I don't know what other people dream about but for me it is very rare that I am being chased by monsters or in danger of falling off of buildings or even being in any sort of danger at all. My dreams tend to be more true to life.
On occasion I will dream about crazy things that are evil or will have the ability to fly or shoot fireballs out of my fingers and what not but this is actually quite rare. More often than not my recurring nightmare is one that is just an extremely frustrating situation that comes from real life experience.
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not what i dream about (but a great 80's monster anyway)
I dream, on a regular basis that I am waiting tables at a fancy restaurant that is extremely busy and we are understaffed. Normally it is just me and a few other people waiting tables, we have no support and the people I am working with all seem to be much better at their jobs than I am.
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I worked in food service from the age of 15 until around 23 years of age and did every aspect of it. I am no stranger to this game and in the United States where tipping is part of the process you can actually make a very good living from this profession if you work in the right kind of place.
One of my first "fancy restaurant" jobs was at a ski resort where the chefs wore the outfits and there actually was an executive from France and another from Germany that oversaw the dining operations. I was merely a busboy but was expected to carry trays on my shoulders without dropping all the plates and glasses.
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It doesn't look so fancy here - I guess they changed it
Anyway, the restaurant industry can be a very stressful one for everyone involved. The only way these places make money is to cram in as many people as they possibly can for 3 hours a night and get them their food as fast as possible, then get them the hell out so you can put someone else's butts in the chairs and do the entire process over again. As a waiter you have to juggle so much information at once and people, including me, would routinely forget one of the 12 things you are trying to keep in your head at the same time.
I don't know how many times in my life I was waiting tables and then would glance out to my section only to realize that someone asked me for a refill like 15 minutes ago and I forgot. There were other times where I completely botched someone's order by entering it into the computer wrong - anyone who has worked in food service knows that this is just part of it. Customers are demanding, and for those customers who never had the pleasure of working in food service they don't realize how difficult it is to remain kind to people when you are this stressed out.
The kitchen is really busy and stressed out as well and they have the added luxury of working in a cramped environment filled with many dangers where they can cut or burn themselves on a regular basis. Arguments between waitstaff and kitchen staff are very common.
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In my dreams it is always much much worse. I will be unfamiliar with the menu, my section will be packed, I will not be able to find anything in the kitchen, no one will help me. My customers are normally pleasant but I will get extremely bizarre questions from them about the food or requests that I do not know how to fulfill. Customers will seat themselves even though they are not supposed to at tables that are dirty. Kids will be wandering all over the place. I'll return to a table to see that everyone's drinks are empty and I have managed to not get one of their dinners.
Just when I think i am getting caught up (get out of the weeds) another two tables will get seated. I never complete my objective in this dream and for some reason I wont wake up the way that you do in really scary dreams. I am stuck in it for what seems like forever. Then when i do wake up I am frustrated, annoyed, and worst of all, not well-rested.
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no thanks
I do however, wake up and feel relieved that I no longer work in food service and hope that I never do again.
That was my night last night and it was an extremely horrible experience that is still haunting me as I sit at my desk right now. Generally, regular people are the monsters in my dreams and I have this restaurant dream on a regular basis.
I wonder if there is some psychological explanation as to why I have these dreams regularly.
Do any of you guys have odd dreams like this or perhaps some food-service nightmares in real life to share? I'd be very interested to hear it if you do.
Even though I had food service experience in a variety of ways, one very memorable 'related' experience was 'not' while I worked in the trade, but had to step in for a new, young cook who got 'slammed' in the wee hours at a Diner, after local Bars closed. The joint 'filled' with happy drunks hungry for an early breakfast at about 3:00 o'clock in the morning.
I was a regular customer there and also had a contract with the 24 hr. Diner to do some minor restoration and repair as needed. My choice to perform the work late at night was due to less people in my way; it was a popular and busy place.
How this poor kid got stuck as the 'only' cook late on a Friday night, I don't remember, but he was already flustered before the Bar crowd hit the place. The night manager was trying to help cook, work the counter, wait tables, tend the register and wash dishes - then I came to the rescue...
I started to cook orders as they came, alongside the kid and intermittently ran to the dish-washer as clean plates, glasses and silverware ran out (dishwasher/busboy had called out sick)
It was a MAD-HOUSE...!!!
At one point, the new cook suddenly wasn't by my side...he was stooped down and huddled against the wall a few feet from me, with his hands covering his face... I guess physically and emotionally exhausted.
Then I had to stoop down and comfort the poor guy, in between flipping bacon and eggs...in order to up-lift the guys spirits with a hand on his shoulder and kind, reassuring words.
HEY!!!! You just made me waste a good story in the comment section... I could have probably made a few thousand Hive off it, if I'd posted the damned thing on my page!!!
what a wonderful follow-up story. You didn't even work there and you pitched in. Says a lot about you as person @angryman ... I'd be willing to bet that the young line cook remembers you to this day.
I don't know how much use I would have been in that situation. I once owned a restaurant and I am a terrible cook, I just know what i want stuff to taste like!
Hmnnnn…??? Now you've made 'me' wonder if he remembers me too. I wonder if he stayed in that business. It was about twenty years ago and in a State I no longer live in.
I think I was a better Baker then a Cook :>)
Of course there is, you were doing it for years and its part of you. I get the Kwiksave nightmares in the same vein!
oh do tell what this Kwiksave is you refer to...
I am due for another one soon, they take a lot of writing so I do tend to do them often. This is the most recent.
https://peakd.com/hive-170798/@slobberchops/the-horrors-of-kwiksave-christmas-is-coming
that was really good, shame i missed that when it was still in the vote window. I'll try to stay on top of stuff better in the future :O
I posted one yesterday but I am not sure if I want to keep them going. Some things are harder to write than others. Non-fiction to me is easy, and although this story is mostly just that, adding the spice I find more difficult.
lol... he who controls the "spice"....
Haha. So many times. It's been a while, though, at least that I can remember. Sometimes I have baseball dreams of back in my highschool glory days.
It's been years since I waited tables but I can relate to those kind of nightmares. Work ones are the worst.
I saw that movie in the theatre with my old man. Dreamscape with Dennis Quaid. Great flick!
The movie scared the crap out of me as a kid. I shouldn't have been watching it at the age i was at the time. I was already plagued with very lifelike wide-awake nightmares at the time and Dreamscape didn't help at all.
Did you know that the film was just the 2nd film to be released with the new rating classification of PG-13?
Now that you mention it, I remember the rating just started. I didn't know it was only the 2nd film. Wow. It's wisely discussed in our family how young I let my 1st kid watch the movie The Thing. Yea I shouldn't have done that. 😁
That doesn't sound like a good dream ;)
I usually have one along the lines of rejoining one of the big software companies I worked for in the past. Knowing I don't believe in the business model and haven't the motivation to do a good job or put up with the organizational garbage.
Then there is the last day of school test after having sherked classes and assignments all year.
Having put a good amount of time in the food industry, I think it is being in the front of the house that has you still programmed to stress about providing the perfect dining experience.
You just reminded me of another frequent dream of mine, the unprepared for something that is going on in school situation with a class that I have skipped all semester... ooh, that one is bad... sometimes I am on campus and i attend the class so infrequently that I can't even find the classroom.
I have never worked in the food industry but boy, that must be stressful...
I have the same kind of dreams, though, where reality and fiction seem to melt together so well that sometimes it's difficult to understand if I'm dreaming or not.
Not too long ago I found myself in the middle of Hong Kong's protests, along with my own brother and his girlfriend. And it was scary as hell.
While I don't live in Hong Kong, my brother and his girlfriend do. I guess my brain picked that up and used that scenario for my dream/nightmare. 🙃
ah yes, i have dreams that mirror real life sometimes and have even asked the people involved in the dream about it, only to discover by talking to them that I have accidentally gotten fantasy and reality mixed up. doh!
Ahahaha. That happens to me a lot. But lately I have been a hard time sleeping. Not only is quite hot in here, my stupid neighbours don't know how to train their dogs and they keep barking all night long.
It's five AM now and to have some quiet I've laid down in the floor of my living room, because in the other side of the house, where my bed is, I can't fall asleep with those damn dogs making noise non-stop. 🥴
i am very fortunate that my dog is not a yapper. She will only ever bark if someone knocks on the door. I'm sure there are other things that would trigger her, but i kind of trained it out of her... encouraged her to not be a barker because little yappy dogs are possibly the most annoying creatures on earth.
Sorry to hear about your sleeping woes, I've been plagued with having trouble sleeping for most of my life, it started in college where the only way I could sleep was to drink Nyquil or be near blackout drunk.
Well, I was able to sleep 4h. But if this madness continues I'll have to call the cops on these guys. The lack of sleep and their noise are driving me mad.
Id hate dreaming about my job. If your job is stressful and youre having nightmares over it, i think its time to quit. You moved on from it so good for you.
Im sure that now you have ... "gooddreams". 😂
well we didn't have much choice back in those days (college), we weren't eligible for very many jobs and at the end of that super stressful day you normally made a lot of money. I suppose in the end it was worth it but it was just crazy that it didn't seem to matter how well we prepared for the "rush", or how many staff we had, we always got our butts kicked by it.
Seems to me that working in food-service got you a minor trauma! Just kidding...
As a child I used to have nightmares featuring Dragons and Godzilla-like(?) creatures (which is strange because I never heard about Godzilla until my teens.) I remember piloting a helicopter to run away from these dinosaurs but I don't remember much else as I stopped having these nightmares many years ago.
Oh, when the exam periods were near, I often dream about missing the exam by oversleeping...
Now I mostly dream about having the ability to fly, sometimes in real life setting and other times in fantasy (anime?) settings. Just flight is a common theme in my dreams.
While I occasionally dream about normal life situations, I tend to forget these dreams very easily.
Do you know about the Deja Vu feeling? One explanation I get is that "something similar happened to you in a dream and you forgot it." I don't know how true that was, I don't care enough. Haha...
I count myself lucky that I never had to work in the food service field or the fast food business. I did work at a camp where they threw me in the kitchen for a short time, but it was mostly just throwing dirty trays into the Hobart machine and preparing meals. We weren't there for a profit so we didn't have to worry about turning over tables and that sort of thing. It was mostly just feeding a lot of kids at once. This sounds like a pretty traumatic dream. Since it is recurring I wonder if there is a way you can trigger yourself to realize it is just a dream. How frequently do you have it?
i would say i have that dream a couple times a month. My life is pretty laid back now since I am never part of food service other than as a customer. I'll have to make a note to think about what happened the day before that might have triggered it. That would be a real interesting discovery for sure.
Almost everyone I knew in college was involved in food-service. When I would meet someone who worked for a straight hourly wage they always made less than the tipped staff - i guess that's why I always did that. I even worked at Pizza Hut, which is a place I don't think many people eat at anymore but they did back in the 90's.
It's good to hear that I am not the only person that has flashbacks to restaurant work.