There is, of course, a darker version.
I worked in one.
When I moved to California with Maya and my year-old son, the logical first step was to find a job in the new land of low-fat milk and raw honey. My parents had raved about the quality of life in California:
“People walk around in shorts in the middle of the day!”
“Everybody’s on a permanent vacation—nobody works here!”
“Beaches! Sunshine! Vegetarian restaurants!”
People, it seemed, survived in style down here. Maya and I both reckoned we could get decent waitressing jobs, which would at least pay the bills until we got on our feet and began doing whatever it was that we were really meant to do. For Maya, who had been playing violin since the age of nine, that whatever involved music. For me, a small voice in my head still whispered (although not very insistently) that I should be writing something. Anything.
Our initial approach to the job search was fairly simple. We’d found an apartment to rent that was close enough to the beach to sport an ocean view (if we craned our heads in a very specific way out of the living room window) and within walking distance of a town very popular with tourists. Because we’d moved without a car, or much of anything resembling furniture, for that matter, I strapped Blaze into his stroller and both Maya and I walked along the ocean from our apartment into town, stopping in at every restaurant along the way. Usually, we took turns going in. If the restaurant looked more upscale, Maya would wait outside with the baby while I filled out an application. Having only Maxman’s and Peppy’s to her credit, Maya felt unsure of her waitressing skills and, despite tales of my Dining Room experience, was unwilling to try to bluff her way into a fine dining situation. As a result, I filled out countless applications and Maya spent a lot of time with Blaze.
After a couple of days of this pavement pounding, we stopped in at Hoover’s, an eclectic diner only steps away from the azure surf of the Pacific. The restaurant was decorated in shades of black, pink, and seafoam green down to the flecks in the Formica tabletops. There were whole wheat muffins under glass and Warholish prints on the walls. Next to an old-fashioned industrial coffee maker was a very high-tech cappuccino machine. The overall effect was Mel’s Diner meets the Twin Peaks café.
Maya and I filled out applications together while I rocked Blaze in his stroller with my foot. The diner’s owner, Adrian, seemed highly amused at our team approach. He was in dire
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need of help, he said, and had to hire someone immediately. I marveled at our good fortune and the fact that he wasn’t even planning on checking our references.
“Can you girls start Sunday morning?” was all he asked.
It all seemed so easy.
Within a few weeks, however, Maya and I both discovered why, despite a steady flow of customers, Adrian had the highest staff turnover of any restaurant in town. We also learned a style of service that I have come to label “guerrilla waitressing.” Within a scant couple of months, we were preparing for our shifts as if we were going to war. And Hoover’s was nothing if not a battlefield.
Allow me to illustrate . . .
I wake up on Sunday morning at 5:30 A.M. and pack a bag for Blaze with toys, diapers, and bottles. He’ll be spending the day with my parents until I finish work. I take a five-minute shower and hurry myself into a pink T-shirt and shorts. For the first time in my life, I’ve eschewed the traditional black waitress footwear for an expensive pair of cross-training athletic shoes. As I strap them on, I realize what a good choice they are. What I will be doing for the next several hours will be more of a workout than work. I can’t leave Blaze without saying good-bye to him, so I pick him up out of his crib and kiss his sleepy face before tucking him into bed with Maya.
“I’m leaving,” I tell her.
“Hmmm . . . OK,” she mutters. “See you there.”
I walk to work while the rest of the world sleeps. My twenty-minute route takes me along the ocean, through quiet streets. It’s still fairly dark outside and the salty air has a little bite. But this is California. I’ll be sweating by noon, no matter that this is the middle of January.
I arrive for my shift at Hoover’s at 6:30 A.M. My first task is to rouse Danny from his stupor so that he can unlock the restaurant and prepare the popovers.
I should explain. Adrian had a very successful business, which he was doing his best to run into the Indian burial ground that his restaurant was suspected of being built upon. By the time my sister and I were hired, he was about three quarters of the way to complete ruin. There were two things that kept Hoover’s busy and saved Adrian from going under: a spectacular ocean view and popovers. Every single day, Adrian, or whatever hapless cook happened to be employed at the time, made dozens of popovers, which were served with every breakfast and lunch. Most mornings the popovers came out late, half burned or half raw. They were sent back regularly by customers screaming with indignation. Yet, amazingly, these same customers came back time and again, lining up for forty-five minutes on a Sunday morning in order to wait another forty-five minutes at the table with seven refills of coffee until they received an omelette that contained not what was ordered but whatever was left in the kitchen and that was garnished by a misshapen, ill-conceived attempt at a popover.
But I digress.
“Danny!” I shriek for the third time. “Get up! Danny, can you hear me?”
Danny Davidson is one of two cooks Adrian refers to as “my international staff of chefs.” Danny found his way to Southern California from New Zealand and entered almost immediately into a Faustian bargain with Adrian. At twenty, Danny has been an alcoholic for more than five years. Adrian, seeing a prime opportunity, offered to pay him mostly in beer. While the arrangement suited Danny, it didn’t allow him much spare cash to live on. Magnanimously, Adrian provided Danny with a room off the restaurant, which had been serving as a spare office. Thus, Danny, who had never so much as fried an egg before
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being hired at Hoover’s, has become something of an indentured servant. He drinks steadily all day and finishes with several six-packs when his shift is over. By the time his next shift begins, he is usually deep in a bottomless blackout.
I pound on the locked door until my fists hurt and I experience a familiar flash of panic. Could Danny, whom I like but am unable to help, be comatose this time? Or worse? I bang and scream one more time. There is a muffled groaning behind the door.
“Danny! The popovers. It’s getting late—please.”
The door opens and I am assaulted by a wave of alcoholic fumes. Danny, half dressed, bloodshot and pasty, looks worse than a train wreck.
“Where’s Adrian, the scabby prick?” Danny mutters. “It’s not my shift this morning.”
“He’s not here,” I say, desperately. “Please unlock the door for me, Danny.”
Spewing barely intelligible curses, Danny stumbles down to the diner and lets me in. I have to beg him to stay vertical and start cooking. The restaurant is scheduled to open in an hour and we’ll be full to capacity within a half hour afterward. Reluctantly, Danny staggers to the kitchen and begins whipping up a batch of popovers destined to reach a new low point in culinary standards.
It’s seven-thirty and Sheryl, the next waitress on, is half an hour late. I’m running around frantically trying to get the coffee made, the tables wiped down, and the condiments filled and lined up. We’re not going to be ready.
The phone rings and I lunge for it, hoping it’s Adrian to say he’s on his way. No such luck. It’s Sheryl, sounding none too happy.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m going to make it into work today,” she says.
“Sheryl, please, even if you’re late, it’s no big deal. But it’s going to be really busy and we really need—”
“No, I’m really not going to make it.”
“Are you sick?”
“Not exactly.”
“Can someone come pick you up?
”
“Well, I’m kind of in Mexico.”
“Well, you could make it back in a couple of hours, couldn’t you?”
“Not really. I’m kind of in jail. In Tijuana.”
There is a long silence. My brain is refusing to process the information.
“Listen,” Sheryl continues, “can you let Adrian know what happened? Tell him I’m really sorry. Also, I think you should know that Frank’s with me. I mean, he’s also in jail, so he probably won’t be able to make it for his shift, either.”
I don’t want to know the details and Sheryl doesn’t offer them. What I do know is that we’re now two servers short. This day has all the earmarks of certain disaster.
Adrian shows up at eight. He’s wearing a pink sweatshirt, black tights, and loafers with no socks. His hair is matted and his eyes are wild. He looks as if he hasn’t eaten, slept, or bathed for at least a month. He barks, “Cappuccino, make it a double!” at me and heads to the kitchen. By this time my first customers have arrived, a couple of regulars who bring the Sunday papers and fold them into neat sections to read one at a time. One of them watches Adrian, smiles, and shakes his head.
“Crazy guy,” he offers. I smile and fill his coffee. “It will probably be a few minutes before the popovers are ready,” I tell him. “We’re running a bit late today.”
“So what else is new?” Mr. Regular tells me grumpily. “I’ll take the omelette first, then. Bring me the popover when it’s ready. And since I have to wait for it, you can bring me an extra one for free.”
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Thank you, thank you, Mr. Regular. I’m happy to serve you and really earn my $1.57 tip. How empty would your life be without the chance of that free popover for all your troubles? I ring up his omelette, but I’m dubious that anyone is paying attention to the order in the kitchen, where shouting is audible.
“You call this a popover?” Adrian is screaming as I approach the kitchen. “This is an abortion!” Adrian takes the first batch and throws them into the trash. “Now, make some real popovers!”
Danny is staring at his feet, taking the abuse. His misery emanates in tidal waves.
“Um, I’ve got an omelette on order,” I begin tentatively. Adrian and Danny stare at me as if I’m speaking Greek.
“Can you believe this fucking kid?” Adrian says, pointing at Danny. “Can’t even get a fucking popover together. Where the fuck is Oaxaca?”
“Oaxaca” is the other international star in Adrian’s chef roster. A Mexican national with no green card, Oaxaca is illegally employed by Adrian and treated even worse than Danny, if that’s possible. Sweet, timid, and unable to understand almost any English, Oaxaca regularly works twelve- to fifteen-hour days. I don’t know how much Adrian pays him, but I’m sure it’s criminally low. Oaxaca is not his real name, it’s the region in Mexico he comes from, but he is never referred to any other way— another attempt on Adrian’s part to keep him in his place. None of us know what his name is, exactly, and he’s too shy to tell us.
(This type of hiring practice was a fact of SoCal kitchens I’d discovered very soon after moving to the area. Inevitably, restaurants would hire illegal, or dubiously legal, aliens to work in the kitchen for ridiculously low wages. Thus, restaurants of every nationality—Greek, French, Italian, Indian, Thai—ended up with Mexican cooks. One restaurant I worked in later carried this policy to extremes, hiring illegals and raising their wages by minuscule increments until Immigration did a sweep. At this point, the restaurant would “fire” the cooks, only to hire them back with new names at the old wages.)
“Um, Adrian? Sheryl called from Tijuana. She’s in jail with Frank. They’re not going to make it to work today, obviously, so I was wondering if maybe we could call somebody else?” I run from the kitchen after delivering this news, not wanting to hear its effect.
At nine the restaurant is almost full. Maya and one other waitress, Jessie, have arrived. Maya takes one look at me and reads the morning in my face.
“How bad is it?” she asks.
“Don’t ask,” I tell her. “I need you to take Twelve, Fourteen, and Fifteen. And Twenty’s been waiting for ten minutes. How’s Blaze?”
“Fine,” she says, tying on her apron. “Mom and Dad have big plans for him today. They’re going to the Wild Animal Park.”
I raise my eyebrows. “They could just bring him here and avoid the cost of admission,” I say.
Maya and I are soon waiting on at least ten tables each, while Jessie is struggling to handle two. Jessie explains that she’s hung over this morning and will need a little time to ease into her shift. Adrian doesn’t care about this because Jessie’s father coaches a professional football team. Even though Jessie has been disowned by her father for drug and alcohol problems, Adrian figures some of the gravy will eventually drip over onto him if he employs the daughter. Oaxaca has shown up and started cooking, but Adrian is on a rampage, criticizing every plate that comes out of the kitchen, so that now we are at least ten plates behind and not a popover in sight.
“I don’t know why I keep coming here,” a woman says to me, waving her diamond-encrusted hand in disdain. “The service is slow and the food is terrible.”
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I don’t know why, either. Go to another restaurant, I want to tell her. Please. Better yet, go home and cook something yourself for your bratty children. Instead, I make her a free latte and locate crayons for her two screaming kids, buying myself ten more minutes before she erupts again.
At ten, Chris and Terry arrive, replacements for the jailed Sheryl and Frank. Terry and Chris feel that since they have come in on their day off, they should be given the best tables, which are located on the patio, up a rickety flight of wooden stairs.
While the popovers were subject to the vagaries of human nature, the ocean was consistently beautiful. Since my episode at Hoover’s, I have learned that people will do just about anything to secure themselves an ocean view, even if the table they are viewing it from is made of dirty white plastic, shaded with an ancient Cinzano-emblazoned umbrella, and laid with barely edible food. This was certainly the case at Hoover’s, which in addition was laid out so eccentrically that it was almost impossible to give decent service to its prime tables.
Chris and Terry are arguing their point when the question of who will serve up on the patio becomes somewhat moot. We all hear a spectacular crash and a gasp of “Ooh” from the upstairs diners. On closer investigation, it seems that Jessie has fallen up the stairs with a tray full of cappuccinos.
“I think I blacked out,” she says. “I think I twisted my ankle. I can’t walk. I’m going to have to go home. Or maybe to the hospital.”
At Adrian’s command, we begin handing out free mimosas to the patio tables to assuage the trauma they’ve sustained watching the accident. Several tables feel they have to justify receiving freebies that they haven’t yet had the chance to demand:
“You’d better make sure you get that cleaned up. If I slip on those stairs, there’s going to be a lawsuit.”
“Only one mimosa? Can I get another one if I don’t get my breakfast in the next half hour?”
“Are you sure you use fresh-squeezed orange juice in this? Doesn’t taste like it.”
“I don’t drink champagne. Can I get a free Bloody Mary instead?”
The downstairs tables get wind of the situation and begin complaining bitterly:
“Hey, I’ve been waiting thirty minutes for two eggs and toast. Where’s my free drink?”
“What kind of place is this? Free drinks for half the restaurant?”
“Get that fascist Adrian out here now.”
The downstairs tables get mimosas. This ploy actually works quite well. Enough diners get tipsy enough not to notice the wait or the escalating entropy. The only trouble now is that we’ve run out of orange juice. The juice man hasn’t made a delivery for a while since Adrian is at least two months behind on payment. We are also running out of eggs, bacon, sausa
ge, and hamburger because the meat distributor is in the same boat as the juice man. At this rate we will be out of every menu item but the tuna melt by noon.
“Tell them that this is Vegetarian Day at Hoover’s,” Adrian says. “This is California, isn’t it?”
Despite the chaos, business continues to be brisk. I even have time to converse with some of my customers about topics other than the lateness of their orders. One man, for example, asks me: “What is this awful music?”
Adrian has two tape loops he insists on pumping through the restaurant. One is a medley of relatively current pop tunes and the other is a collection of standards that would work well in an underground French bistro. Today we are listening to the latter.
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“I believe this is Eartha Kitt,” I tell him.
“Eartha Kitt? You mean Catwoman? You gotta be kidding me. This place . . . ”
I approach another table and offer them something to drink. “I just want you to know,” one man says, “that the last time we were here, we had a terrible experience. The food was cold and we were not given any attention from our waitress.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
“Well,” he continues, “we’ve decided to give you one more chance. Now, what do you recommend?”
“The tuna melt is excellent,” I tell him and he orders it.
A couple I’ve waited on before comes in with their baby girl and sits down at one of my tables. There is dread in my heart. “How’s it going?” they want to know. “You remember us, right? Greg and Kate? And this is our little Annalisa. Your name’s Brenda, isn’t it?”
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