Well, my job is still great, but I had my first bad day. I'm pretty upset and I almost cried on the way home from work. I didn't, though. I forced myself not to, because it was really stupid.

Anyways, I woke up early this morning because someone texted me and I find out it was my boss. Someone called in sick today and she wanted someone to cover for her. Well, this was around six in the morning and I was so out of it and tired, I just ignored it and went back to sleep. Well, I woke up again around nine and my phone buzzed again. I thought it was my imagination so I ignored it and didn't look until 10:30 am.

Well, she was still looking for someone to come in so I texted her and said "I haven't done this shift yet, but I would be glad to come in and help as best I can."

So, she texted me back and said that would be great. So, I got ready and went in a few hours early and learned how to do another shift.

Well, morning and afternoon was great, it wasn't until dinner I started to really have trouble.

I was spilling drinks with this one guy, and I felt really bad because I'm not used to it and the jug it was in was really weird and it leaked.

Then this lady tells me "you need to make sure you are taking all the warm food to others when it's up on the warmer" which really frustrated me because I WAS doing that and pretty fast too. I was busy helping others and I'd always look up to see if there was anything there. All the times I looked, there wasn't.

And then later, it's my shift's job to clean ALL the dishes. There is only room for two squares holding clean dishes on the clean side and then you have to clean all the other dishes and put away the clean ones at the same time.

This is really, really hard, and this same lady was like "You really need to do this faster and learn a system that will work." I got really upset and almost cried then because I know I'm new and it's not my fault that I don't know how to do it fast yet.

And because of me, we all left ten minutes late because I was so slow. I felt really bad.

So, does anyone have any ideas how I could possibly form a system? You rinse them, put them in a rack, and then put them in the dish washer. When they're clean, you push them to the other side on the clean counter and then you have to make sure there's room for the next. The lady said I need to always have one load in the dish washer going.

Any ideas? And how can I keep my stress levels down on the job?