The Hapless Waiter

Anderson Cooper says he served very little purpose as a hapless teenage waiter

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Published: Tuesday, March 20, 2012, 6:00 AM

Updated: Tuesday, March 20, 2012, 8:00 PM


Anderson Cooper says he was the world’s worst waiter in his younger days.
ANDERSON COOPER doesn’t get nervous reporting from war zones, but during his high school days he quaked at the idea of taking strangers’ orders. The silver-haired talk show host and son of actress/heiress Gloria Vanderbilt surprisingly waited tables as a youngster and reveals he wasn’t very good at it. “I was the world’s worst waiter,” says Anderson during his interview with Internet sensation Marilyn Hagerty on his “Anderson” program Tuesday. Cooper was so paranoid about taking orders he says he “used to beg people not to sit at my station because they made me so nervous.” Cooper welcomed Hagerty on the show after her March 7 restaurant review of the Olive Garden in the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald went viral. On Tuesday’s episode, Cooper sends the 85-year-old to review upper East Side celebrity hotspot Crown, where she tells chef/owner John DeLucie, “If you ever come to Grand Forks I’ll take you to the Olive Garden.”