Drea: Interviewing a Waitress

July 30, 2024 / Last updated: September 13, 2024

I’m about to write my phone number on a receipt at a Mexican restaurant.

I have never done this before and I feel nervous and my heart races.

The waitress is friendly and cute and she looks interesting.

She’s young, probably early 20s. Blonde hair and tattoos and her eyes light up when she smiles.

I’m captivated, not romantically, but by curiosity.

What’s life like for her?

I wonder if I can try writing about her and if there’s a cool story here.

As she brings me the bill I blurt out: Can I interview you sometime?

I scribble my number on the receipt and add my Instagram at the bottom.

Hours later, my phone buzzes with a text from an unknown number.

“Hey! It’s Drea from lunch. Still want to chat?”

We make plans and meet up for coffee.

This is Drea. She’s 19 and she’s working two restaurant jobs this summer to pay for a trip to Europe.

I ask her a lot of random things now because I’m not sure what I will write about. I wonder if this is how reporters do it.

On tipping and who tips poorly and who tips well:

“I make $2.75 per hour plus tips,” she explains. “If they’re rude right away, they probably won’t tip me well. Younger people and people not from America, same thing. But families- if the dad is friendly, those are sometimes really good tips. I like to see what they leave. It’s fun.”

I wonder if she’s good at reading people’s body language. If serving so many people gives her superhuman skills?

“I don’t think so,” Drea says. “I don’t want to be mean about it but the tips are sort of all I care about. I’m there to do a job and I want to get paid. I’m happy to chat with anyone if we’re not busy. But at the end of my shift I only make money if I get tips.”

That makes sense. And tipping culture in America is so confusing. I ask her to say more.

“There were these girls my age who came in last week. They were so nice. I liked talking to them even if they didn’t tip me well. I felt like we could be friends. But then sometimes you get a huge table of college students and you just know. You just KNOW it’s going to be bad. I had a table of 12 college students the other day. They were asking for so much free stuff, extra chips and salsa, refills on sodas, everything. And then they didn’t tip me at all. I cried. I almost quit. I was so mad. Those tables are hard.”

She’s thinking about that memory now and I can tell she’s upset. This does not seem to be going well for me as an interviewer so I think of another topic to ask about.

On people flirting with her:

“Sometimes guys leave me their numbers on the receipt and I like that. I show everyone at work, like: Look I got a number!” She laughs. “But no, I never call them. I have a boyfriend. We’ve been together for 3 years. He’s the best. But it’s still nice to get a number. It’s cute.”

We keep talking. I’m struggling for topics now. I’m not good at this whole interviewing strangers thing and I wonder if I’m going to have to apologize to her for inviting her for coffee.

But then she mentions that she was out late last night. She hosted a Summerween party.

My ears perk up, even though I’ve never heard the term Summerween, and I nod and pretend like I know what it is.

My ears perk up because I love parties. I love people who host parties. I think we need more people who host parties and get-togethers and meetups. In fact, I wrote a whole book about this. How we need more parties because a lot of people my age work remotely and we are lonely and it’s hard to make friends.

Suddenly I’m not just an awkward interviewer fumbling for questions. I think I can maybe write about this or connect with her as a fellow host. I lean in and ask her to tell me about last night.

“I hosted a Summerween party,” she explains. “That’s basically a Halloween theme party but in the summer. I think we had 15 people? I dressed up as Aquamarine, a mermaid. And I carved a Jack-o-Lantern into a watermelon. We had a dirt cake with gummy worms and little eyeballs. And pizza, everyone loves pizza. I think I learned to host from my mom. She loves cooking for people. My parents used to host a lot before we moved.”

It’s not easy to host a party and make all those snacks. I personally like name tags and introductions at a party more than snacks. But I get it: people like food and they need to be fed.

I tell her about my book, The 2-Hour Cocktail Party, and give her a copy. I show her the chapters about the party supplies checklist and the minute-by-minute agendas and the sample scripts of what to say when the first people arrive.

Why does she host?

“I miss my friends. When I’m home for the summer I want to see them. But it’s hard for me to hang out with each of those people individually. It’s easier to get everyone together at a party. I love it when we all hang out. If my friends from one group talk to some of my other friends, we’re all getting closer together. Right? It’s just like fostering relationships and reinforcing the relationships I already have.”

She actually said the words “fostering relationships” and I could not have written a better reply.

I remember when I went to college and I feel bad that I didn’t do more to keep in touch with my friends from high school like Drea is doing now.

“I don’t want to lose my high school friendships. I worked really hard to find my group and my people. And I don’t want to lose that just because I went to college. That’d be silly. So I host these parties. And new people come, too, and we all hang out and talk and some people even make new friends.”

As I leave the coffee shop, I think about Drea’s parties.

She’s not just hosting theme parties. She’s preserving her past friendships while building future connections. All while working two jobs. At 19, she’s doing something that many people never learned: the art of maintaining relationships.

I think this is good. Drea is good. Her parties are good. And I believe that the youth are alright.

I think I see now why I do these interviews even if I don’t know where they will end up.

I do these interviews because I find myself in other people’s stories.

I learn lessons, I relive my own mistakes, and I practice my own advice through the conversations we share.

I get in my car and I pull out my phone. I start texting some friends I haven’t seen in a while and begin planning my next party.

This will be fun.

THE END

Hi from Nick! Originally published on Twitter / X. I’ve been doing these interviews with people like this one and posting them on my Instagram and Twitter / X. I’ll add some others into the Profiles category. Leave me a comment if you liked this and I’ll try to add some more.

Thank you to Nylo, Alexa, Edwin, Nicholas Aufenkamp, Megha Mookim, Ashley McCully, and Justin Nolan for feedback on this profile.

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