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Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

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Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#41

Post by throw384629 »

JohnFen wrote: post #5
cafard wrote: post #2

I don't know. I never graduated to waiter, but I worked as a busboy a few times. I have much sympathy for wait staff. My recollection is that the waitresses were always decent to me. Still I don't buy, "I suspect it’s easier to teach a waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a waiter." One of my other low-paying jobs was as a copy editor, and I have seen how commonly schools have failed to teach PhDs to be…

> Still I don't buy, "I suspect it’s easier to teach a waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a waiter." Yeah, I don't buy that either. I know that the best software engineering work I've done in my entire life happened when I was working as a hotel housekeeper, before I was programming professionally. It was because cleaning hotel rooms is a purely physical, and highly repetitive job. Every day at work,…

From my experience, the hardest part of being a waiter was dealing with customers.

I worked hard physically as a dishwasher or warehouse worker, but had little mental stress.

I only lasted a few weeks as a waiter. Despite the much higher tips, dealing with bad customers was so stressful I couldn't handle it and it significantly affected my studying.

Whereas I never felt that tired when doing physical labor.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#43

Post by quickthrower2 »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #8

I gave up on this article about 1/3 of the way through. I could fill dozens of pages with my aimless years after I quit college, but I wouldn’t think to bore people with it.

I got 10% through. Says more about me, or at least my mood. Clicking a HN link I al not sold on reading so much. But if this article was a book I purchased I would read it over a few days.

The writing is good though at a micro level. I think it needs more structure and hooks. Chapters with interesting titles “The positive consequences of lying in my first interview” for example (I am not a writer so sure HN could do better)

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#44

Post by chongli »

toast0 wrote: post #40
chongli wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it prioritizes exercises that are easy for a teacher to mark over exercises that develop real writing skills. Everything is broken down into elementary mechanical tasks and marked with rubrics. Writing is taught as if it were mathematics, that you can just follow a simple algorithm and you are done! Turns out, neither great writing nor mathematics work that way. Both are very hard and require non intuitive le…

Following the algorithms for writing makes you neither a bad nor a good writer. If you learn and follow: tell them what you'll tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them; you writing will be formulaic and boring, but competent. If you do all the things, you'll be an ok writer.

Boring writing is bad writing. If you can't holder your reader's attention long enough for them to get what you're trying to say then you've failed to communicate. If you follow that formula, not only will your writing be boring but too long as well.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#45

Post by jorvi »

throw384629 wrote: post #41
JohnFen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Still I don't buy, "I suspect it’s easier to teach a waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a waiter." Yeah, I don't buy that either. I know that the best software engineering work I've done in my entire life happened when I was working as a hotel housekeeper, before I was programming professionally. It was because cleaning hotel rooms is a purely physical, and highly repetitive job. Every day at work,…

From my experience, the hardest part of being a waiter was dealing with customers. I worked hard physically as a dishwasher or warehouse worker, but had little mental stress. I only lasted a few weeks as a waiter. Despite the much higher tips, dealing with bad customers was so stressful I couldn't handle it and it significantly affected my studying. Whereas I never felt that tired when doing physical labor.

Is it not common in America to share tips with the entire staff?

In Europe there is much less of a tipping culture, but at the end of the night all tips go in one big pot and then get divided amongst the staff.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#46

Post by juliusgeo »

emodendroket wrote: post #31
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work for Roy Rogers, when we had to call the customers “Pardner.”

I got reprimanded for going to urinate at unscheduled times.

I worked as a busser and at multiple fast food places before getting a job as a software engineer. I have also been reprimanded for going to urinate at unscheduled times. I don’t think that gatekeeping the experience of being exploited for your labor is useful. Creating divisions between people who are only exploited, vs those who are exploited even more doesn’t help anyone except for those who are exploiting.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#47

Post by skipkey »

jorvi wrote: post #45
throw384629 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience, the hardest part of being a waiter was dealing with customers. I worked hard physically as a dishwasher or warehouse worker, but had little mental stress. I only lasted a few weeks as a waiter. Despite the much higher tips, dealing with bad customers was so stressful I couldn't handle it and it significantly affected my studying. Whereas I never felt that tired when doing physical labor.

Is it not common in America to share tips with the entire staff? In Europe there is much less of a tipping culture, but at the end of the night all tips go in one big pot and then get divided amongst the staff.

It depends. Admittedly this was 35 years ago or so, but generally a certain percentage would go towards the bar and other staff, but mostly you would keep your own tips.

It’s probably due to a difference in culture. The US was still very anti-socialism at the time. But the culture was definitely that you should keep the rewards of your own labor.

At smaller restaurants there was never any pooling at all.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#48

Post by Freedom2 »

JohnFen wrote: post #5
cafard wrote: post #2

I don't know. I never graduated to waiter, but I worked as a busboy a few times. I have much sympathy for wait staff. My recollection is that the waitresses were always decent to me. Still I don't buy, "I suspect it’s easier to teach a waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a waiter." One of my other low-paying jobs was as a copy editor, and I have seen how commonly schools have failed to teach PhDs to be…

> Still I don't buy, "I suspect it’s easier to teach a waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a waiter." Yeah, I don't buy that either. I know that the best software engineering work I've done in my entire life happened when I was working as a hotel housekeeper, before I was programming professionally. It was because cleaning hotel rooms is a purely physical, and highly repetitive job. Every day at work,…

Brandon Sanderson has a decent quote from Secret Project #1, that makes me think a bit.

> That is one of the great mistakes people make: assuming that someone who does menial work does not like thinking. Physical labor is great for the mind, as it leaves all kinds of time to consider the world. Other work, like accounting or scribing, demands little of the body—but siphons energy from the mind. If you wish to become a storyteller, here is a hint: sell your labor, but not your mind. Give me ten hours a day scrubbing a deck, and oh the stories I could imagine. Give me ten hours adding sums, and all you’ll have me imagining at the end is a warm bed and a thought-free evening.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#49

Post by RadixDLT »

waiseristy wrote: post #28
cafard wrote: post #2

I don't know. I never graduated to waiter, but I worked as a busboy a few times. I have much sympathy for wait staff. My recollection is that the waitresses were always decent to me. Still I don't buy, "I suspect it’s easier to teach a waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a waiter." One of my other low-paying jobs was as a copy editor, and I have seen how commonly schools have failed to teach PhDs to be…

Lemme modify the writers words for you to more accurately describe the phenomena : “I suspect it’s easier to teach a good waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a good waiter.” Being excellent at balancing a stressful, fast paced, work environment applies to many jobs. But being excellent at being an “intellectual” whatever the hell that even means (writers? Programmers?), does not really apply to very ma…

Person who engages in critical thinking and reasoning

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#50

Post by sebmellen »

This is probably the most surreal article I’ve read on HN, only because I grew up in Mira Mesa and have eaten at that very IHOP, probably even while she was a waitress there. It’s astounding how small the world can seem sometimes.
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