Waiting on Tables, Waiting for Respect

“You have a new table at 42, Sarita.” I go to the fridge to get pickles, coleslaw, ketchup, and mustard, and make my way across the dining room to table 42. About fifteen feet away, I stop. It’s a girl I know from Stern, out to eat with a date. I groan inwardly; I know her too well to escape the pleasantries, the joking explanation to the question she will ask in her mind, if not aloud– “Why are you working here?”

I spent my summer and the first month of school working as a server at a popular ko-sher restaurant in Midtown, where more than half of the customers are Orthodox Jews, many of whom I know personally from the Jewish community. I loved my job in almost every way–the fast pace, the challenge of multitasking, the camaraderie with my awesome co workers–but serving my community members and classmates was somewhat… unsettling. When I would show up in my uniform to work after school, I would invariably end up serving girls who had sat in my classes earlier that day. Every time, I would see that jolt of recognition, the glance at my apron, and the dawning awareness that I actually worked there, which usually seemed to lead to some discomfort. Relating to my classmates at work, as a server rather than as a peer, created a confusing shift in social structure on both sides. On the social hierarchy, server is viewed as lower than classmate, but I was clearly the same person I had been that morning.

This job forced me to straddle the fence between two very distinct worlds–the privileged Orthodox consumers, and those who serve them their steaks–without fully belonging to either. After only a few weeks, I began to feel much more connected to my co workers than my community members during my working hours, and I even found myself identifying pretty deeply with random service members I encountered in the city. I felt that I had suddenly entered an exclusive club of people who knew what it was to be ordered around by obnoxious customers, who were familiar with the experience of being yelled at by a middle aged lady, cheeks taut with Botox, for bringing out limp onion strings on her sandwich. In a strange way, being in both worlds at once highlighted the fallacy of the low class server stereotype. I came to recognize that I had previously, in some subtle and inarticulate way, looked down upon these people, and yet I was now one of them! Clearly, there was something wrong with my stereotype of the server.

The world of service is a bizarre one. As soon as you enter the bubble of the restaurant, normal concepts of courtesy melt away, replaced by a sort of sanctioned stratification. There is a pecking order, where the customer is suddenly always right, and the server is always at fault, no matter the circumstances. The superior customer has control practically as well as symbolically, with tip control. If the waiter doesn’t notice the customer’s hand go up quickly enough, the customer has the right to punish with a bad tip. Basic politeness and courtesy are commended in the customer rather than expected, with plenty of customers opting to decline commendation. As my coworker Kayla put it, “Some people confuse server with slave.”

There is also a subtle expectation that service people are less intelligent. After all, there is no special schooling required to serve sushi. After my first few weeks at work, I joined a few of the other more experienced servers and stopped taking notes on orders most of the time, unless I had a large table. Customers would frequently cast doubts upon my ability to remember, some even telling me that the accuracy of the meal would be my test. “Are you sure you don’t want to write this down?” they would ask. “It’s a lot to remember.” I would laugh it off, flashing them wide smiles and saying that I thanked them for their concern, but that I would be okay without my notepad, that I was good to remember orders for tables of four or five. When I would turn away to enter their orders into the computer system, I always shook my head at their assumptions. It was inconceivable to them that the charming girl who was their server might also have a better than average working memory, that she might even be in any way more intelligent than they were. My memory was like a party trick to them, something to chuckle at in mild wonderment and amusement, and then forget in the blur of a pleasant meal.

I don’t mean to imply that all of my customers were rude, or that they all spoke to me like I was a dolt. On the contrary; most of them were very polite, kind, and complimentary. In any given shift, I always got about five comments on what a nice smile I had or how friendly I was, and I always had a number of tables who would leave me very generous tips. I engaged in pleasant banter with many of my customers, especially the regulars, and for the most part enjoyed making them happy with good service. There was, however, always a vocal minority of customers who were jerks, and treated either me or my co workers like we were scum, and it is to them I am speaking in the previous two paragraphs. The issue of subtle prejudice, though, is one that I think is far more universal than many of us would feel comfortable acknowledging. I am an extremely polite and open-minded person, but before I became a waitress, I really did have a quiet default assumption that the people who worked in Duane Reade, the cashiers at the pizza place, and the blue-eyed girls who waited on my tables were lower class, and probably not as intelligent or well educated as I was. This didn’t mean that I treated them rudely, but as unhappy as I am to admit it, I definitely looked down on them in certain ways.

Now that I have been in both worlds, I realize that the perception of servers as inferior is totally undeserved. People in service jobs are just like everyone else, with accomplishments and ambitions and lives. If anything, the people I worked with were some of the most upstanding, funny, intelligent, and kind-hearted people I know. When I first started work, they all, without exception, welcomed me and trained me and helped me when I made mistakes. Apart from their good natures and remarkable lack of competitiveness, I am also in awe of my co workers’ work ethics. Most of them immigrated to this country within the last ten years, and have learned English as their second (or in the Bengalis’ case, sixth) language. Many of them have families who depend on them fully for this income, and many of them have one or two other jobs to make ends meet. Their lives are full and interesting and rich; over the course of four months, I learned about Macara’s modeling career, Camilla’s aspirations to go to medical school, Abid’s career as an engineer in Bangladesh, Martha’s DIY projects on her fixer-upper home, Kayla’s passion for art, and Hila and Carolina’s surprising shared aspiration to become veterinary nurses. I personally am a psychology student, and hope to one day earn a doctorate and become a therapist.

Waitressing was not the unfortunate pit-stop I expected it to be. On the contrary, being a waitress was a huge growth experience for me, and ended up being one of the most interesting and thought-provoking things I have done in the past year. But the best part about it was that it allowed me to become friends with this incredible group of people, and spend my days laughing and joking with them. Getting to know my co workers shattered all of my stereotypes, and taught me better than any article ever could that server is far from synonymous with stupid.