November 1988: Not My Job

I am a waiter and I am a dancer. Do you wish service or an entrechat douze?

Conundrums breed and multiply. Nobody, it appears, can get a fix on service. Lots of scalp scratching going on; ditto, dumbfoundedness. 

“Without quality service, my business is doomed,” says a restaurant owner.

“I’ve had to cut back on my hours because I can’t find enough qualified employees to wait my tables,” says another. Imagine.

In a large conference room at the New England Culinary Institute, seated at long tables, operators and the press debate service. It is often a heated debate. It is damp and autumnal in Montpelier, Vermont.

Fran Voigt, president of the Institute, has prepared an agenda. It includes “Trends.” Also, “The Competition.” Nobody wants to talk about the competition; everyone, it appears, knows who or what that is. Apparently, talking about trends is a waste of time, too: all conjecture and uncertainty Nobody knows what a trend is or how to define one.  Service is on everyone’s mind. Nothing else matters. The agenda is inconsequential. This is the argument—never, by the way, disputed: 1) You can talk “trends” until you’re blue in the face; likewise, “competition.” 2) If you’re running a restaurant with lousy service, sooner or later trends won’t make any difference and your competition will bury you. Service is on everyone’s mind.

“What can we do about service?” Voigt asks. The emphasis is on “can,” as if to imply that it’s already too late. The question is enough to trigger the discussion that lasts all day. At times, as you will see, it is anguished and querulous; at times vindictive; sometimes sardonic and macabre. The give and take is nonetheless instructive.

There are 40 of us here today. Some have a grasp of what it takes to provide service. Others, merely a gasp. We address nearly everything that has anything to do with service, including, most importantly, what to do with the people we hire to provide it. We avoid the obvious: say what you will about service, do what you will to glamorize it, it is not a profession. It is a job, which is what it will be forever and ever.

At a café in Paris

Never mind what it is in Europe where it is in many cities a profession. It is a job here because restaurateurs think that’s what it is and treat it as if that’s what it is. It is, to boot, a minimum-wage job—correction, when tips are included as a percentage of the pay it is a half-a-minimum-wage job which should give you an idea of its value. It has no self-respect, no dignity, no value, no worth. Only a handful of owners think it has any of the latter; and, those who do, make every effort to endow it with some of that. To most owners, this is what service is: it (please note the gender neutral pronoun) takes the order from the customer, delivers the order to the customer who pays for it after he or she consumes it. No big deal. A basic function: simple, frills-free. Does it deserve enhancements: a title, more pay, a bonus, a slap on the back? “If that’s what service is all about, how are we then to instill in it a sense of worth or stature or importance?” asks Voigt.

Says a restaurateur, “We treat most service people like newspaper boys. Peddle the plates. Do a good job and we’ll pay you something for doing it. Not much, mind you, but it’s all we can afford. So, be thankful. Do a good job and if you do our customers will give you something extra, especially if he or she likes the way you look and talk. And, because we are kindhearted, you may keep that something extra, unless we think you don’t deserve all of it in which case you’ll have to share it with everyone else who works here.”

Smile, get the food out on time, talk good like a waiter should, serve from the left (or was that “from the right”?), pick up from the right (or was that . . .), say, “Thank you” and “please,” be charming and never wear stuff that might offend our customers. Tattoos? Cover them up. Piercings? Get rid of them? Perfume? Need you ask?

“It is, too, a profession,” argues a restaurateur. “It is not just a job. We indoctrinate our service help. We welcome them as family into our restaurant. We tell them they must know our food and the ingredients that go into it; they must know wine; they must know what the table service is for and where our food comes from. Our guests today are very smart. Our waiters must know how to talk to them. Not a day goes by when they are not challenged by someone or something. Every day as restaurant owners we hope to mitigate that challenge by making them comfortable at the job.”

“I’m impressed,” says someone. “How long is the average waiter with you?” “We’re happy if he stays two years.” “You’re kidding.” “Two years is a lot.” “And then what?” “He’s off to a real job.” “I see; and what do you pay him or her?” “Half the minimum wage.” “I see.” “Plus tips, of course.” “Of course.”

What are we going to do? What will we do? Futility feeds frustrations.

“We don’t know how to hire or whom to hire,” says another restaurateur. “We are inept at hiring. We have no idea what to look for.”

“What do you mean, ‘What to look for’? I didn’t know we had that option,” says a friend. “The employment situation in Boston is so tight, hotels are between 10- and 25-percent below staff. We don’t have the luxury of looking for the right person. We’re lucky to get someone, anyone. A person. We’ll take the first warm body that walks through our front door with or without a resume.”

Still another chimes in. “Have you any idea what it’s like to have someone on the job so incompetent that when the time comes to fire him or her, you can’t because it’s impossible to find a replacement? We can’t afford turnover when we have to turn over.”

Scapegoat Time at the Roundtable: “Here’s the real problem,” says someone who used to be a waiter. “For many kids, their first experience in foodservice—like mine—is working fast food. Assembly-line food; assembly-line service. Push a button and out comes food and service. The idea—the only idea—is sales and profits. Kids get turned off of foodservice forever because of the shabby way managers (for the most part ill-trained or never trained) treat them at McDonald’s or Wendy’s. Doesn’t matter which one you name. Name one, you’ve named them all. Could be Burger King or Pizza Hut. Kids want no part of a foodservice career.”

“It’s not just limited to fast food,” says a reporter. “I’ve heard horror stories about waiters mistreated at midscale restaurants from Olive Garden to Cheesecake Factory. I’d be willing to bet, were it not for their being ill-treated, that some of them, when they were hired, were thinking of a career in foodservice.”

Now, it’s getting rough. More anguish; more hedging. A lot of people are scared.

“I don’t have any answers. What the hell are we going to do?”

“Go figure,” a friend whispers to me.

“How come,” a writer proposes, “foodservice has all these celebrity chefs, but no celebrity waiters?”

“Easy,” says a food writer who has never been a waiter. “When you endow a person with celebrity you acknowledge her intellect, her creativity, her authority and influence, her presence, her clout. Her ownership. That’s what celebrity is: a celebration of skills and talents for all the world to see and admire. There will never be celebrity waiters, never be a profession of waiters, until foodservice strips the job of its stigma and invests it with those qualities.”

“Ownership,” says one. “I think that’s what I heard. Am I right? That is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Who among us is willing to give ownership to waiters? To empower them? A chef, I can see. A waiter?”

“This worries me more than anything else,” a restaurateur says. “I’ve got a great chef and a great menu and fantastic food. If my people up front are no good, if they have no idea what the menu is all about or, if they do, have no idea how to talk about it with customers, they can easily destroy what the chef and I have worked so hard to create.”

Pay is pitiful. Not so, says a restaurant manager bragging about one of his waiters. “He’s got a condo on the lake; he gets a kick out of driving inebriated customers home in his Mercedes. They like him so much they ask him to sign the menu.”

Great! As an editor, here’s what I’m thinking. We’ll do a story about this kid. We’ll call it, “The Waiter: It’s not a Job, It’s a Lifestyle.” We’ll point out how great it is to be a waiter; we’ll throw in other examples of great service just to shore up our argument, like the maître d’ at the show lounge in Las Vegas who’ll show you to a good table if you slip him 20 bucks; a really good table for 50. Thanks for sharing your story about the condo and the Mercedes. Must be hundreds like it. Right?

Waiters are the Rodney Dangerfields of foodservice.

Try this on for size: “Until you construct a justice system that treats people the same way, that gives them the same rights, that gives them dignity and a voice in the growth and evolution of the operation, you will always be courting misfortune brought on by backbiting and mutual distrust.” Michael Kay said that in our October issue. Kay is the president of The Portman Hotel Company. He is wise beyond his years. I think he knows how to work with people who report to him. He trusts them.

Here’s something else that symbolizes what being a waiter is all about. A waiter punches a clock. When was the last time you saw a chef do that?

My son, the chef; my daughter, the chef. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? How about my son, the waiter; my daughter, the serving wench?

Let’s you and me find dignity in service. You go first.

Dancer: Rommel Canlas; Paris café: Elena Dijour/Shutterstock.com