One particular Saturday, Parisa and I lingered until closing and offered to wipe down the tables. It was the least we could do after hanging out in our favorite booth for five hours and only ponying up for one-dollar coffee refills most of the day. Katie handed us each a rag and asked if we wanted part-time jobs. Parisa, ever the overachiever, was already stretched too thin volunteering at a homeless shelter, but I was unemployed after a less-than-stellar one-week stint at Hollister that I abandoned in the middle of my shift when a white mother talked to me way too loudly and way too slowly in English, as though I wouldn’t understand her otherwise.

“How soon can I start?” I’d asked Katie that night.

It turns out, there are few things I’m as skilled at as I am at waiting tables. I know to kneel down when I’m asking one of those adorable introverted little kids (whose parents always insist they order on their own) whether they want the mac and cheese or the chicken fingers off the children’s menu. I shrug and say “no problem” to frazzled new moms who have braved the restaurant with their wide-eyed babies, leaving me to pick up an alarming number of Cheerios off the floor. If the kitchen is moving a little too slow, I’m happy to offer free beverages—even if it means losing a few dollars from my own paycheck. I always recommend the coffee cake, and, to Katie’s chagrin, I’m the first to admit the turkey meatloaf is a touch dry for my taste without the proper amount of ketchup. I keep telling her they need to add more milk to the recipe, but she won’t listen.

Being a waitress has also made me a better painter. Michelangelo dissected cadavers to hone his art, but I much prefer to look at the living. I love observing families relieved to be free of cooking and scrubbing pans for a night, coworkers who are finally able to let their guards down outside the office, couples who walk in with all the high expectations of a casual date night only to leave with their shoulders hunched and their smiles gone—probably because the love of their life told them not to eat too many French fries. You might be able to learn to sculpt marble perfectly from looking at tissue and muscle and bones, but the best way to know how to paint a smile or a furrowed brow or a teardrop is to be there when the disappointment or the sadness or the elation hits. The coffee cake always elicits the latter.