Yuliya is easily one of my favorite co-servers at work. She's fun to hang out with, gets stuff done, and doesn't tell an exorbitant amount of stories that begin with "So, we were so wasted..."
She's from Belarus and has the cutest accent ever, which I am very good at making fun of. (There's not much I can't mock, really, but I'm especially good at foreign accents since that year in high school I became good friends with the exchange students.) She's been in the US for about three years now and has even settled down and married a nice American boy. But she still has trouble with her English.
Last weekend, our soups of the day were Potato-Ham Chowder and Garden Vegetable. (Soup names are obviously important enough to be proper nouns.) I heard Yuliya listing these soups for table 42 when they asked, except that she said "Tomato-Ham Chowder". I informed her of her error when she left the table, but told her that she was probably safe. I mean, really, who would want to eat Tomato-Ham Chowder?
Table 42, of course.
After they submitted an order for one cup of Tomato-Ham Chowder, I told Yuliya she had to tell them. It was no big deal, I'd told tables I'd made a mistake plenty of times. But maybe Yuliya was not as accustomed to making errors as I was. She didn't want to tell them; she was convinced they already thought she was crazy and could feel her tip rapidly declining. I argued with her. What else could she do but tell them? They were expecting their Tomato-Ham Chowder.
This is what she did. Like I said earlier, the other soup of the day was Garden Vegetable. Unlike it's partner, it had tomatoes in it. So Yuliya takes a few tomatoes from the Garden Vegetable soup and drops them in a cup of Potato-Ham Chowder. She served it, and we all held our breaths.
They liked it very much, thank you, and left her a 20% tip.
It has to be the accent.
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