WAITER

WAITER

My first job was at Dunkin’ Donuts in High School. I worked the graveyard shift. It was the kind of job right wing nut jobs have in mind when they say the minimum wage is for teenagers. I was a teenager. They paid me and trained me. It was a sentimental education. Ray, the cook, mixed, kneaded, cut and fried donuts, while listening to preachers. I’m sure he had a day job. Ray never said more than two words to me. I think after a year he knew who I was, but I can’t be sure. I made coffee, served customers and, because it was the graveyard, had to prepare trays of donuts for the morning rush. Occasionally Ray would change the music to a black music station. This was a lot better for preparing donuts. It was the glory days of disco, not the Ur days of Do the Hustle, or the dark days of Stayin’ Alive, but the scary, post-apocalyptic disco days of Macarthur Park and Good Times. There was really nothing like filling a tray of jelly donuts to Good Times or We Are Family. There was a big plastic jug of jelly with two sharp steel spouts at the base. You could fill two at a time. I would impale two donuts, press the lever beneath the spouts until the jelly erupted from the holes. Frosting and dusting with sugar and cinnamon were other stages of production. I was a good donut decorator. And I was a good counterman. The coffee was always fresh. I talked to all of the schizophrenics, insomniacs, fucked up teenagers and truck drivers. The only people I didn’t speak to were the cops, who didn’t like my long hair. I did a lot of nefarious things that won’t be noted here. 1970’s kinds of things. Waiter kinds of things. Maybe the cops knew.

I thought this little job of mine, or racket (a racket that had been passed on from teenager to teenager for god knows how long), would prepare me for the real world, but it did not. I discovered it was useless on a resume when applying for work at Crepes and Cappuccino up near Columbia. All it meant was that I had learned to show up on time.

BEFORE HITTING NIGHTBIRDS

The next waiter job I got was several years later in NYC. S and I had returned from traveling and we needed work badly. We got jobs at Nightbirds, a dive for downtown punks on Second Avenue and maybe 5th street. I had the Graveyard shift, S had the morning shift. I remember Philip coming in on my first night with a bunch of friends. I was failing. I fell running with food. I dropped a hot chocolate. I spilled soda. They ordered drinks and I carried them as you would empty glasses, with my fingers in the rims! Philip, an experienced waiter, laughed at me and said, thanks for the fingers in my drink. That was night one. By night five I could carry three plates up my arm or a tray full of drinks without spilling. And I was the king of sidework. I cleaned, cut lemons and limes, restocked the ice, married ketchups. I was also a sucker, because the snotty, pissed off, depressed waiters who refused to do this were sent home early by the psychotic owners. I was so good! I got to stay. I soon took on the color of the place, grey. I became a sad, angry waiter who despised the customers, who were mean, spoiled, cheap and loud. They were scraped up off the bottom of places like Danceteria, The Peppermint Lounge and Area. Slugs would roll in around 4:30 for eggs, coffee and pancakes. If I was lucky it would be employees from Limelight. They tipped well. One night a woman came in to talk to the bartender, Kenny. She was kinda drunk, had a junky vibe, but intelligent. She left around 3. She came back two hours later in tears. When she left I asked Kenny what was wrong. He said she had gone home to discover her building on fire. Her boyfriend was dead. A fat woman came in every night and deposited 12 quarters in the jukebox. She played ‘What Do You Get When You Fall In Love’ and went in the bathroom where we could hear her sob.

I couldn’t take this anymore, but I was now a battle hardened waiter. On New Year’s Day, at 8am, I walked out, leaving the owners with a restaurant full of gasping, psychopathic drunks.

Fortunately the legendary restaurateur TONY of Dojos fame was opening Around the Clock Café. We knew the Dojos crew. This got S and me interviews. Because I would work graveyards (I was an expert now in graveyard shift food delivery) I got the job. S was pissed, but she got a job at a better restaurant, a ‘fancy’ restaurant (sigh) The Pharmacy over on Avenue A and 9^th Street. Around the Clock was part of a big expansion, and Tony was ambitious. We served a menu of savoury crepes and 12 varieties of eggs benedict. That didn’t last long. It was a more controlled, nicer space, romper room for a higher class of unpleasant jerk. By now the streets of Manhattan were completely dedicated to housing the homeless. Heroin was available every few blocks. Rents were soaring, the vacancy rate plunging and the haves were rolling in money. The avant-garde was no longer underground but an ongoing celebrity driven party. Downtown Manhattan was in the possession of a cadre of 20 and 30 year olds who serviced this party. All night we poured drinks, hung up coats and served and prepared food. We also stole enormous amounts of money and gave away free shit to everyone we knew. Everyone was stealing, everyone was on drugs, and no one cared. You could walk down the street at 5am screaming at the top of your lungs. You did I say? We. The night ended at 10 am with a pocket jammed with cash. Cabs, restaurants, movies, bars, after hours clubs. It was really a good time.

Then people started dying of AIDS.

When my kids were born, in 1986 and 1988, S and I were still working in these restaurants. By then we were on the best dinner shifts. But by then the wage, and the tenement, started to mean something different. Working for tips, for restaurant wages, living in an apartment that frequently lost heat and hot water in the winter, carrying a double stroller, groceries and two babies up five flights of stairs, was really hard. But that’s the reality for most restaurant workers, not the 24 hour party. The older I got the more I had to live on these wages, and life became difficult and depressing. Not because a bunch of assholes had insulted me. Because living on a substandard wage, raising a family, and living in the housing the poor can afford sucks. I was becoming Ray. But S and I had an escape valve. Most people don’t. Ray didn’t.

Please, write to Cuomo about raising the minimum wage for tipped workers: support tipped workers