What Your Server Knows

I’m on vacation. I’m supposed to be thinking about the beach, the waves, the sun, and one of my great loves – fishing. Yet, I as stare out into the dark expanse of the Gulf of Mexico approaching midnight in the panhandle, I am paradoxically struck by a beauty that I never want to leave; yet at the same time, my mind yearns for home.

We visited a restaurant this evening and when it came time to ‘tip’ on an overpriced meal, I was reminded of a $112 tab accumulated by a group of Oak Ridgers twenty years ago when I was waiting tables. It was a Sunday afternoon (a party of eight or nine) and after waiting on them all basically hand to mouth, I walked away with $2.10, my hourly wage.

Like a bad taste, that flavor still lingers inside me two decades later—and it has less to do with the tip than you might imagine. On that day, I was my own worst enemy. The night before, our manager had put out a call for help. Someone wasn’t going to show up for their Sunday shift and we were a server short. As a newbie to the business, I volunteered. When I did, chuckles erupted from the senior servers. They knew something that I didn’t: The post-worship crowd tended to stiff the help.

My first Sunday afternoon waiting tables will forever live in my memory. I have never been worked harder, treated worse, or made less money in any other job, or on any other working day of my entire life. The real insult was that I was naively excited about taking Sunday afternoon. Being a Christian and having been raised in Oak Ridge, I figured I’d be waiting on people who shared the same values, people I could relate with and talk to while I worked.

I couldn’t have been any closer to heart-break as I learned firsthand the Christian witness being left on tables. As my brief career waiting tables waned, I found myself requesting to work the “smoking section” on Sundays. At least there I would be greeted with a smile, treated with grace, and tipped with charity.

As a pastor of many years, I still look back to those days, wanting desperately to call it a fluke. But I’ve spoken with too many waiters from too many places to accept my experience as an anomaly.

So when the bill came tonight and I thought of all the waiters in the Gulf losing cash to a terrible catastrophe of oil, my mind went back to Oak Ridge. I thought about what a server knows – and how that knowledge speaks so much louder than a suit, or a dress, or a freshly inked salvation track. I thought about Jesus and our mission as believers.

I know there are many who are licking their chops at the thought of a negative blog about believers. They like nothing more than seeing another log thrown on that fire, and that is the very nature of humanity that we’ve been called, by grace, to redirect. This wasn’t written for them; it is for believers. We must accept that we are not only capable of more; we’re commanded to more. If we’ve no grace in our Sunday lunch, even after piously saying it with a bowed head, then we shame the Gospel which is far worse than shaming ourselves.

I love and miss my hometown and I’m excited to be coming back to work, as dysfunctional as that might sound; because come hell or high water, what our servers know about us has got to change.