Waitress at an Italian restaurant - bar.

The other weekend last month I went to this strip of Italian restaurant bars a bit WNW of downtown, where I had inconsistently hit up bars before.

At the 2nd one, the bar was empty but the early dinner crowd was just coming in, and as I ordered a beer, the (slightly dark skinned) (middle aged) waitress seemed chatty, so I asked her how she was.

"Okay," she was like.  "I'm still getting over something my preschooler brought home."

"Man," I was like, "The way kids get sick, I'm surprised they're ever well."
"That's because they're developing their immune systems," she was like.  "Seriously, you go to a preschool classroom, and all the kids have sniffles."

From that, I segued the convo and asked her what she thought of the measles stuff.

"Honestly," she was like, "I swear that one day half our fucking country is going to die from some bullshit like that."

After that, we really got along and talked quite a bit.

She said she had worked at the restaurant over ten years, and had learned the hard way to give customers what they want with courtesy and especially with special orders, though you always up charge them for that.

"Even then, sometimes they're not happy," she was like.  "It's like, 'Wait till I meet you on the street, bitch.'"

She also said that she feels very bad for delivery people, and that during a snowstorm she ordered take-out like she never does and the pizza guy finally showed up 2 hours later and the pizza was honestly already getting frozen.

"I gave him ten bucks," she was like.  "I felt so bad."

She also added that you should always give realistic timeline for waiting, though, and she always writes down when she tells people how long the wait was, since sometimes people call back and lie about how long ago they put in a table request.