To Serve and Collect
First printed in The Chicago Reader, 1981
This article is all true, and took place at the now closed restaurant, The Foundry, in the late 1970’s in Washington, D.C. It was the first piece of writing I got paid for.
“Waiter, excuse me, but this is fish.”
“Yes, ma’am, swordfish is fish.”
“But I thought the menu read swordfish steak?”
“That’s right.”
“So where’s the steak? I don’t like fish.”
A crimp in my smile, another straw in the camel’s backpack of faith in mankind, and off I gallivant to the next table, where a hungry audience awaits my salad performance. The equipage is complete with twirling pepper mills, flying lettuce, and a secret house dressing whose only mystery is how to open the package it’s purchased in without spilling. With a little pizzazz in the roughage ritual, perhaps they won’t notice the grains of rice stuck between the prongs of their forks.
The setting is a popular [Georgetown] restaurant, one that happened to be opening just as I arrived fresh from Michigan and in dire need of a job. Beginning with a management of greater enthusiasm than experience the newly recruited staff reflected the endearing characteristics of bungling sincerity and blissful ignorance in matters of food and drink, creating the milieu of casual cordiality at formal prices. I remember serving a table once when another waiter nearby was being asked the vintage of our Chateauneuf-du-Pape. His reply was, “I don’t know—I don’t like red wine. That’s a red one, isn’t it?” The rest of that night I felt like part of a surgical team delayed when the doctor asked which side the appendix was on. From then on, if I did not know what I was talking about, I was determined to at least sound like I did.
I am one of the standard bearers of hospitality, indentured servants to the Lord Gratuity, Master of Nontaxable Income, and Keeper of the Bow Tie Faith. Because I work primarily for a commission on your meal, it is in my best interest to make sure you think you enjoyed yourself, whether you did or not. Technically all I do is make a rough sketch of your culinary fantasies and present to you somebody else’s handiwork; however, the aura I create around that meal is the key to the rise and fall of my bank account. Perhaps I will lecture on the history of Chateaubriand, though as far as cooking skills go I’d have more success assembling a nuclear warhead than a bearnaise sauce. In spite of this handicap, I can still become Master of Nutritional Ceremonies, spicing your dish with wit and humor, pouring levity and camaraderie from a wine bottle, and drawing life from inanimate patrons. Sometimes this is not so easily done.
One evening I placed an unopened bottle of German wine on a stone-faced couple’s table, and proceeded to launch a rocket of lettuce into their stratosphere, trying to impress them with my adept, surgeon-like hands. As I tossed the salad the gentleman, face taciturn and wrinkle-free, tried pouring some wine even though the cork was not yet removed. He shook it as if it was a stubborn bottle of catsup. I motioned to the empty glass beneath his vigorous efforts and said, “It’s a very dry wine.” Maybe it was my delivery, but instead of laughing he looked up angrily and said, “A Moselle should not be dry. Take it back and bring us another.” Some people just don’t have a sense of humor.
Another night, as I was besieged with food, drinks, and checks awaiting delivery, a party of three was seated in my section. My priorities did not favor them for about 15 minutes, which was approximately five more than one fellow’s fuse of tolerance was set for. His anger rose in proportion to the tasks I performed at tables other than his. I finally got to them, offering a cocktail/peace pipe to smooth their ruffled feathers, and received silence in reply. A chasm of uneasy quiet lay between us; somewhere in the distance I heard the ominous thunder of a buffalo stampede, furiously pounding my way. In a sudden mad rush they arrived. “Godammit,” he bellowed, smashing his fish on the table as a judge would pound his gavel. “I’ve been here six times, and (boom) every (boom) time (boom) the service (boom) has gotten (boom) WORSE (BOOM)!!!”
Accompanying thumps accentuated his proclamation like auditory punctuation marks. All about us forks stopped in mid-flight, cargo remained undelivered, heads turned, voices quieted, and a deafening hush blanketed the room. Nervously put in this unrequested limelight, I replied without pausing to consider the consequences, “Perhaps you don’t tip big enough.” The look on his face reminded me that mortal life can end without advance notice; every word of that remark was another dot on a line across my throat that his razor-edged glare sought to cut. My nose itched—his was steaming. I began thinking of places to apply for work the next morning. A pin dropped in Des Moines and it echoed in my ear like gunshots. As the quicksand of terminal sarcasm slowly swallowed me, his two companions began snickering. They tried to suppress it, but the pressure from all the room’s tension burst out of them in hysterical laughter that swept the room, creating a cacophony of uncontrollable silliness that caught even him and me in its wake. I had breached his fortress and set a milestone for the humble waiter’s right to rebel against surly customers. They requested me to serve them on subsequent visits.
It didn’t always turn out so congenially, though. Once I was fired for allegedly finding joy in a customer’s misfortune. A very hostile woman, who found fault with seemingly everything around her, had given me grief over an exhausting list of our establishment’s products and policies. In the course of her meal she criticized the location of her table, the silverware, spots on the glasses, the vintages of our wine, cut of her meat, selection of music, choice of hors d’oeuvres, temperature of the bread, and many other faults that only the keenest eye could see. It was late in the night, and her party was the only obstacle in my path out the front door, so I was anxious to see them on their way. When they requested espresso for dessert, I hurriedly made it, served it, and prepared to finish for the night. A busboy alerted me a few minutes later that they were looking for me. When I got back to their table, the critic awaited me with a greenish look of nausea, announcing with the zeal of a bus station route caller, “I’m going to be sick!” I refrained from sharing my initial reaction, following instead her accusing finger which pointed menacingly at the half-finished demitasse of espresso. Personally, I could think of nobody I’d rather see this happen to, but professionally I knew she was the worst imaginable client to have a real, palpable defect in her meal. And there, floating like an oil spill, was the carcass of a thoroughly drowned cockroach. Somehow the classic “backstroke” line didn’t seem appropriate, so I calmly cleared their cups away, offered sincere condolences, fresh bug-free espresso, and drinks on the house, or some dessert if that was desired. All appeared under control until the gentleman asked what we had in the way of cakes or pies. Without hesitation I recited our choices from memory, but when I told him grasshopper pie, I realized immediately how ludicrous that must sound. I reflexively started laughing, and saw something less than joy on their faces. I figured I had erred slightly in judgement.
Three weeks later the mail brought a copy of a letter she had penned and sent to both major newspapers and the Board of Health, spurring an unexpected regulatory investigation that could have lost the restaurant its license had we fared poorly. The aggravation it created facilitated the offering of a sacrificial lamb, which turned out to be me. Until I proved much of her letter to be a vindictive distortion of the facts, I was suspended for two weeks. I got my job back, but to this day, I don’t like espresso.
If being on the floor is the visible part of the waiter’s profession, surely the kitchen is its foundation. How smoothly things go back in the oft-crowded, noisy, hot madhouse determines whether the waiter smiles with or without clenched teeth. It is there that the pretty words from finely printed menus are chopped, filleted, dropped, pick up, seasoned and spiced into three-dimensional reality. One busy weekend night I had ordered two poached Pacific salmon for the same table: one looked as it should, the other decidedly didn’t. Side by side they looked like before and after photos of a slow cat crossing Pennsylvania Avenue at rush hour—not very appetizing. I adamantly refused to serve any of the eight dinners sitting there until they cooked me another piece of salmon, exercising my right of veto. Given the circumstance—it was prime time Saturday night, and my filibuster was holding up the entire cooking line—our chef overrode my veto with a large knife and some rather serious threats. For the next hour I was somewhat unnerved by recurring visions of being skewered and marinated by a vengeful maniac muttering profanely of salmon.
Every waiter has his own style, determined by personal quirks and characteristics. Some are timid and subservient, others flamboyant, domineering, clumsy, profound, caustic, compassionate, or flirtatious. Some receive sadistic gratification in asserting a customer’s ignorance; one compatriot, for example, would explain to a table of Midwesterners what abalone was and when he had concluded ask if they preferred it with or without chocolate sauce. For those who enjoy lobster smothered in catsup, that’s all right, but for the rest of us it’s sacrilege. Another fellow would walk up to the table after a charge card receipt was signed, look first at the inscribed tip and then at the people still sitting there and sigh, “I guess Mother’s operation has to wait another week, doesn’t it?” and walk away dejected. Perhaps the classic laissez-faire attitude was captured by a friend who began his dialogue with, “Evening, folks, my name is Michael. If you need anything, anything at all, just ask the busboy.”
After several years of garnishing peoples’ waistlines with a vast array of atherosclerotic dishes, joining in numerous private quarrels, and uncorking many a clandestine affair with domestic and imported grapes, I’ve come to the conclusion that dining out partakes of the common person’s deeply rooted cinematic yearning to wear wings of fame; the more movie-like the experience, the happier everyone is. One evening a quiet couple midway through their 60’s were waiting for their dinners when the man got up to use the bathroom. Standing five-six and stocky, he didn’t look the mischievous sort, but after he’d been gone a half hour his wife started to worry. I looked everywhere and finally found him in our kitchen getting cleaned up by one of my employers. It seems this customer, innocently en route to the men’s room, accidentally brushed against a very large, drunk and belligerent fellow who threw a punch at him. Despite his disadvantage of six inches and 30 years, the elderly gentleman seized the opportunity to indulge in his first fight since his sailor days ended 20 years before. He pummeled his younger, bigger opponent to a bloody hulk and chased him out of the restaurant. So excited was he over the fight that he wouldn’t allow us to give him his dinner or drinks on the house, claiming it was the most fun he had in a long time. He was thrilled; his wife needed another drink.
Waiters are almost always coming from one place and heading for another be it from undergrad to graduate school, marriage to infidelity, Canton to Costa Rica, or sober to drunk. Hardly ever is a waiter planning to make waiting his career, though it happens anyway. This tendency to regard it as a temporary source of income and entertainment rather than a permanent plateau could be the reason there are so many fascinating characters in the restaurant business: it’s a sort of Hollywood Squares for cheap labor. The encounters one has in this setting are fast, fleeting, and of rare quality if a little effort is put forth.
As a customer I usually try to scrape away my waiter’s surface resistance and see between the menu’s printed words—a touch of human contact can go a long way in thawing out a frozen food scene. With so many in this business living a philosophy of transience, guided by comets rather than stars, you have to look fast if you don’t want to miss a unique sight. Dostoevski said, “It’s always worthwhile speaking to a clever man.” So take advantage of the chance for a bit of free advice before your waiter/waitress receives his or her law degree, congressional appointment, doctorate or medical certification and charges you a whole lot more than 15 percent. As I grope for a way to conclude tactfully, I am reminded of the words of a wise old manager who had the ability to make people laugh just hard enough to forget they were being booted out the front door: Folks, I have some good news and some bad news for you. First, the good news—you don’t have to go home. The bad news is you can’t stay here, so good-bye.