Waiters and bad faith

[imomus]

It's been fun having Lik, Ron and Shazna in town. Here we are (all but Lik) sitting outside Sasaya, trying to look as sad as possible in order to convince the waitresses to find us a table (it worked).



And it's of waiters and waitresses that I want to speak today. In Cafe Jacques on Maybachufer last night we got into a big debate about our relations with them. I told the "Americans" (Shazna and Ron live in New York) that I feel very uncomfortable relating to waitstaff. I feel horribly patronizing tipping them, I don't quite know how or whether to converse with them, I'm not sure whether I want them to wear a mask or tell me how they're really feeling.

This might be essentially "European" of me, because I notice Asians don't have this discomfort -- Lik and Hisae were quite happy to call the waitress by waving a hand vehemently in the air. Or is it something introverts feel and extraverts don't? Or something socialists feel, a gap between a concept of ideal equality and contextual inequality (as long as we're in the restaurant, I'm supposed to "command" the waitstaff). Or have I misunderstood entirely? Am I, like a passenger on a plane, entirely strapped in and at the mercy of the waitstaff, the same way a baby is at the mercy of his mother?

Here are some napkin notes outlining my argument about waitstaff. First, I notice that waitstaff often deal with the status difference between themselves and their customers by making it into a tempo difference -- they develop what I call "the machismo of competence" and try to cram as many events as they can into each second. By acting impatient, they keep the upper hand. So I try to order as quickly as possible, to allow the waiter to get on to the next thing. I squirm in embarrassment when my friends linger indecisively over the menu.

Secondly, it's even worse when there's a racial difference between the customers and the waiters. I deal with ethnic difference in my personal relationships fine, but it makes me uncomfortable -- it's just too "imperialistic" feeling -- when I'm issuing orders and instructions to someone of a different race.

Thirdly, I feel this awkwardness to the extent that I generally prefer service industries to be automated. I prefer self-service restaurants to waitstaffed ones (they allow me to skip the one, two, three, four, five moments when I have to call the waiter over), ATMs to bank tellers, touch tone automated enquiry systems to live human operatives. I'd be happy to live in a society in which services were all dealt with by robots. We're in an odd moment now, though -- British people are useless at efficient service industries, for instance, but, increasingly, that's the only kind of job left in Britain.

Sartre, in "Being and Nothingness", uses a waiter as an example of his concept of "bad faith". He's interested in the slippage between mask and man. "His voice oozes with an eagerness to please," paraphrases Wikipedia in its Bad Faith entry, "he carries food rigidly and ostentatiously. His exaggerated behaviour illustrates that he is play-acting as a waiter, as an object in the world: an automaton whose essence is to be a waiter. But that he is obviously acting belies that he is aware that he is not (merely) a waiter, but is rather consciously deceiving himself."

Thinking of Sartre reminds me of something I read recently about how he and De Beauvoir spent much of their time living in hotels and eating in cafes. They did this in order to let "servants" look after their material needs while they got on with writing, thinking, speaking. It was also, no doubt, a way to evade some issues of gender politics -- the division of domestic labour between men and women. But it's interesting to think of waitstaff as "temporary, contextual servants". Sure, it isn't a feudal situation where someone is born a servant and stays one forever. The moment you leave the restaurant, you're no longer a waiter. But while you're there, there's a hierarchical relationship between you and the customers, and you accept their tips with humble thanks.

I told Shaz and Ron I thought American society was much more comfortable with this kind of relationship than European society. There's a strong sense there that everyone has some commercial interest. You expect people to be relating to you via money, whether it's someone you meet at a party who immediately starts self-promoting and networking, or the kind of chats you have with your doorman or an intern in your self-created company.

In Berlin, things are very different. Here we like to think that money doesn't dictate relationships, that there's some kind of solidarity that goes beyond that. But it isn't always the case. What happens when you befriend someone you've met through a commercial relationship? Shazna thought a line was crossed when you invite someone to your home, or get invited to theirs. And yes, Hisae and I have been to, for instance, Yumi from Smart Deli's house. She looks after our rabbit sometimes. So we feel like we're friends with her. On Saturday night we went to a party at her store, the four-year anniversary of Smart Deli. Yumi was greeting everyone, chatting away, passing out takoyaki octopus balls. But we were still paying for them, paying for the beer we were drinking. And sometimes we go to Smart Deli with friends, and Yumi just hovers in the kitchen and we don't talk to her at all, just stay within our own social group, then pay at the end, smile, and go.

I remember disagreeing with American friends in London years ago about this. They'd say some shopkeeper had treated them very rudely. I'd say I'd rather someone tell me what kind of day they'd been having than give me some sunny mask, a chirpy "Have a nice day!" which was just a lie based on money. When all our relationships become commercial relationships, I argued, there's a radical impoverishment of the quality of life.

Anyway, the conversation got very heated, with the Asians and extraverts and Americans and former waitresses around the table much less troubled by these relationships than I am. I sort of admire their ease, their mastery, their ability to patronize without shame. I think the waiters prefer it to my sort of awkward hyper-sensitivity too. Nobody likes having their "bad faith" pointed out, after all. But what does it mean when more and more of our human relationships are determined by the financial relationship we have with someone?

A related question, "How do we relate to interviewers interviewing us with self-deprecating courtesy?", might be answered by a couple of recent interviews I've done. Radio Correct broadcasts an interview with me about the Field Recordings Festival I participated in last week this evening at 9pm Berlin time, repeated on Wednesday morning at 8am. (For the relationship between Berlin time and other timezones, check here.) You can listen to the show, in which I play my favourite field recordings and talk about the ideas behind them, here.

I'm also on the inside back cover of the new edition of Map, Scotland's best -- nay only, I believe -- art magazine.

Oh, and Is It Because I'm A Pirate? is a relevant song for today's theme; here equality is restored between the waitress and customer when the pirate asks the waitress out on a date -- and, outside the restaurant context, it's she who makes him wait. Isn't that one of the better definitions of power: the ability of one party to make the other wait?

Anyway, must fly. Garcon! L'addition!

Comments

synchronicity or sneaky recycling?

[(Anonymous)]

When I saw the subject line it reminded me of the post you made exactly one year ago:
http://imomus.livejournal.com/2006/02/20/

Re: synchronicity or sneaky recycling?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's interesting! I did think of that entry when writing this one, without realizing it went up exactly one year ago! I might expand this subject into my next Wired column, like I did the "dining alone" theme. This time it would be angled around the idea of robots taking over service industries, though, and whether that would erase the kind of "bad faith" I'm talking about here.

Re: synchronicity or sneaky recycling?

[(Anonymous)]

With these articles are you also kind of admitting you've never worked in the service industry? Not that it isn't easy to be unsure of what the golden rule looks like in the pitch black jungle of capitalist consumerist alienation, whether or not you've had to slave in the frontlines of it.

Re: synchronicity or sneaky recycling?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I've worked in bookshops. I've also done music for commercial clients like Nike. I know what it's like to be told to go away and do it again the way the client wants it. It's a really horrible feeling, and one I do almost everything in my power to avoid. The way to avoid it is to set the terms of your relationship with the world; to be the one who defines the world's perception of you, rather than waiting for it to find some role for you based on its own pre-existing needs. As in advertising, you must create new needs, and make them fit exactly what you have to offer.

[brettday.livejournal.com]

I work at a restaurant, and I never have a problem with people placing orders, asking for drinks and such-- I knew what I was expected to do when I signed on the job, and in that way the customers asking for things are no worse than any other boss at any other job. I (and I think most service industry folk) see them as another sort of co-worker, albeit a temporary one.

After all, the relationship in the restaurant is one of me having to fulfill their wishes, but there are predefined boundries that all parties know and accept (anything they ask for outside of food and food related things I'm free to refuse). And if they're rude to the point of unmanagebility, I can always refuse to serve them anyway; just go get the manager, tell him what's up and let him deal with it. And, of course, if the job ever gets to be too much, I can always leave. The knowledge that I'm there voluntarily, and only as long as I chose to be is very comforting on rough nights.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Would you rather have customers talk to you

1. in a firm, authoritative, even patronizing way, or

2. with a sort of nervous collusive smile, as if they were delicately negotiating an ambivalent hinterland between being your friend/equal and being your customer/master?

Does the amount of tip someone leaves change how you really feel about them, or just how you act you do? Or neither?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think what I'm getting at is that those of us who are very sensitive to inequality assume -- and our every act and tic and gesture reveals our assumption -- that to be a waiter must be inherently humiliating. And that can actually induce a sense of shame or offence where none would otherwise exist. It's a bit like asking someone "Are you feeling depressed? I'd totally understand if you were..." And, you know, they weren't, but now you mention it...

[(Anonymous)]

It's that alienated work thing, isn't it.

I'm sure a lot of the time the waiter thinks of the customer as being as much of a big nothing as as the customer thinks of the waiter as being a big nothing.

Attempts to re-dress the balance are frequently hilarious..

I popped into Tesco in Clerkenwell yeaterday to buy some fruit and milk, as she was ringing up my items the 'asian' girl on the check-out said "Good morning, sir. How are you?", I replied : "Good, thanks", or similar.

After I'd left Tesco I went over to Terronis by Leather Lane, to buy my coffee. On the way back from there I realised I'd forgotten to buy some porridge so I popped into Tesco again. I got the same girl on the checkout;

Girl: "Good morning, Sir. How are you?"

Same as I was 15 minutes ago.

Tu et vous

[jimineuropa.livejournal.com]

A not-quite related experience is the dissonance I always feel when entering a shop or restaurant in a country like Poland (where I am now), where custom dictates I use the formal 'pani' address (analogous to 'vous' in French) to the salesfemale or waitfemale (it would be 'pan' to a male), even if she's eighteen and fresh out of vocational/trade high school - whereas if a few hours later I was to meet the same person at a disco, it would be equally socially acceptable to go up to her and address her straight off in the 'ty' form (analagous to 'tu' in French). Same person (same two people, in fact) - but different situations, and different hierarchical assumptions. :)

[jimineuropa.livejournal.com]

I LOATHE being called 'sir' in shops in England, it just makes my toes curl. Perhaps the word's lost its older connotations of master/servant hierarchy, and people just say it with the same insoucicance as they seem to say 'f__k', but for me it sounds simultaneously both nauseatingly crawly and contemptuously dismissive ('Sir? You? Don't make me laugh.') Brian Eno feels similarly, or he did in his legendary 1995 diary. So I know I'm not alone in this respect. :)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm fascinated / horrified by the range of more-or-less passive aggressive behaviors people engage in to get even when they feel slighted by subservient jobs. They'll act impatient, or go outside for a smoke. Yesterday I linked to a Wiki article about the Blarney Stone that said that people who work at the castle rampart where it's located actually pee against it, just to mock the tourists they're earning their living from.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, it's like reciprocal alienation.

In a sense alienation is like a currency that people pass around between each other.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Interesting idea!

It's all in one's head

[(Anonymous)]

I take classes with a yoga instructor who also works in a coffee shop.
She told us a story about an earlier teacher in her lineage thought it
was great karma to work in a coffee shop, because one was working on
learning to serve people - ie, learning to listen and be caring about something than your own small egotistical self. Of course,
it is a radical act to develop such nurturing, feminine traits in the US.

[(Anonymous)]

Would you rather be called sir or mate? I still haven't made up my mind about that one yet.

they develop what I call "the machismo of competence" and try to cram as many events as they can into each second. By acting impatient, they keep the upper hand.

Not of because of themselves, it's more the influence of some low-life-stuck-in-the-job-forever manager who tells them (not necessarily directly) to behave that way and keep productivity up.

Even in Japan, where service people are better at keeping their masks on, I had encounters with staff from Tsutaya or my local video shop in which they were "impatient" (to use a mild word) with me or my foreign friends even though we were not doing anything wrong or being annoying. They were probably just extremely overworked and, since they had a mental block about accepting the very existence of gaijin who speak Japanese, were dreading the prospect of having to communicate with someone they can't speak.

[barkis.livejournal.com]

Hey! wanted to ask if any of your work is fair game for my podcast. You enthusiastically approved my playing of your forbidden colors remix, but I just wanted to double check. I would like to play this one too.

Also, I completely relate to what you are saying here. I think I overly thank and acknowledge servers when I eat out, but then, I don't feel I am that too over the top with it. I think it is impoortant to see everyone first as a fellow human. It sounds like you are hyper-aware of status, even though your point is to avoid doing so. I think I followed that correctly, anyway.

There were times when I was a waiter, tho, that I liked to secretly punish annoying customers by ignoring them for certain amounts of time. I liked to maintain my dominance in whatever way I could. :-)

[(Anonymous)]

Mmm, yeah.

To mish-mash various ideas a little...

If you're not aware of other people as being living kicking sentient beings, then the Tao has a habit of reflecting that non-being-ness back at you.

If you work in a coffee shop, or a menial job of one sort or another, the best way to deal with it is to be present to where you are, who you're with and what you're doing, so you're not living in what the Situationists used to call 'dead time.' This is a fundamental of what Gurdjieff called 'self-remembering.'

You can't legislate for this kind of thing and say, "Oh we should all just love each other", or whatever, because all that does is create alienated love. "We are the world!" etc.

[nato-dakke.livejournal.com]

am I missing something? I thought you had been writing for so long about the ecstasy of losing yourself in a role, and accepting the lies Japanese TV tells you, because we all know it's a lie... to the point that it doesn't even matter that it is.
What difference is there between you playing along as the disposable "patron" and us getting excited about sumo in spite of the rampant yaocho?

While I'm at it, if it's your socialism that gets between you and the wait staff, maybe you should let it get between you and the anonymous automat stocker.

Passive-agressive behaviours of wait staff

[kuroy.livejournal.com]

Very resonant post.
Interestingly, being waited on in Japan is a much less uncomfortable experience, probably because the waitstaff are decently shielded in tatemae, and you know that, and they know you know. They are not really themselves, so they don't have to feel demeaned. We poor Westerners feel obliged to be our real selves at all times: it's exhausting. Maybe we should regard public life as a stylised gavotte, and just learn the steps. How much more comfortable our public lives would be, and how much sexier our private lives.

[(Anonymous)]

More pointless nonsense from the pointless and the nonsense. Get it here with more humour
http://nonsense.sourceforge.net/

Re: It's all in one's head

[(Anonymous)]

Not really.

Re: Tu et vous

[eli-l.livejournal.com]

I live in Montréal, Québec (the French province of Canada) and have the same kind of issue. Except that Quebecers are much more laid-back (lots of bosses demand to be "tutoyer"), which really complicates the matter.
If I were to deal with a waiter my age, he would expect me to use "tu", with an older waiter I would use "vous".
Then again, in a very chic restaurant, I would be excepted to use "vous" with any waiter.
In any bar, it is common to use "tu".

If that weren't complicated enough, I have noticed that waiters will use "vous" with any client who isn't francophone.

Compliqué! :/

Different, but close

[eli-l.livejournal.com]

I work as a receptionist and get some pretty arogant visitors. I prefer those, to visitors who try to "get to know me" or try to act like my pal. They are dealing with me solely because they need something and I am obligated to deal with them because it is my job. I feel that the transgression of that exchange of services is humiliating, since it forces me to be friendly. I'm obligated to fake an emotion, something I wouldn't have to do if the person simply aknowledged that our short relationship is one of business, not pleasure.
Of course, this doesn't apply to my coworkers.

[cantstoptharock.livejournal.com]

Perhaps in America - where there is a tipping wage, there is more comfort, because right off the start, the waiters/waitresses are presumably getting paid even less than the standard minimum wage - they are working a sometimes thankless job that without YOUR tips brings home very little. In America, waiters and waitresses sometimes depend on the tips in order to bring home a living wage, and people know this, and so they tip, and feel better about themselves for helping the poor lady/woman/single mom/drop out/immigrant person.

And while this may not always be the case, especially if you consider that wait staff in many extravagantly high end restaruants make considerably more than minimum wage and have to be considered extremely classy in order to get hired, we still tip, and we still feel comforatable with the idea of the waiter/waitress in the role of one who is lesser - even when we know this to be false. It's just one of those roles that we've grown to be comfortable with - even in circumstances where we are aware that the role no longer exists.

I know my boyfriend is English and coming over to Canada (where although the waitstaff get paid at least min wage and there is not 'serving wages', their tipping habits have become ours), he has a very difficult time dealing with the "etiquette" around tipping - in his eyes, waitress seem to get hired based almost entirely on appearance, and tipping seems to happen in a direct relation to that - and the whole concept of that makes him feel incredibly uncomfortable - even in situations where blatantly it is not the case - when it comes time to tip, he feels weird about it. I think he doesn't fully understand what a tip is for, having not been part of the customs and the culture of consistant tipping across the board. I don't think so much that he feels it is undeserved, but perhaps, like you mentioned, it may feel a bit patronizing.

So maybe it is a European thing...

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

i think the american mega-monetization cuts both ways such that lately i feel almost as comfortable in a store as i do as a guest in a person's home. not paying for food just makes me realize the food is being paid for by someone else who may or may not be stretching their wallets to accomodate my hungry-ass stomach. the "networking" thing is a big big question. bring a bottle of wine?

I try to be super-friendly to waitpeople and often ask for recommendations or other questions because I know that they are experts at what they are doing (obviously this also gives them an opportunity to try to upsell me / earn tips with friendliness). I truly believe that if robots ever get advanced enough to fully work the service industry, they will demand to be polite and friendly to everyone.