Lobster and Telephones

In my ginormous history of waitressing, never once had I spilled drinks while serving customers. I suppose there's a first time for everything. I was setting down the last drink on a table tonight when my finger caught the edge of a big glass of water and over it went. Fortunately no one got wet, and I covered the table with a billion napkins and as many apologies. The parents thought it was hilarious, and the three kids were oblivious. They just kept on coloring as their table turned into a small lake.
During embarrassing occurrences like that I hate myself for still turning lobster red like a schoolchild. It's an unbecoming shade on me.
Which, speaking of lobster faces, reminds me of the phone incident early in my Friendly's career. We had just gotten a new cordless phone in the restaurant with little screens on it for caller ID, and during a busy night the phone rang as I was rushing by. I grudgingly stopped to answer it and of course it was a dreaded carry-out food order, and to make it even more annoying, the guy wouldn't speak up. I could barely hear him; his already-muted voice kept trailing away like, "I want some chihhh.... and somhhhh..." I had to keep saying, "Sir, could you please speak up? Sir, I can't hear you... what was that?"
It seemed like I was on the phone with this guy forever, but I finally got his whole order down. I took the phone away from my ear to hang it up and looked up to find another waiter staring at me.
"Did you just take a whole carry-out order with the phone upside down like that?"
I looked down at the phone in my hand. Indeed, it was very much upside down. I had been speaking into the earpiece and listening to the mouthpiece the whole time. My face turned bright red. And in a ridiculously short amount of time the whole waitstaff knew of my heinous blunder and quite a lot of laughter ensued. Oh yes, I went to bed that night a happier person for having filled so many people's lives with hilarity.
And when I went back to work the next morning, I was walking past a cook I barely knew when he said, "So. I heard you took a whole order with the phone upside down last night."
Good thing I'm a grown-up now and don't do things like that anymore.
I fool some people.