Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress by Taylor Candacy

Author:Taylor, Candacy [Taylor, Candacy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2014-09-26T21:00:00+00:00

Sammi DeAngelis, Seville Diner - East Brunswick, New Jersey 2005

Although some waitresses confessed to trying to outsmart their managers, many respect management and choose to follow the rules. Sammi DeAngelis of the Seville Diner in East Brunswick, New Jersey, said, “When my boss says ‘no substitutions,’ I do what he says. He invested the money, it’s his business, and I respect that. Some customers come in here and try to manipulate me into giving them what they want. You know, I’d love to give out free food, but this isn’t Never-Never land and I’m not Peter Pan.”

Waitresses who show initiative and loyalty are usually promoted to head waitress. Some are offered a higher hourly wage and given badges with numbers to indicate their position above the other waitresses. But most career waitresses are not social climbers. They couldn’t care less about the title of head waitress or even manager. It’s already apparent who the head waitresses are. They have the most regular customers, make the most money, and in many cases have been working there the longest. So these women don’t need a promotion. Virginia said, “Because we’ve been there so long, we didn’t feel like waitresses. We felt like we owned the place. You’re at work so much, you start to feel like the place just can’t go on without you.”

Over 90 percent of the waitresses I interviewed were offered management positions, but fewer than 5 percent accepted. Based on the waitresses’ testimonies, they didn’t think there was much to gain from being a manager. To them, it’s an unrewarding job that offers little more than grief from fussy patrons and a staff that doesn’t respect them. A waitress-turned-manager would lose the freedom to be herself and wouldn’t be able to spend as much time with her regular customers. Managing would require her to be more diplomatic and she would be forced to make decisions that are good for the company but might not be good for the workers. Also, the respect she gets from her employees may not be entirely genuine; she would never know if people are nice to her because they truly like her or because she is able to give them the schedule they want. Suddenly she’s an outsider to the family she has known for many years. Usually the shift in perceived power isn’t worth it. Esther said, “They couldn’t pay me enough to be a manager.” Virginia agreed, “I never wanted to be a manager because of the cut in pay and as soon as you became management, everybody hated ‘ya because you had to police your staff over things like giving away an extra piece of toast. It definitely wasn’t a step up.”

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