To be a server: As told by a former waitress from New Orleans
The tables lay untouched beside the evening rain. A familiar despair had settled among the waiters as they eyed the empty streets. A young woman stood by the doorway, watching a couple earnestly as they brushed past her section and seated themselves at the table behind hers. She fumbled for her lighter and lit of what was left of the cigarette she had tucked away.
And the night, that indifferent force of life, went on, spilling time and returning the hours to their aprons in slow, crumbled ones. Some of them asked to be let go for the night, and some stayed, not for any feigned effort of loyalty, but for sheer necessity, held back by the last embers of a hope that remained in place despite the empty chairs, the near worthless amount they were being paid hourly. If anything, the quiet evening should have laid bare the extent of the injustice they were subjected to, and the undismissable fact that their hours here, without the customer’s presence, were worth nothing. Still, they held on, and their night here, like many others before it, went unchallenged.
It is true; we harbor a tendency to dismiss the complaints made by servers. Their mocking wages are often overlooked and even pardoned when taken into account the compensation they receive through the customer’s tips. Certainly, servers have the chance to make good money. After all, we’ve imposed this implicit agreement between the server and the customer, making it almost obligatory to tip, and to not do so is often considered a great offense.
However when the server hasn’t made enough to make ends meet, the rage is almost always misdirected. They blame the weather, the thriftiness of customers, even the quality of the food that day. Their anger, although entirely justified, is ushered from the original source and redirected towards the closest and most visible subjects. Owners, on the contrary, are often unseen and feared entities that behave much like a God in the inaccessibility they purposefully impose, and in the submissiveness and obedience they regard themselves as rightfully entitled to.
And to challenge them is to stand alone. It is simply the case that many workers will go on in muted fury, sometimes out of fear, but mostly from weariness. There’s a very deliberate and purposeful arrangement of tying time with money that keeps many bonded within long, strenuous hours, and therefore unable to find the time to organize any meaningful request for change.
But this can be fixed for two simple but often overlooked reasons. First, we significantly outnumber those with say over our circumstances. But most importantly, the individual committing the oppression in the workplace is completely dependent on the people whom he or she is oppressing. This applies to our broader democracy as well. Why, then, have the affairs of so many been handled by the hands of so few for this long? It’s simple. It goes on because of our own willful submission to the bondage imposed by the very men whose profits, and power, depend entirely on our underpaid labor and unbroken silence.
Certainly, there is a law in place that the owner is responsible for ensuring that the server meets the minimum in the case that the tips made that day do not average out to, for instance, $7.25/ hour (Louisian’s minimum wage, which follows the federal minimum wage). But this law is hardly enforced, and what is implemented instead is a system that sends waiters home in the hopes that those remaining will make, what they, in their intended number of employees on shift, could not.
It’s no surprise, then, that there are many ways an owner can avoid paying the minimum wage. And there’s far too little accountability for ensuring a basic living wage for servers despite the circumstances — whether or not a customer tips, whether it is in or out of season.
And though a server may, after an exhausting effort, return home with a living wage (having depended entirely on the customer’s generosity and satisfaction), it remains an oppressive system that does not justify the two or three dollar wages they are subjected to. It should not be the responsibility of the customer to accommodate for the gaping rift between what the server is paid, and what he or she should be paid. Their predicament, although largely unchallenged, captures one of the most degrading practices of capitalism. And the sure ease in which these jobs are filled does not dismiss the pressing injustice of their occupation.
What worries me most, however, is the common acceptance I’m often answered with when I address the absurdity of the wages they are paid. Many servers simply point out that they are able to make it up in tips, or, that even $2.50/ hour adds up at the end of the week. Many overlook the horror because at the end of the day, if it is a good day of course, they’ve made what they need, and to most servers, the source of the earning is insignificant, so long that it was earned.
But the current system of waitressing is flawed for yet another significant reason. It normalizes this concept of behaving in an orchestrated and artificial manner in exchange for a greater share of the customer’s order. That our kindness and attentiveness are, despite some of our best efforts against it, tied to a desirable earning creates a habit of transactional exchanges wherein the customer is reduced to the amount he or she can offer. It is undeniably the case that under this system certain customers, based on their appearance or social status, receive more attention and more exaggerated efforts of courtesy.
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At the end of the shift, I stand in the corner, another cigarette lit against the dead air. In those times, the silent streets seem, more than ever, to lay bare the extent of the loss: the dreams tucked in the stained pockets of their aprons, the drums of resistance silenced in our fatigue. And still, we’ve allowed injustice a permanent presence, even willingly dismissed the prospect of change as a taunting mirage, a valorized event of a seemingly irreplicable past.