The Waitresses and the Tray
She picked it up. She picked it up. The waitress. She took my tray on her way back from the storage room to the kitchen. Why now? I’ve been sitting at this table in the coffeeshop for nearly 4 hours, and finished my coffee and my carrot-banana cake at least 3 hours ago and none of the waitresses took my tray until now.
When a waitress walks out of the storage room, 4 steps forward and then takes a 90-degree turn to the left, then walking 4 steps forward, she ends up, to her right, next to where I am sitting. If she turns her head to the right, she’s facing me. The table where I’m sitting is approx. 110-120cm in height and maybe 100cm wide. My tray was in the middle of the table. If she continues to walk, taking another 5 steps straight ahead then turns 90 degrees to the left and walks around 15 steps straight ahead, she ends up in an open kitchen. That’s where all the empty trays are brought by the waitresses.
The path from the storage room to the kitchen is not the only path that leads by my table. My table is in the middle of the coffeeshop, and there is a whole other section of the shop which is not between the storage room and the kitchen. It’s further back and necessarily leads by my table too.
Usually, the trip of a waitress consists of walking from the kitchen to the back of the shop and back, or from the kitchen to the storage room and back, or from the kitchen to the back to the storage room and back, or from the kitchen to the storage room to the back of the shop and back to the kitchen. On every single trip, the waitress walks past my table at least twice. There are 3 waitresses at all times doing the forth and back. At least twice every 2 minutes, there is a waitress walking by. If not more often than that. In the past 3 hours, 180 times, a waitress walked by my table, and only at the 181st time did a waitress take my tray. What the fuck is happening?
I noticed, while I still had my tray, that the empty coffee cup had kept some of the color of the coffee, which with the right lighting could have seemed like the cup was still full. An optical illusion of sorts. There is a bunch of lamps hanging over me, so this might be a plausible explanation. But why didn’t the last waitress get tricked by the optical illusion too? Her height, she’s shorter than all the other waitresses. But she walked past my table lots of times before the one time when she took my tray. Maybe it’s the lighting coming through the windows that changed. Maybe it was the sunlight combined with the light of the lamps combined with the remaining brown color in the coffee cup that created the optical illusion, and now that the sunlight was gone the optical illusion was no more, and thanks to her height the tiny waitress could finally see that the cup was empty. It’s plausible but maybe also wrong.
I went to the hairdresser 2 weeks back and currently look a little like the guy from Prison Break. And in general, I’ve heard from friends in the past that the first time they met me I seemed quite intimidating. I must look unapproachable now. It could be that the waitresses had a team-building night last night and binge-watched the first season of Prison Break and are just freaking out seeing me sitting there. It took them 181 tries to get over their fears and get near me to take my tray.
Maybe there is a rule at this coffeeshop that each waitress is responsible for a certain number of tables. And on Wednesdays, the tiny waitress is responsible for my table. This explains why all waitresses besides the tiny one did not take my tray. The tiny waitress loved playing waitress with her brothers and sisters as a child but one day while playing she fell over and a knife that she was carrying stabbed her left eye and another knife cut a nerve in her right arm. She was rushed to the hospital but lost her left eye, which was replaced by a glass eye which restricts her field of vision to what's in front and on the right of her. She also lost the capacity to lift her right arm. Since she loved being a waitress before her accident, she pursued her dream and decided to become a waitress for a living with or without a functioning left eye and right arm. Today, when walking from the kitchen to the storage room to the back of the shop, she simply ignores what’s on the left of her because she doesn’t see it but registers what’s to her right to pick it up on the way back with her left arm. In a way, she does the seeing on her way to the back and the moving with her functioning arm on the way back to the kitchen. She doesn’t always do that but it's her preferred mode of operating, especially when the shop is not too busy and there is no hurry to bring a specific tray back, which was the case for my tray. I simply did not notice these details because I’m usually not staring at tiny waitresses’ eyes to see whether they are real or made out of glass. I also don’t randomly challenge people to lift both of their arms in front of me.
It’s getting late, time for me to go home. Not having any tray in front of me, I stand up, put my jacket on, put my computer in my backpack, swing it over my shoulder, and start walking to the left with the goal of walking around the table and finding my way out of the coffeeshop. One of the waitresses was blocking my way because she was preparing to mop the floor. I notice it and decide to not force my way through but to take the other way around the table. I take a 180-degree turn and stare right ahead of me, where I see in the corner of the room a tray return station.
