"The Working Life of a Waitress"(Kayla Ruppert)

“The Working Life of a Waitress”

Mike Rose
p. 10-20

Mike Rose continues talking about his mother’s life as a waitress. She tells him in order to be a good waitress “You have to have one hell of a good memory.” (p10) To back that up he adds in some psychological studies that all point out the same facts about what waitresses know.

· “Food and drinks- ingredients, appearance, and typical combinations.” (p10)
·“Visual, spatial, and linguistic techniques to aid memory.” (p10) Examples are abbreviating items, grouping them in categories and finding ways to remember costumer appearance and location.
· Waitresses jobs are “goal directed” (p10) their goals are to make their work go smoother and to earn more tips.

Then he explains his mother’s way of remembering orders. What people ordered helped her remember who gets what. Say “a man orders a T-bone steak and the woman would order something smaller, and even if the order is backwards that’s going to stick in your mind.” (p11) Even with a table of six or more she had a way to make it a less of a load if someone ordered hotcakes she would put a container of syrup in front of that person right away. Also the way a person acted towards her helped her remember their orders. She said “Somebody is giving me a rough time, then of course they will stick in your mind.” (p12)
Waitresses all agree that they work better when they are busy. His mother adds to that. “Even though you are very busy, you’re extremely busy, you’ll still in your mind you have a picture, and still use all these strategies and one triggers everything else.” (p12) But then sometimes when you are busy and everybody is demanding your attention you just don’t know what to do first. Mikes mother felt the same way. When she was stuck in a situation like that she was “thinking what to do first, where to go first…which is the best thing to do…which is the quickest.” (p13)

As a waitress you have no time to rest. You have to keep moving fast or customers will get unhappy, you have to keep up with the hot orders or “the cooks will yell at you,” (p13), and you have to get the checks to the costumers or “you’ll get hell from the managers.” (p13) “As you walk, every time you cross the restaurant you’re never doing just a single task. You’re always looking at the big picture, and picking things along the way.” (p14) As a waitress you are always alert and using your mind.

Response

Rose’s work is brilliant. His message was stated clearly. Waitressing is a memorable job. It takes a person that is quick to think. I like when his mother mentioned “even a regular is tapping his coffee cup, the cook is ringing the bell, and so on, a waitress could attend to all this clatter, and know what it means, and yet still not know what to do next.” (p15) I understand exactly what she is talking about because I’m a waitress myself. Everyone thinks that a waitressing job is for someone that is uneducated and lazy, but it’s not. It’s harder than you think. That’s what I believe his point was to get across. Don’t look down on waitresses as not having a hard job. Next time you go to a restaurant and its taking a little time to get a refill or an order taken remember what all a waitress has to get done.