Waiting; The True Confessions of a Waitress (18 page)

My night more or less fell apart after that, but I still had cer
tain decisions to make. I really couldn’t contain my disgust at the gall of the vomit woman, and she took offense. I had to write the table off. As for the multiple drink table, they complained that my service was slow (“Are you having a bad night?” the host asked me) and tipped accordingly. After I called in all my favors with the kitchen, I managed to get the food for the couple with the children in record time. I didn’t receive any thanks for this, verbally or monetarily, but I was relieved that I hadn’t given them any cause to complain. The birthday table was a bit dicier. After weighing my options, I brought out a small cake studded with candles, along with several waiters who sang “Happy Birthday”
in loud, off-key Italian. The matriarch shot daggers at me with her eyes and I shrugged. After all, she wasn’t paying the bill.

In a more pleasant but no less extreme example of personal service, I once waited on a couple visiting the West Coast from Boston. They were expecting their first child and told me that it was their last time to take a vacation together alone. They were debating names, they told me, could I offer up some possibili
ties? I provided them with a few names and their meanings (because the names in my own family are so unusual, I’ve made an informal study of the etymology of names) and then told them what their own names meant. The couple became very excited and went on about how lucky they were to have been seated in my station. I wished them the best at the end of their meal and I meant it. The next night they came back and asked for a table in my section.

“We’ve come up with a list of names,” they said, “and we really wanted to share it with you and see what you thought.”

They came in for the next three nights (the last three of their vacation) and ate dinner at my table. I liked these two and felt a bit beholden to them because they’d been so nice to me and had tipped me so well, but after the first night, they came in expect
ing me to stand around and chat with them for the duration of their meal. I truly did not want to be rude to them, but I’d run out of things to say to them after the second night. It was almost like having relatives come to stay at my house.

Of course, there are still other types of personal service. I’ve been propositioned quite a few times at the table, sometimes directly, sometimes in the guise of genuine interest in my sparkling personality. Luckily, I don’t remember most of these. One, however, still stands out clearly. It was another large party. Again, alcohol was involved. The host was a large, burly fellow and singularly unappealing. He told a few bad jokes and touched me every time I passed by the table. He ordered several bottles

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of very expensive wine and offered me a glass of each one, which I declined. By the time I ordered the entrees, the check was already close to three hundred dollars. Midway through dinner, the host motioned me over and gestured for me to come close. Thinking he was going to order another bottle of wine, I bent down to hear him whisper in my ear, “You’re not very tall, are you?” I shook my head no. “Well, let me tell you something,” he continued, his breath against my neck, “you’re just the right size for me to fuck you in this chair.” There was absolutely nothing I could do about this remark and he knew it. For all anybody knew, he’d said nothing at all, and so I pretended that he hadn’t. However, I didn’t let myself near his end of the table again, forc
ing him to raise his voice if he wanted to ask for something. I consciously chose not to think about why this man felt he had the right to talk to me in such a fashion and consoled myself with the thought that he was an ugly pig who would doubtless never get lucky in the way he wanted.

(As a related aside, most of the waitresses I’ve worked with agree that it is never a good idea to date their customers, but I’ve seen a few notable exceptions. One waitress in particular continually scanned the dining room for eligible men who might pluck her from her miserable fate. After a few duds, she met Prince Charming, a true sleazeball who brought his buddies in regularly to stare at her. Prince Charming sent roses to the restaurant, as well as a giant stuffed teddy bear. The waitress claimed to have been totally swept off her feet. It would only be a matter of time, she said, before she was released from the hell
hole of restaurant work and was living in the style to which she planned to become accustomed. Time was certainly what Prince Charming got—ten to twenty for racketeering. The poor wait
ress watched his arrest on the news and went home to find the FBI camped out in front of her door.)

Well, personal service is as personal service does.

Working Conditions

“Food and beverage service workers are on their feet most of the time and often carry heavy trays of food, dishes, and glassware. During busy dining periods, they are under pressure to serve customers quickly and efficiently. The work is relatively safe, but care must be taken to avoid slips, falls, and burns.”

Actually, one carries heavy trays of glasses only when one can find the glasses in question. Or the spoons. Or the forks. My sincere hope for the health of the public is that very few restau
rants operate like one that I recently worked in. In this restau
rant (part of a chain), all the managers were given year-end bonuses based on the profit margin of their particular unit. There are several factors affecting profit in any restaurant: labor is one, food cost is another, and then there are supplies. Labor and food cost can be cut only so much if the restaurant is to remain operational. Supplies are a different story.

Claiming that silverware was being pilfered by the staff (or gremlins), the management of this particular restaurant refused to bring out spoons, forks, or steak knives when these items began running perilously low. And by perilously, I mean that after the first year of operation, this restaurant (which is still very busy and noted in several national dining guides) no longer served spoons with coffee. The coffee would arrive at the table with a plastic stirrer embossed with the restaurant’s logo. The logic here was that spoons were too precious to waste on coffee. What if the guest ordered a dish of ice cream? Despite begging, pleading, and ranting by the waiters and waitresses, manage
ment stoically refused, for years, to bring out the supplies, which were stored, in abundance, in a locked room off the kitchen. This led to some truly nefarious activities in and around the table. Busboys regularly got into fistfights over forks and started hiding them under piles of tablecloths, stacks of menus, or next to

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garbage cans, where they assumed nobody would look. Ulti
mately, these busboys forgot where they’d hidden their stashes and raided the tables of other waiters for silverware, which led to heated arguments between waiters (“Let me see your pock
ets—I know you have at least four spoons in there!”).

In the end, however, it was the guests who suffered the most, without even knowing it. Desperate waiters, faced with customers yelling for forks (it
is
difficult to eat without one), ran to the kitchen, frantically rinsed used forks (which were soaking in dirty water), and dried them with soiled linens. Those forks were then sent to the table.

Although I can’t say I’ve seen this practice in any other restaurant, I’m alarmed by the thought that it might happen elsewhere. The fact that this particular restaurant is so well known and so popular leads me to believe that large restaurants with similar structures might employ the same tactics. Buyer beware. Or, as my father has often said, “Every time you eat in a restaurant, you take your life in your hands.”

Well, what’s life without an element of risk?

Risk is also an important factor in the working conditions of any waiter or waitress. And by this I mean the risk to one’s mental health. Although I haven’t seen waiting tables come up on many top ten lists of the most stressful occupations, it could certainly be included. There is enormous pressure on every food server (especially those in busy semiformal restaurants) to jug
gle an astonishing variety of mental and physical tasks over short, intense periods of time. Timing, as they say, is every
thing. What’s more, a server is constantly being watched and, yes, judged. There is no room or time to lose one’s cool at the table. True, I am not speaking of saving lives or putting out fires. However, how well one can perform under pressure in a restaurant directly influences one’s earnings and therefore one’s living.

For example: A typical weekend night might find me serving five tables at a time. Table One orders drinks and says they want to look at the menu for a while before they order. Fine with me. Table Two is seated and says that they’re in a bit of a hurry because they need to catch a movie. They want suggestions on the menu because they’re on a diet and have special needs. They also want to order a particular bottle of wine that they’ve heard about. Meanwhile, Table Three is being seated. They’re regulars who’ve requested my table specifically and they’re in the mood to chat. I have to signal them that I’ll be right with them, knowing that I can’t approach their table until I have at least five minutes to shoot the breeze with them. I go searching for the wine for Table Two and find that we’re out of it. I have to go back to the table and suggest another wine, during which time they’ve all come up with impossible variations on the menu that the chef will make but that will take an extra forty-five minutes to prepare. After I’ve taken their order (my order pad looks like the rough draft of a short novel at this point), I make another trip back to the bar for the substitute wine that Table Two has decided to order. While this is going on, Tables Four and Five are being seated simultane
ously. I look around for my busboy, hoping he’s had the foresight to bring bread and water to the tables, but he’s nowhere to be found. Later, I learn that he’s having a snack in the kitchen. I pacify my friends at Table Three by telling them I’ll put their order in and then come back to talk to them as soon as I’ve greeted my two new tables. Before I can even go to the new tables, however, I have to open the wine at Table Two. Unfortu
nately, the wine they’ve ordered is a bottle of Machiavelli Chianti, which often comes with a dry, hard cork. Sure enough, opening the bottle proves to be a herculean task, and as I’m huffing and puffing, I see Tables Four and Five craning their necks, looking for me. Tables Four and Five, it turns out, both want cocktails, and Table Five tells me that they’re ready to order “right away.” “Won

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derful,” I say, thinking that I won’t have to spend too much time there, but no, the woman at Table Five is not at all ready to order. Her eyes scan the menu lazily. “What do you think is better,” she wants to know, “the seafood linguini or the chicken breast?” I make a couple of recommendations and ask her if she’d like me to come back. “Oh no,” she says, “I’m ready.” As I’m taking the din
ner order for Table Five, I glance over and see Table One ready to erupt. They want to order
now
. As I now have no time to stand back and observe the pace with which my tables are eating so that I can order their salads and entrees accordingly, I switch into overdrive and order everything—drinks, appetizers, and din-ners—all at once. As I do, I offer up a little prayer that the kitchen is on its usual slow timer and that not everything will appear at the same time. It’s too late for Table One, though. They’re already angry that I’ve taken so long to get to them. My friends on Table Three are none too happy, either, and feel I’m ignoring them. My busboy has reappeared, looking as if he’s just back from vacation, and wants to know what I need. “I don’t know,” I spit at him, “look around!” After I finally deliver the drinks to Tables Four and Five, I’m able to run to the kitchen to see what stage of preparation the entrees are at. “You’re coming up,” the chef says to me. He’s sweating, red in the face, and looks totally pissed off at the world. I watch helplessly as the dinners for Tables One, Two, Three, and Five come up at exactly the same moment. There are ten plates altogether for four different tables. By all rights they shouldn’t have come up together, because some of them are slower-cooking items like lasagna and steak. But the kitchen may have made a mistake on somebody else’s order and be passing these off on me in the guise of trying to be speedy. They’ve played this game before and will never cop to it. “I can’t take these all out at the same time,” I hiss at the chef. “Then you shouldn’t order them at the same time,” he hisses back. “Don’t bring anything back and tell me it’s cold.” It’s pointless trying to
argue with him. Obviously, my prayers have not been answered. When I deliver their entrees, Table Five tells me that I forgot to bring their salads. Table One says that their food is merely “OK.” Luckily, the couple at Table Four is making out. At least I won’t have to go there for a while. Table Three, however, is offended by the public display of affection and demands that I send the man
ager over to break them up. I find myself apologizing to every
body. My manager wants to know why I can’t handle the pace. “It’s not like you have any large parties,” he says. There are now only two possibilities for me. The first is to fold completely, throw my tickets up in the air, and walk out of the restaurant. The other is to organize a triage system. With forced calm, I tell my busboy that he needs to go to every table in my section and give them whatever they want. I tell my friends on Table Three how sorry I am that I can’t talk to them and that hopefully next time I won’t be as busy. After checking with the manager, I offer Table One a free dessert for their troubles, which brightens their day consider
ably. I solicit the help of another waitress to check on Tables Four and Five before they, too, become hopelessly unsettled. Finally, I drop the check on Table Two, where the two men at the table fight over who will pay it. They both start yelling at me not to take the other’s money and I have to tell them, “I’m sorry, but you two are just going to have to work this one out on your own. I’ll be right back.” As I walk away from the table, the hostess stops me and whispers frantically, “Are they just about finished? I’m running an hour wait.” I laugh at her, at myself, and at the situation. I’ve become so stressed that I’ve actually entered into the eye of the hurricane and I enjoy a moment of complete calm.