We rock up to a stranger's house. I open my phone to check the address. I adjust my collar, walk up to the door and knock. As I wait, my gaze travels to the two sad-looking balloons tied to the front fence. Someone eventually opens the door. 'Hi, we're the caterers,' my co-worker says.
We're shown to the kitchen, then left alone to do our work. If it's a good night, we'll leave with a thank you and maybe a tip. If it's a bad night, we'll be lectured about how to do our jobs, and a man will be creepy to me (an unfortunately not uncommon experience).
As a server, I go out with trays of food, reminding myself to keep a smile fixed to my face. I do the rounds, taking note of who is eating what, memorising the faces of people with special dietary requirements. I'm mostly invisible to the guests. As I squeeze between groups of chattering people, more than once I have to maneuver to avoid someone backing into me.
After one job, I sat in my friend's car afterwards, feeling completely wiped out. 'It was a long job,' I told her.
'Why's that?'
I described how people grabbed and reached around me while I held trays of food, how they would take minutes to dip their food in a sauce while talking to someone, and I just had to stand there. 'It's like they don't see you as a human person,' I said. In an essay titled 'Mr and Mrs B', the American writer Alexander Chee aptly described the experience of being a server as being viewed as 'human furniture'.
Still, there are also benefits to being the not-person in the room. In the same essay Chee wrote that 'being a cater-waiter allowed me access to the interiors of people's lives in a way that was different from every other relationship I might have had'.
"Working as a server helped me mature as a person. Now, I notice more often the people on the edges, so often unseen."
I've waitressed at yacht clubs, fire stations and in people's homes. In a small way, I've been part of people's celebrations. I've seen 16 year olds on their birthdays, old couples celebrating their anniversaries and, on one particularly memorable occasion, the absolute shock of the guests at a surprise wedding.
I learned a lot about people when I wasn't 'really' there. I watched the grandmothers