BW Boutique Hotel

The waitress’s response is shaped by various kinds of knowledge of the restaurant: knowledge of the menu, of preparation times, of the layout of the place. Included here is a knowledge of emotional dynamics, both a folk psychology about dining out and the characteristics of particular customers. My mother, twenty years after retirement, can recount the quirks and traits of her regulars. As one veteran waitress puts it: “Everybody has their own personality. That’s another level of learning.., you’ve got to learn this way of working with people.”
The high-level goals and knowledge of the restaurant give rise to more specific action rules—waitressing rules of thumb— that, depending on the context, could aid in sequencing one’s response. All the waitresses I interviewed, for example, mention the importance of attending to—even if just to acknowledge_newly seated customers. (“The big part of this business is not to ignore anybody.”) They also stress the importance of picking up orders— especially hot ones—quiclcjy. Another rule of thumb, applicable during rush hour, is to tally and deliver checks in a timely manner. And yet another is to consider the emotional consequences of action—which calls for an ongoing assessment of character and feeling. Is the cook especially touchy today? Do you have a particularly demanding customer? My mother expresses this emotional calculus when she advises “use your own mind and ask [of yourself] which customer will complain and which won’t.” Given an environment of multiple demands, these rules of thumb could guide one, for example, to attend to a new customer and serve a hot order—and forestall the circuit through the station to refill coffee. Refills would, in the moment, move lower in priority. What is striking, though, is the degree to which the expert waitress relies on a broad strategy that makes many either-or decisions moot. And this brings us to the fourth element in the waitress’s response to multiple demands. She organizes tasks by type or location. She combines tasks in ways that greatly economize movement, that make activity, in my mother’s words, “smooth.” As one waitress puts it, she is always asking “which pieces of what I need to do fit together best.” Though some prioritizing of tasks— guided by rules of thumb—does occur, the more common move (noted as a mark of experience by several of the waitresses) is to quickly see what tasks can be grouped and executed with least effort.
This leads to a fifth characteristic: the way restaurant routines aid in this organizing of tasks. My mother and the other waitresses I interviewed all refer in some way to a circuit through one’s station that is watchful and that takes advantage of the restaurant’s physical layout. As one waitress explains it:
I always think of it as kind of a circle, because there’s the tables, there’s the bar, there’s the coffee station, and it kind of becomes a flow of organizing what can be in one full circle, how many tasks can be accomplished, as opposed to back and forth, back and forth. I think the waitresses who get going back and forth are the
This description resonates with the earlier discussion of attention— the blend of anticipation, vigilance, and motor skill—but in a way
ones who get crazy with four tables. that underscores the dynamic interaction of the waitress’s ability and the structure and conventions of the restaurant.
Perhaps the thing that most impressed me in all this—and it emerged in every interview—is the claim the waitresses made that they work best when the restaurant is busy. On the face of it, this doesn’t make sense. I would imagine that one could remember three or four orders with more accuracy than six or seven, that one could handle refills easier with a half-full station. These numbers. would result in a more relaxed pace but, the waitresses claim, not in more skillful performance. In fact, my mother insists she could never have developed her level of skill in slower restaurants. “You’re not as alert . . . not thinking that quick’; you’re not anticipating orders; “you’re making a couple of trips” rather than a single efficient one. “In a slow place, you think slower.” One waitress notes the feeling of working “like a well-oiled machine” during rush hour. Another says that “when it gets the craziest, that’s when I turn on. I’m even better than when it’s dead.”
Of course, increased volume of trade can lead to disaster as well—if, for example, a waitress calls in sick or a critical piece of equipment fails. Every waitress tells those horror stories. But it seems that, barring the unusual mishap, the busy restaurant can lead to maximum performance. One’s physiology responds—my mother talks about her “adrenaline going faster”—and there is a heightened readiness and reaction. And the increased flow of trade itself provides a variety of demands that call forth, that require the skillful response, the necessary fluid integration of attending, memory, organization of tasks, and strategic use of routine. This is not to deny the exhaustion, even the punishment, of the work, but it is telling how my mother and the other waitresses all comment on the satisfaction that they feel when they perform well under stress. Several use language similar to that of the currently celebrated “flow” experience, felt during those times when a person responds successfully to significant challenges from the environment. “There’s a sense of accomplishment in just the mechanics of it,” says one waitress, “just knowing that. . . I’m handling it all.”

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