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"SO TELL ME AGAIN WHY I'M NOT SERVING THE PRESIDENT INSTEAD?"

It was an ungrateful question of me to ask, but it had been bugging me for the past few minutes and the dinner party had barely started. All any of us had done so far was roll up our sleeves as we waited on the food to be prepared. Eric, however, happened to pull an all-nighter and got sick so he couldn't come into work today. Since he was our top chef - in other words, our only chef - we were having a bit of a dilemma. Ernie, his twin brother, knew all of the basics of food preparation and we had two other cooks in our crew, so we weren't facing the disaster of the century, but it was definitely a setback.

Thankfully, neither Katie nor I were part of the cooking team, we were just there to serve the guests, so we didn't have to worry too much about how fast we were working. Sure, we had to worry about how fast they were working, but we made a pretty good team.

Katie Jackson was my boss of sorts (the most experienced out of the four servers on our team); a nearing-middle-aged woman with green eyes and bouncy black curls and a bright smile if you didn't piss her off (which made it a treasure to see). She was also in her third trimester of pregnancy, her grey uniform for Happenstance Catering tightly hugging her curves, jutting out sharply where her baby bump started. She originally planned on a maternity leave for herself, but there was no way she would let three novices handle the event we were doing today.

It was a benefit for some tech company apparently, and they had only hired us because we were local to the Philadelphia area and it was a charity event so what better idea was there than to make your company seem well-rounded by supporting a struggling company like they were. I didn't feel like looking into it any further, mainly because I knew we would go back to catering at children's birthday parties or at the Seniors' Bingo Nights at the nursing home upstate in the blink of an eye. Opportunities like this didn't last forever.

But to be completely honest, maybe this wouldn't be the last time we were working in the big leagues. One of our new recruits - a college guy with freckles and a bad attitude - just happened to be the nephew of the attorney general and that alone was able to land him and his crew a gig at the newly instated President of the United States' dinner. In fact, being blond and hot (in his opinion and mine), I was considered for joining that team, however Katie grabbed me at the last minute and here I was.

"Because I," she added emphasis before rubbing her inflated stomach, "have a baby on the way and I could use all the help I can get. It's neither of our faults that all of the experienced workers either left or went on holiday. With only about two and a half weeks on the job, compared to those two" - she pointed at the other two servers, Charles and Rick who could barely seem to balance a platter - "you're the best we've got."

I nodded, although I internally couldn't and wouldn't accept it. When you just happened to major in politics but wind up serving people their food, you obviously begin to feel a bit lost.

And here I was, behind a closed door with a room full of some of the richest people I'd ever meet in my life and while I knew where everything was, I still felt so lost.

"We should serve some more drinks," she said with a slight smile, as if she noticed that I was currently feeling down about my situation. "It'll keep their minds off of the fact that there's no currently food besides bread on anyone's tables."

I looked around at the room we were provided to prepare in; a small kitchen reserved for the Observatory staff who were currently out since the whole space was rented just for this event. It had all of the simple amenities, a stove, a sink, a microwave, a freezer and refrigerator, and it was actually quite cozy. I would've definitely preferred to wallow in the failures of my life in here than out there where people who cracked the code would be able to see me and humor themselves. I was sure they would have a row over Katie showing up to work while she was clearly pregnant.