After twenty years as a waitress, Ginsberg reflects on the experience, the restaurants she’s worked at and colleagues she’s worked alongside, and the perceptions the public have, based on both her experience with diners and on the way waitresses are portrayed in films and on television.
Coming from a country where tipping isn’t mandatory (and, depending on where you’re eating, often not expected), the section on wages was a little distressing, but I have the same reaction almost every time I read about US conditions of minimum wage workers. I’m sure that, along with most diners who haven’t worked in the industry, there are many aspects that I’m unaware of, but for the most part I found myself contrasting the (what seems to be unnecessarily complex) US system of bus boys and hostesses and sommeliers with the (at least superficially) streamlined Australian experience, where one person does everything. Somehow I have a feeling that wasn’t what Ginsberg was aiming at.
There are no surprises here, and nothing I found particularly amusing or interesting. It wasn’t uninteresting, and I certainly finished it, but if I was using one word to describe Waiting it would be “inoffensive”. - Alex
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