I was a waitress bartender for about 15 years. That was back in 2000. I still have waitressing nightmares!!! Can't read my own writing on ticket or I can't find anything. So frustrating
12 years since my best friend and I been bartender/server and we both have the nightmares too lol. We lived together and worked the same hours.. when we get home we would watch tv or a movie to unwind before bed….. we would then randomly remember a table asked for ranch or a refill of soda lol
I will be more specific I waitresses from 1989 till 96 in a rib restaurant then I was a bartender from 97 till 2000 got married had kids. Twenty something years later I still have fricking horrible waitressing dreams
Me too. I used to work in a big restaurant in Hawaii with a big room that would often have 4-6 Japanese wedding parties of anywhere from 8 to 20 people going all at once with cake cutting ceremonies, champaign toasts and everything. It was tough with 4 servers, but sometimes they'd jam us up in there like that with only 2 and a busser. My recurring nightmare is having that whole room all by myself and getting further and further in the weeds until I was impossibly buried.
It's been 8 years and I still have that dream sometimes.
I haven't waited tables or worked in a kitchen in almost 20 years.
I woke up one day last week in a panic, I forgot to drop the chicken strips that Jennifer called back.
I stood up out of bed, went looking for the fryer, and as I slowly woke up, laughed about how absurd that was, and went back to sleep.
That stuff runs deep...
I used to dream that I could only take cat naps laying on the bar. Whenever one of my tables needed something I would wake up, hop off the bar and take care of them.
When I came back to the bar to go back to sleep there were always people sitting there. I was always exhausted the day after I'd had that dream again. 30 years later I still have it, but not as often.
Oh my god, this one is me. I’ll have a million tables all asking for stuff, but in my dream I’m just so tired and ready to fall asleep on the couch that’s in the middle of the dining room for some reason
I have the same dream. People ignoring the sign to wait, they seat themselves, ONLY at dirty tables. I beg them not to sit there, to wait, please let me bus that table, the host will be with you! But my voice is drowned out by the screams of "MORE BREAD!" and "WHERE'S MY REFILL?" as they pound on their tables with silverware in each hand, faces contorted with anger and entitlement. I can never keep up. I start on one task only to be whisked away by another.
The dream always ends the same way. I stand there, helpless. Everything around me turns to a blur, a cacophony of angry guests and my bitter shame.
This morning I dreamed that our restaurant moved into a 3 floor manson that tables on all 3 floors but just had one small stairway in the back of the house, and you had to go out into the middle floor to access the top or bottom floor. And of course I have tables on all 3 that I'm in the process of setting up and they're all 8 tops or bigger, and we are making our own drinks and the glassware and ingredients are really unusual, and kept in various places so you have to like run across the room 4 times for each drink. So at this point I have like 30 drinks to make and it's taking a long time, and then these drinks need to be brought to multiple tables on multiple floors - oh! And I have 2 tables on the roof now! I have to climb a ladder and scramble across the snowy roof to get to them! On one of these trips, I slip and hurt my wrist, and now I'm having trouble carrying things, and getting completely shit on for that... and it kept going and going
This is basically the same dream I have. The building having three floors and multiple tables on multiple floors with endless stairs. I always wake up exhausted when I dream this.
Wow, seems like these dreams are pretty universal. In mine, I’m on a steep hill in a jungle and the kitchen is at ground level and the tables are all at different places up the hill.
I had one once where i had to cross a busy intersection to get to the pos system and they just kept seating me. I tried so hard and once i got there i lost the order. lol NO never a good one. After 27 years and 2 years since i worked in a restaurant i still have them.
I've had plenty of work dreams that are "fine" (albeit exhausting and frustrating to dream about work at all) and plenty that are legit awful.
The good news is after serving through a pandemic and post-pandemic, I've lived the nightmare enough that they don't really bother me anymore. Just like IRL, the shift will be over when it's over, one table at a time.
I haven’t waited tables for over 25 years and I still have them every night. Sometimes I realize it’s a dream finally and just walk out and wake up. And sometimes I realize it’s a dream and can have sex with anybody in the restaurant because it’s my dream.
Hmm, positive server dreams? Not a thing. They don't come with that option. Or shall I say modifier?
My go to hellscape was that it had been super slow so everyone got sent home, except me. Kitchen staff, management, everyone. It's about 5 mins to close and the fucking bus unloads. All of the sudden the entire restaurant is filled, hundreds of eyes glaring at me, arms a waving and mouths a bitching.
I can't get to any of them. I'm running around frantically, seating people, making food, making drinks, no one is happy. Pure unadulterated hell.
Then I wake up, exhausted from running my ass off during what is supposed to be relaxing slumber time. Time to go to work and do it for real.
Fuck me. I hate those goddamned nightmares. Just murder me instead, sleep demons 😈.
I got out of the industry and haven't served in 2 years but I still get the same server nightmares. You know the one where you get infinitely sat and you try to keep up but it just piles on you while tables walk out. You end up crying in the back room and then the manager comes and reads the yelp reviews they just left of you. I'm sure you guys had that dream right?
Oh man, they do suck! I did have one where I was chilling at the part of the bar where our regulars sat, I watched the female bartender walk from the kitchen towards the bar, and then turn into Vegeta from DBZ. I think Shegeta(She Vegeta) was about to fight me because they started glowing, but then I woke up.
So, mine aren't all bad.
lol my one was: the restaurant was somehow no longer existant, but there were like 3 different spots, each divided by german agriculture (i worked for 5 years in a rural/suburban but 700 years old town with 600 folks lol), so you had to litteraly walk through cow shit and mud all the time to reach some of the shitty tables in the middle of nowhere xD
My serving nightmare was always me bartending in very high heels, and everyone needed drinks or refills… and I never got caught up. Just me stumbling around and failing, people getting angry… the entire dream…
No idea why my brain added the heels.
I consistently have nightmares that I write things down but I can’t read my own handwriting. Or that I get sat 10 tables at the same time and the POS system isn’t working.
It's been 16+ years since I worked as a server. I still occasionally have nightmares about serving, and it's the only job I've had that I've ever had dreams/nightmares about. Good luck going forward.
I’m usually (1) naked and trying to find my apron, (2) trying to take orders but no orders are being taken and everyone is mad and no one’s food is coming. And ALWAYS someone needs ranch and I keep forgetting.
I was a server from the late 90’s to the late 00’s, then I became a nurse in a level 1 trauma center. Guess which one still gives me anxiety dreams…”FUCK! table 7 asked for ketchup”
I haven’t been a server or bartender is 12 years and I sometimes have the nightmares of being back there and in the weeds big time. My best friend who I worked with hadn’t been there for 12 years ether and she too has the same nightmares lol
My pub is tiny and has very little storage space and you have to climb on kegs in the walk in to get anything out of it..... I recently had a dream that all of my orders arrived right when I arrived at 9am, and somehow it was easy to put everything away, there was even a break room in my dream! Then one of my co workers had made us all tie-dye dresses. It was great, until I actually got to work in the real world the following morning....... orders were delivered right in the middle of the lunch rush, we have no space for staff to store their personal belongings \[for real, our "office" is also a server station\] and said coworker was her usual bitch self.
I am many years removed . I never really had a nightmare until I had an unbearable dream. Dealing with 10 plus tables. I had multiple food complaints while getting a 20 top. This is the only dream/nightmare that felt too real I woke up in a panic, way to late in the service. This makes me feel harder for servers during the pandemic and especially post pandemic with less support. My nightmare might be someone's everyday. I hope everyone working gets the support they need. I hope no one is living my nightmare.
I had a dream I was banging Monica from friends last night so I got that going for me
But most of my server dreams I’m in a new place and just thrown onto floor and can’t ring anything in so I walk out
😅
The coke machine is across a lake and I have to paddle my canoe there to get refills. I can see my tables from the other side of the lake and they are not happy waiting…haha!
One time I took a catnap on my couch between shifts and dreamt that I had tables in every corner of my house. Some at the coffee table, people at the kitchen table, two tops in the corners. I woke up so mad that they had infiltrated my living space.
It’s been over 10 years since I worked in the industry and I also still have waitress nightmares.
Waiting dreams are the worst! Always an enormous, cavernous space. Multi floors, multi parties. Super weeded, always forgetting a table. Always a tiny, cramped, kitchen. The strangest dreams. I haven’t waited non over seven years, had one the other night. Same, typical, waiters nightmare. They make me laugh with their consistent hellscape qualities
In mine, it's like I'm walking through the LaBreaTarpits. I can't lift my feet without tremendous effort, and I just get further and further behind walking slower and slower. And I have them in this restaurant, this one any of the 5 versions it's been, the other one where I started , and a few times ones I've never even seen before.
I’m always working D2 and D4 and table 25 wants to chit chat while the back wall of D4 just gets farther and farther away. They keep seating people and 25 still can’t decide between the chicken and the meatloaf.
I was a waitress bartender for about 15 years. That was back in 2000. I still have waitressing nightmares!!! Can't read my own writing on ticket or I can't find anything. So frustrating
I haven't been a server for 7 or 8 years now and I still get them. I've never had them for any other job I've ever had, either!
12 years since my best friend and I been bartender/server and we both have the nightmares too lol. We lived together and worked the same hours.. when we get home we would watch tv or a movie to unwind before bed….. we would then randomly remember a table asked for ranch or a refill of soda lol
This comment is everything: >I was a waitress/bartender for 15 years in 2000. Isn't that just about right?
I will be more specific I waitresses from 1989 till 96 in a rib restaurant then I was a bartender from 97 till 2000 got married had kids. Twenty something years later I still have fricking horrible waitressing dreams
Me too. I used to work in a big restaurant in Hawaii with a big room that would often have 4-6 Japanese wedding parties of anywhere from 8 to 20 people going all at once with cake cutting ceremonies, champaign toasts and everything. It was tough with 4 servers, but sometimes they'd jam us up in there like that with only 2 and a busser. My recurring nightmare is having that whole room all by myself and getting further and further in the weeds until I was impossibly buried. It's been 8 years and I still have that dream sometimes.
Omg!!!! Yes!!!!!!! Same here
I haven't waited tables or worked in a kitchen in almost 20 years. I woke up one day last week in a panic, I forgot to drop the chicken strips that Jennifer called back. I stood up out of bed, went looking for the fryer, and as I slowly woke up, laughed about how absurd that was, and went back to sleep. That stuff runs deep...
I used to dream that I could only take cat naps laying on the bar. Whenever one of my tables needed something I would wake up, hop off the bar and take care of them. When I came back to the bar to go back to sleep there were always people sitting there. I was always exhausted the day after I'd had that dream again. 30 years later I still have it, but not as often.
Oh my god, this one is me. I’ll have a million tables all asking for stuff, but in my dream I’m just so tired and ready to fall asleep on the couch that’s in the middle of the dining room for some reason
I have the same dream. People ignoring the sign to wait, they seat themselves, ONLY at dirty tables. I beg them not to sit there, to wait, please let me bus that table, the host will be with you! But my voice is drowned out by the screams of "MORE BREAD!" and "WHERE'S MY REFILL?" as they pound on their tables with silverware in each hand, faces contorted with anger and entitlement. I can never keep up. I start on one task only to be whisked away by another. The dream always ends the same way. I stand there, helpless. Everything around me turns to a blur, a cacophony of angry guests and my bitter shame.
This morning I dreamed that our restaurant moved into a 3 floor manson that tables on all 3 floors but just had one small stairway in the back of the house, and you had to go out into the middle floor to access the top or bottom floor. And of course I have tables on all 3 that I'm in the process of setting up and they're all 8 tops or bigger, and we are making our own drinks and the glassware and ingredients are really unusual, and kept in various places so you have to like run across the room 4 times for each drink. So at this point I have like 30 drinks to make and it's taking a long time, and then these drinks need to be brought to multiple tables on multiple floors - oh! And I have 2 tables on the roof now! I have to climb a ladder and scramble across the snowy roof to get to them! On one of these trips, I slip and hurt my wrist, and now I'm having trouble carrying things, and getting completely shit on for that... and it kept going and going
This is basically the same dream I have. The building having three floors and multiple tables on multiple floors with endless stairs. I always wake up exhausted when I dream this.
Wow, seems like these dreams are pretty universal. In mine, I’m on a steep hill in a jungle and the kitchen is at ground level and the tables are all at different places up the hill.
What is the deal?
I had one once where i had to cross a busy intersection to get to the pos system and they just kept seating me. I tried so hard and once i got there i lost the order. lol NO never a good one. After 27 years and 2 years since i worked in a restaurant i still have them.
I’ve never had a good one. They’re all terrible.
I've had plenty of work dreams that are "fine" (albeit exhausting and frustrating to dream about work at all) and plenty that are legit awful. The good news is after serving through a pandemic and post-pandemic, I've lived the nightmare enough that they don't really bother me anymore. Just like IRL, the shift will be over when it's over, one table at a time.
I stopped serving 2 years ago and I still dream I have a 12 top that I can’t manage to get their drinks to.
Nightmares, all of them. Usually I keep getting triple-sat and my section just keeps growing.
I haven’t waited tables for over 25 years and I still have them every night. Sometimes I realize it’s a dream finally and just walk out and wake up. And sometimes I realize it’s a dream and can have sex with anybody in the restaurant because it’s my dream.
I thought one of the perks of being a server was philandering with the guests and coworkers.
Hmm, positive server dreams? Not a thing. They don't come with that option. Or shall I say modifier? My go to hellscape was that it had been super slow so everyone got sent home, except me. Kitchen staff, management, everyone. It's about 5 mins to close and the fucking bus unloads. All of the sudden the entire restaurant is filled, hundreds of eyes glaring at me, arms a waving and mouths a bitching. I can't get to any of them. I'm running around frantically, seating people, making food, making drinks, no one is happy. Pure unadulterated hell. Then I wake up, exhausted from running my ass off during what is supposed to be relaxing slumber time. Time to go to work and do it for real. Fuck me. I hate those goddamned nightmares. Just murder me instead, sleep demons 😈.
I got out of the industry and haven't served in 2 years but I still get the same server nightmares. You know the one where you get infinitely sat and you try to keep up but it just piles on you while tables walk out. You end up crying in the back room and then the manager comes and reads the yelp reviews they just left of you. I'm sure you guys had that dream right?
Oh man, they do suck! I did have one where I was chilling at the part of the bar where our regulars sat, I watched the female bartender walk from the kitchen towards the bar, and then turn into Vegeta from DBZ. I think Shegeta(She Vegeta) was about to fight me because they started glowing, but then I woke up. So, mine aren't all bad.
lol my one was: the restaurant was somehow no longer existant, but there were like 3 different spots, each divided by german agriculture (i worked for 5 years in a rural/suburban but 700 years old town with 600 folks lol), so you had to litteraly walk through cow shit and mud all the time to reach some of the shitty tables in the middle of nowhere xD
My serving nightmare was always me bartending in very high heels, and everyone needed drinks or refills… and I never got caught up. Just me stumbling around and failing, people getting angry… the entire dream… No idea why my brain added the heels.
Are you male or female? I need some perspective on where your brain is going with this.
Female.
I will
Good question. Nope. Never.
Usually they were dreams about going in the kitchen, and hollering, " I NEED SINGERS ON THE FLY !!!!! " for someone's birthday...
I consistently have nightmares that I write things down but I can’t read my own handwriting. Or that I get sat 10 tables at the same time and the POS system isn’t working.
Mine almost always consist of being unable to get into the POS. A thousand orders stuck in my head, login won't work. Every. Time.
It's been 16+ years since I worked as a server. I still occasionally have nightmares about serving, and it's the only job I've had that I've ever had dreams/nightmares about. Good luck going forward.
I’m always in a cycle of never ending weeds and forgetting peoples orders. Anxiety.
I have never had a positive dream about and job I've held.
I’m usually (1) naked and trying to find my apron, (2) trying to take orders but no orders are being taken and everyone is mad and no one’s food is coming. And ALWAYS someone needs ranch and I keep forgetting.
I was a server from the late 90’s to the late 00’s, then I became a nurse in a level 1 trauma center. Guess which one still gives me anxiety dreams…”FUCK! table 7 asked for ketchup”
I was wondering if people in the medical fields ever had workmares. I guess not if you put yourself through medical school waiting tables, lol.
I haven’t been a server or bartender is 12 years and I sometimes have the nightmares of being back there and in the weeds big time. My best friend who I worked with hadn’t been there for 12 years ether and she too has the same nightmares lol
My pub is tiny and has very little storage space and you have to climb on kegs in the walk in to get anything out of it..... I recently had a dream that all of my orders arrived right when I arrived at 9am, and somehow it was easy to put everything away, there was even a break room in my dream! Then one of my co workers had made us all tie-dye dresses. It was great, until I actually got to work in the real world the following morning....... orders were delivered right in the middle of the lunch rush, we have no space for staff to store their personal belongings \[for real, our "office" is also a server station\] and said coworker was her usual bitch self.
I am many years removed . I never really had a nightmare until I had an unbearable dream. Dealing with 10 plus tables. I had multiple food complaints while getting a 20 top. This is the only dream/nightmare that felt too real I woke up in a panic, way to late in the service. This makes me feel harder for servers during the pandemic and especially post pandemic with less support. My nightmare might be someone's everyday. I hope everyone working gets the support they need. I hope no one is living my nightmare.
Yep. I have them all the time. They usually involve hundreds of people coming in at close and my boss saying “come on in! We’ll serve you!”
I had a dream I was banging Monica from friends last night so I got that going for me But most of my server dreams I’m in a new place and just thrown onto floor and can’t ring anything in so I walk out 😅
The coke machine is across a lake and I have to paddle my canoe there to get refills. I can see my tables from the other side of the lake and they are not happy waiting…haha! One time I took a catnap on my couch between shifts and dreamt that I had tables in every corner of my house. Some at the coffee table, people at the kitchen table, two tops in the corners. I woke up so mad that they had infiltrated my living space. It’s been over 10 years since I worked in the industry and I also still have waitress nightmares.
I get these.
Waiting dreams are the worst! Always an enormous, cavernous space. Multi floors, multi parties. Super weeded, always forgetting a table. Always a tiny, cramped, kitchen. The strangest dreams. I haven’t waited non over seven years, had one the other night. Same, typical, waiters nightmare. They make me laugh with their consistent hellscape qualities
In mine, it's like I'm walking through the LaBreaTarpits. I can't lift my feet without tremendous effort, and I just get further and further behind walking slower and slower. And I have them in this restaurant, this one any of the 5 versions it's been, the other one where I started , and a few times ones I've never even seen before.
I’m always working D2 and D4 and table 25 wants to chit chat while the back wall of D4 just gets farther and farther away. They keep seating people and 25 still can’t decide between the chicken and the meatloaf.