No waiting on this waiter

     I have always wanted to be a waiter. Restaurants are one of my favorite places because you deal with delicious food and making people happy. What could be better than that? So this summer, I decided to make my dreams come true. My good friend Chet served a church mission in Italy, and has been working at a little Mom-and-Pop Italian restaurant for several years now, so he was able to get me a job with him at "La Dolce Vita". The only thing is, the owners and kitchen staff don’t speak English. They communicate almost entirely in Italian or Spanish, so my on-the-job training was...virtually non-existent. I had a few minutes of quick instruction from Chet (which was very helpful) but then the customers began pouring in by the hoards. Apparently it was Prom night, and things were about to get crazy. Since Chet spoke English, I figured I’d just follow him for the evening to learn the ropes. However, when the entire place filled up with hungry high schoolers, the waiters became so frantic they asked me to take a few tables. I'm not shy, so I agreed to the adventure.
      To my credit, I did pretty well for having virtually no experience and only a few minutes of training; however, when I started getting peppered with questions about the menu, I knew I was in trouble. "What dessert options do you have? Can I substitute this for that? What's your recommendation?" I chuckled to myself and thought Hmm, great questions. I have no idea... One of the ladies asked me if she could have white sauce on her Cannelloni. The cani-what? Is that an entree, drink, or a dessert? I assured her that we could put white sauce on just about anything. [After employing my Spanglish skills in the kitchen, it turned out I was right. Whew!] Once my orders were ready, I faced another predicament. There were trays and trays of pasta piling up in the waiters area, each smothered with sauce and sprinkled with cheese. Crud! I don't know which plate is which? They all just look like pasta to me! The kitchen staff was yelling for me to take my food to the customers, so I grabbed the trays and did the only thing I could think of. I picked up one of the dishes and asked the first guy at the table if this looked like what he ordered. He stared at the plate and said "beats me?" So I asked the next guy, and—by process of elimination—everyone got fed. I may have switched a few orders and possibly misguided a customer or two, but I was having a blast! That's what happens when you ask a brand-new waiter in a completely Italian restaurant to take tables one hour into their first day...