BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : SEPTEMBER 11, 2000 ISSUE
BOOKS Tipping Point WAITING The True Confessions of a Waitress By Debra Ginsberg HarperCollins -- 286pp -- $22 Each summer of college, burned out from cramming for exams, I would arrive home on my parents' doorstep swearing never to go back to school. And every summer without fail, I'd get talked out of that vow by the aging waitresses at my summer job site: a Big Boy restaurant in Cleveland. ''Oh, honey,'' they would say, ''stay in school. You don't want to wind up like us.'' I'm glad I took their advice. Yet after years of waiting tables in between other gigs and reporting for Restaurant Business magazine, I can appreciate an alternative view--that some people want to be career waiters. For anyone who doesn't understand this, I recommend Debra Ginsberg's entertaining and sometimes sobering Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress. Ginsberg provides a personal memoir of romance, tales of nutty co-workers, and life lessons. The book is structured more or less chronologically. So we accompany Ginsberg the college student as she works in the giant cafeteria at Yellowstone National Park; graduates to an octogenarians' dining club in Portland; then moves on to an Italian eatery, a raucous bar, and more. At each stop, the author draws us more deeply into her world. Who knew, for instance, that managers spy on their waiters, using ''spotters''? Or that Mother's Day is, for restaurant workers, the most reviled of holidays--when diners regularly revert to childhood behavior aimed at servers? That waiters frequently employ subliminal techniques to sell coffee and desert? That decaf seldom is? Neither staffers nor customers, it seems, are free of bad behavior. Ginsberg describes cooks who spit in food and patrons who put bugs on their plates to avoid paying the check. Then there are waiters who steal from patrons' doggy bags and who offer Italian Christmas greetings that are actually insults. (''Buon Natale, e cadi de la scala!'' or ''Merry Christmas, and fall down the stairs!'') Ginsberg also instructs us on the origins of tipping--in 18th century English coffeehouses. She tells how cocktail waitresses fend off sexual advances by tailoring the way they present themselves to each patron. And she finds time for reflection: ''A restaurant is a place where several basic human needs are met all at once. Within these walls there is food, shelter, and warmth. Often, there is a sense of family.... One is never really alone at the table.'' By the time Ginsberg realizes that her true calling is what she's already doing, we're hooked on her story. Ginsberg's title carries a double meaning, describing both the job and the tendency servers have of waiting for their ''real'' lives to start. But as this account shows, there's a lot of life in the waiting game. BY JOAN OLECK _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS Tipping Point PHOTO: Cover, ``Waiting'' INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online

Copyright 2000-2008, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved. Terms of Use   Privacy Notice