Tonight, and this evening, oh and early this afternoon I found myself catering a party directly ontop of the underground science building. It was a dinner for scientists, obviously. And they hailed from all over the world. I was assigned for tables. One of them had three Japanese men sitting at it, one was occupied by five Germans, the third had four people who were all speaking English, and the fourth was home to 8 of the French.
I was delighted to hear the French cascading in lively waves over the lemon yellow table setting (complementing the sunflower centerpeices and seven peice silverware sets at each place--each of the 345 guests recieved three forks which was a total waste of time and effort). Anyway I swooned, inwardly, and waited for my chance to burst into french and surprise my guests. The chance came when one of the men at the table accidentally said "merci" instead of "thank you." Instead of ignoring him I said, "pas du problem" which was probably a little wrong grammatically because I haven't really been practicing lately. They were all agog. Each of the eight French (one of them was really a New Yorker who happened to speak french) turned to me in unison and began expostulating excitedly and rapidly in French.
I was a little scared but managed to remember to refer to my french auntie as "une francaise" (in the feminine). Then I served them "cafe et decaf" and was proud to be that evenings slightly interesting entertainment.
Then my boss told me that I was doing a good job, primarily because I was talking to the customers (that's why I wanted this job) at which point I then began cleaning and heavy lifting for several silent hours.
The morale really lowered when all the people in charge left 3 hours before we were finished cleaning up.
And that's WORKING WITH CATERING!
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