Waiting; The True Confessions of a Waitress (43 page)

“Ah, you waitresses,” one of them sneered convincingly, “you never claim any of your tips.”

“Yes, we do,” said Debra #1 who was, in reality, a housewife who had never waited tables. “We claim all of our tips.”

“Get out of here,” the knight said, “you know you don’t claim tips.”

“And I suppose medieval knights
do
?” I said.

“You said it!” cried Debra #3, a comedienne who had actually waited tables. “What do these riffraff know?”

Soon after this, I taped a short segment for another television show. The interview was held in a restaurant and the reporter, who had not read
Waiting
, kept badgering me to admit that all waitresses spit in their customers’ food. When I wouldn’t, the reporter sighed heavily and, off camera, asked me to get him a fresh glass of lime soda. “This one has little black spots floating in it,” he said disgustedly, gesturing at his glass. As I approached the kitchen to refill his glass, a waitress leaned over to me and whispered, “
This
is exactly the kind of person who gets his food spit on regularly.”

I heard from very few of my old coworkers when
Waiting
finally hit bookstore shelves, but those who did write to me seemed to like the book very much. I heard from my friend who’d had sex on table fifty and who had once asked his waitress to place her panties in a to-go container. “I read the ‘Food and Sex’ chapter first,” he wrote. “Boy, did that ever bring back memories. This book has to be more fun to read for those of us who were there. It makes me realize how many friends I’ve left behind over the years.”

Shortly after this, I received an e-mail from a waitress I’d worked with who’d gone through both her pregnancies at the table. “Thank you for writing about what I’ve been trying to do with my family and with waiting all these years,” she said.

A waiter I’d worked with for years and complained to end
lessly about the kickback-taking hostess Angela, who never seated tables in my section but filled those of the waiters around

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me, wrote me a letter and said, “The book was really funny. I wish you had thrown some bile Angela’s way. After all, she prob
ably cost you about five thousand per year.” He was in a position to tell. Most of my loss was his gain!

By far the biggest response to
Waiting
, however, came from people I had never worked with and never met but who felt immediately familiar with me, my family, and, especially, the restaurants I wrote about in the book. Some servers wrote to me saying they were sure of the identities of the restaurants I men
tioned and named a few of their best guesses. I did a guest spot on a local radio show and one of the producers told me breath
lessly, “That thing with the spoons . . . I thought my restaurant was the only place that never served spoons with coffee!”

Many of the interviews I did for
Waiting
in both print and radio began with the interviewer stating that he or she had waited on tables for a number of years. All remembered the expe
rience vividly and a few of the interviews turned into chat ses
sions where we shared war stories and laughed about the foibles of human nature. And when I made appearances for book sign
ings and readings, all of those who attended were either servers themselves, had waited tables at one time or another, or had rela
tives who waited on tables. One gentleman asked me to sign three copies of
Waiting
, one for each of his waitress daughters. Another purchased copies for all of the waitstaff at the restaurant where he was the manager. And a third asked Maya and Blaze (who I considered my entourage and who came with me to as many engagements as possible) to sign his copy of
Waiting
as well.

There were a couple of responses from waitresses that I found quite humbling. One Seattle waitress wrote to me and told me that she had been burned out and completely sick of her job until she read
Waiting
. “I did not know how badly I needed a fresh perspective until I read your book,” she wrote. “You helped
me to remember that although I may not have a ‘real job’ I cer
tainly have a
real life
.” I met the second waitress at a book signing in New York City. “I bought a copy of your book,” she said, “and all the waitresses I work with bought a copy, too. It’s our bible.”

Everything about the response I received to
Waiting
and the tour and interviews I did to promote it was fun, intriguing, and rewarding. It was like working a particularly profitable and pleas
ant shift with a huge staff of interesting and intelligent people. I heard a whole new batch of stories that could have easily hap
pened at some of the places I’d worked: For example, a man who asked where the television was located because he’d read in a dining guide that the restaurant offered “game in season”—and a woman who ordered “the corkage” (the fee the restaurant charges to open wine the customer brings in) complete with French pronunciation, mind you, because it seemed like the most reasonably priced item on the menu.

What pleased me the most about the response I received, though, was that both servers and nonservers alike could
relate
to my experiences. Indeed, there was a commonality to those expe
riences that even I hadn’t seen the full scope of when I wrote
Waiting
. When I read the letters and e-mails, and shared stories with people at signings, I felt that I
had
managed, at least in some way, to write authentically about those twenty years at the table. For that, I was not just happy but grateful.

Of course, there have been detractors as well (Nothing’s ever perfect, is it?). I tried not to take the criticism I received too much to heart, especially when it was based on a “I didn’t like it and I don’t like her” kind of feeling. After countless appearances at tables where, no matter what I did, I simply could not please my customers, I had developed a slightly thicker skin. At least, I realized that sometimes it’s just about chemistry. There will never be a way of pleasing everybody. There was one criticism, however, that I feel compelled to answer. There were a few com

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ments stating that I seemed defensive and negative about the profession of table service in
Waiting
and that I felt the need to justify my years as a waitress. In one sense, this is true. I still believe that, despite the large numbers of men and women who make their living in this profession and despite the proliferation of restaurants of every kind in all parts of the country, waiting tables does not have the aura of respectability found in other jobs—even those within the restaurant itself. Perhaps this is because the job is considered unskilled—something that anybody can do—unlike, for example, the profession of chef.

While I was writing this book, in fact, and in the months fol
lowing its publication, I noticed that chefs were becoming a new breed of celebrity on the landscape. Various chefs have become iconic figures for a large slice of the public, filling out a territory once occupied by very few. Chefs now have their own TV shows, bestselling books, and films about their lives. Their restaurants have become destinations on vacations, and the language and style of cooking has become its own cottage kitchen culture. Is this a profession to aspire to? Yes, indeed. But one would be hard-pressed to uncover a celebrity waitress in this revered kitchen culture. Indeed, I don’t believe we’ll ever see the day that we choose to travel to a restaurant because of the national repu
tation of its servers. I don’t disagree that chefs have a job that requires both skill and talent, yet I do believe that the job of server (at least if the job is done well) requires quite a high level of skill as well. The fact that I’ve rarely seen this acknowledged in any meaningful way over my years at the table may account for some defensiveness.

As to the charge of negativity, I have to plead innocence. Despite its many difficult moments, waitressing has served me very well indeed. I could never have spent twenty years in a job I hated. The flexibility and kaleidoscopic range of experiences I found waiting tables allowed me the time and the material with
which to write. More important, it allowed me to live comfortably while raising a child as a single parent. Really, could I have asked for much more than this? Should it turn out that I can’t make a living from my writing alone, waiting tables is one of very few jobs I would consider taking. And this brings me back to the real end of this story.

I have not returned to the table since the publication of
Wait
ing.
This is not necessarily because I haven’t wanted to but because I haven’t yet had to. Other writing assignments have come since I completed the book and I’ve been able to support myself as a writer at least for the time being. I can speculate end
lessly about the future but time has taught me that this is an ama
teurish exercise at best. Recently, my father (a real restaurateur at heart) began developing a concept for another new restaurant. I am quite sure that, as we have in the past, my entire family will in some form or another be involved in this project. (“What about Blaze?” my father asks. “Surely he’ll be needing a job soon.”) Whether I end up at the soda fountain again or scratching out notes on an order pad, I can rest assured that, in some fashion, I will be waiting. I’ve learned that there really isn’t a true end to waiting. There is only the beginning of what comes next.

About the Author

Debra Ginsberg
is the author of
Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress
and
Raising Blaze: Bringing Up an Extraordinary Son in an Ordinary World
. She is a graduate of Reed College and a contributor to NPR’s “All Things Considered” and the
San Diego Union-Tribune
Books section.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Pr aise
fo
r

waitin
g

“Ginsberg’s book successfully weaves examples from her twenty years as a waitress with explorations of the sociopolit
ical implications of the American class structure. Her tri
umph, in this book, is that she shows us how the beautiful and the base coexist. That tension is what makes the job, and the book, so compelling.”

—P or tland Oregonian

“A lively and insightful look into restaurants. . . . Ginsberg is such a charming and talented writer.”

—San Fr ancisco Chr onicle

“Ginsberg writes positively but not Pollyannaishly and has told an attractive story about coping with a life that has been dif
ferent than what she expected.”

—Ne w Y o r k Times Book R e vie w

“As this account shows, there’s a lot of life in the waiting game.”

—Business W eek

“This book is more than a saga about workplace woes. The better story is the one in which Ginsberg relives her personal struggle, waiting for her life to ‘happen.’ ”