Tales from the Café: These Slip-Resistant Shoes Were Made for Walking

Time: Saturday, 2:46 pm

I hate working brunch. (To be fair, most of us hate working brunch, so this isn’t just me talking.) I’m sure I’ve said this before, but it’s chaotic and loud and there are too many people around. Added onto this, I was working on the patio, so I had some of the longest treks from kitchen to table.

I liked the exercise I got from it, but I have to admit that it’s still tiring.

But brunch was almost over, and most of the customers were either just finishing up or had already gone. I took a moment in the back to catch my breath and reconfigure my brain for the upcoming shift to dinner. It was one of the quirks of working through the end of brunch and into dinner. Despite them both being full service, and thus you’d think that they’d be similar, there was still a jarring feeling between the two. My guess was that Saturday and Sunday nights were dramatically quieter than their respective mornings, even on their busy nights.

Autumn walked around the corner, eyebrows furrowed. “Have you seen Ada?” I gestured toward the kitchen door, rubbing my eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just tired.” I smiled, pushing a stray chunk of hair out of my eyes. “I feel like I’ve run a marathon.”

“Don’t you have a pedometer? Why don’t you see how many steps you’ve got?”

I reached for my belt, pulling the step counter off of my waistband. I’d bought it a few months back in an attempt to keep myself accountable for more exercise. It had only worked nominally, but it was nice on days like this because I could at least feel justified in how tired I was based on the number of steps I’d walked.

“Let’s see.” I hit the button to make my step count pop up–and stared at it blankly.

Autumn laughed. “What’s wrong? What’s it say?”

“There’s no way I’ve only walked six thousand steps. No way. I have to have walked more than that.” My brain couldn’t even process what I was reading. 6257. How? How?

“Well, where’s your section?”

I looked back up, visualizing the restaurant. “Ah, maybe that’s it. I’ve got the fireplace and the early twenties. Right by the kitchen.”

“That’ll do it.” Autumn gave me a sympathetic smile and headed toward the kitchen, likely to get Ada back for something.

I took a deep breath and clipped the pedometer back onto my belt. This was going to be a looooong day.

A/N: If I had a nickel for every time this has happened to me, I’d be able to pay off my new car and my student loans in one fell swoop. I swear my Fitbit lies sometimes.