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and a belt buckle with the word QUEEN stamped on it in four-inch metal letters. Jeff spoke very little, laughed a great deal, and smoked constantly. All three were big fans of our pizza and patronized Peppy’s almost daily. Of all the businesses in the neighborhood, they were the only ones to do so.
The grand opening of Peppy’s was hardly the rush we’d hoped for. In fact, business was decidedly slow for the first few months. My father had hoped to gain many regular customers from the foot traffic around the area. There was foot traffic, all right, but generally not the kind that generated income. For example, one regular visitor was a blind traveling salesman who poked his head into Peppy’s every other day or so and demanded to know “What is this place?” When told, he responded, “Wanna buy a handmade belt?” Since nobody ever did, he usually backed out with the parting shot of “Ah, the hell with ya.” Then there were a regular contingent of night crawlers wanting to know “Where’s that titty bar at?” And we had a host of people who came in, walked up to the counter, stared at the menu, and then asked to use the bathroom.
We began advertising free delivery in the hope of generating sales from families in the surrounding neighborhoods. Maya and I called every friend and contact we had in the greater Portland area and invited them in for pizza. A few became regulars. Belinda came in to eat soon after we opened and told me that she had gotten a job as a bartender/cocktail waitress at a bar near her apartment. She was really enjoying it, she said, but for some reason she had recently gained quite a bit of weight. In fact, she showed me, she could barely close her jeans.
A month later, Belinda called to tell me that she, too, was pregnant. Her boyfriend wasn’t happy about the news, either, she said, and was refusing to speak to her. Her due date was less than two months after mine. Perhaps, she suggested, we could have a double baby shower?
Gradually, each member of my family began to assume a role at Peppy’s and our days started to follow a predictable routine. My father did all the ordering, buying, and deliveries. He prepared fresh sauce every morning, spending hours peeling garlic, sautéing mushrooms, creating salads and, later, lasagna. My mother spent her days working in an office and her evenings sitting at a booth in Peppy’s. My youngest sister, Déja, who’d been an infant when we had the luncheonette, was now nine years old. She perched behind the counter most afternoons, alternating between pinball and homework. Maya made pizza and more pizza. In fact, she had touted her cooking skills so highly in the early days of Peppy’s that soon she was the sole pizza maker. Her position, seated or standing in front of the ovens, was one she would hold for the duration of the restaurant. The task of customer service was more or less relegated to me. With my doctor’s appointments, growing belly, and baby preparations, I wasn’t able to log as many hours at Peppy’s as Maya or my father. As it turned out, I was also unable to eat tomato sauce without getting sick, effectively eliminating pizza from my diet. All of this served to remove me from consideration as a cook of any kind. Besides, with all my experience at the table, I was a natural choice for front-of-the-house operations.
Every morning, my father and Maya picked me up at my apartment. The three of us ate breakfast together and planned out the day in terms of what had to be prepared and stocked or what flyers had to be designed and printed. Maya made dough and grated mozzarella cheese. I went to the bank for change. My father peeled garlic and, every half hour, moved his car into another temporary parking space. If it was slow and it looked as if I was becoming too sedentary, my father would leave notes for me at the cash register.
“The doctor says that walking is good for you,” one of these notes said. “P.S. We need tomatoes.”
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As the days grew warmer and longer, we all spent more time waiting, although very little of it involved waiting on tables. We waited every day for customers to arrive and all found our own ways to fill the downtime.
Perched by the ovens with her apron on, Maya read dozens of romance novels over the course of the days. She also indulged her penchant for soap operas. I watched with her as the soaps ran between what passed for a lunch rush and what might turn into a dinner rush. (We watched so often, in fact, that when my son was born he became his own study on the effects of prenatal stimulation. If he was fussy after lunch, I noticed that he became soothed as soon as one of the familiar soap theme songs played within his earshot. To this day, as well, pizza remains one of his foods of choice.)
Pinball was also a particularly popular time waster, and various family members competed for the highest scores. One machine, titled Centaur, featured a beast that was half man and half motorcycle. Periodically, as the balls zipped around, the machine would chant “Destroy centaur” in a particularly demonic tone. I heard it so often that my dreams often featured this phrase.
On a larger scale I waited to give birth. Pregnancy is a singular challenge for those short on patience. The baby was due in early July. By mid-May I had read half a dozen books on pregnancy and early motherhood. I’d given myself a baby shower at Peppy’s and had collected a substantial layette. I’d bought a crib and set it up in my apartment. I’d selected a name, Blaze, for the baby I was convinced was a boy. Maya was to be my labor coach, and by early June we’d completed childbirth classes together. I started beginning conversations about the baby with “When he gets out. . . .”
“When he gets out?” Maya scoffed. “You make it sound like he’s in jail in there. Why are you in such a hurry? Leave him alone and let him develop at his own pace, why don’t you?”
It was very difficult for me to wait it out after coming to this stage of readiness. Before this, my working days had been fast-paced and high pressure. Quiet gestation, therefore, was not a condition that came very easily.
I did have occasional writing jobs, which would periodically keep me busy. Tim would come into Peppy’s, eat a slice of pizza, and pick up the copy that I’d written. I never told him about my pregnancy, and although he sometimes stared directly at my belly, he never made a single comment until he called with an assignment a month after the baby was born and heard the unmistakable noises of an infant in the background. “Say, did you have a baby recently?” he asked. “I was just wondering. . . .”
Going through my pregnancy under the watchful eyes of not only my family but a daily host of strangers taught me how very public restaurant work is. Prior to Peppy’s, I had always felt there was a certain anonymity to waitressing. After all, with the exception of regulars, one’s customers are different every day. Each table is a chance to display a fresh persona, even a new identity if one so desires. But in truth, one really has to have an act to wait tables. A certain shtick is necessary at the table. This is what the customer is paying for. The average patron couldn’t care less if you’ve had a bad day, week, or month and he resents it if he’s forced to even consider this. He wants a smile, a dance, a bit of mystery.
Every waiter and waitress I’ve worked with has developed a personality especially for use at the table. One waiter I worked with, for example, was a dead ringer for the actor Rowan Atkinson. He exploited this resemblance for all it was worth. Customers often came in saying, “We want Mr. Bean to wait on us tonight.” The waiter added little quirks to his behavior to add to the general persona he was developing, telling his customers in the middle of a meal, “Enjoy your dinner. I’m going to go smoke a cigarette, I’ll be right back.” Later he managed to up the per
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centage of his tips by telling his tables that he was a struggling single father (never mind that his daughter was over twenty-one and that parenting was probably last on the list of his priorities). Another waiter I worked with performed magic tricks at the table. His pockets were constantly bulging with colored scarves and playing cards, and he was usually late picking up his food since some of his tricks required quite a bit of time.
Waiters and waitresses who hail from countries other than the United States generally have an easy
time presenting a restaurant persona. I’ve been consistently amazed at how easily impressed most people are by an accent of any kind. In fact, I’ve seen countless transgressions forgiven by customers just because the waiter or waitress was French, Italian, or Spanish. I’ve experimented with this one myself. One of my “talents” is the ability to mold my speech patterns and accent to whomever I’m talking to. A British accent is especially easy, as is a New York twang. At the table, I’ve utilized both, usually to great effect.
Many years after she sat behind the counter at Peppy’s rehearsing for her first performance in an elementary school production of The Wiz, my sister Déja, an aspiring actress, would rehearse for other roles and develop characters at the tables of restaurants where she worked. For her, the restaurant literally became her stage; every shift was an opportunity for an improvisational performance.
At Peppy’s, our shtick, such as it was, involved our family and the dynamic inherent within it. My pregnancy was unquestionably a part of this. Certainly, all of our neighbors knew that I was going to have a baby and they all seemed to wait for the blessed event with me, at times less patiently than I did. Mike, especially, was fond of walking into Peppy’s, looking at me, and saying, “Haven’t you had that baby yet?”
There was a high school close by from which we began to draw a lunch crowd of teenagers. I became a walking cautionary tale for the high school girls who came in and watched my expanding midsection. Most of them thought I was in my teens and had been forced to drop out of school. I saw them sometimes, huddled in the booths, whispering about what might have happened to me. The high school girls weren’t the only ones who held these opinions. Many of our adult customers, who knew that we were all family at Peppy’s, sought to unravel the circumstances behind my condition with considerably less subtlety:
“When’s your baby due?”
“Are you going back to school once it’s born?”
“Where’s the father? He run out on ya?”
“Looks like you’re carrying low—must be a boy.”
“You’re having a girl, aren’t you?”
“Are you gonna call your baby Peppy? Ha ha.”
“Is this your first baby? You’re in for a treat. You can’t imagine how wonderful it’s going to be.”
I can’t say I minded the attention or even the fact that my unborn baby was up for discussion as often as whether we made our pizza with a thin or thick crust. In a way, it helped me feel a sense of community and commonality with people outside of my family. Perhaps, too, there is a bit of the exhibitionist in everyone who chooses waiting as a profession. At the very least, it’s not a job for shrinking violets. A certain gregariousness is required of a person who must strike up pleasant conversations with dozens of strangers on a daily basis. And although my pregnancy was a distinctly personal experience, I’ve witnessed and been part of several other public episodes of bonding between seemingly disparate people, together only because they all happen to be eating in a restaurant.
I saw a striking example of this kind of bonding, for example, in September of 1997 when Princess Diana died. I worked the dinner shift on the night after the funeral. Without exception, every customer and employee of the restaurant had stayed up all
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night watching the funeral on television. Many customers were actually still tearful, their eyes red-rimmed. There was a feeling of shared sadness at every table. Some of my customers even took my hand as I took their orders and said, “Isn’t it just the saddest thing?” It was the topic of conversation for the entire night, with everyone united in a sense of overwhelming grief.
Although business improved over the first few months we were open, it never really took off. My father was disappointed by the lack of support among the local businesses and felt that for the amount of effort we were putting in, the returns were quite small. He couldn’t understand what we were doing wrong and why the neighborhood hadn’t responded more positively to our pizza. He and Maya, together for more hours at a stretch than anyone else in the family, often lapsed into a routine argument when it was particularly slow.
“Where are all the customers?” he’d ask her. “It’s Saturday night.”
“I don’t know,” she’d answer.
“Haven’t you had any orders for delivery?”
“No.”
“Maybe the phone’s not working.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the phone.”
“Go call the operator, make sure it’s working.”
“It’s working.”
“Why are you still sitting in the same position? Why don’t you make a fresh pizza?”
“For who? There’s nobody here.”
“There’s not going to be, either, with that attitude.”
The “Saturday Night Fight,” as it was soon dubbed, became as much a ritual as the daily peeling of garlic and grating of mozzarella.
My father redoubled his efforts to make Peppy’s a place where everybody would want to eat. It was all about pleasing the customer, he maintained. This was another distinct truth about restaurant work I learned at Peppy’s: The customer is always right.
When I was a sixteen-year-old working at Maxman’s, I hadn’t truly understood why my father consistently gave Mrs. Zucker more meat on her sandwich or filled up Mr. Grubman’s platters. A few years later, I found myself outraged at the lack of support given to waiters and waitresses by restaurant management. It took Peppy’s to make me understand how truly expendable waiters and waitresses are. It is extremely easy to replace a server. In fact, most restaurants don’t even bother advertising when they need to hire staff. A “Help Wanted” sign in the window or, in the busier restaurants, a predictable stream of prospective employees is usually all that is needed for a plethora of server hopefuls. The customer, however, is not so easy to replace. For some people, even one slightly negative experience in a restaurant is enough to warrant a flood of complaining letters, phone calls, even a potential lawsuit. The unhappy customer’s ultimate threat is that he will never return and, what’s more, he’s going to tell all his friends about how poorly he was treated.
Because their cash flow is greater, larger restaurants are better able to handle disgruntled customers. Still, with the exception of one restaurant where the owner was certifiably insane, I have never worked in a place that didn’t fall over itself trying to make sure that the customer’s last words were “I’ll be back.” For a small, family-run operation like Peppy’s, unhappy customers would signal a quick end to the business. Even with various enticements (free delivery, coupons, and specials), it was difficult enough to convince people to come in for the first time.
It was with this very intimate understanding of why the customer is always right that we restrained ourselves from cracking wise when a potential customer asked us “How big is
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your sixteen-inch pizza?” or “What comes on a cheese slice?” or even “Want me to tell you how you should really make pizza?” We said nothing when half of our high school crowd showed up with bags of food from McDonald’s. The other half, after all, were eating pizza. We listened patiently while people gave us decorating tips, menu suggestions, or told us that we should lower our prices.
In a way, it was Mrs. Zucker all over again. This time around, we took it only slightly less personally.
By the beginning of July, I couldn’t stand, sit, or lie down comfortably. I was so distracted, heavy, and full of baby that being at Peppy’s became an impossibility. It was the hottest summer on record and I sweated it out alone in my apartment for what seemed an eternity. Finally, in the last week of July, I checked into the hospital to give birth.
My father placed a sign in the window at Peppy’s that said simply CLOSED FOR DELIVERY, and my entire family joined me in the hospital, talking, eating, and milling about while I went through thirteen hours of labor. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
My son, Blaze, was born very early the follow
ing morning. Several hours later, Maya and my father went back to Peppy’s and fired up the ovens. But it would never be business as usual for me again. The change in my life was staggering in its enormity.
Blaze’s delivery had been complicated and he had to spend an additional week in the hospital. When I finally brought him home, I was amazed at the sheer emotional chaos my new baby created for me. He cried and I cried along with him. He seemed, quite simply, angry at having been removed from the womb. And after his time in the neonatal care unit, I was afraid that every sound he made was an indication of some strange mysterious illness. Neither one of us slept. For a week, I doubted all my instincts, terrified that I would be unable to understand or give him what he needed.
After about a week of this, I brought him to Peppy’s. Exhausted and bleary-eyed, I sat in a booth near the counter with Blaze next to me, wrapped up like an enchilada in his car seat. The pinball machines rumbled. Maya made pizza. My father peeled and chopped garlic. Customers walked in and out. My mother sat with me and we gushed over what an unbelievably cute baby I had. Blaze slept peacefully. I felt safe for the first time since his birth. Nothing bad could happen here. From that moment on, my son and I developed a certain rhythm. He became a very contented baby, and I became not a woman who had just given birth, but his mother.
Waiting; The True Confessions of a Waitress Page 18