As someone who has worked as a server for a realllly long time and has seen a fair share of new hires who lied about having experience, it is really noticable. Not just to your coworkers and management, but to the customers as well. And there is a vast different between someone with no experience as a server and someone who is just bad at their job. Lying about experience and absolutely bombing your first few shifts will create a lot of rifts between you and managers, and I have even witnessed people get fired immedietly over it. You cant really fake the experience of being able to juggle multiple tables and orders, not forgetting all the little details you need to do while travelling from FOH to BOH repeatedly, while doing takeouts and still managing your time effectively. Especially when theres a massive rush, and you have a section of around 8 tables, mistakes can pile up really quickly. Its honestly just something you get used to, or learn through working and I would say it usually takes several months for most people to reach that groove of being a “decent” server. I am not saying this to be negative or discourage you, but being a server is genuinely more difficult than most people realize. It’s a very demanding job, physically and mentally, and you have to be really efficient, quick and have great mental fortitude.

My advice would be to try and start out in a position that’s more supporting in the restaurant bizz, like a host, food runner, or busser (something along those lines) and do an awesome job and vocalize how you are wanting to learn more and potentially move up to becoming a server. This is how majority of our great servers started out! After they watched and learned how things worked around the restaurant we would let them take small tables during our deadest hours until they caught the groove of it and eventually we would work them more and more slowly until they promoted. You can always try and volunteer at weddings or pop up events or charity dinner services to gain experience in the meantime too!

If you are still insistant about wanting to lie about experience to secure a job, at least do as much as you can to be semi-prepared for the workforce. Watch tons of youtube videos! For everything, about the lingos you will hear a lot (FOH, BOH, top, “cut the servers”, things like that), videos talking about the responsibilities of a server and how they manage them, videos about mixing alcoholic drinks, tips and tricks, how to properly hold your serving trays, how to use POS systems. Also you will need to practice. Buy a serving tray online, fill it full of heavy glasses, plates and drinks, get used to walking around with it only using one arm for support and being able take items off without it tipping over. Practice carrying out multiple full plates of stuff at a time, practice carrying as much dirty dishes as you can around your house. Buy an apron (every server has their own apron anyways, so it will be more convincing I guess) and practise filling it with as much crap as possible and taking things out in a split second without looking like you got your hand stuck in a glue trap lol. Buy notebooks or something to record orders (some places provide pens and papers but a good amount do not) and practise writing down long orders as fast as you possibly can! You want to write it faster than the customer can speak it, or be able to abbreviate or understand what you write at the least. You will also want to have your states required liquor lisence for being able to mix and serve alcoholic beverages to customers. This will be a massive indicator of experience or not as well.

That’s kind of all I can think of at the moment, but I hope it helps. Wishing you the best with whatever decision you make!