Great Connotations ep. 6: I didn't do it! in more or less words.

In every Great Connotations post, I examine the meaning behind the everyday word choices that people make. People can say the same thing a hundred ways, but the specific way they say it reveals a lot about their personality and what they're really trying to say.

So, the other day I picked up a shift from my girlfriend as a waiter at my old job because she had important plans. A number of new workers seem to have been hired since I've left, but then again, restaurants generally have a low retention rate.

There was a new waitress working that night who seemed a little shy - it was only her third or fourth shift. She seemed very nice, and I'm sure she was, but she always had a worried look on her face. Maybe she had a test or a project hanging on her consciousness, or she had a rough day, or she's generally pessimistic - a feeling I got as I talked to her, but not what I'm discussing today.

Anyway, I was punching an order in with my fingernail on a very sturdy, hardly-registering, 'touch' screen computer when she runs by me into the kitchen with a small stack of dirty dishes.

A few seconds later a plate crashes to the ground.

She walks out, turns to the first person she sees, me: "Were you the last person to put up a plate? Because a plate just broke." She was about to place the plates she had been carrying in the dirty dishes bin, but the previous stack had toppled.

First of all, a broken plate can rattle a new employee. It's obviously much less embarrassing in the kitchen and not on the main floor, but, for some reason, no matter what you drop or where you drop it, or how many of it you drop, if you drop it in a restaurant it will be really, really loud.

Like any self-conscious employee, knowing half the staff heard the plate shatter; knowing she stood right in front of it when it dropped; she wanted to let someone know that she didn't do it.

She asks me 'Were you the last person to put a plate up?' At first, it seems like she's throwing blame at me to cover up for herself. But, I don't think she was trying to pin blame on me, or anyone else, she was just un-pinning it from herself. This is reinforced by the second sentence "Because a plate just broke." She says, I didn't break it, you didn't break it, no one broke it; the plate broke itself. All the blame is the plates and none of the blame is ours. So, are you or I sweeping it up? Don't worry about it, the kitchen staff will.

It's important to note that she left out how the plates broke. She goes from 'putting up a plate' to 'the plate broke.' She left out what I explained: that the dish bin was so full that the last mother-fucker to stack a plate on it should have been a little more fucking careful! Don't add to the four-foot tower of plates rocking back and forth next to the over-powered, thirty-seconds-flat, rumbling steam bath of a dishwasher. Just don't stack your mother-fuckin' plate up there!

She could have said everything I just did, but she didn't. What does that tell me about her? One, she's non-confrontational. She chose to disperse blame into the unknown.

Also, since she didn't discuss it further, with me or anyone else, we didn't waste trivial effort in finding the plate-breaking dunce. I mean, who cares? It was an accident. After she relieved herself of the guilt by confiding her innocence in the nearest co-worker, she probably doesn't care who did it either.

The situation is over and what have we learned? I dunno, she didn't want to be labeled a plate breaker?

Let me ask you a question.

If you're at work, let's say you're doing opening duties for a restaurant: pulling chairs off of tables, cutting lemons, organizing cups, making sweet tea, etc.; and your manager walks up to you and says "Don't forget to make the sweet tea," and, obviously, you knew you had to make sweet tea, it's been ingrained in your mind since the first week you started the job and you've never forgotten, I mean, who could forget the sweet tea?, that would cause a meltdown in the South, a Revolutionary War between customers and floor-staff, where we would lose and they would waste a lot more tea, well... What do you say back to your manager?

1) No shit, Sherlock.
2) What the fuck do you think this gallon of sugar I'm carrying is for?
3) Have I ever forgotten to make sweet tea before? Douche-bag.
4) Of course I'm going to make sweet tea! I always do.
5) You've gotta be fucking kidding me. Just go away, I've worked here longer than you.
6) Yes sir.
7) Sure will.

If you've thought about, or actually said, any of the top five, you're just like me, just like this girl, and just like a lot of people. It makes you feel like an idiot. Like you're forgetful and untrustworthy.

But, in reality, the manager doesn't know everything. Maybe yesterday another server forgot to make sweet tea and sweet-tea fiends jonesing for their fix boycotted and picketed the entrance causing the restaurant to lose hundreds of dollars. He just wants to make sure that doesn't happen ever again. But we get so offended.

On the other hand, some people are a bit too controlling, in the sense that they love to double-check every-one every-second of the day because they haven't learned to trust people. They're too much upstairs and not enough in the living room sharing the love or the television remote.

So, the new waitress is kinda like me, and you, and now that I've picked apart two sentences she said to me, I think I can sympathize and empathize with her more. Even though I'll probably never work with her again.