Ten Things I Can't Stand About Working At Harvesters

• Being inexplicably short-staffed.
• Customers who treat you like shit.
• Customers who don't respond to my charms.
• A hard slog on the 40s&50s/1s&10s
• The fact that:
  • Shifts somehow always conflict with big nights out, epic football games and important events...
  • ...while time off falls on boring, dreary, non-event days
• Thieving gypsies.
• Serving someone you kind-of-half-know enough to nod at but not enough to have a full blown conversation with. It's awkward and they're not tipping for shit.
• The endless, looping, never-ending jukebox.
• Birthday Cakes. Big ones. Small ones. Chocolate ones. Sponge ones. Ones with icing. Ones with cream. Ones with a million candles. And especially ones with lettered candles spelling 'Happy Birthday'.
• Making any kind of mistake that forces me to use my camp, polite, apologetic, sucking-up voice. The one terrible weapon in my otherwise amazing waiting arsenal.

Ten Things That Keep Me Coming Back

• Tips.
• Customers who treat you like shit but then surprisingly leave you a fiver.
• The competitive streak that only hits me in ridiculous activities that no one else bothers with like waiting tables. For other cases of the competitive streak see ping pong and Word Scramble.
• A nice relaxing shift on the 10s/60s.
• Snacking on the left-overs after a busy day.
• The moment the kitchen stops serving food.
• The availability of people to cover your really-can't-be-arsed 12-5 Tuesday or occasionally your really-want-this-off split shift Saturday.
• Cashing up to find you've done a couple of notes better than you thought you had.
• Tables that order four standard EB meals, four refills and don't want deserts.
• Pissing about at any point during a shift whether its caging a fellow employee and throwing cold buckets of water over him or D-10 fights down the 20s.