Questioning Expectations

"...brought in by degrees some fifty adjuncts to refreshment, but of tea not a glimpse....which the waiter staggered in with, expressing in his countenance burden and suffering...and so from the whole of these appliances extracted one cup of I don't know what for Estella." (269)

Is this passage describing the fact that you can never recognize things you want after long periods of time, or is it speaking on the fact that you never get what you want from life right away, or a combination of the two? I honestly don't know what exactly Dickens is trying to get across, the first and last bits make sense but the added facts about the anguish of the waiter baffle's me. Please help me in my quest to understand this cryptic message.