The Waitress (415) - Writers Forum

jaworski · 03-04-2008, 07:10 PM

We’re sitting at a table at the corner of Madame Brussels watching the waitress as she makes her way to our table. We watch as she loses her balance trying to push in a chair and stumbles, kicking the table with her foot. There’s laughter at another table but only Sophie looks away.

The waitress has blonde hair and is dressed in a sort of French maid outfit that makes her seem Scandinavian and she keeps trying to pull her skirt down with one hand but, after realising the difficulty this entails, gives up. When she finally does arrive and takes our order, her speech is slurred. ‘What do you want?’ sounds something like ‘Whadoou ya wan?’ and everyone looks away embarrassed.

I’m pretty sure the waitress is drunk and I don’t think anyone at this table is even close, although it’s probably close to 2 or 3am by now, and I’m not even sure how that happened.

The waitress stands at the front of our table and surveys the group for a long time, waiting for an answer I guess. She is drunk past the stage of standing still, and keeps shifting her weight from one foot to the other, gripping her notebook and pen for balance.

Ali looks up and begins to explain that we’re just waiting for more of our friends to arrive and that we’ll order later but she doesn’t hear or understand and says, ‘Sorry, what? Sorry… Wha?’, taking a step backwards.
So Ali leans forward, looks up at the waitress and says the exact same thing again but she still doesn’t seem to hear.
Now she’s also leaning forward and says, ‘Wha? You wan more glasses?’
We all look toward Ali, our willing representative, as he asks the rest of the table for clarification, ‘What? I thought that was clear. Am I not making sense here?’
The waitress finally steps back again to announce, ‘Oh my god. I am sooo sorry, I’m sooo drunk… and I was working all night… again,’ then laughing, shaking her head, ‘Soo…um waitt. Wha do you all wan again?’
Again, embarrassed, everyone looks away to Ali.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll order later. When our other friends get here.’ But because we’re all watching her, I think it ends up sounding like a question and she pauses and smiles and laughs at our table. Everyone smiles back and it almost seems like we’re all smiling about the same thing until she turns and leaves.

KDAYE · 03-04-2008, 07:21 PM

hey. i think this is solid, but you should try and catch the readers attention in the first sentence. alot of the first paragraph could have been combined to one sentence, and if you start from the action you could do that. also, spellcheck because you have a couple of mispelled words. and i like that you dont use punctuation, ie quotes, i dont either. overall this is a good piece.

check out mine if you can.

KDAYE · 03-04-2008, 07:23 PM

hey. i think this is solid, but you should try and catch the readers attention in the first sentence. alot of the first paragraph could have been combined to one sentence, and if you start from the action you could do that. also, spellcheck because you have a couple of mispelled words. and i like that you dont use punctuation, ie quotes, i dont either. overall this is a good piece.

check out mine if you can.

http://www.writingforums.com/critiqu...elp-story.html

wren · 03-05-2008, 08:56 AM

This is good - I like your characterisation of the waitress. It feels a little unfinished on it's own though - something that happened, rather than a story if that makes sense. It would make a good snapshot scene in a larger piece.

writeforfun · 03-05-2008, 10:07 AM

Unlike most of the stuff posted here, at least this is pretty straigtforward, prose-wise. Others, of course, have different styles, but by and large I've noticed that too many are infected with a desire to orchestrate complex, flowery writing, words for the sake of more words, rather than concentrating on writing a good story.
You don't have a story either. What you have is a scene, an anecdote about a drunk waitress. It's not badly described, but it doesn't seem in any way important -- unless this is in the context of something larger that you have written or intend to write.
One other thing I found a bit jarring -- a waitress wearing a French Maid's outfit??? Where is this taking place? A strip club? Also, how does such an outfit make her "seem Scandinavian"? Are French maid outfits traits of scandinavian women? Doesn't ring true to me.
Good luck!

CountBlabula · 03-05-2008, 12:43 PM

Hi jaworski,

Lucky for me, I haven't ever met a drunk waitress. Does this story take place in a real city?

jaworski · 03-06-2008, 06:13 PM

Yeah, you're all right. This is just a snapshot rather than a story. It was intended to be the beginning of a short story about the feeling of disaffection at the end of the night + the group of people the narrator is with. Though i thought i'd just post what i'd written.

Oh. She looks scandinavian because she has very blonde hair and is wearing a tight black/white dress, resembling a french maid outfit. Ill fix that up later and yes this happened in Melbourne. Thanks