Waiting; The True Confessions of a Waitress (40 page)

It was the best of all worlds, really. In a way, I became very spoiled. But although I didn’t realize it at the time, I was travel
ing a slippery slope. Ultimately, it couldn’t last.

Up to a certain point, time had tended to move very slowly for me. Almost imperceptibly, things took a fast-forward trend after a couple of years at Baciare. I’m certainly not alone in my realization that life moves along much faster as you get older. But I was a little slower than most in arriving at that realization.

At first I noticed the little things. For example, I started col
lecting regulars. I saw some couples marry, conceive, and give birth. Then I saw the children grow. Kids I’d known as embryos were now ordering their dinners from me. I saw other couples court, marry, divorce, and come in with new partners. Then there were the couples more advanced in years who lost partners over the course of time. Learning how to offer condolences while waiting on a surviving spouse was a brand-new lesson for me.

Many customers started remembering me. I’d greet a new table, only to find that they’d been in a year before and had liked me so much that they’d requested my section again this time. “How’s your boy?” they’d ask. “He must be getting big.” To my look of shock they’d say, “You
are
the one with the kid, right?”

I started to lose a certain amount of the anonymity that table service had previously afforded me. This was a little difficult. Part

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of the draw of waitressing (for me, at least) was that every new table was a new adventure. They knew little about me, but on the other hand, I knew nothing of them. The information they pro
vided me with was new. I’d always thought that once I had a sec
tion full of regulars, I’d been in a place too long. I was on my way to becoming a “lifer,” one of those waitresses so effectively por
trayed in film and television who knows exactly how you like your potatoes, what foods you’re allergic to, how many kids you have, where you grew up. . . . In other words, a waitress who had no life other than the one she was living right at the table.

This notion stood out in sharp relief every time an ex-waiter came in for dinner, looking to show off his new career, and said, “Hey, I can’t believe
you’re
still here.” As the years rolled along, these kinds of scenes became increasingly frequent. The most striking example was that of Daniel, a tall, rusty-haired busboy. I watched him graduate from busboy to food runner and then to bar
tender. He finished college while working at Baciare and then quit. The next time he came in, he was employed as a marine biologist. The time after that, he came in with his fiancée. Then he came in with the wife and in-laws. Finally, he arrived with his new baby son.

I could probably have ignored all of this for much longer than I did. So, too, could I ignore the passing of several of my birth
days. Playing the “how old do you think I am” game worked for a while with this one. Since my Dining Room days, customers had inquired as to my age. Actually, it was usually couched in a more politically correct way. For example, “Are you sure you’re old enough to be serving liquor?” or “When you get to be my age, honey, you’ll understand” (and this from people who
were
my age). So I started a little routine, asking the customers to guess my age and assuring them that they could be totally honest and I wouldn’t be the least bit offended. Consistently, they guessed much lower than my actual age. I had the most fun when a cou
ple bet each other on the number. The women always won, as
they always went with a higher number. This game, where I always ended up being younger than I was, made it much easier for me to believe that time was not actually moving at all. If I looked twenty-one or twenty-two to my customers, then perhaps I could fool myself into believing that I hadn’t gone for years without thinking of moving on to another line of work.

Blaze’s birthdays were another story altogether. There is noth
ing that delineates the passing of time so distinctly as one’s own child. “How’s the baby?” people would ask and I’d be forced to admit that he wasn’t a baby at all, but a toddler and then a little boy. Quite suddenly, it seemed, I was over thirty and my “baby” was in school. He had his own personality, his own particular needs, and he had a whole social structure made up of school, peers, and teachers that was completely independent of me.

When he began school, I found myself with several hours of free time during the day, something I hadn’t experienced for six years. In the glaring light of all these hours, it didn’t take long to reach the conclusion that I was doing nothing productive with my own life. And for the first time in almost a decade, I started think
ing about marketable skills and how I didn’t have a single one.

It was even more depressing to measure myself against my peer group. I’d reestablished contact with a few friends from my college days who were scattered along the West Coast and knew that most of them had been spending the years following gradua
tion establishing careers. A few of them were doing quite well. Many of them had bought houses. Almost all of them had mar
ried, but none of them would even think about having children for several years. There was not a waiter or waitress among them.

Not only did I not own my own home, but the concept of having enough money to buy one was just this side of impossible. And because of Blaze, moving to a more affordable housing area was now out of the question. I was following the path of so many parents before me and living in an area that was out of my finan

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cial league because of the school district. Very early on, Blaze had demonstrated some special needs, and I was convinced that aside from private school, which was completely unaffordable, his par
ticular elementary school was the only option.

I didn’t see marriage as much of a possibility, either. My last relationship, which had fallen apart just as Blaze was starting school, had ended in such a total emotional disaster that it left unerasable scars. In my early thirties, far from old, far from fin
ished, I came to the conclusion that relationships were just some
thing I couldn’t “do.” Although it would be a few years before this notion changed from fatalistic to comfortably factual, I accepted the fact that I’d made a mess of every involvement. Every one had ended in some sort of wild emotional roller coaster, leaving me to pick through whatever damaged pieces of my psyche were left. I couldn’t figure out whether this was due to character flaws (mine or theirs), unrealistic expectations, or just plain bad luck. What
ever the reason, the end result was the same. As it was, Blaze had only one parent. It was clearly my responsibility to ensure that this parent didn’t fall apart and become emotionally unavailable over some man. Those days were definitely over.

And what of my career, such as it was? It had been ten years since I’d taken a “temporary” job waiting tables in the Dining Room. I was a fledgling writer, after all, and had needed the time, space, and life experiences to add to my store. Since Blaze’s birth, I hadn’t written a thing. I’d even given up writing in a journal, a practice I’d faithfully followed since the age of eleven. A writer who didn’t write. Was there anything more pathetic than this? There were excuses, of course. I reviewed and rejected all of them: All my creative energy went into Blaze. I was busy sorting out some relationship or other. I was struggling to keep my head above water financially. What it all came down to, ultimately, was that I’d hardly put any effort into what, prior to having Blaze, had been most important to me.

Finally, there was the question of the job. Waiting tables had supported me nicely for a long time. So long, in fact, that I’d made no attempt to do anything else. Little piles of cash can be seductive indeed. Why think about switching jobs when you could consistently count on at least a hundred dollars a night and occasionally come home with over two hundred after six hours of work? And of course, what it took to get those little piles of cash was usually interesting enough to make it worthwhile.

Over time, however, there were some permanent shifts in this landscape. Business, which had been uncontrollably busy in the restaurant’s early days, began to level off due to a gradual lack of novelty and a rise in competition. Then the seasons became wildly divided in the amount of income they would provide. Spring and summer were still very busy, but the winters became a bit grim. Every time it rained, the patio had to be closed, eliminating a third of the seating and at least four waiters. Fights started breaking out over who was called off the most, and disputes with management over matters of fairness became commonplace. Some of us looked to the weather as anxiously as farmers praying for their crops. Was it too cold, too wet, too windy? If so, we risked being told to stay home or, worse, came all the way in to work only to be given a table or two on the frigid patio, where we would wait on parka-wearing customers who complained about the weather and refused to tip. After a couple of these tables, we would be sent home with
out enough money to cover the gas it took to get there. What made the latter scenario so bitter was that management would contend that the unfortunate waiter or waitress who had come in to work in the tundra had received the benefit of a shift. Next time it rained, that waiter would stay home.

“But I didn’t make any money!” the impoverished waiter would cry.

“That’s not my problem,” the manager would say. “You came in, didn’t you? You had a section, didn’t you?”

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Various sections of the restaurant started receiving their own unofficial names. The patio, for example, was divided into the North Pole and the South Pole, the north end being decid
edly cooler and windier. A section near the door became the Wind Tunnel. The group of tables next to the hostess podium was the Runway because it was so empty one could land a plane in it.

Winter conversations between waiters began assuming famil
iar patterns:

“Where are you tonight?”

“I’m in the North Pole again. This time I’m going to ask the chef to prepare a bucket of raw fish for me because the only tables I’ll have are going to be full of penguins. Where are you?”

“Not much better. I’m in the Runway.”

“Well, you’re inside, aren’t you? What are you complaining about?”

“Why shouldn’t I be inside? I drive thirty miles to get here every day.”

“So what, you think that means I don’t have to pay
my
rent? You never get called off, come to think of it.”

“Talk to the manager if you’ve got a problem. I’m not listen
ing to your shit.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck
you
, asshole.”

The salaried management’s response to stressed-out waiters complaining that they couldn’t make ends meet was less than comforting. “Do we complain when you make hundreds of dol
lars in the summer?” they would say. “This is a tourist town, business is slower in winter.” My personal favorite was this one: “If you don’t like it, you can always find another job.”

With the exception of a few busy holidays, the months between November and March became more of a gamble. If it turned out to be a particularly rainy or cold winter, I’d end up
losing more than just a few shifts. The lottery aspect of waiting tables began to lose much of its luster for me.

To make matters worse, the restaurant’s owners decided that they were spending too much money on health benefits for their staff. Up to that point, anyone who worked over twenty-two hours a week was eligible. By switching the hourly requirement to twenty-seven, the owners were able to eliminate much of the waitstaff’s eligibility. Management helped by shaving hours off the schedules of several waiters. Shortly thereafter, my health insurance was canceled.

Individually, the lack of health insurance, slow winters, and the nagging feeling of going nowhere fast were manageable, even possible to ignore. Together, though, they started creating twinges of anxiety and despair. I started feeling that something had to change but felt powerless to effect or even identify that change.

Finally, on New Year’s Eve, I decided that enough was enough. I had to stop moping about my fate and take some con
trol over it. I made a promise to myself that I would put forth my best effort to be out of the restaurant business altogether by this time next year.