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Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

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Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#101

Post by caconym_ »

ipaddr wrote: post #10
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…

Everyone learns to write in school. A waiting job most can pick up but not all. I couldn't get past serving training. Carrying four plates and keeping them straight takes without spilling is for others.

> Everyone learns to write in school.

This is like saying everyone learns math in school. It's technically correct, but only if you ignore the vast difference in skill between the average person and (e.g.) an accomplished novelist.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#103

Post by dmurray »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #78

> The job at that bar was the best job I’ve ever had, in concert with the life I’d always wanted—publishing my writing, running a literary magazine, having several close circles of friends, living in the city I’d always dreamed of. I loved my apartment and I had the money to do things like get facials and use ClassPass. I took vacations and went to literary awards or friends’ book launches and plays and fancy dinners…

> Remember when a job such as being a waiter still meant you could in fact survive and have money left over for the occasional niceties in life like a bit of relaxation, or a frivolous purchase like (gasp) some clothing that isn't needed for a particular purpose?

The author's experience was three years ago. Yes, I think we all remember, no, not that much has changed in three years. Many people still make a comfortable living in a big city waiting on tables; many struggled to make ends meet even way back then.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#104

Post by tomcam »

adamwk wrote: post #87
tomcam wrote: post #79

Author refers 3 times to 20-pound plates of potatoes. Is that really a thing? I’ve eaten at thousands of restaurants and don’t recall anything like that but I’m not the most observant person.

I’ve been to the restaurant in San Diego and the plates are indeed massive

Ok thanks. Couldn’t tell if she was exaggerating, but since she used the exact figure several times I had to assume not.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#105

Post by Hard_Space »

What a great piece. Glad to see it on front page of HN.

I worked for years in retail, in camera shops, and I understand the episodic hilarity and mundane heartbreak of a career in service. But it was washing dishes in a restaurant, my first ever job, that made me aware of the time-pressure intensity of food service, and that it's a lower-risk version of the old space/air travel aphorism: 'Flying is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror'.

You work a whole shift, but only a slim segment of it matters, when work and concentration become hyper-compressed. Dishes break, people break, and there are no breaks - it continues relentlessly like a forced march, without reflection, until the blessed first minutes where you sense that it's beginning to abate.

If you're of a reflective mood, you think to yourself not only that the frantic and merciless nature of the job will never change (even if the restaurant closes, the same experience is happening in an endless continuum all over the city), but that it has probably been like this for as long as there has been civilization - a millennial succession of workers (slaves, the earlier back you go), chopping vegetables and scraping plates (copper plates, if you go back far enough), back to dining establishments and the kitchens of the influential in Roman times, Egyptian times.

It's a strange thing, but participating in these activities that are most visceral and least threatened by automation, they feel like a kind of time travel, or like being in one of the less objectionable circles in hell.

We've always been at lunch with Oceania!

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#106

Post by freetime2 »

tomcam wrote: post #79

Author refers 3 times to 20-pound plates of potatoes. Is that really a thing? I’ve eaten at thousands of restaurants and don’t recall anything like that but I’m not the most observant person.

Here’s a photo from their FB page. I could picture a tray with several orders like this approaching 20 lbs.

https://www.facebook.com/HashHouseAGoGoSanDiego/photos/a.120...

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#107

Post by tomcam »

freetime2 wrote: post #106
tomcam wrote: post #79

Author refers 3 times to 20-pound plates of potatoes. Is that really a thing? I’ve eaten at thousands of restaurants and don’t recall anything like that but I’m not the most observant person.

Here’s a photo from their FB page. I could picture a tray with several orders like this approaching 20 lbs. https://www.facebook.com/HashHouseAGoGoSanDiego/photos/a.120...

Jeez that looks amazing! Thank you for the link!

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#108

Post by cosmodisk »

lastangryman wrote: post #100

How nice to read a long-from piece online, simply and clearly formatted, with no adverts, popups, affiliate links, or such nonsense. Just genuine writing. > The work was the only thing that kept me out of my anxiety. I know it's a trope for knowledge workers to romanticize physical work, but I find the opposite when programming. The work increases the mental anxiety.

Programming is part of my job, but I only have to do it every now and then. However, I'm considering pulling a plug on programming side gigs I do sometimes. It's so intense, the brain feels like it's going to explode+ there's that anxiety and that the whole thing will fail before I can even submit it. I'm not sure the money justifies every time.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#109

Post by pcthrowaway »

rootsudo wrote: post #66

"I leaned into the idea of serving as an identity. I joined all the Facebook groups, followed #serverlife and server memes on Instagram." I think this is one of the most toxic things in todays society, work becomes your identity and therefore you relate to it and it becomes you, or you settle to what that identity is. You are also surrounded by people in the same role, and depending on that you change to fit in with…

And yet, here we are, on hacker news.

Tech isn't the only thing I follow, and I have a few other hobbies, but it definitely is a big part of my identity now, to the point that even when I next take a break from working in software I'm still going to be following open source, tinkering with software, and probably still obsessively keeping up with HN

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#110

Post by stavros »

cosmodisk wrote: post #108
lastangryman wrote: post #100

How nice to read a long-from piece online, simply and clearly formatted, with no adverts, popups, affiliate links, or such nonsense. Just genuine writing. > The work was the only thing that kept me out of my anxiety. I know it's a trope for knowledge workers to romanticize physical work, but I find the opposite when programming. The work increases the mental anxiety.

Programming is part of my job, but I only have to do it every now and then. However, I'm considering pulling a plug on programming side gigs I do sometimes. It's so intense, the brain feels like it's going to explode+ there's that anxiety and that the whole thing will fail before I can even submit it. I'm not sure the money justifies every time.

It's interesting how different our experiences are. I love programming so much, I'll often forget about food or sleep if I'm building something that really interests me. It's easily the best high I've gotten.
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