We get to Williamsburg in Virginia as night begins to close in. Williamsburg is a town of houses scattered along four- lane roads that gravitate towards its colonial centre. At this point, as we skim the road looking for a plausible motel, we are yet to discover that colonial Williamsburg has been turned into a sort of historical theme park. Tomorrow we will see women in gingham dresses and men in breeches labouring under the sun in imitation of their ancestors, that is, if their ancestors had been outfitted with the kind of headpieces to allow them to sing and jive to the Declaration of Independence like a chorus line at a Justin Timberlake concert.
Impeccably restored colonial buildings and faithful replicas are of little importance to the hollow-bellied and weary-eyed, and our hearts leap with joy at the sight of an unremarkable and down-at-heel motel rubbing shoulders with a marginally more prosperous-looking seafood and steak grill. Side by side, they look like a nouveau riche lady turning her back on an unsavoury hick relative at a social function.
We check in the motel -don’t expect any frantic stabbing whilst in the shower, with the heat and humidity, the irony would be stratospheric- and we hasten to grab some food at the grill. The interior sports a 1985 idea of class that even then was the wrong idea: golden- tasselled brocade curtains, thick carpeting in burgundy complementing the tan upholstery of its booths and imitation Roccocco vases filled with plastic flowers.
I have often noted that there is a quasi symbiotic correspondence between a restaurant and its floor staff. Think of some of the hipster establishments in Dublin and their heavily-tattooed staff clad in irony-laden vintage or, if you know Spain well, of the ruddy and matronly broad faces of landladies in roadside trucker joints in Castile.
The seafood and steak grill, whilst on the surface no exception to the rule, will prove to provide a much richer waitressing experience than any other I’ve had. Our waitress -a white haired blue-eyed woman in her seventies- welcomes us with a jaded smile that betrays the late hour. She is working the shift with a stout black woman also in her seventies and we are ushered to a booth by the black waitress.
The menu swings from land to sea promising sturdy servings from either: crab cakes, seafood platter, grilled steak. Our waitress comes over to the table to take our drinks order and when my friend announces that she is strictly no frills when it comes to drinking beer – no glass for her- she fixes us with her sleep-laden blue eyes and says with a Manhattan twang: “So you are a bottle baby, huh?”. It will be the first of a series of zingers delivered with the wry warmth that is the preserve of those who do not let their intelligence override their humanity.
Restaurant service in the US bears only a basic resemblance to service in Europe. This in no doubt results when you mix classic American cordiality and the tipping system -misguidedly called tipping when in reality it is, at 15% of the bill, a much needed wage supplement for those earning a salary significantly lower than the minimum wage. The peculiarities of the American tipping system where the floor staff’s salary is directly at the mercy of patrons mean that interaction with your server is rarely reduced to a cursory exchange of hellos before perusing the menu. For the average American waiter or waitress his or her livelihood depends on how they are judged by the patrons. This has the inevitable effect of turning service into a spectacle. As a teacher, for different reasons, I am acutely aware of the pressures of judgement and acceptance on a day-to-day basis.
Americans marching for their right to tip in Williamsburg, Virginia.
The pressure for a waitress vis-a-vis her customers in the US may very well be a concentrated and fractioned version of my experience as a teacher. The challenges are similar: maintaining a professional distance without sacrificing warmth; judging the patron’s receptiveness to humour and irony; creating the illusion of a bond without being overbearing or over familiar. All of these in a matter of minutes and with the pressure of serving as many tables as you can as quickly as you can.
As in acting, in teaching, the magic only happens when a consummate professional -rid of any vestiges of the self-consciousness that mars the novice- lets the mask slip long enough to give an insight into the person. This is the moment of truth that is missing from so many social exchanges. And this is what -apart from a serving of crab cakes, a seafood platter, and a couple of drinks- our waitress at Williamsburg brought to our table.
She enquired about our journey and revealed herself a New Yorker when we told her we had stayed with a friend in Brooklyn. She described the Motel next door, after a damning eye roll, as “not exactly the Plaza” adding, “but sometimes all you need is a clean room and a comfortable bed”. She was a Julliard graduate, she told us. She found anything south of Washington, uncivilised, and added mischievously that Southerners “resented us” because “we won the war”. I knew that I could not ask why a gifted musician had wound up serving tables past her retirement in a roadside grill in Virginia.
Behind the irony, wisecracking and warmth, there was a subtle note of melancholy and regret: the kind that likes to create a diversion from the banality of a well worn path. By the time we left, to the tune of “come back tomorrow but come earlier”, she had more than earned a generous tip. She, above the costumed impersonators standing outside postcard replicas of colonial architecture, will linger in my mind as embodying the best of the American character -warmth, playfulness, openness and a dash of grit- along with the worst of the “winner takes all” ideology that blights the lives of so many. How much happier for both of us the experience if profit -on her part- and value for money -on mine- had played no part.
A Fistful of Olives 