Waiting It Out

The Manhattan was an old dowager of a restaurant by the time I got there in the late 1970s. It had been founded in 1905 and enjoyed a long run as a quality establishment for people who came downtown to shop, go to the theater, see and be seen. With three spacious, colonial-style dining rooms, it reputedly once served 5,000 people a day. It offered traditional food that wouldn’t be considered gourmet today, but was consistently tasty and fresh and served on china plates: burgers, steak and chicken platters, sandwiches, salads, soups. Occasionally someone would order a cocktail or a glass of wine.

It was an old-fashioned place, of a kind that has practically disappeared. Everything was prepared on premises, including all the breads and baked goods (customers could order their famous pies to take home). Much of the food preparation went on in the huge basement, which I’d pass through every day on my way to the waitresses’ locker room to don my cheesy blue polyester dress with a little red apron. Most of the workers in the downstairs soup and vegetable stations, bakery, and meat prep area were black people wearing white uniforms, which always gave me the unsettling feeling of walking through the kitchen of a plantation.

In the upstairs kitchen, with the exception of the guy grilling the burgers and steaks, everyone was white. There was Bob, the manager, a nice guy in cheap suits and aviator glasses, who approached his mediocre job with admirable earnestness. Lena, the old Swedish immigrant who prepared the sandwiches, had a chin-length white bob and features that must have once been beautiful. She barely spoke English but always beamed at me because I was polite and never yelled at her to hurry up. I rapidly learned the politics: who to step around, who would do you a favor under pressure. When the owner, a tall, hale man in a suit, made an appearance, everyone snapped to attention.

Waitressing required a completely different skill set than passing AP exams and Regents. We were expected to remember who ordered what (a challenge when large parties came in), coordinate the orders to be served together, hoist heavy trays without spilling, and handle payment. I worked long shifts from mid-morning till the evenings, and by the time I got home, I was so physically exhausted all I could do was lie on my bed and listen to records (LPs!) on the little stereo system I was so proud to own. Many years later, when I read Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed, her account of trying to get by working blue-collar jobs, I recognized myself in her statement, “In every job, in every place I lived, the work absorbed all my energy and much of my intellect.”