I work at Hell’s Kitchen, a unique and tasty restaurant in downtown Minneapolis.  We are known for our breakfast and our weekend brunches are an environment where people wait hours..literally…to get a table.  Even in this economy, we can pack the house  on a regular basis.

I quit working weekend brunches over a year ago.  Not because I necessarily wanted to, but getting a babysitter on the weekend is a toughy.  So, I am a M-F daytime waitress.  Not very common in this industry, but I love it.

Today, however was a weekend in the eyes of the world as it is indeed, New Years Day.  I walked into work this morning just before seven am.  I was playing up my crabby demeanor because my usual coffee shop was not open because of the holiday.   I missed on my desire for caffeine to wash away the single glass of champagne I drank last night.  My coworkers were in various states of hangovers as well.  None of us were as hungover as we were snarky about the fact we froze (we will not see anything higher than -3 this weekend) in commute to get to work so early on a holiday that was showing itself to be financially unfruitful.

The first two hours or so of business proved to be pointless.  There were no customers.  The staff sat around, drinking coffee and eating eggs while our lame stories of early to bed New Year’s Eve’s were exchanged.

Somewhere around 9:00am the entire population of the state of Minnesota congregated in the entryway.  From that moment until this evening, when I clocked out, I ran.  RAN.  I ran from table to table.  I ran from the bar to the kitchen.  I never got the chance to run to the bathroom.  Sometimes a restaurant server knows they can squeeze an extra few bucks outta you if they ignore nature and schmooze you instead.

About two o’clock, when I am normally ending my day, I looked at a fellow server and said, “Guess what? They said I get to go home now!”   I swear she teared up.   I was lying with the evil intentions of seeing what the reaction I could induce when most intense form of jealousy arose.

We all stayed.  And we apparently broke a brunch record.  We broke a brunch record with no business for the first two hours of the shift.  And I broke a server record.  And it was awesome.

I informed my slightly tipsy final table of the day that their last round of drinks pushed me over the edge to record sales.  This was a lie, I broke sales before this point.  But I wanted to celebrate and they were the perfect folks with which to do so.   The whole lot of them high fived me and left me a ridiculous tip.     They were/are the perfect customers.

Today was not only a day of best sales, but BEST day of work.  I had a blast, even after the slow and foggy brained start.  2010 is starting out well.