Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress

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In a truly just world, everyone would have to wait tables for at least six months, just to know what it's like. Failing that, we have writer-waiter Debra Ginsberg's tasty memoir to remind us about life on the other side of those swinging doors. Horror stories? After 20 years of serving other people's food, she's got 'em--and being handed a drunk's vomit-soaked napkins certainly fits the bill. But even though she expresses the usual frustrations with bad tippers and control freaks, in the long run Ginsberg is anything but bitter. In fact, she recently left her publishing job to return to waiting tables, hooked on the freedom, spare time, and ready cash the lifestyle provides. Of course, there are other perks too. Sex thrives in the close quarters and steamy atmosphere of a typical restaurant (not to mention with the high-drama personalities who work there). Fans of Kitchen Confidential will be relieved to know there's as much bad behavior among the floor staff as there is in the back of the house. As in that book, Ginsberg also relates some eyebrow-raising tales about what can happen before your food gets to your table. (The moral here: "It really does pay to be nice to your server.") But Waiting is far more than just a sexual soap opera or a cautionary guide for dining out; it's also the story of one woman's coming of age, most of which just happens to take place while she's wearing an apron. During her tenure as a waitress, Ginsberg thrives as a single mother and comes into her own as a writer--and waiting (as she suggestively calls it) helps her do both. Most of us (including waiters) think of the profession as a stopgap, not a career, but what happens on the way to somewhere else, Ginsberg writes, is every bit as important as the final destination: "Perhaps the most valuable lesson I'd learned was that the act of waiting itself is an active one. That period of time between the anticipation and the beginning of life's events is when everything really happens--the time when actual living occurs." --Mary Park


From Publishers Weekly
Ginsberg has spent nearly 20 years, more on than off, as a waitress, developing a love/hate relationship with a career most of her college-educated peers see either as a way station or a pink-collar province. Though neither a fully ripe memoir nor a truly spicy dish on the food biz (for that, see Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential; Forecasts, April 24), her collection of anecdotes, covering subjects from her father's luncheonette to fancy restaurants, conveys the unpredictability and humanity of this humble but essential work. Ginsberg sketches co-workers, both lively and burnt out, and her inspired and irresponsible bosses. A good view of the "parallel mating dances of staff and patrons" is one perk of her perch; she posits that the risk-taking, gregarious types who work for tips foster mutual attractions. In the "feudal pyramid" of the waitstaff, busboys are at the bottom and managers at the top, but waitresses must keep both happy to make sure things run smoothly and that tips ensue. Some scenes are wild: as a cocktail waitress during manic "Buck Night," she saw patrons drink the potent (and free) "Bar Mat," made up of bar spillage. Readers might pick up some pointers: bad-tipping regulars will suffer subtle server sabotage; customers who harangue staff for decaf might end up with regular. Ginsberg's more personal segments, which can be aimless, portray an intelligent single mom, fiercely committed to her son, with worries about her potential as a writer and her future. She quits waitressing only to return a year later, concluding that "the act of waiting itself is an active one" and that there is beauty and simplicity in the small acts of her work. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
YA-As a child, Ginsberg marveled at her father's stories about waiting tables, which made restaurants seem exciting and glamorous. At 16, she started working in a luncheonette and has spent over 20 years in all types of eating establishments from a diner to a "prestigious" club. As she recounts the different jobs that she has held, readers discover what it really takes to be a waitress. Ginsberg feels that she must be an actress, a good listener, and a nurturer. She examines the complex physical, mental, and psychological skills required to deal with demanding customers, unscrupulous managers, and uncooperative cooks and busboys. Throughout her career, Ginsberg felt that waiting tables was only a means to her real goal of being a writer. However, over time, she realized that the work allowed her to spend real quality time with her son. With a new insight into this profession, readers will see their next waitperson in an entirely new light.Jane S. Drabkin, Potomac Community Library, Woodbridge, VA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
In this memoir of 20 years of waiting tables to support herself and her son, Ginsberg, who also writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune, wavers between justifying her choice of occupation and attempting to shock or titillate readers with tales of the chaos, unsanitary conditions, and sexual harassment she experienced while working in a restaurant. She is often defensive about her work, which requires special skills and personal qualities and can be lucrative in the short term, though it is not especially respected and leaves no lasting evidence of the effort expended. However, Ginsberg does not connect her situation to the larger problems of the service economy or of women's work in general. Nor does she contribute to our understanding of how to survive in her occupation or even how to get better service in a restaurant. The section on images of waitresses in film and on television is particularly limited in insight. Not recommended.APaula R. Dempsey, DePaul Univ, IL. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Entertainment Weekly
"Funny and ultimately satisfying."


From Kirkus Reviews
A fresh new writer and seasoned waitress will be your server for this memoir of a life measured out with coffee spoons. It's not the same story as Prufrock's.This plat du jour is as mundane as meat loaf and, even loaded with filler, as easy to digest. Starting in her teens, Ginsberg has served in her family's borscht belt luncheonette and in a stodgy, WASPy private club. For over 20 years she's delivered slices in pizzerias, drinks in bars, and good eats in restaurants nationwide. It's been no piece of cake. It's true: some provoked servers may spit in an insensible customer's soup, stomp on a returned steak, or tamper with a cheapskate's doggy bag contents. But patrons may just as frequently be remarkably nasty or truly stupid. Looking for a free meal, they may plant bugs in their food. Worst of all, they may even stiff their waiter or waitress and leave no tip at all. Discussing the theory and practice of waiting tables, Ginsberg updates the Federal Occupational Outlook Handbook and deconstructs films and TV shows that feature food servers. She notes the value of adopting a persona, true or false, and presents, with considerable verisimilitude, the sounds, the smells, the panic, the steamy drama of a busy kitchen. It's not the savage scene once limned by dishwasher George Orwell, down and out in London and Paris, and there are no small servings of sex. It's close and feverish, after all, in Ginsberg's domain. As well as a guide to acceptable table manners, this is a memoir of people she's worked with and for--of blighted romances and of growing up in an apron, order pad in hand. On the whole, she seems to have enjoyed the job.Not a definitive study of the profession, but simply one woman's tale of table service and, equally, of her lovers, her friends, and her family. Served with a smile. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


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Debra Ginsberg's Waiting touched me, made me laugh, made me hunger—so to speak—to know more and more about the ups and downs of her life. It's a life of cups and saucers, shouting diners and lunatic restaurant owners, the tug and pull of single motherhood, romantic hopes dashed and rebuilt and finally, the many, many beautiful notes of epiphany she so wonderfully renders. — (Lisa Schiffman, author of Generation J)


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