Maya lasted three weeks before the first real incident.
The first two weeks were just hard. Her feet hurt every shift. She mixed up table numbers twice and sent the wrong orders to the kitchen. She spilled a drink — water, thankfully, not wine — on a businessman who was on a call and who looked at her like she had done it deliberately. She smiled through all of it, apologized where required, and went home every night and soaked her feet in warm water and told herself it was temporary.
Derek was fair. Not warm, not unkind. Just clear. He corrected her when she was wrong and left her alone when she was right and that was the whole of their relationship.
Priya remained cheerful in the way of someone who genuinely liked her job and couldn't understand why everyone didn't.
The other staff w
