I Miss Waiting
Lifetime Lessons From Service
Welcome to Polymathic Being, a place to explore counterintuitive insights across multiple domains. These essays explore common topics from different perspectives and disciplines to uncover unique insights and solutions.
Today’s Topic covers an aspect of Polymathic Thinking that is often overlooked. Let’s dive in and see how our skills are formed by the sum of our experience, not just the most prestigious. Today is a nostalgic review of how many things I learned while waiting tables in college.
My time at Michigan Tech University was the adventure of wrangling multiple part-time jobs, as I could fit them in throughout the school year and summer breaks. I was a photojournalist for the local paper and worked at the ski hill, driving the groomers and loading the lift chairs. During the summer, I waited tables and typically had another job as a handyman, cleaning rooms at a dinky resort, working at a lumber yard, or half a dozen other ventures. Fun fact: In the summer of 02, I slept in a tent in the woods in bear country1 while working two jobs and showering at the local state park at night.
Looking back, these were the foundation stones of my aspiring to be a polymath, which I continue to build on today. I touched over a dozen different skill sets and learned many lessons from unexpected sources. Today, we’re going to focus on waiting tables and a few counterintuitive lessons that taught me.
Intro to Waiting
The restaurants I worked at were on the higher end for Northern Michigan. The Big Buck Brewery and Steakhouse, Pilgrim River Steakhouse, and the Mariner North Resort. No Michillen Stars, but for the regional economics, these were the nice places.
If you’ve ever watched the Ryan Reynolds movie Waiting, you’ll get a gist of the types of shenanigans that go on at a restaurant. And, like the movie, it is a place where you bond in such a politically incorrect way it would shock most sensibilities outside of my time as an Army Ranger, which was very similar. Also, regarding those socio-economics, the staff I worked with were even a bit more interesting.
The first thing to understand about waiting tables is that there’s the dining room, where we act suave and sophisticated, hands clasped, polite nods, with liberal use of “Sir” and “Ma’am” while weaving through the tables like dancers to deliver a wonderful time out. It was all polished professionalism, smiles, and kind words.
Then there’s the back. The true mayhem occurs in prep areas, the kitchen, walk-in freezers, and loading docks. Filters don’t exist. The f-word had hundreds of inflections and meanings as it was used more than anything else. Skins needed to be thick, and the rowdy behavior was empowering once accepted.
The most important rule about waiting is keeping those two worlds separate. The biggest faux pas is letting the kitchen leak out or holding onto your ego in the kitchen. Outside of that, all bets are off.
This was something that I wish corporate HR could better understand. Teams need to form, storm, and norm, and, especially in high-intensity work like waiting,2 you have to be able to measure the mettle of your co-workers, and you need to be able to trust them under the worst conditions.3 HR wants everyone to sit around, collaborate, and sing kumbaya, while the reality is, I need to know that you can take a gut punch, straighten your shoulders, walk out, and serve my grandmother with grace and dignity.
The rough and tumble was a feature, not a bug, and that feature taught me a ton about the human condition, from psychology to sociology to politics, and how to get along in chaotic environments and mature as a result. Today, in the corporate world, we cannot tolerate that grit, and we miss the lessons and the bonding that occurs. Without further ado, let’s explore a few fun stories about how the crazy world of waiting taught me many things.
Earn Tips; Never Expect Them
As a brand-new waiter, I was taught the ropes by a much more experienced fellow. He told me that anyone could serve tables, but mastery was evident in the tips. This was the early 2000s, and his goal was “three bills a night.” That means three Benjamins or $300 in tips each night.
That was the minimum, and with that was his admonishment that I never deserved a tip; I only earned one through exceptional service. This lesson, which has shaped my view of the waiter's role, is also one I’ve integrated into everything I do. I never expect compensation; I earn it. This was the first lesson he taught me. The second was more counterintuitive on how to stereotype properly.
Stereotyping Properly
One of the most important lessons I learned while waiting was how to stereotype properly. Oh, we don’t call it stereotyping; we call it ‘reading a table,’ but let’s be honest, you’re stereotyping the hell out of the entire group. It’s something I wrote about previously:
Being able to ‘read the table’ meant I had to pick up on stereotypical cues quickly and switch myself to the right persona. The elderly couple I demurred and used lots of “Sirs” and “Ma’ams.” The table of golfers was chatted up about courses, scores, and beer. The table with kids was immediately presented with crayons, paper, and kiddie cups of water. The table with the ladies’ night out got compliments and flirting.
It’s a powerful skill that has been sullied by ignorance of how stereotyping is also known as social graces and that we apply stereotypes to ourselves in how we dress and act to fit in better. My mastery of reading a table has served me well everywhere, from battlefields to boardrooms, and changed the way I see stereotypes.
Wiggle and Giggle
One of the most amazing things about working in the rough and tumble of waiting was how empowered the women were in owning their sexuality. While one waitress taught me the power of ‘wiggle and giggle’ in driving tips, it was the older, more matronly types who also taught me that it wasn’t about selling their sex. It was how to stand firm, confident, and capable as a woman in an environment that appears to be a #MeToo nightmare. A great example is the 2019 Quillette essay, “#NotMe: On Harassment, Empowerment, and Feminine Virtue,” regarding restaurant work:
What I learned that summer was that the adult world was often about sex. I learned that I didn’t need to be afraid of it. I learned that I had a lot more power over men than I originally thought—not simply because, as a cute young thing, I was awakening to my own feminine sexuality and realized how keenly the guys wanted me to like them, but because I had more power than I realized to reject their advances, to assert my sense of sexual agency not because it was a private and protected part of me, but precisely because it was so openly commented upon.
Far from needing to protect women and hide sexuality, the back of a restaurant taught women agency, and men learned moderation. The guys kept assholes in check while women learned that wiggling and giggling were only part of the equation.
Wait for the Bite
I slid between two chairs and pivoted to set the water glasses down for the newly seated couple. Placing my hands together, I leaned in and greeted them before asking, “Is there something I can get you from the bar to start?”
The man’s eyes flicked between the drink menu and his wife’s face. He sighed, his finger hovering over a basic Jack and Coke. His wife looked over out of the corner of her eye with a ‘don’t you dare’ expression. I knew I was in for an interesting evening. I was dealing with Karen, and she was a doozy.
Now, the cool thing about this restaurant is that we had a Karen alert, as this archetype can get difficult quickly. It only took a simple comment to the chef and the head waiter, who let the shift manager know. Depending on the severity, the owner was also clued in. It meant all hands on deck: hop and pop.
This isn’t to say we don’t provide good service in general, just that all the staff has dealt with Karen before and we help each other out. Water never runs out, the manager swings by to check in, and food is more closely overseen. It’s also where I learned a lot of tricks about dealing with difficult people. One that sticks the best is to “Wait for the Bite.”
It’s a simple idea. You keep an eye on the table, and when Karen takes a bite of food, you swoop in, fill the water, and ask if there’s anything you can get them. As she frantically chokes down her bite of steak, you have a good chance that someone else will speak up and say everything is “Okay.” This allows you to scan the table for absolutely anything that needs to be resolved on your next pass.
In this case, we still needed to deal with that drink. I slid up to the bar and asked for a favor. A minute later, I glided back to the table and served him a double Jack and Coke with a wink, saying, “Sir, someone misordered at the bar, and I hate to let things go to waste,” Seeing the grin on his face was even better than the generous tip he left.
This trick is still useful today, and it's one reason I like to have working meetings during lunch. I wait for that bite and then ask for opinions on an idea. This gives others time to speak up and increases the diversity of voices sharing ideas.
Dealing with Trust and Tyranny
At one restaurant, my head waitress was a bit tyrannical. She was close friends with the owner and loved to flex her authority. She also detested that I regularly had tables specifically wait for me to serve them, especially since they were usually large groups, which meant the tips were higher. From the first week, she had a chip on her shoulder, and I was the target.
Tyrannical people typically feel entitled to more than they’ve earned. When this is coupled with lax bookkeeping, it often leads to temptation. The way we cashed out the dining room register was crazy. You just opened the till, pulled out all the cash, carried it to the bar register, and stuffed it in—no counting, nothing.
So it’s no surprise, really, when I went to convert my tips to larger bills, that I caught the head waitress skimming off the top. The head waitress knew she was caught, and the unspoken exchange was that I’d say nothing, but she’d stop making my life hell as her petty tyranny was wont to do.
The rest of the summer was a delight, and I learned that you need proper accountability mechanisms to keep bad behavior in check. In my case, holding the head waitress accountable while, ironically, the head waitress was fleecing the owner. It also set the seed for how I measure good leadership because I’ve seen the behaviors of the head waitress demonstrated in many other places in my career.
Summary
I miss waiting because it provides a rough-and-tumble, raw connection to the core of who we are as humans. I currently hold the title of Chief Engineer, creating solutions for Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) for the Space Force. I’m sure that sounds cool, but it lacks the gritty reality of waiting tables.
This is a key element to remember about the Polymathic Mindset. The aspiration to look across domains and disciplines also needs to include looking up and down the layers of work. Success in my current role is directly related to the lessons I learned waiting tables. My skills are formed by the sum of my experience, not just the most prestigious. I miss waiting, but it’s always with me as a lifetime of lessons.
What are your experiences working as a waiter or similar work? I’d love to hear your insights and what you learned.
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If you’re curious, here’s approximately where I pitched my tent for 3 months. https://maps.app.goo.gl/DcJFbK4vra9cjYcR7
Yes, the restaurants I worked at were pretty high-intensity. We moved a lot of tables as there was typically an hour and a half wait, and people on vacation were hungry.
There is a surprising similarity between waiting and combat teams in the military. Both look shockingly professional, sophisticated, and suave in crisp uniforms and impeccable manners. But when you see them in private, you’d wonder what sort of shit-show hellions you’ve just run into.
Obvious question, how does this apply to the current DOGE and the investigations for fraud in the federal government? How would you handle auditing all these federal employees? What would you do differently?
I'm quite confident that working in restaurants helped me learn how to think. I would not object to a plan wherein everyone has to do one year of civic service, and that one year consists entirely of working in restaurants. I'm quite confident the world would have more empathy, but also: better problem solving skills.
These are great front-of-the-house callouts, and there are just as many kitchen corollaries. This time in my memory will always have its own special space.