Your Waitress is a Philosopher

On the nature of customer service

The waitress is a central, colloquial figure not just in American life, but human life for the better part of almost 250 years. Yet, particularly in America, she has become this underappreciated asset in daily living and economic exchange. Like her brothers and sisters in agriculture, hospitality, and other roles oriented towards the service of community, the waitress has become stuck in an idea of herself, bound to its rules and restrictions. Her value, her character, as a real human person, come second to her ability to sell herself, and the establishment she represents, to us as their greedy, hungry patrons. Something about the nature of the waitress, the appeal of this job to so many women and men in college, people short on cash, or those without a proper retirement speaks to this horrid underbelly of the American experience, and reflects the larger nature of customer service as an industry which attempts to explain away this underbelly through the fulfillment of needs.

The waitress does not enter her profession with starry-eyed dreams of a career, or long-term ambitions to stay and master her craft. Unless, of course, there is some corporate latter she can climb from her position into management, the waitress enters her position out of necessity. She is the prime capitalist, rather the prime capitalist’s prime laborer. She becomes the waitress as we understand her out of a need to make her ends meet, to supplement an income, or simply for a quick turnaround on cash. This is the first sin of modern customer service. There was, once, a craft to foodservice. As far back as the 12th century in China, eating out was becoming more than street food, it was becoming a communal and performative experience, in which waiters sang, or 16th century Japan when seasonal menus were designed to tell stories.

“Oh! I see. And I’ve sort of been maintaining my amateur status so that I can waitress in the Olympics.” - Rachel Green (Played by Jennifer Anniston), ‘Friends’