No matter what task is at hand, no one can do it alone. Even small daily things like working and handling a restaurant require more than one person. The short story “Pancakes”, by Joan Bauer, follows Jill, a waitress, and how her normal day suddenly goes wrong in the Ye Olde Pancake House. Jill is a perfectionist; she always strives and wants the best out of herself and others. She believes any task can be done with perfect work. However, one waitress is not enough for the masses of people coming to the pancake house. Being overrun with customers, Jill finally cannot handle it all and realizes that perfection is unattainable. Even though she is dependable, Jill is bossy and too perfectionist, showing that expecting the best can lead to the worst.
Jill’s dependability is the reason of her confident approach to all of her tasks. During her job interview at the pancake house, Jill sets the tone, assuring the owner over and over again about her capabilities. She is also very confident in explaining her system of order and her knack of alphabetizing condiments. Hearing this, the owner, Howard Halloran, remarks that he would die happy if Jill was half as competent as she looked. After the whole conversation, the owner replies, “ ‘You’re hired,’ Howard Halloran said reverently, and put me in charge of opening and setting up the restaurant on Saturday and Sunday mornings, which is when nine-tenths of all pancakes in the universe are consumed and you don’t want some systemless person at the helm” (Bauer 196). Jill is familiar in being a crucial part of success, and she is ready to step in and achieve it. In her childhood, Jill moves quite a lot, and being organized and orderly becomes her way to adapt and have some stability. She always …
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…not knowing the trouble he’s caused me” (Bauer 201). Jill, always wanting her customers to be satisfied and the restaurant perfect, takes the time to talk to the customer and even bring it back to the chef. Jill prides herself on being perfect and believes in herself, but being perfect takes too long in her case.
What seemed handleable at first spirals out of control, and through her dependability, Jill’s bossiness and perfectionism become more prominent as they lead to her eventual demise. Each of her individual traits builds up to attack her from the inside as she becomes more and more flustered. Using Jill as an example, author Joan Bauer shows how perfectionism is unattainable and can become a nag to attaining goals. Although Jill has the right meaning, her expectations are set to impossible heights and thus topple on top of her as soon as one thing goes wrong.
