An homage to the service industry.
For the past five months, I worked as a hostess and server at a casual/upscale restaurant. Its interior reflects the building’s original, prohibition-era speakeasy architecture – a posh atmosphere lit by Edison bulbs, filled with eclectic décor. Down the hall hangs a 10-foot-tall set of golden winds, and above the bar sits a metal horse head with a Styrofoam green apple in its mouth (the apple was a comical addition from a manager, not part of the original piece).
Saturday nights rendered valet service, exclusive DJs and a full bar. The same patrons stumbled their way into Sunday morning brunch with their families, ordering the $17 mimosa flight to push the hangover back a few hours.
If the restaurant was human anatomy, servers would be the blood cells, moving with speed and grace to deliver essential components around the body. Hosts act as the nervous system, because when it is out of balance, everything else is too.
Chefs would be the lungs, taking raw oxygen and turning it into something the blood can distribute, and the body can use. The expo guides this process as the heart, pushing the blood out with the proper components. The dishwasher is the backbone of the restaurant, the spinal cord. Without them, nothing moves forward. Finally, managers would be the liver, filtering out all the shit that no one else wants to deal with.
When all the gears align, it works like a machine. A glance can tell a server they’ve been sat. A raised finger can remind the sous chef of the clam chowder a la carte. Each person moves with incredible purpose, gliding through the restaurant like the bow on a violin, writing an incredible song to the tune of a cash register chiming.
The service industry offers a quick, generally easy pay-out. With no prior experience, I was on the floor a week after applying. The qualifications are ubiquitous: being physical able, friendly, organized and time efficient. Servers need nothing more to make good money, and they won’t survive with anything less.
Like many other jobs, it is physically and mentally exhausting. I’ve walked eight miles inside the restaurant in a day, circling with hot plates, drink refills and piles of scraps. The mental to-do lists are always building, and servers must move quickly enough to check off the same number of tasks that they are adding. Ketchup for table 8, drink refills for table 11, greet table 9, clean table 5. By the time ketchup is delivered and drinks are refilled, table 7 needs more napkins and table 6 wants the check.
The success of a server boils down to how much they can carry in a single trip. Whether it be hot plates or table scraps, full arms means less back and forth. This free time is filled by taking on more tables. Thus, more tips.
Stacking an arms-worth of hot plates takes practice, confidence and a certain desensitization to the blistering red skin below. Each time gets a little easier, as the skin slowly forms natural, leathery heating pads to place the corners of a dish on. Thick skin, literally. My co-worker props the dishes on her D+ chest. I balance hot plates on my overlong acrylic nails. Whatever gets the job done.
I’ve never taken Adderall, but working in a restaurant produces some natural chemical I imagine Adderall would feel like. There’s the laser focus and occasional blackouts. Hours feel like minutes, and it’s only at midnight that you realize your feet are throbbing and there’s $500 in your pocket. It’s been the most productive eight hours of your week, and you can’t remember a second of it.
To my surprize, an overwhelming number of people will tip $2. And I’m not talking about when bills are $15 or $20. I’m talking $100, $150, even $200 in my own experience. (The worst settlement I’ve ever heard of came from the best server in the restaurant – 10 cents on a $500 bill.) Nonetheless, $2 remains the crooked standard for many customers, whether the server messed up the entire ticket or served the food on wedding china.
I’ve spent my fair share of time combing Reddit threads for something explaining the $2 tip. I’ve read about available capital to skewed tipping expectations, but there was no clear answer. I genuinely don’t understand it.
Sometimes, it is worse than $2. On my first day serving, I worked the front patio, which held 11 four-person tables. Juggling five tables already, two girls sat down at table 6. They were in their late-teens-early-twenties, talkative but awkward. They consistently met each other’s gaze before answering my questions, as if they were mentally discussing their answers before verbalizing them.
The girls ordered two appetizers, two entrées, and two strawberry margaritas. While I wasn’t sure they were old enough to drink, I didn’t I.D. them. Honestly, I didn’t care. Liquor means a higher bill, which usually translates to a higher tip. I’m willing to risk serving underaged patrons for a pay-out. And I think you’ll find that most others servers are too.
I rounded on my patio tables frequently, stepping outside at least once every five minutes. Suddenly, the chairs of table 6 were empty. Plates of devoured rib carcases remained alongside empty, sugar-rimmed glasses, but the girls were gone. In my head, the world silenced. My heart sank as I noticed a single dollar held by a plate’s corner, meant to cover a $76 bill. They had walked out without paying.
Now, I was in the negative. My tips would have to cover it. I walked behind the host stand, shed a tear and went back to work.
Too often in my serving experience, I felt less than human. Other people decided the worth of my service through their tip, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Flight attendants’ pay isn’t deducted when the plane hits turbulence. USPS workers aren’t compensated based on how fast a package arrives. Other “service” jobs are allowed a fixed rate, maybe because it’s clear how much of the job is out of their control. Servers are public relations specialists in a way – the troubleshooter fixing all the problems but taking all the punches.
Female servers are forced to find many balances. A shirt tight enough that it won’t brush food while leaning over a table, but not so tight to appear provocative. Makeup to appear beautiful but not hot. Innocent enough to resonate with families, but not so much to appear unprofessional. Attractive enough for tables to like you, but not enough for them to desire you.
Flirtation, invasion of personal space, touching, even an invitation to a threesome (as an 18-year-old co-worker endured). Hearing “Oh, I like tall girls” while approaching a table. A table of men asking me, “Can you take our order from the other waitress? You’re much prettier.”
We’re told to sell dining as an experience, but much to my dismay, that experience includes being served by a tall blonde.
Fetishization of female servers is so prevalent because at $2.13 an hour minus tips, the offenders are determining our pay. I’ll deal with it. Glide around the table to avoid people reaching for me. Smile and laugh along at their sexist jokes. I’ll even give it back to them a little bit and bury that churning feeling in my stomach. Hell, they’re wearing Rolexes.
Someone who’s never worked in a restaurant might have a simple solution. Leave. To that I say: sure, it’s physically and mentally exhausting, degrading and demoralizing, unappreciated work. But its addicting as hell. The rush, the energy of the kitchen, the partying after work. Nothing bonds people like mutual suffering, so your co-workers will become some of your best friends.
You’ll be regularly inspired by the kindness and brilliance of your peers, the same people who society often overlooks. It’s the dishwasher rebuilding his life through hard work rather than less-than-legal shortcuts. It’s the host who has beat unsurmountable odds (parent deaths, escaping the foster care system, physical and sexual abuse, suicide ideation) to reach her twenties. It’s the server who just lost her 2-year-old in a tragic accident, but still comes to work to feed her other child.
No matter what was going on at home, each of these people put a smile on and served their guests with competence and compassion. It is a testament to resilience. It is also a testament to necessity.
In the service industry, you’ll laugh harder than you ever have, like when a server locked her keys in her car, and the entire kitchen staff offered to retrieve them by breaking in (without setting off the alarm, of course). Even safety threats turn humorous. I worked while a homeless man punched my manager in the face and hurled a chair at her. I worked while there was a shooting across the street. I worked while one member of a bridal party threw a glass at another, knocking his teeth out (right before the wedding!). While these situations were concerning and high-tension, they’re the kind of adrenaline-inducing stories that leave us deliriously belly-laughing later.
There’s a general understanding that anyone working in service is working to live, not living to work. Even managers will gossip about underachieving employees and particularly exhausting customers. Once, a manager was speaking with my customer, who had a unique passion for critiquing every practice in the restaurant. He said, “You decided to come here. We didn’t ask you to come. And now that you know how we function, you can make a better choice next time on where to eat.” Or as I like to put it, “We don’t need you.”
Then, the manager will steal you a Corona, call the woman a bitch, and talk to you about their relationship problems like nothing happened.
In response to the outsider’s solution, “leave,” the answer presents itself in a different question: How much are you willing to endure, how much of your own humanity and value are you willing to sacrifice for a paycheck?
In confronting this question, I realized there is one aspect of the service industry that I can’t attest to: the struggle to get out. In a way, I am a fraud, because my time as a server had a clear expiration date. At the end of the summer, I was leaving the city, moving to New York and starting graduate school. I had a clear path in life and was using this job to save up for it. Unlike others, I never grappled with the desire for something more and the fear of the unknown. I never felt the financial burden of providing food and shelter to a child. I never gave up my career aspirations for security. I never felt “stuck” because I wasn’t.
The only thing that separated me from my co-workers was circumstance. They are all kind, smart, hardworking people who want the best for their families. And many of them are stuck. Enter the overwhelming and undeniable sense of guilt associated with my ability, my privilege, to exit the service industry on my own terms. What did I do to deserve it?
Tip your servers well. Some of them need it.
