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You
Got Served
To
the Editor:
I
am writing in response to Jo Page’s “The Power of Waiting”
[Reckonings, Feb. 17] because I’m a longtime local food server
who was dismayed by the sexist assumptions underlying her
piece. Although Page’s column was intended to be funny, and
although I’m sure she didn’t intend it to be read politically,
her column indeed addresses politics of a different sort:
the politics of gender.
I could compose a scathing diatribe, citing the less-than-glamorous
occupational hazards and horror stories of being female and
waiting tables for a living, not to mention all the unwanted
flirtatious attention by male dining partners on heterosexual
dates. And yes, I admit some of my less experienced sisters
have not learned how to navigate the awkward dynamic of waiting
on couples. I’ve been victim to such behavior myself not only
when dining out, but in other non- dining situations as well.
I’ve been ignored by both women and men who deemed my personhood
less important than my male companion’s, and yes, it’s hurtful,
diminishing, and rude. But that behavior isn’t exclusively
a “waitress” thing.
Since Page alluded to metaphysical ontology, here’s another
theoretical concept with which she is undoubtedly familiar:
patriarchy. The attitudes Page experienced and her reactions
to them are the results of a patriarchal system that still
expects women to compete with each other for the attention
of men, and still encourages women to judge each other’s physical
appearances (“sculpted butts” and “snotty gait” are two examples).
When we buy into this system, we perpetuate it. I have always
assumed that women who have been kind enough to say “when
you have a chance” are acknowledging a sisterhood, and not
shriveling, intimidated, in their chairs. I hope Page’s feeling
“chastened” is exceptional, and that her fearing and coveting
the confident aloofness the job develops in many of us is
not a signal of a “subculture” of “silent, envious women.”
Page says she prefers [male] waiters because they don’t make
her feel unglamorous or “like a vile wench for wanting a glass
of water without ice.” Perhaps some women do prefer male servers,
perhaps for the same reasons, or perhaps they feel that men
don’t mind unsolicited flirting while they’re pouring your
coffee. What goes unsaid in “The Power of Waiting” is that
power is indeed at play in these exchanges, and the
cost is real and material for us if we piss someone off. I’m
not in the habit of referencing Billy Joel, but what we’re
doing every time we pour your decaf and laugh at your dining
partner’s flirty (and probably not very funny) jokes is indeed
the practice of politics.
While I read most of Page’s latest column with the proverbial
grain of salt, I have to wonder in what Hollywood, ideologically
produced reality she lives that her servers are all potential
movie stars. She protests that “it’s not about guilt or class-on-class
oppression.” Many waitresses in the United States are scraping
by upon, to borrow from Barbara Ehrenreich, nickels and dimes–for
most it isn’t about earning artsy cred en route to some creative
career; it’s about feeding and sheltering themselves and their
children. Since Page has never worked in a restaurant, allow
me to demystify the gig for her: Dining out is a socially
artificial and bourgeois experience, enacting a contract within
a capitalist system. That is, the restaurant’s proprietor
pays us $3.85 an hour to serve food with a smile, and we hope
to perform well enough to receive 20-percent tips from customers
as they pay the bill. It isn’t mysterious, and although it
is a performance of the negotiation of gendered roles, it
is sure as heck isn’t glamorous. Telling us you want our “weary
glamour” and “steely gaze” feels like a backward compliment,
like when someone says, “Great outfit; most people wouldn’t
have the guts to wear that!”
So Jo Page, listen up: Thank you for being polite to servers—countless
people are not. Thank you for generous tipping—our livelihoods
depend upon it. Thank you for saying “when you have a chance”
while requesting more Hollandaise—we truly do appreciate it
as an acknowledgement that we’re busy even if your friends
consider it to be obsequious. In the future, if you want water
without ice, simply ask for it that way because no one minds,
and if that’s the most complicated special order of our evening,
we’re having a rare, stress-free night. And as for the easy
access to the Bombay gin, let us assure you that because the
food- service industry is a giant perpetuator of a patriarchal
economic system which contains many hidden social costs, nothing
and no one is ever truly free.
Deanna
DiCarlo
Albany
The
Collective Good
To
the Editor:
“No
Union, Please” [Letters, Feb.10] struck me as indicative of
the sad state of working-class consciousness in America. Part
of me still wants to believe it is management propaganda,
but a rational portion of my brain realizes that the political
and economic consciousness of American workers is low enough
to allow for pro-management opinions in the low-wage,
unskilled service sector, in a company which completely monopolizes
its sector (and thus faces no wage competition).
The letter itself suffers from critical flaws in judgment
and reasoning. Apparently, the author is satisfied (at 49
years of age) to be working for $8.50 an hour, and believes
her fellow workers should be, as well, as if it were some
preordained wage level decreed by the Ticketmaster gods. Yet
American wages have been generally stagnant since the Nixon
recession of 1973, and the value of minimum wage has fallen
over 25 percent in the last 25 years. Benefits have been under
attack throughout the same period; all the while productivity
in America has increased by 25 percent or more.
Do things have to be this way? Obviously not. On the whole,
unions raise wages by 20 percent, and compensation (wages
and benefits) by 28 percent. Statistically, union members
are up to 28 percent more likely to have employer-provided
health insurance, with 18 percent lower deductibles. If this
were not enough, union workers receive 26 percent more vacation
time than their nonunion counterparts. Unlike the assumptions
of the author of last week’s letter, the increased wages (possibly
even a living wage, and not a paltry $8.50 an hour) a union
would bring more than compensates for small amounts of union
dues—which, incidentally, would constitute a strike fund during
a walkout/lockout period.
There is another portion of the debate on unions the author
ignores: their great potential for creating a radical and
democratic culture. A union is what the workers make of it.
Many unions, indeed, are run by bureaucrats whose goal is
to conciliate corporations and members of the ruling class.
Some, like UE, the ILWU, and the IWW, are politically active
and democratic. They are so because members have worked to
make them real unions, and not passive and hierarchical tools
of their hired officials. Workers in those unions do not have
to use an anonymous opinion box, but can air grievances openly
without fear of recrimination, suggest policy changes and
possibly even implement them because of union strength. A
union at Ticketmaster could be like these examples, a democratizing
force instead of a burden.
In the end, the interests of management and working-class
citizens are diametrically opposed. The author says many people
are content with the rules of the store—but what if they were
not? There is no way for workers in this economy to set the
rules themselves, or to participate in changing them. It is
part of that taboo phrase—the class struggle—something American
workers must relearn. Unions create many tangible benefits
for their members: higher wages, health care, and job security—and
the possibility of a democratic organization where employees
can act collectively, and shape the working environment instead
of it shaping them. Yet, unions are part of that class struggle
that management and ownership have done their best to persuade
us no longer exists—a fight between a minority business elite
in corporations like Ticketmaster who run workplaces and the
economy for themselves, and the potential embodied in working-class
solidarity, which envisions a new society in embryo, with
an economy based around human need. A strong, combative, democratic
union can provide all of these things.
Peter
LaVenia
Chair, Albany County Green Party
Metroland
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