It wasn't on the menu, but we're serving it anyway.

Once upon a time I was a waitress. Occasionally I would pick up extra shifts serving at off site catering events....usually really fancy events where my fellow servers and I could count on being reminded of our place at least once (oh, how I miss those waitressing days!).

One of those events was a wine tasting/dinner/private school fundraiser held in a local art gallery. Very fancy...

My friend Emily and I were working this event together. We started at the wine tasting table and when that portion of the evening was over, we moved on to serving food. While we were serving dinner, a super important sommelier was giving a presentation about various wines and how to properly enjoy them (we could tell he was super important because he basically told us he was...repeatedly). During his presentation he kept talking about how important it was to know your wine, especially if you ever went to a restaurant...because everyone knows that waiters and waitresses are idiots and aren't going to be able to help you pick your wine....HA! The "waiters and waitresses are idiots" jokes kept coming throughout his entire presentation. It was AWESOME. That isn't really important, though. What IS important is what happened after dinner was over and we began clearing plates away...

When a more than inebriated woman honest to God handed me a plate covered with a napkin, and as I started to pull away from her, decided to pull the napkin away...sort of like a big reveal...

...and left me with a plate full of vomit. VOMIT.

This big, fancy party, where a large group of our town's wealthiest citizens were congregated. Where almost everyone in attendance treated the serving staff like cockroaches - seriously, if they could have squashed us under their heels, they would have. I think that the only thing that stopped them from even attempting it was the fact that they would then have to serve themselves and no one could really face the horror of that task. Anyway, all of that aside, did I mention the vomit plate? It's funny what your mind goes through when someone unexpectedly hands you a big plate of vomit. You start trying to place the meal on the plate. Did we serve rice tonight? Was there a cream sauce on the menu? Are those the vegetables that...oh god...

...oh my god....

that's vomit....that's puke....

there's puke on that plate!!!!!! It's dripping...it's dripping...oh my god...what am I supposed to do...oh...oh...oh......

and finally...you have got to be kidding me.

And I had to remain professional, fighting back my own urges to vomit as I discreetly covered the vomit plate and carried it through the crowd of people (the most important people in the world,as it were).


When I went back to the table I noticed that she DID put the vomit napkin back on the table and she DID play with it a little bit, spraying chunks of vomit this way and that. Everyone else at the table DID pretend that this was not happening. The smell alone was horrifying, yet nary a wrinkled nose was in sight. No lie, everyone sat facing the snotty wine guy, legs crossed, listening intently, completely oblivious to the vomit lady.

But that wasn't the end... the bathroom door is located right behind the presentation stage where the snotty wine guy was speaking. Shortly after spraying some of her fellow diners with vomit chunks, the woman got up and stumbled to the bathroom door. She then plastered herself against the wall next to the bathroom, with both arms spread out, head lolling this way and that. She was the backdrop for the presentation for at least ten minutes and yet, the entire audience continued to act as though she wasn't even there. Then, perhaps upset that the audience had not noticed her amazing skills as a presentation backdrop, she vomited all over the damn place. At which point TWO people out of the 150 or so assembled took notice...
(Emily and I had tried to help her at one point, tried to get her into the bathroom, but she insisted she was fine and shooed us away...as lowly servers, there wasn't much else we could do.)

The two attendees that finally noticed the lady quickly hustled her into the back so that she could puke into some containers that were not designed for puking in. One of the women chastised us (the lowly serving staff) when she saw us grabbing a mop bucket. I believe her exact words were, "Do you really think it's appropriate to be janitorial during a presentation?"

...

...

...WHAT????? Wait...wait....WAIT A MINUTE!!!! One of YOUR better than everybody friends just vomited all over the damn place and you're worried about appearing janitorial????

Did I mention that at no point during this entire performance did the puke plate lady's husband move from his chair? He did not so much as shift his butt in the chair or offer his wife an arm to hold onto while she stumbled her way to the bathroom.

Only when the presentation was nearly finished did he finally gather his coat and come looking for his missing wife. He found her in the back, blubbering like an idiot and covered in her own vomit, while a small group of ladies attended to her and tried to stay as far away from the lowly serving staff as possible.



In conclusion, I'd just like to say this: Upon reaching the age of thirty something, you should not be drinking yourself to the point of very public puking. Especially at a fancy fundraising dinner. Especially when everyone is all dressed up and better than everybody else.

However, if you are in the vicinity of some really drunk puking lady, maybe help her out a little bit. Especially if you're married to her. I feel kind of sorry for the lady...maybe if her husband was my husband, I'd drink like that too. More than Pukey McPukes-a-Lot, it was everyone else who was in attendance that really sucked.


My final request is this: If I ever turn into a rich and better than everybody else jerkface who thinks that they are too good to lend a hand to one of their so called friends because people might notice, somebody punch me in the crotch.



THE END.