet that you usually do not open wide enough to pay us. An objective view of this 'caring to not care' phenomenon would be much more important than a personal essay about how servers hate their jobs.


I strongly believe that I must follow through with this idea. I have to publish it, if only because no one else can. Though, as a student with no previous publication experience, I'm just a bit intimidated by the idea that i might not be good enough to do it.


If I'm not good enough to have my work published, perhaps I should chose a new career path.