Picture a teenager’s hell: being bellowed at by adults three times your age for an incident that you had no part in. Why? Because you’re standing right there. The wait is too long. Someone doesn’t like their table. The kitchen is backed up on orders. The prices are too expensive–because, yeah, a bottom-of-the-barrel hostess has the power to change the prices. Making everyone happy is simply impossible, but pissing everyone off is quite easy. A DoorDasher shoves his phone in my face for an order; I step a toe into the kitchen and get cussed out by my boss to leave. I return to my manager reminding me to start making drinks and to keep our stations separate, but she needs help with the phones, and she needs help with the orders, but why am I not at my station, and who’s handling the DoorDasher, and Voilà: everyone’s miserable. No matter how many years you’ve worked a restaurant job, you’re never prepared for the state of crippling anxiety, dripping sweat, and excruciating pain you’ll be in all day. Not to mention the low growl in your stomach everytime you stare at a skirt steak skillet or a bacon stuffed grilled cheese that you’re not allowed to eat.

Navigating the restaurant for a whole 8-hour shift–no break– without bumping butts with anyone is next to impossible. The entire restaurant is just a game of bumper cars, but there’s 50 cars in a track that’s only made for 5. The tables are so close together that people have to take turns wiggling their way to their chair. The 3ft by 6ft box of syrup-spilled countertops that three hostesses squeeze themselves into always ends up with an accidental elbow to the side or boiling espresso shots on someone’s shirt. And the kitchen isn’t even wide enough to fit a bumper car. Every shift is just a game of how hard can my car collide with the rest of the cars and not spill my drinks, or how many cars will the waitresses have to navigate around just to exit the track. While waitresses will try to forewarn you with a “behind!” or “corner!”, it never prevents a collision between two cars or two plates of buttery, fried, delicious fat. And the gag is, you can’t sit down in your car. Nope. You have to balance on your rotting feet and hope you don’t fall over. The only time you’re allowed the luxury of sitting is when you sneak into the bathroom and sit on the toilet seat. But I will warn you: if you go into the bathroom, you will find at least one waitress either vaping or crying. It’s always one of the two.

Getting paid $8 an hour to stand there and smile as a grown adult spits in my face, “I’VE BEEN WAITING A WHOLE HOUR FOR MY FOOD” when they’ve only been waiting 14 minutes really is my pride and joy. Peering over at a waitress calculating how she’s going to feed her kid off of her food stamps because half of her tables left a 5% tip while listening to my manager drone on about how she’s finally gonna leave her deadbeat financé and escape with her kids to Vermont with a guy she met on the internet made me realize that no matter how many times someone swears they’re finally going to quit, they never do. Not because this is a dream job with a stable pay that every little kid aspires to be, but because everyone has some sort of driving force that keeps them coming back to this hellhole; for me, it’s saving for college, for the waitress it’s feeding her kid, and for my manager it’s a fantasy about ruining your family with a man you met last month, playing Call of Duty.