What I Learned Serving Pasta to Rich People
Ice Skating Waiter by Alfred Eisenstaedt
The job of a good waiter is the same as a good seducer.
It’s not enough to simply satisfy her needs; you must do so elegantly, in a way that makes her feel like she is the only girl (patron) in the world (restaurant).
Now, while I have never been a good seducer and thus know very little about good waiting, Lord knows I have tried my best at both.
Dinner is successful when, at the end of the meal, the patron is already asking to reserve for the next weekend. In the best cases, they will ask for a bigger table. This means that they are planning to invite their other rich friends, not to focus on the quality of food, but because it will allow them opportunity to flaunt that they found this ‘cute little restaurant’ first.
As a waiter at one of these cute little restaurants, it was my job to know all of this while simultaneously acting completely oblivious to it. Indeed, on the first day of work, the Maître d' sat me down and told me to repeat after him.
“You will see and hear nothing.”
“I will see and hear nothing.”
“Good. Now, you will see and hear everything.”
“Wait…”
“Stop! Did I say ‘wait’?!”
“No, but…”
“Repeat after me! I will see and hear everything!”
I did what I was told, and that is how I started my life as a waiter.
Fear Makes Food (and Life) Better.
There is a mountain pass in Montana that is one of the most treacherous roads to drive in the entire world. It’s cut out of rock and winds up one of the steepest inclines in the Rockies, finally leveling out around 11,000 feet.
While it is a scenic drive, it is not the type of scenic drive that allows you to fumble around for your bag of peanut M&Ms and salted gas station pretzels while driving. A sneeze and jerk of the wheel here is a very sure way to reserve your ticket for a world-class roller coaster ride that ends somewhere in the afterlife.
Of course, this is only the beginning, as you also need to consider wildlife like skittish mountain sheep and scurrying rock chucks, and the swerving cars on this one-lane road driven by tourists who are just as nervous to sneeze as you.
Our restaurant sat at the base of this mountain.
I would serve patrons coming down from the pass, and they would eat like it was the first meal they ever ate. I would also serve patrons about to drive up the pass, and they ate like it was the last meal they would ever eat. Both groups always enjoyed their food, which was the same food, far more than the group who wasn’t coming or going to the mountain.
2. Don’t Give Cannolis To Pretty Girls.
As a waiter, the second worst feeling is hearing your patron request their steak well-done.
In our minds, this an unforgivable sin, one that would compel us to tell the patron that we simply would not, morally could not, allow such a violation to occur within our restaurant walls.
We will reuse your half-eaten bread, dip our pinkies into your sauce, and finger your salads with the same fingers that are perpetually running through our unfailingly slick hair, but we would rather slide our beloved grandmothers into the wood-fired stove next to the sizzling calzones before we serve you a steak well-done.
Now, the absolute worst feeling you can have as a waiter is hearing your name called from the back of the kitchen.
This was especially true in our restaurant because our chef was about as friendly as John Wick. After his dog was killed. The minor difference worth noting is that our chef was about four the size as John Wick, and instead of holstering guns, razor-sharp Japanese blades dangled from the leather belt wrapped around his bloody, marinara-stained apron. He looked like the butcher in every mafia movies who owned a deli but also, you know, does some work on the side.
Some of us really believed Vinnie did something extra on the side.
The restaurant was always closed on Mondays, and every Monday from early morning until late at night, Vinnie and his jet-black Harley Davidson would disappear. At first, we thought it was a girl, but our restaurant sat in a small town, and like in all small towns, everyone knew what everyone else was up to. There wasn’t the slightest peep about Vinnie and a girl anywhere.
I was once pulled over by a cop late at night, and when the officer asked for my identification, I responded by telling him I worked for Vinnie (after enough time, all of us in the restaurant had trouble separating our identities from our work). The look that passed over the officer's face was one of disgust and admiration, as if my soul operated outside of his authority in a world that he couldn’t decipher was more beautiful or wretched than his own.
The restaurant was seasonal, and Vinnie traveled into Montana with his own crew from New York. I was the only local hire, which the officer didn’t know. If he had, I'm certain the conversation would’ve gone differently. In his mind, I was one of Vinnie’s, and nobody could mess with Vinnie except Vinnie himself.
After a cordial tip of the hat, the officer wished me a good night and left.
The truth is, I wasn’t one of Vinnie’s. I was the outsider on the staff, the lowest of the low. The dishwashers could take my plate of food on break, and I wouldn’t be able to say anything (this only happened in the early days).
So when I heard my name yelled from the back, I thought it was the end.
“Yes, chef?”
He handed a receipt to me. It was sweaty and smudged with fresh ricotta.
“What is this? Cannoli sales?”
His glare continued which I took as a sign to look closer.
The receipt showed the amount of cannolis gifted to tables. Some of us waiters used to do that when we liked the customers.
“So,” he always started his sentences with ‘so’, “this is the amount of cannolis you’ve given out to customers. Last month, only.”
I read the bottom line: $358 of cannolis.
“So, what do you have to say about this?”
What did I have to say? Sure, there were a few pretty girls who probably didn’t deserve the cannolis I sent, maybe more than a few, but largely I sent them to tables of either frequent customers or tables I thought I could turn into frequent customers.
Sweat began seeping through my undershirt and into the armpits of my button-down. If I made an excuse, he would fire me on the spot. Vinnie loathed excuses.
Once, he questioned a busboy who was drunk, already aware that this busboy had raided the restaurant's wine supply downstairs. The busboy replied that he had found wine bottles already open and he was afraid they would spoil and stink up the restaurant if left unfinished. Without replying to him, Vinnie ordered a waiter to drive the busboy directly to the airport and buy him a ticket back to New York (where the whole staff came from). The busboy boarded the plane still wearing his waist apron.
“What’s my tip rate compared to the other waiters?” I stuttered.
His eyes strained to the point where I thought surely they would pop straight out of his head, but not before he was able to palm my noggin and dunk it into the scalding hot oil fryer right alongside the arancini.
Then, as if a wave of spring water was poured throughout his body, he completely relaxed.
“So, you aren’t as dumb as I thought. Your tips are better. You don’t need to know by how much! But they are good enough to keep you on. Just stop giving so many of my cannolis away!”
“Yes, chef!”
3. Do It Now, Later Never Comes.
Besides being asked what our best dish is (which we would always answer by saying the name of the dish we need to sell the most of), the most popular question waiters are asked is, “What do you do when you aren’t serving?”
I’m a traveler. I go places to learn, and I write.
This answer became tiresome to give because like pushing the Coca-Cola button on the vending machine, I knew exactly what I was going to get back.
“Oh boy! You have to do it while you can! Life moves fast, you know.”
This was usually followed by a shrug and fake laugh, with remarks of wishing that they themselves had done that years ago. If it was parents with their kids, the parents would nod their head at the kids and raise an eyebrow at me as if they were passing me a special piece of wisdom in secret.
This always disturbed me for two reasons:
Even if said jokingly, this response effectively shrugs accountability of past decisions and fantasizes about a life that doesn’t exist instead of appreciating the one that does.
Largely, they are right.
Most of the people that told me they wanted to travel and never did, never will.
It’s hard to hit the road when you have a big job opportunity on the horizon, a lease, a serious partner, kids, aching knees, a parent that needs caretaking. It’s never impossible, but it doesn’t get easier with time.
If you have the itch, do it now. Go. Later never comes.
4. Love Thy Kitchen Staff As Thyself.
A family once asked us to make lasagna for their wedding party.
Our restaurant never catered for events, but Vinnie, like all good chefs, possessed somewhat of a twisted entrepreneurial spirit that wanted to test if his kitchen could crank out 300 squares of lasagna in a single morning.
As if we were a fast food pizza chain with a fleet of teenage mechanical laborers and mad max delivery drivers, he wanted those trays of lasagna to arrive at the wedding with the bechamel sauce still bubbling on top.
By the time I got to the restaurant in the morning, every red bandana in the kitchen was soaked. The restaurant felt like a sauna. I propped open all the doors and shortly after got a call from the hotel concierge down the street that several of his guests were requesting lasagna for breakfast.
I was busying myself, straightening a table that I had already straightened a minute prior, when the father of the bride arrived to pay. He strode right past me in starched jeans and a wide cowboy hat that looked like it had never been worn.
It always bothered me when people walked straight back to the kitchen without acknowledging any of the front staff.
They acted like they were in a Scorsese movie, as if they could snap their fingers and point, and moments later (despite the house being full) I’d have the corner table by the kitchen arranged for them with a clean crystal ashtray and bottle of chilled champagne with a white linen cloth wrapped around the neck.
While he was chatting with our cooks about the lasagna and the weather, I printed the check.
$5,385 worth of lasagna.
After shaking hands with Vinnie, he paid the bill with a heavy metal card and I handed him back the receipt to sign with my heaviest pen.
Because I’m a well-trained waiter, I took it back from him without looking at it and gave him a big smile and wished his family a very fine wedding day. Because I am a waiter, as soon as he turned out the door I looked greedily at the ticket.
The tip? $20.
I thought he missed zero, but even that would be too low.
The kitchen staff was already cleaning, hoping to catch a quick nap before the lunch and dinner shifts. They liked to go downstairs and sprawl out like starfish on the chest freezers, as that was the only cool spot in the whole restaurant.
I slid the receipt over the metal counter to Vinnie. He looked at it briefly, paused, then went back to cleaning his station without a word.
He asked his crew to work an extra shift, to sail off and pillage another ship, but the loot was no good, and as the captain, he was responsible.
The man with the starched jeans and wide cowboy hat had a very difficult time reserving a table for the rest of the summer. The next summer it was no easier.
Vinnie ended up tipping his cooks properly out of his own pocket.
5. Pity The Server With Pity Tips.
It’s a common knowledge amongst waiters that the people who look like they will tip the most will not tip the most. I’ve served thousands of people and this has proved true thousands of times. There is only one instance that broke this rule.
It was a woman dressed in a fine white cotton dress with jewels as heavy as frozen spring water dangling from her neck. She sat alone in the corner with her back to the crowd.
Like every Saturday night, all 20 tables were full and we had a line out the door. Since we weren’t allowed to leave the floor when the restaurant was full, we caught our breaks behind the espresso bar.
It was there where I would guzzle down water and sometimes a swig of cold wine if the Maître d' wasn’t watching, which was never the case. We each had our own sweat towel and cache of mints behind that bar too. If you needed either of these, you would have to contort your body into a very small croissant so that the customers sitting directly next to the bar couldn’t see you. It was behind this bar that another waiter asked me who the woman in the corner was.
Usually, we waiters can communicate this very easily and discreetly through a brief flash of the eyes, but I had been so focused on my tables that I hadn’t seen him asking earlier.
I told him I didn’t know but I would figure it out. After all, my job was to know everything.
I tried to spark a conversation with her while delivering the main course, but when I looked into her eyes and saw just how gorgeous she was, my hands became shaky and it took all of my focus to not shred the parmigiana right onto her lap.
After a curt bow, I retreated to behind the bar and told the inquiring waiter that from the way she holds herself she surely is someone of importance. He told me that wasn’t enough and reminded me that what I already knew: my job was to know everything.
“Find out who she is sleeping with!” he said in a way that would make anyone else think he was joking but I knew he wasn’t.
Towards the end of the meal, I delivered cannolis on the house (sorry Vinnie) but still could not bring myself to speak directly with her.
Perhaps this is why she tipped nearly 40%. Did she feel bad for me? Was this a pity tip?
(Some waiters specialize in pity tips. They create stories, often rotating between 2-3 stories depending on the demographic of the table, which are intended to make the patrons feel almost guilty for being served by someone who suffers so much. To relieve their conscience of the guilt, the patron tips extra, sometimes in cash depending on the waiter’s believability.)
The Maître d' made me swear to never use the dark power of pity tips. He told me they always catch up with you. He’d seen guys who told different stories to the same patrons on different nights because they lost track of which story they were telling to whom. Besides making excuses, this was the fastest way to get fired.
I hated pity tips and swore to never try for them, so when the beautiful woman tipped me so much I was afraid I had somehow broken my pledge.
Tables of one never tip 40%. My Maître d' of course knew this and would see this when he counted the tips at the end of the night. I was bound to be questioned.
This was all running through my mind as she passed me at the cashier and wished me a good night. I was cleaning the table in daze when I realized she had left a box of arancini.
In the classic fashion of a waiter, I made a huge scene about it and broke into a sprint while inside the restaurant, plowing through the line outside to find the woman in the white dress.
(This is another technique that we waiters use. It’s more ethical than pity tips and even more effective because not only do you show the forgetful patron how much you care, if you are dramatic enough, you show everyone in the restaurant and on the street how much you care.)
I raced down the sidewalk and caught a glimpse of her glow floating across the street. She saw me and stopped directly in the middle of the road.
“You forgot your arancini.” I said, exaggerating how out of breath I was.
“Why thank you, young man.”
If my cheeks weren’t already red, they were after she said that. I could hear her voice clearly now without the music of the restaurant and it was so distinct that I was certain I’d heard it before.
“You seem very familiar, have you come to the restaurant before?”
She said she hadn't and introduced herself as January Jones.
“Zane Jarecke” I replied, shaking her hand, completely missing the fact that her name was obviously an entertainer name.
We stood in the middle of the street and talked for some time until the thought of kissing her grew just as big as the full moon hanging above us.
She must have seen this in my eyes, or heard it in my words which had started to tremble, because she smiled an understanding smile and pulled out a crisp $100 bill from her clinch.
“Thanks again for everything, Zane.”
She turned and walked to a car that was as shiny as the diamonds around her neck and I stood there in the middle of the street until her tail lights disappeared around a curve and into the crisp mountain air that smelt so fresh you could put it in a cup and drink it.
I looked down at the money, and then up at the big moon. The famous actress, January Jones, had most certainly just given me my first pity tip.
At the end of the night, I reported this all to the Maître d', who kept his keen eyes on me from behind the blue smoke of his cigarette which he puffed on like an aristocrat.
“Okay, Zane.” he said, uncrossing his legs and standing up. “You aren’t going to tell anyone about this. Not the other servers, and definitely not Vinnie.”
Then he held out his hand without looking at me, and I reached deep into my pocket, where I kept the $100 bill, and handed it to him. He folded it neatly and stuck it deep into his pocket, where he kept all the extra cash tips that patrons would give him under the table.
***
Every day I worked at the restaurant, I dreamed of being on the road. Now I am living on the road and writing about the restaurant. The days were long and painful, but I often reflect back and smile, remembering all the secrets we kept while serving pasta to rich people.
The end.
“The moral is, never be sorry for a waiter. Sometimes when you sit in a restaurant, still stuffing yourself half an hour after closing time, you feel that the tired waiter at your side must surely be despising you. But he is not. He is not thinking as he looks at you, ‘What an overfed lout’; he is thinking, ‘One day, when I have saved enough money, I shall be able to imitate that man.’”
–George Orwell,
Down and Out in Paris
yours truly.
