While I was empathizing with the people around me, I started to feel better about my situation as well. I came to terms with my own expectations for my life. All my emotions around my writing career eased when I was running from one end of that kitchen to the other. And learning not to be so hard on the people around me made me less hard on myself.
But the most important lesson I learned about empathy was about where it ends. Because sometimes, no matter how hard you try to really look at a person’s motivation, there’s nothing there to understand.
Coincidentally, on another Valentine’s Day, and my last day at the restaurant (though for an unrelated reason), I waited on the most memorable table I’ve ever had, before or since. I greeted them — a man and woman probably in their early 50s — with the same introduction I always used, welcoming them in and taking their drink order.
They ordered water and pasta with sauce, which was the cheapest item
on the menu that still came with unlimited salad and bread, as well as
the fastest to prepare. The man asked me to hold off on putting in the dinner order because they wanted to enjoy their salad. Like ordering light, this was also a common request, and I said not to worry, I would take care of the timing.
I brought their salad and bread, served other tables while I waited for them to finish it, and then, when they placed their empty bowl on the edge of the booth, I asked if they wanted more. “Yes, please,” they said.
On my way back to the kitchen, I stopped at an open computer and put in their dinner order. Not because I was trying to rush them, but because the lobby was full and part of my job was to keep things moving. They’d ordered pasta with a spoonful of sauce on it, and so the kitchen saw an easy order come in and put it out right away. By the time I was done making their second salad, another server was at the table with their dinner. The guests, who had been perfectly polite up to now, were outraged.
People at the Olive Garden often got annoyed about their food coming out too fast, but this man and his wife were shamelessly livid. For a second I thought it was a joke because their anger was so outrageous. Honestly, in all my combined years in food and beverage, I’ve never had people so mad at me. (A close second: once, when I was 16 and working at McDonald’s, a woman threw an ice cream cone through the drive-thru window at me.)
“Oh, you’ll take care of it?!” The guest parroted my words back to me. My manager offered them a discount that amounted to $5 on their $20 check, but the guests insisted they’d never come back if they couldn’t get their food for free. My manager — a total hero — held the line. He told me later that if they were going to come in and spend $20 and give people a hard time, then it was cool if they never came back. He emphasized that just because they were looking to get something for free, didn’t mean they were going to get it.
When I summoned my empathy skills and tried to parse the interaction for
their motivation, I felt like I’d been tricked. Theirs was a complete self-absorption — a total disregard for everyone else involved in the Olive Garden experience that night. And sometimes people are just like that.
There’s something about being yelled at by a jerk that brings a sense of clarity. When people get like that, it usually has nothing to do with the other person and everything to do with their expectations, realistic or not. And no matter how powerful empathy can be, simply saying no and not letting it bother you is just as transformational.
Today when I hear about customers being ruder than ever and see video footage of people harassing workers in places like Target and Applebee’s on social media, I wish I could tell those workers that not all customers are good customers. Not all people are good people. Not all expectations will be fulfilled. The best way to live in uncivilized times is often simply not to let it ruin your night.
I moved on to another restaurant after that. I figured if I could master serving at the Olive Garden, I could do it anywhere. My new job was at a fancier place with a completely different clientele. The money wasn’t really any better, and I left as soon as my writing work leveled out again.
There are so many factors that play a role in making it in any kind of freelance work, and if anything, working at Olive Garden forced me to become more comfortable with the fact that I can’t control many of them. Just like there might be a jerk in your section, countless other things may not work out the way we expect. Shifting political winds, pandemics, changing markets, technological advances — sometimes no amount of hard work can overcome them. Things change. Learning how not to be so hard on myself and others has made me better able to accept my own lack of control. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told myself that everything will be all right because I can always go back to the Olive Garden.
Melinda Copp is a writer based in Bluffton, South Carolina. Her work has been published in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals, including The Rumpus, The Cleveland Review of Books, and The Petigru Review. Subscribe to her monthly newsletter for more essays on reading, culture, and life at
https://melindacopp.substack.com/ and connect with her on Instagram
@melindacopp.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost in 2023. We are republishing it now as one of HuffPost’s most loved personal essays.