Work Like You Don't Need The Money

Dance like no one is watching. Love like you’ve never been hurt. And finally, work like you don’t need the money.

Now there are plenty of motivational books and seminars to help people obtain the first two parts of this lesson, but, there seems to be no need to help people with the last. Too often I have frequented a business where the help was working like they didn’t need the money. Or the job. Or my business.

We had a waitress the other night that was taking the above prose to heart, as my family went out for a Mexican meal. We needed a table for five. Evidently that is an oddity. Most restaurants have plenty of tables for four. And we can’t be the only family of five in the world that wants to eat. There must be many families of six. Or seven. Or even eight!

But, nonetheless, we wait our turn and the waitress leads us to a booth. We displayed again, we were five. We didn’t fit in a booth. With an exasperated frown, she huffed that this booth sat six. I frowned back. Maybe six midgets. Or six refugees from a third world country. Certainly not the six of us.

Even when in a group of four, I don’t like booths. Once past the romantic evenings of snuggling up to your sweetie, booths are just crummy. No one wants to sit on the inside. Then you get stuck and can’t jump up for the bathroom. Or get more ketchup. Or to toss up the ebola hamburger you just ate. And the person on the outside is constantly having to stand for your ketchup missions, or is in direct line of fire for your projectile ebola burger.

Take the middle seat on an airplane. Nobody wants the middle seat. Why do airlines even have middle seats? Maybe that is the reason behind all their financial woes of the past few years. They have middle seats. I have been forced next to smelly unshowered backpackers, talkative and freaky single men, talkative and freaky single women, and then the time back when I was a teen, that I got the middle seat between my mom and an extremely large man.

Now I didn’t really mind him spilling over into my seat. But when they served our meal, I was starved and ate everything on my plate. My mom was never one to eat like a bird, so she refused to share with her only daughter. But the large man picked at his meal and didn’t even touch his giant chocolate cake.

I kept eyeballing his cake, debating whether to just ask him for it. He obviously didn’t want it. But kept shifting his position away from me and tilting his plate in obvious fear of my exposed teeth. I kept waiting for him to offer, and he kept taking more defensive positions as my stomach growled louder. Then I began to drool. All over his left arm.

He actually threw away his cake, but ended up with a soaking wet left arm, and undoubtedly wishing that the airplane had no middle seat. I shared the same sentiments, although no middle seat would have the benefits of not putting me in such close proximity to his mercenary and untouched cake. Which forced me to deplane in Boston glassy eyed and dehydrated from both cake trauma and loss of saliva. But I have never forgotten that man, that slice of cake, or the distress a middle seat brought.

So, the Mexican restaurant waitress marched us back to the waiting area, and spat out that we would have to wait even longer if we didn’t like her booth. Miffed, we left for what we now considered the "nicer" Mexican restaurant. This one was owned by locals, so they hopefully would grace us with a table for five.

We were greeted by a smiling waitress who worked like she needed the money, and who gave us a table with plenty of chairs and no middle seat. Because not only did she see a five person sized tip in the table for five. But she had a really sharp eye, and had already tagged me as someone that would buy a really big piece of her special chocolate cake.